Imago Dei Initiative

Striving to be the image of God through our everyday lives.


We strive to experience the enduring Christian Faith within emerging culture and among rising generations.

We serve in New York City

We live and move and have our being in New York City, particularly Brooklyn. This is an incredibly diverse place of colors and ethnicities and languages and religions that is always changing. Our challenge is to be the imago Dei (image of God) in ways that will resonate among the people of this City and in ways that will draw and challenge them to consider the Way of Christ. The way we live our lives, the way we move, the way we speak during every moment within this incredible context serves as an example of loving God and loving our neighbors.


Imago Dei is situated with the people of Brooklyn, primarily in the Carroll Gardens, Red Hook, and Clinton Hill neighborhoods. We currently have two Home Groups meeting in Carroll Gardens - one for adults and one for college students. (Home Groups are regular gatherings where we discuss life, faith, and how it all fits together in the contexts of our lives.) For more information:

We are thinking through...

As we intentionally, consistently, and persistently investigate how we are the Church, the mystical Body of Christ, the community that strives to live the Way of Christ, we are continually thinking about our changing context. How shall we live? These are a few things we are thinking through...

The Church and Christianity in minority status

Among rising generations beginning with the Millennials, within most urban centers, and among a growing number of the less educated, the Church and Christianity increasingly exist within a minority status. The Church no longer occupies a central position among social institutions or as a primary influencer of societal thought and action. This is the first time in U.S. history where this is the case. A majority of young people are now raised without any kind of spiritual or faith-centered education.

For people of faith, followers of Christ, how then shall we live? How are we to understand ourselves? How are we to adapt in positive and productive ways? How do we draw, educate, and form new people who what to experience an authentic Faith?

The Enduring Faith

When the Protestant Mainline denominations allowed themselves to be overwhelmed with liberal ideological thinking beginning in the 1950's, people got tired of all the politicking and left. There developed among Baby Boomers a generational way of thinking that demanded that Christianity must be remade. There was a wholesale rejection of that which came before them. American Evangelical denominations were the beneficiaries of the Mainline exodus.

As the 1980's began, the Evangelical denominations repeated the mistake of the Mainline by allowing themselves to be overwhelmed by conservative sociopolitical ideology, and young people began and continue leaving in droves.

These are the "Dones" we read about - those who have left organized Christianity of whatever stripe and are not involved in any other religious organization. 

Boomers and some X'ers responded with the "Seeker Movement" which striped the expression of "church" of traditional iconography, liturgy, music, etc. The "Seeker Church" was born - they thought this would draw in again those who rejected the pre-Boomer Christianity. Yet, this became an extension of the Baby Boomer generational rejection of all that came before them.

With Generation X (X'ers) coming into its own and with the Millennial Generation reaching adulthood and as a response to the increasing politicization of American Christianity, many within these and following generations never became involved in and have no desire to be involved with organized Christianity (or any religion), altogether. The "Nones" were born.

Among many X'ers, the "Emergent Church" conversation rose up. They took upon themselves the task of reimaging the Christian Faith in the context of Post-Modernism and Post-Christendom. They asked the question of how to live out the Faith in a pluralistic society where Christian thought and practice were and continue to be of little importance to the general society. This seems to be the final stage of the Baby Boomer endeavor - we continue to think we must remake Christianity into something different in order to be relevant or pertinent or popular. The strange thing is that sociological studies over the past 20-years seem to all suggest that what the "young people" want is what the Church always had - 1,700 years of enduring faith and practice.

The Emergent Conversation was correct in pushing us all to rethink how to experience this Faith in dramatically different contexts, but we realize that many new "communities" and expressions are often temporary and transient. The movers and shakers have often repeated the same, ancient mistakes of the past packaged in modern technology. We are and continue to be all too human.

So then, what is the baggage the Church has been carrying around or the chip on its shoulder over the past six or seven decades? What does it mean to experience anew the enduring Faith, but in contexts the U.S. has never experienced before? What does it mean to people who seek God without the inner demand to reject, but rather see the religious/spiritual experience - to find God - all as new and intriguing?

Worldview and divergent understandings

What is generally understood as the "Christian Worldview" or perhaps "Christendom" has come to an end - or at least has come to an end among large segments of the population.

The National Study of Youth and Religion emphasizes that the default faith of younger people beginning with Millennials is no longer Christianity, but is now "Moralistic, Therapeutic, Deism." As American society continues to be less and less "Christian" (what is just, fair, compassionate, and loving of neighbor and all others) the implications for the Church and the way we live out the Way of Christ are significant.

How shell we then live?

We are currently focusing on two areas of emphasis for our common life:
1. That which enables human flourishing
2. The seeking of wisdom rather than the justification of propositional truth

The Way of Christ teaches a means of living and understanding the world that is increasingly alien to the general population. What are the implications? What are we to teach and proclaim, even if unpopular or misunderstood? How are we to be the imago Dei among the people in our everyday lives in ways that resonate by them?


Striving to live as the imago Dei in our everyday lives.