Weekly Community
Every Thursday evening there is an opportunity to pray [...]
May 2026 Update
Thanks so much for reading this month's news from The Initiative, a community committed to "walking in deeper friendship with Jesus and his followers, so that the love of Christ might exceed all divisions." We do this primarily through prayer, sharing of our lives, and proactive work for greater unity.
April 2026 Update
In last month's update, I made a passing reference to the tongue-in-cheek placeholder name for our community (before we landed on The Initiative) as "FOJ (Friends of John)". Somewhere in there, I think we also played around with the idea of keeping the FOJ and just subbing in "Jesus" for "John". Ergo, the "Friends of Jesus"
John’s April Friends Letter
What you and I believe about God has immense impact upon how we live and die. But is there a revealed formula (theology) for how we should understand God? What attributes should we ascribe to God? Is there a theology of God found in ideas like omniscience, omnipresence, or perhaps omnipotence?
John’s March Friends Letter
For those of us who live in the cold Midwest we welcome this month because it allows us to hope for Spring again. Our winter has been very cold, to put it mildly, but we are now seeing real signs of a warming trend.
February 2026 Update
This month, I'm sharing a brief reflection on the beginning of Ephesians and some of its imperatives for our relationships with one another in light of who Jesus is. We also want to celebrate the good things from January's Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and offer a number of ways to participate in the "living laboratory" of our community.
John’s January Friends Letter
I have mentioned on a number of occasions how I have adjusted my worship life to sync with the liturgical church calendar. This has been a process for me over twenty-five years. I find this approach deeply satisfying. I will give one example here; the liturgy for January 11 had the title: The Baptism of Our Lord. The Gospel reading and preaching text was Matthew 3:13-17.
October 2023 Update
Thanks so much for reading this month's news from [...]
What’s Love Got To Do With It? – a Sermon by Scott Brill
Our Executive Director, Scott Brill, preached this sermon titled, [...]