A Peace Church on Highland Avenue
Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren has gathered at 783 W. Highland Avenue in Elgin, Illinois, for decades, set on a quiet residential stretch of the city's west side. The neighborhood grew up alongside the denomination's general offices, and the church's story is braided into Elgin's Brethren history. Members remember townies who grew up within walking distance of the doors alongside newcomers who came to the city because of the denomination's headquarters. Five words sit at the center of the church's identity: faith, peace, community, welcome, service. The congregation describes its calling with a phrase that has become a kind of motto: "Continuing the work of Jesus: peacefully, simply, together."
The building is the kind of place members call sanctuary in the truest sense. They speak of it as holy ground, a place where they can be honest, vulnerable, and finally themselves. "I can unravel in this space and be knit back together," one recent reflection read. "Now, I don't believe this place has all the answers but I have no where else to go. Not everything is right here when I'm here though I do feel at home." The pews have held baptisms, weddings, funerals, and the long table set for the breaking of bread. They have also held the questions members carry in from a hard week and the silence that follows.
Continuing the Work of Jesus, Peacefully, Simply, Together
Highland Avenue belongs to the Church of the Brethren, one of the historic peace churches. Members trace their worship life back to simple practices: believers baptism, communion, the Love Feast, scripture read aloud, and a long tradition of nonviolent discipleship. The congregation gathers with the wider denomination through Annual Conference and lives locally within the Illinois/Wisconsin District. In sermons, members are reminded that they are part of a larger body. Colleagues from across the district are named, the 2026 Moderator is quoted, and the wider church's transitions are spoken of with care and hope.
That wider Brethren identity shows up in small ways. The Palm Sunday sermon noted the parade into Jerusalem as a "creative protest of traditional power", one that turned attention away from empire and toward a God who upholds the oppressed, feeds the hungry, frees the incarcerated, heals the brokenhearted, welcomes the immigrant, and stands against evil. The members are a peace church in the plain sense: a community that takes seriously the call to follow Jesus without doing violence to their neighbors.
Pastor Krista Dutt and Her Call
Pastor Krista Dutt preaches and leads worship at Highland Avenue, and her work extends beyond it. She serves as a chaplain in a Chicago-area hospital, a vocation that runs alongside her role at the church and colors nearly everything she preaches about. She has described being shaped by breath prayers, finger labyrinths, pipe cleaners bent into prayers, camping prayer retreats, and the privilege of sitting with patients in the dark. "The hospital is too rushed for flowery words," she has written, "more often than not in those scary sacred moments we don't have capacity to take in much. So the prayers become simple: Please help. Please stay. Please let them be okay."
That chaplaincy presence shapes the pulpit. The Easter sermon of 2026 was told in several voices. Becky, Krista, Dan, and Matt each took a part of the resurrection story. The arrangement reflects a pastoral instinct: the congregation is invited into the narrative, not lectured from a distance. Members bring their own voices to scripture; the sermon sometimes hands the lectern to a lay reader named Becky, who walks into the Easter story as a woman carrying spices for a dead friend.
Krista lives with her husband Jim and their blended family, which includes foster children, biological children, and grandchildren. The rhythms of foster care, parenting, and adoption shape her preaching. Parenting, she has written, has changed her without erasing her; she is "still Krista" while becoming a different version of herself in each season. "If you had met me then, I probably would have talked about Jim, scavenger hunts in Chicago, or whatever cooking experiment I was trying." That love has shaped its own theology, its own lessons in kindness.
Curious Hearts, Honest Questions
For several months in 2026 the congregation walked through a sermon series called "Curious Hearts, Honest Questions." The series took up the hard, practical questions people actually carry into the sanctuary and refused to pretend the answers were settled. A series of questions were asked one at a time over many Sundays.
"How does prayer work cosmically?" became a Sunday of breath prayers, finger labyrinths traced during the sermon, and pipe cleaners bent into prayer shapes. The pastor reflected on Roseto, Pennsylvania, where three generations living together seemed to protect residents from heart disease, and on the way praying for others may rearrange us before it rearranges God. The conclusion was honest about mystery. "Prayer remains mystery. But I have witnessed that people who pray tend to stay tender. People who pray tend to forgive more easily. People who pray tend to notice suffering faster."
"Is God really involved in our daily lives?" became a Pentecost reflection. The Spirit of God, the pastor said, refuses to be confined to buildings or religious experts; she pours out on ordinary lives. She shows up in a discouraged person receiving a phone call at the right moment, an exhausted nurse keeping tender care for patients, an immigrant family waiting for security, a community waiting for justice, a stranger beginning to understand another stranger. The miracle of Pentecost was not sameness, the pastor noted; it was understanding. "The Spirit came while they were still uncertain. That feels like good news. We don't have to understand before the Spirit comes."
"Does God change?" took up the tension between Malachi's "I the Lord do not change" and Revelation's "Behold, I make all things new." The pastor named the way parenting has changed her, still Krista, but shaped by every season, and wondered whether God's relational engagement is similarly responsive. "Maybe there are moments when God looks at humanity and thinks, 'That is a good point.'" Liberation theology was offered as a way to bring the question back to lived experience: "What kind of God is present in the struggle of oppressed people?"
"Is God really accessible to us?" took up the Zacchaeus story. Zacchaeus was an empire-lover, rich, and short, three strikes against him in his day. Jesus invited himself over for dinner anyway. The sermon was written while police officers were kneeling on the floor of the hospital where the pastor works, brought in after a shooting. The answer was about nearness: a God who enters homes, eats with the excluded, and is not ashamed of human limitation. "A God who feels near to me wants to be near us."
An Expanding Imagination of God
After Easter, the summer sermon series took up an "Images of God" theme, a deliberate effort to expand the congregation's imagination of who God is. Each Sunday held up a different image and let it reshape how the church prayed.
The Rock sermon read Psalm 62 as "an American Psalm," confessing the idols of consumerism, nationalism, and online outrage, and ending: "Truly my soul finds rest in God. / Only in God am I finally home." The week drew on a visit to Annual Conference and a podcast interview with Richard Colligan, but the sermon stayed close to a particular vision of the church, one that measures success by who it welcomes, not by its influence. "A church that welcomes immigrants because its security isn't rooted in borders. A church that tells the truth because it isn't dependent on popularity. A church that forgives because its identity isn't built on always being right."
The Mother Hen sermon read like a pastoral letter to the congregation, written on the day members were voting to call a pastor, and signed simply "A disciple of Jesus." It gave thanks for casseroles delivered in times of grief, for Love Feasts celebrated, for songs played and sung with talent and grace. "I give thanks for your faithfulness over the years, for those who came before you, the townies and those who came because of the denominational headquarters." The letter lifted up Jesus' longing to gather Jerusalem like a mother hen gathers her chicks, and asked the church to become a place where frightened souls find shelter. "You may have a fox in your backyard, but you may also have a fox in your heart." The church, the letter said, does not need another parent figure; it needs gatherers. People who notice the quiet one, hear the frightened one, and keep making room.
Refiner's Fire, Woman with the Lost Coin, and Give Me Jesus rounded out the summer. The woman caught in adultery was given a voice; she is the one the crowd wanted to stone, and Jesus bent until his eyes were level with hers. The dove at the Jordan became "dove power": power expressed through humility, gentleness, mercy, and self-giving love. "The dove is not a contradiction of Jesus' ministry. The dove is a preview of it." The Spirit empowers Jesus, but it is dove power. Power that stands beside others, not above them.
Holy Week and the Long Walk to Easter
Holy Week at Highland Avenue is taken seriously as a season of protest, lament, and resurrection. The March 1 sermon was a raw, honest prayer from a soul on the edge, one who had tried to live faithfully and watched people who use God and mock God prosper. "Why did I need to take you so seriously when I see those that don't, winning at life. The people that aren't kind are thriving." The conclusion was that the sanctuary is a place to come back to, not because everything is fine but because God is here. "I belong to you and you belong to me."
The March 8 sermon walked through Psalm 137, one of the least-read psalms in church history, and lifted up holy anger as a faithful response to injustice. "When a knee is pressed on a man's neck for nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds. When a child is used by governmental agencies to coerce the parent's deportation." Holy anger, the pastor said, is what rises when we see injustice. "Anger is not the opposite of love. Indifference is."
The March 15 "Do Not Fear" sermon wrestled with fear in a world that keeps delivering bad news. "Do not fear. Do Not Fear. Do. Not. Fear." The sermon called on God as a river, steady, nourishing, breaking through, rather than as the roar of the ocean. The Palm Sunday sermon reframed the parade into Jerusalem as a creative protest of empire, naming the kind of king Jesus was: "He has receipts to show that he shows up over and over to advocate and benefit the poor, instead of just saying the right words." The closing was a commission: "To praise not only with palms, but with acts of justice. To praise not only with songs, but with solidarity."
Easter Sunday unfolded as a four-voice retelling: Becky walking to the tomb with grief and spices, Krista seeing the dazzling men, the two of them running to tell the others, Dan trying to follow the breathless women's story, Matt running to see for himself. The sermon did not end in triumphalism but in wondering. "Something had started. Could I believe that Jesus might be alive?" It was a careful, honest Easter for a community that knows doubt and faith can sit in the same pew.
The Sacraments Around the Long Table
The Brethren sacraments shape the church's worship life. Believers baptism is practiced and is spoken of with joy in the Easter sermon. Communion, the breaking of bread, is celebrated regularly; the Emmaus sermon walked through it as the moment when the disciples' eyes were opened. "Bread is taken. Blessed. Broken. / And suddenly, they see." The Love Feast, the historic Brethren practice that gathers foot washing, a simple meal, and communion together, is named with reverence in the pastor's pastoral letters and held as a treasured memory of the congregation's life.
The sacraments sit alongside other tables the church sets. Members tell of casseroles delivered in times of grief and celebration, hospital rooms walked into, dinner tables opened to friends and strangers, and coffee poured after the service. One sermon asked: "What tables do you want to set in this after-Easter time? Who do you need to connect with?" The question grew out of a family that has been choosing furniture to make it easy to invite people over. Hospitality, the church has learned, is sometimes the holiest work.
Music and Memory
Music runs through the church's story the way members live the story of the church. "So many of you have gathered people through music," the pastor wrote in the July pastoral letter. "Some through laughter. Some through quiet listening. Some through faithful commitment to the community. Some through faithful prayers that no one else ever hears." Songs are part of how grief is held and how hope is passed on. Members have celebrated baptisms and grieved the losses of loved ones and the changes within the church itself, and the music has carried them. The Palm Sunday sermon noted that the parade crowd had a different kind of music in their bones, inner work that let them shout "Hosanna" with both protest and conviction.
Children, Youth, and the Next Generation
The congregation is intergenerational, and the rhythms of the next generation are woven through sermons. Children's stories are part of Sunday gatherings, and the children's time is named alongside the fellowship hour and the shared meal as a place where Christ is present. The pastor's Pentecost sermon asked the church to set new tables and reach out to new people, and the question grew out of a family that has been choosing furniture to make it easy to invite teenagers over. Foster children and grandchildren shape the pastor's own life and her preaching about who belongs.
Youth ministry has been part of the church's past and present. The pastor has shared how she used to work more with youth than she does now, and how she once used pipe cleaners as a way to pray with young people. Members include those with school-age children and teenagers, and the parenting sermons are written from real life: from sleep deprivation, from school drop-offs, from learning to read together, from losing badly at board games. The next generation is not an afterthought at Highland Avenue; it is part of the sanctuary.
Welcome and the Stranger
Welcome is one of the church's five words, and the sermons return to it constantly. The Road to Emmaus sermon named four ordinary things, a conversation on the road, a risky exchange of ideas, an invitation to stay for dinner, the breaking of bread, and asked what they might look like today. The pastor told of a friend named Beth, who has eight children and still finds ways to invite neighbors over for a meal. "We are going to have to cook a lot anyway." Another friend, a community organizer named Tim, told the pastor that a dinner invitation has more meaning than meeting a need. "If a person needs food and you give it, they may not go hungry. But they may have a connection need that has not been met. Whereas, a dinner invitation where relationships are created and trust is established meets so many needs."
The church's welcome extends to those the world has pushed to the margins. The imprecatory psalms sermon, on Psalm 137, lifted up the language of those who know what it means to be powerless. The Palm Sunday sermon framed the parade into Jerusalem as a creative protest of empire, and named the kind of king Jesus was: one who lived out what Psalm 146 describes, a God who upholds the oppressed, feeds the hungry, frees the incarcerated, heals the brokenhearted, welcomes the immigrant, and stands against evil. "Jesus isn't commuting in, instead he is involved at a core level with the people around him. He reliably pitches in to do the dirty work." Members have been taught that welcome is not a strategy; it is a way of life shaped by the gospel.
Pastoral Care and the Wider Church
Pastor Krista's work as a hospital chaplain informs her preaching and her prayers for the congregation. She has described the hospital as a place where she has learned to pray more simply, and where she has been privileged to be trusted with strangers' hardest questions. "Do you think hell exists, Krista? I think I might be dying soon, and I need to know." The same presence she brings to hospital rooms she tries to bring to the congregation, one that asks honest questions and waits with people in the uncertainty.
The church is part of the Illinois/Wisconsin District of the Church of the Brethren, and the pastor speaks warmly of district clergy gatherings, of colleagues like Dennis Webb, a retired pastor who has shaped the way she thinks about God and change. The wider Church of the Brethren, its Annual Conference, its 2026 Moderator, its long commitment to peace and justice, is named in sermons as the larger community the congregation belongs to. The Don Fitzkee 2026 COB Moderator was invited to share from the pulpit on a Sunday about change, modeling the way the local congregation listens to the wider church and the wider church listens to it.
Visiting Highland Avenue
The church sits on a residential stretch of West Highland Avenue in Elgin, on the city's west side. Visitors who come on a Sunday can expect a gathering that values silence, music, prayer, scripture, and the long conversation that comes after a sermon. The service includes prayer, music, scripture, a sermon, communion, and a children's time. The building is a sanctuary where members say they can "unravel and be knit back together," and the welcome extends to anyone walking through it.
Sunday services are livestreamed on YouTube at the @highlandavenuechurch783 channel, and every recent sermon is posted to an online archive. Online giving is available, and a weekly update goes out by email to anyone who signs up. The office can be reached by phone at 847-741-5124 or by email at office@hacob.org. The mailing address is 783 W. Highland Avenue, Elgin, IL 60123. The church maintains a presence on Facebook at facebook.com/HighlandAvenueCOB.
Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren is a peace church that takes the long questions seriously, sings with talent and grace, sets tables for strangers, and trusts that the Spirit is still bringing life out of chaos. It is a place to deepen faith, proclaim peace, embrace community, welcome others, and serve neighbors in the compassionate spirit of Jesus: peacefully, simply, together.