The Freedom Bulletin
A Freedom Fellowships Newsletter
December 2023
When one Freedom Fellowships family saw an opportunity to start a discovery group for their son and his friends, they prayed and hopped on it with joy.
For a while, Sarah Ramsey, a member of the BroYo fellowship group, felt convicted to form some ki...
Written by Megan Smalley
To kick off 2023, Freedom Fellowships launched the Meta Sphere for its growing post-college fellowship groups. (For those who don’t know, “Meta” is a Greek prefix that means “beyond.”) When the sphere launched, it featured four fellowship groups, all...
Written by Kaitlyn Farrance
Missions Prayer Breakfast is an important ministry of Freedom Fellowships. Every third Saturday of the month, people from every fellowship group come together to pray for the movement of the gospel across the world over breakfast. This ministry not o...
Written by Elli Rozler
July 2023
The Story of Joni & Friends’ June 2023 Family Retreat
Driving a souped-up Bobcat golf cart around the Shawnee campus, I sat next to a young man known simply as Jojo. Jojo has a form of autism that makes him extremely excitable and hyperactive, and...
Written by Kyle McCallum
Freedom Fellowships hopes to join a Northeast Ohio Consortium with several other local churches to participate in India Gospel League’s Adopt a Region program.
Ten years ago, Freedom Fellowships began to support India Gospel League’s Adopt a Villag...
Written by Megan Smalley
Recently, several fellowship groups in the college and adult spheres split and formed new groups. Here's a look at some of our newest fellowship groups!
There comes a season when a fellowship group is poised to split. We can be encouraged that formi...
Written by Kaitlyn Farrance
A women’s panel discussion offered wisdom to the women of Freedom Fellowships on singleness, dating, marriage, sex and parenting.
This summer, Freedom Fellowships hosted a first: a panel for women in the fellowship to come together to discuss biblic...
Written by Elli Rozler
What do you remember about the Book of Job? A man loses all his stuff and gets sick, then God fixes everything because… Why? There’s a lot going on in Job, and it’s hard to get a grasp on it.
This past semester, Logan Balas, Ian McCullough and I too...
Written by Alex Herbers
April 2023
By Dane Ortlund, Review by Dar McCallum
I am so grateful for Dane Ortlund’s book, “Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers.” As someone who grew up in a somewhat legalistic church, coupled with a personality that leans toward...
Written by Darlene McCallum
About five years ago, Richard Hunter saw the need to minister to the seniors at Independence Village in Aurora, Ohio, where he works as a maintenance supervisor. His burden was to bring hope, dignity and a purpose to the seniors living there who ofte...
Written by Kaitlyn Farrance
On Feb. 17, three friends and I made a trip to visit Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky. Now why would we do this? If you weren't aware, news was circulating that a religious revival was breaking out at Asbury University, a private Christian coll...
Written by Calvin Muller
With the new year came a change in how the Freedom Fellowships College Sphere approached its Central Teaching (CT) meetings. Instead of meeting in the Study Center on Saturday evenings along with the Young Adult and Family Spheres, the College Sphere...
Written by Kaitlyn Farrance
Summary of the 2023 Fiscal Support Team (FST) Retreat teaching by Kyle McCallum, edited by Alex Herbers.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Hebrews 13:8.
Our church is changing, but change isn't new. The fellowship God has bu...
Written by Alex Herbers
December 2022
2022 was an eventful year for Freedom Fellowships. Let’s take time to praise God for the wonderful blessings and answered prayers! Here are some of the amazing things people in our fellowships have been able to experience with God’s power:
FST:
Pl...
Written by Elli Rozler
When you fly halfway around the world, only to find that your bags are still in Chicago, you go through some things: denial, anger, bargaining (United customer service: I’m looking at you), depression and finally, acceptance. OK, it’s not that seriou...
Written by Heidi Muller
Isaiah 49:6 – The LORD says, “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the ea...
Written by Todd Muller
“And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death.” - Revelation 12:11
We humans are story-driven people.
Underdog stories, redemption sto...
Written by Megan Smalley
May 2022
“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
2 Peter 3:9, NASB
“We can live forever if you’ve got the time.”
My Chemical...
Written by Alex Herbers
I'm a big fan of Brant Hansen books. I consider his book “Blessed are the Misfits” a modern classic and “This is Us” isn’t too bad either. Then I heard he was releasing his new book and I knew I had to get my hands on it. Fortunately, it did not disa...
Written by Kyle McCallum
Staff isn’t something we have much of here at Freedom Fellowships, so it’s a wonderful opportunity for us to hire a much needed Associate Pastor to serve and minister to the needs within Freedom Fellowship. Welcome, Adam Esterle!
The leadership team...
Written by Elli Rozler
The Study Center has provided Freedom Fellowships with many blessings. During the pandemic, the parking lot served as an impromptu spot to host Central Teaching (honks to that)! In the last year, the building has been used for teachings, study, worsh...
Written by Megan Smalley
March 2022
If you are looking for a well-written and easy to digest overview of church history, Church History in Plain Language by Bruce L. Shelley is the book for you. From the days of Jesus through the gospel expansion of the early 1900s, this book covers it...
Written by Kyle McCallum
Contributing authors: Alex Herbers, Kyle McCallum, Ian McCullough, Elli Rozler
As many of our Identity Project workers age out of college, the time has come to graduate to the next stage of ministry. Working in the post-college age group has its uni...
Written by Kyle McCallum
Meet Rajakatti, Freedom Fellowships’ new match for India Gospel League’s (IGL) Adopt-a-Village program. Rajakatti is located in the southern state of Karnataka and has a population of about 2,560 families, which includes five nearby villages. The mai...
Written by Kalie Brooks
"...Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise." - Philippians 4:8b, NLT
"A man will lie for a hundred years
In a bed of reliable gears...
Written by Alex Herbers
December 2021
Have you thought about what screen time is doing to you or your kids? In today's digital world we are surrounded by technology and endless instant entertainment that can rob us and our families of opportunities to relate. In his book "The Tech-Wise F...
Written by Kyle McCallum
Dozens of members of Freedom Fellowships have volunteered annually at the Joni & Friends camps that serve families affected by disability by providing them with a week of rest. Many people who volunteer at Joni & Friends return with a conviction to s...
Written by Megan Smalley
An important part of God's plan throughout the Bible involves passing on the things of God to the next generation. Which is why Freedom Fellowships is pleased to see the ministry for our kids, Oasis, revamped and ready to serve the little children be...
Written by Elli Rozler
What a silly word "unexcogitable" is. It means "not capable of being thought out or contrived." (It's almost self-defining that way.) However, if Christmas really is the celebration of God’s coming to earth in the form of a human
infant, then “unexc...
Written by Alex Herbers
November 2021
Spooktober is over, but if you’re still looking for a scary book that
will keep you up at night, look no further than “Playing with Fire” by Billy
Hallowell. Hallowell is a Christian journalist who brings his skeptical eye
to bear on the topic of dem...
Written by Kyle McCallum
On October 19, the elders headed over to Wheaton, Ill to attend the 2021 Amplify Outreach Conference hosted at Wheaton College, the same college attended by the late great Billy Graham. The focus of the conference was evangelism in a post-Covid world...
Written by Kyle McCallum
Pulling into 500 VFW parkway, Kent on a Saturday night this summer you would’ve discovered a packed-out parking lot, like a smaller version of Cleveland’s Muni Lot before kickoff.
That’s what it felt like. People parked around a podium with trunks o...
Written by Elli Rozler