Chris’s Pathway

Multiplier
Christopher Brooks

Categories
National, Simple Church Model,
Placement, Hampton Roads Hub

Pathway Status
Pending Funding

Chris Brooks is catalyzing a quiet, deep movement of discipleship in one of the most unchurched cities in Virginia. As co-founder of The Grace Collective (TGC) and Coalescence Coffee Company, Chris has helped establish a network of house churches that embody the way of Jesus—through shared meals, honest conversation, and everyday spiritual formation. His passion isn’t for crowds; it’s for people—real people, learning how to follow Christ with their whole lives.

Through years of hardship and personal sacrifice—including a season marked by tragedy, burnout, and uncertainty—Chris has emerged with a refined vision: to build a multiplying network of house churches led by disciple-makers who have been deeply formed in the image of Jesus. With renewed clarity, Chris is now stepping full-time into a ministry of training, teaching, and forming leaders, not only in Norfolk but across the Multiply family. His weekly discipleship classes and spiritual formation cohorts are designed to equip believers everywhere to live like Jesus in real life.

But to realize this vision, Chris needs partners. He’s inviting you to walk with him into this next chapter—where transformed lives will lead to multiplied churches.

The Multiplier

A Pastor Formed by Community and Discipleship

Chris Brooks is a leader shaped by discipleship, community, and a passion for everyday faithfulness. As co-founder of The Grace Collective in Norfolk, Virginia, Chris has spent years building a church movement not around stages or Sunday services—but around living rooms, shared meals, and deeply formed lives. His calling is clear: to create a network of house churches where people are discipled in the way of Jesus and equipped to do the same for others.

With his wife Jenny, Chris has helped plant and sustain a relationally rich, spiritually deep community that invites people into honest, slow, and transformative discipleship. Through years of sacrifice and service, Chris has discerned a vision that extends beyond his local city: to form and release a generation of disciple-makers who will lead simple, reproducible churches across North America.

To do that, he’s stepping fully into a new role—developing leaders and forming spiritual communities through weekly discipleship classes, cohorts, and a full training pathway designed to multiply churches from the ground up.

The Challenge

When the Cost Is Everything

Church planting in a post-Christian, urban context is never easy—but in Chris’s story, it became nearly impossible.

Over the past few years, the community he helped build was struck by deep loss and crisis. A key leader fell gravely ill. Another passed away unexpectedly. The weight of grief, uncertainty, and financial strain fell heavily on those who remained. For a season, gatherings slowed. House churches began to unravel. The café that once served as the heart of the mission nearly closed its doors.

This wasn’t just a logistical setback—it was a spiritual crisis. Chris found himself leading through exhaustion, holding too much, carrying more than he was ever meant to carry. The fragile beauty of house church ministry—so reliant on relational trust and shared leadership—was revealed to be both powerful and precarious.

And yet, that same season clarified everything: we cannot build the future of the church without a system for forming and multiplying leaders. We need more than vision—we need structure, training, and support to turn faithfulness into multiplication.

The Partnership

Building the Dura Church Pathway with Multiply

That’s where Multiply comes in.

Together, Chris and Multiply are launching the Dura Church Pathway—a collaborative initiative designed to train and release leaders who can plant and sustain simple churches. Named after the biblical plain of Dura, where three faithful followers stood firm in the face of cultural pressure, this pathway is for those who want to follow Jesus boldly and build resilient communities of faith.

This partnership is built on trust, alignment, and shared conviction. Multiply provides the support structure, leadership wisdom, and global vision, while Chris brings the relational depth, ground-level experience, and pastoral heartneeded to shape a movement.

Their shared goal? 30 new house churches planted by 2030, all led by deeply formed disciples who multiply what they’ve received.

The Plan

A Reproducible Pathway for Disciples, Leaders, and Churches

The Dura Church Pathway is a comprehensive formation track that moves participants through three key stages:

1. Followership

This first stage invites participants into a deeper way of life with Jesus. Using tools and practices adapted from Practicing the Way by John Mark Comer, this phase focuses on spiritual rhythms, emotional health, biblical engagement, and community habits. The goal is to build a culture of followership, where people learn to live like Jesus in the everyday.

2. Leadership Formation

From within this culture, new leaders are identified and trained. Drawing from best practices adapted from OV Church’s leadership system and Multiply’s global models, this stage equips leaders to guide others, facilitate house churches, and shepherd with humility and clarity.

3. Multiplication

Finally, participants are trained to multiply what they’ve received. They’ll learn to plant new house churches, disciple others into followership and leadership, and support new leaders across their city or region. The focus is on reproducibility, contextualization, and sustainability—not just planting churches, but cultivating movements.

The pathway will be delivered through weekly cohorts, digital content, in-person intensives, and local mentorship—scalable, flexible, and grounded in lived community.

What’s At Stake

Without Support, the Movement Stalls

If this pathway is not built, the risk is clear.

Without a system for developing leaders, the fragile gains of the last several years will begin to erode. House churches will lose momentum. Spiritual seekers will remain disconnected. Leaders will burn out. The relational depth Chris and others have cultivated will struggle to multiply without a structure to carry it forward.

And cities like Norfolk—already underserved and spiritually hungry—will remain places where potential goes unrealized, not because God isn’t moving, but because the people He’s called lack the support they need to respond.

The opportunity could slip by—not because the mission failed, but because it lacked the resources to scale.

A Church United and Alive

A Movement Begins

But if this pathway is resourced and released, a new kind of church will emerge.

Thirty new house churches will be planted by 2030. Hundreds of believers will be discipled in the way of Jesus. A scalable training system—rooted in real relationships and spiritual formation—will equip a generation of leaders to plant churches that are simple, sustainable, and Spirit-led.

Multiply’s network will grow stronger. Communities will be transformed. And a new model of mission—quiet, rooted, reproducible—will spread across cities and nations.

This is not about scaling fast. It’s about multiplying faithfulness—and watching God do immeasurably more than we imagined.

The Opportunity

Call to Action: Partner in the Pathway

You can help make that happen.

Chris is stepping into this calling full-time. He’s not building a brand—he’s building a bench of leaders who will carry the Gospel into neighborhoods, homes, and hard places.

• Give to support Chris’s full-time discipleship ministry.
• Pray for wisdom, capacity, and the release of new leaders.
• Connect others who need this kind of formation for themselves or their churches.

The next chapter of church multiplication begins not with a campaign—but with a commitment to follow Jesus deeply and help others do the same.

Let’s build this pathway. Together.