Avanti is a young organization carrying old wisdom

Avanti grew out of a simple conviction, tested over decades of investment in lives and communities: the breakthroughs people are searching for are real — but they come through transformation, not before it.

WHO WE ARE

Because forty years of accompanying people through the actual work of change have taught us that the two are inseparable.

Real change in the things that matter most — your relationships, your work, your sense of purpose — doesn't come from better information.

It comes from discovering that what you're already carrying is more significant than you've been led to believe, and from finding the community of fellow travelers who will share the journey of living that out alongside you.

Avanti exists at the intersection of personal transformation and genuine community.

WHAT WE OFFER

BEING

Knowing who you are

Everything begins here. Not with goals or plans or strategies, but with the more fundamental question: who am I, actually? What are my native strengths — the things I do from design rather than effort? What are my core values — the things I can't compromise without losing myself? What is the unique constellation of wiring, experience, and calling that makes me irreplaceably me?

Being isn't a box you check. It's a domain you return to — with new questions, new experiences, and new depth — for the rest of your life.

CONNECTING

Learning to be yourself with others

Identity doesn't develop in isolation. As our sense of self begins to clarify, it inevitably runs into the reality of other selves — people with their own designs, their own needs, their own ways of seeing the world. And the work of learning to be genuinely yourself in that context is its own profound discipline.

This is where relationships deepen or stagnate. Where we discover that we need other people not just for warmth and belonging — though both matter — but because the perspectives, challenges, and encouragement of others are essential inputs to our own growth.

DOING

Living from who you are

When we know who we are and we're genuinely engaged with others, what we do with our time, energy, and gifts begins to align. Goals stop being arbitrary and start feeling like expressions. Work stops being a performance and starts becoming a contribution.

But Doing is also the domain that most actively updates our sense of Being. Every significant thing we attempt sends us back to the beginning with new information about who we are. What we're capable of. What we careabout more than we realized. What we're ready to let go of

To learn more about the best place to jump in…

Start here

We have a lot to say about what we're building and why. If you're the kind of person who wants the whole story, we'd love to share it.

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OUR STORY

Avanti is a young organization carrying old wisdom.

The Avanti Collective is an updated expression of Growth Dynamics International (GDI) - a non-profit organization that provided support, oversight, and relationship to the leaders of churches, businesses, and other networks founded and led by Doug Fike for over forty years.

Through committed, authentic relationships and a deeply-rooted understanding of Kingdom principles and biblical wisdom, Doug and the GDI team helped their partner networks to deepen their own relationships. navigate challenges, and operate more effectively as teams and communities.

In 2022 Doug and the GDI oversight board sensed that God was ready to do something new, to expand on the heart of everything the GDI and learned, developed, and stewarded over the years by evolving into a wider community that anyone who wanted to find community and share the journey of discovering and living into their purpose could join and fully engage with anytime, anywhere.

Justin — Doug's son, a writer and teacher who had spent two decades applying these frameworks in his own life and work — took on the task of building that new form. The Avanti Collective was incorporated as a nonprofit in 2025, with a simple mission: make the kind of deep, lasting transformation that had shaped their family and community accessible to anyone who wanted it.

FAQs

  • The Avanti Community is always free — no trial period, no credit card, no catch. You can jump in, find your people, and start engaging right away. When you're ready to go deeper, Thrive offers comprehensive learning programs built around the three growth pillars of Being, Connecting, and Doing — but that's entirely on your timeline and never required.

  • Avanti's founders and core team are followers of Jesus — not Christianity as a cultural or institutional identity, but Jesus himself, and the pattern of life he pointed to. That's where our convictions about human worth, design, and transformation come from.

    But you don't have to share those convictions to belong here or benefit from this work. The patterns are real and observable regardless of the lens you bring — which is why they work across every conceivable background, belief system, and life context. Our community includes people from across the spectrum of belief, culture, and background, and that's by design.

    We share this not to locate you relative to our tradition, but because we want you to understand why we built what we built — and why it works the way it does.

  • Those are all valuable — and Avanti isn't trying to replace any of them. What's different here is the combination: a proven methodology built around your whole life, a community of people working on the same things you are, and a framework designed not just to help you in a season but to become a lens you carry everywhere. It's less about fixing something broken and more about discovering what's already there and learning to live from it.

  • Both — and everyone in between. The conviction at the heart of Avanti is that every person has more to discover and more to offer than they're currently living, regardless of where they're starting from. That said, if you're in the middle of a significant transition or a genuinely hard season, Avanti can be a particularly orienting and supportive place to land. The frameworks, the community, and the people here tend to meet you exactly where you are.

  • Not at all! Avanti is designed to work alongside whatever community you're already part of — not replace it. Many of our members are deeply rooted in a local church or invested in their local communities and find that Avanti gives them a broader network, fresh frameworks, and a space to grow in ways that actually enrich what they're already doing. Whether you're looking for a home base or an expanded horizon, there's a place for you here.