Mission

Alive - To Worship

We believe in the redeeming power of God's love through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  Because of this sacrifice, we can never run short of reasons to praise our resurrected Lord.

Forever - To Seek Out Absolute Truth

At A.F.A., we believe that the Bible is the Word of God, and within its pages are all the Truths that God would have for us to know.  It is from this Word that we learn of our eternal promises upon confessing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior with our mouths.  The consequences of being wrong about this are too great to risk being unsure; therefore -
Our goal is one of dedication, to use every resource we have been given to extract Absolute Truths (never to read our own meanings into it!). 

Amen - To Fellowship as the Body of Christ

Christ is coming back for His Church someday.  In the meantime, He has left us with tasks to complete, and He has not left us to do it alone.  For this reason, we at A.F.A. seek to edify one another, both during weekly meetings and in every day interaction, because of our bond as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Meetings

Currently, A.F.A. meets twice a week during the fall and spring semesters. 

*Sunday night meetings are primarily for individual and group prayer.  We also sing a few hymns and have a short lesson geared towards basics of the Christian faith, such as prayer, worship, understanding the Bible, etc.

*Wednesday night meetings involve more worship through music (often of contemporary nature, but sometimes of varied styles).  The lessons are generally more in-depth and tackle more difficult subjects through the idea of exegesis (Greek meaning "to pull meaning out of").

Information about both of these and other non-recurring fellowship activities can be found under our events section.

History

What we now know as A.F.A. actually began as only a six person Bible study on a Wednesday night at the beginning of the fall semester in 2006. Some of those present were well acquainted with each other while others met for the first time. Regardless, a Spirit-led night of Scripture reading was had, and it left all of them desiring to meet again. Many of them hadn’t really found a church in Cookeville yet, and some had schedules that didn't allow much involvement in the other campus Christian organizations. It seemed a great idea to try to continue with the Wednesday night meetings.

Fast-forward through a year of college, and the only thing that can be said is that God was unceasingly moving within the group. What started out only as six began steadily growing through Christian love, word-of-mouth, and through meetings held outside TTU's New Residence Hall. There were two especially memorable moments: one meeting held in a dorm room resulted in a chain of phone calls that led to four new people showing up and becoming regular attendees, and a meeting outside resulted in two people joining when they heard us singing praise music. By the end of the spring semester, we had around twenty people who regularly attended.

In a year's time, we discussed many topics with each other, sharing in discussion over favorite Scripture verses and also studying books on prayer and evangelism. Truly, we learned the sheer splendor of uniting as a group to pray out loud in the presence of God Almighty and the joy of displaying his love which united us. We eventually expanded from our Wednesday night meeting to include a Sunday night prayer meeting. Most importantly, we began to understand more deeply than ever what our Christian bond signifies – that every one of us is a member of the body of Christ, and we are bound together with a love that transcends any power of this world.

It was during these periods of growth that some of us began to see a faint vision of things to come – that our group was not going to remain the same size but rather grow beyond what any of us would have imagined. These feelings only intensified as time progressed and, although we had human doubts, we began the necessary steps to organize ourselves to accommodate as many people as God wanted to provide. During the summer of 2007, God continually confirmed His will for this group to be one of His shining lights in this earthly kingdom: the exact number of people needed to fill important organizational roles were called by God and accepted His call, an ideal venue was discovered to handle more people, a faculty advisor who is more than qualified to help the group see a vision become a reality, a rare opportunity to host an event for more than one hundred people at the very beginning of the Fall 2007 semester, and kindhearted people to sponsor A.F.A. for the costs of the event.

This is a remarkable and exciting time in all of our lives; we could not be more grateful for such opportunities to share the Bible's message of God's love for us, the love we are to have for one another, and how victorious we are to have Jesus Christ as our salvation. We pray that the Holy Spirit will speak to your heart and, if it is God's will, that you may join us in sharing His Good News.