The 180 Program was created by Rob and Meredith Kendall – founders of Advancing the Gospel (AtG) – a ministry that started with reaching out to unwed mothers in 2002 and closed their doors in 2019 after reaching thousands through the ministry.
Rob and Meredith assisted their first pregnant teen when they had been married for less then 2 years. In 1986 she stayed with them during her pregnancy because she was given an ultimatum…”abort your baby or get out.” The Kendall’s volunteered for Crisis Pregnancy Center and gave her the option to save her child. This desire to serve others continued for years.
In 2002 Rob and Meredith Kendall had achieved the American dream but found their lives to be selfish and unfulfilling. At Meredith’s urging, Rob took a year off of work to find their calling in life. Throughout that year Rob studied and prayed and began to see God’s heart for the poor…the single mother, the fatherless child, those in prison and those without a home…the marginalized people who did not have a voice in society. As the year ended, they began a relationship with a single mother of three. Through a series of conversations, Rob and Meredith committed to help her and eight of her friends overcome the challenges that had held them down and on August 4, 2003, AtG was formed as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with two services, a program for single mothers and a program for kids.
Over the next few years, a series of lessons were written to address the questions and concerns that the moms would ask; “Why am I doing the exact same things that my mom did” or “I continue to repeat the same cycles over and over again”. The women had dreams. They would say “I want to offer a better chance for my kids” and “I really want to go back to school”, but they didn’t know where to begin or have the confidence to work towards their goals. AtG began offering a wide variety of services to educate and empower the women they were working with to succeed in life and achieve those dreams. In the fall of 2009, The 180 Program was formalized into a study designed to address the needs of men and women in a repeatable format.
Since 2017 Rob and Meredith have trained churches and nonprofits to change their model of serving to include providing dignity to those they serve. Rob’s book Breaking the Broken, Debunking the Myth of Social Justice allows readers to understand God’s Plan for serving the “least of these”.
As a country we spend billions of dollars assisting families struggling to overcome negative generational cycles of poverty, but what are the results? Millions of capable people trapped in dependency with no clear direction to self-sufficiency. Many want out, but by working hard to improve their lives they often lose more in benefits than they gain in income. It’s a hopeless, self-defeating cycle.
Our current government systems hold people in poverty. As one DHS worker put it “My hands are tied on what I can do. I can’t offer them the help that they really need or I’ll lose my job.” While this is a sad commentary on the services offered, the truth is, the government can’t do what the church is supposed to be doing. Think about it, the church is the only group that has no agenda, but to love God by loving our neighbor as ourselves.
Advancing The Gospel (AtG) began in March of 2003 with a commitment to follow a Biblical model of serving the poor and helping people discover their purpose in Christ. AtG’s mission is to educate and empower struggling families to achieve their unique God-given potential. Based out of Middle Tennessee, thousands of families around the country are finding freedom from their past and a new life in Christ.
In the last 15 years AtG has partnered with churches to serve in jails, halfway houses, homeless shelters, and recovery centers, helping people discover their purpose through life-recovery Bible studies and relationships. AtG does more than treat the symptoms of poverty by providing a holistic approach, which includes identifying the root causes of the struggles, providing group studies and developing a customized plan for each individual to overcome their challenges. This comprehensive approach is much more demanding but results in a sustainable plan for independence where families change their patterns for living and create new legacies.