Staff
Meet the people who make Tri-Faith Initiative work:
Rick MacInnes
Acting interim executive director
- 402-320-5824
Rick MacInnes is one of the founding board members of the Tri-Faith Initiative for Countryside Community Church and currently serves as the Chair of the Tri-Faith Initiative Board of Directors and the Acting Interim Executive Director. Rick spent much of his career in the telecommunications industry, meeting growing digital demands for small businesses and consumers.
Experienced in leading strategic operations, marketing, communications and customer experience teams, he retired from a 33+ year career with Qwest Communications (now CenturyLink/Lumen) in a senior leadership position as the Director of Strategic Product Sales & Marketing for the Channel Marketing division.
While at Qwest, Rick also brought experience to develop new online programs to increase sales and engage customers for the eCommerce and eMarketing teams. Following retirement, he partnered and started the JButler Group, a sales, marketing and fund development consulting business, and served as its COO & EVP/Marketing.
He holds both a master’s and a bachelor’s degree from Iowa State University. As an active member of Countryside Community Church, Rick was a past Moderator of the Church Council twice. As Chair of the Countryside Relocation Committee, he led the church’s building project on the Tri-Faith Commons. He currently serves on the Building & Grounds and Nominating Committees, and has also been Chair of both Deacons and the Youth boards.
Rick, a graduate of the Greater Omaha Chamber’s Leadership Omaha program, held other board leadership roles for the Omaha Children’s Museum, AIM Institute, Crèche Child Care Center, Youth Leadership Omaha, Phi Delta Theta fraternity, Henry Doorly Zoo and Westside Community Schools. Rick and his wife, Cathy, have two married daughters and four grandchildren.
Jeremy Fricke
Vice President of Mission Advancement
- 402-934-2955 ext. 103
- Marginalized and New Religious Communities
- Racism and Religion
- Implementing practical strategies for DEI in the workplace and community
- Interfaith Dialogue Welcoming the Unaffiliated
- American Secularism’s Relationship with Religion
- Interfaith Understandings in the Abrahamic Scriptures
Megan Griffiths
Mission Advancement Coordinator
- 402-934-2955 ext. 100
Corey Oldenhuis
COmmunications Manager
- 402-934-2955 ext. 104
Corey Oldenhuis joined Tri-Faith Initiative in August 2022. As Communications Manager, Corey helps curate its social media presence, website, email newsletters, and other public-facing materials. Most importantly, he aims to capture and amplify the unique perspectives found on the Tri-Faith Commons to spread awareness of Tri-Faith Initiative’s mission and resources.
Corey graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2017 with a Bachelor of Journalism, and shortly thereafter relocated to Arizona to work as a general assignment reporter for publications serving Coconino and Yavapai counties. He then went on to work in Kirkland, Washington as a business and development reporter before moving back to Omaha, his hometown. Here, he made a career switch to B2B marketing, learning invaluable skills across various digital platforms.
When he isn’t working, Corey enjoys spending time with his significant other, Hannah — particularly, in the form of board games, movie nights, and nature walks. He’s also an avid reader, devouring (or, at least, amassing) books on topics such as world history, religion, mysticism, anthropology, politics, and psychology. In especially creative moods, he’ll play music, write poetry, or brainstorm story ideas with Hannah.
Corey is proud to contribute to the Tri-Faith team, as he believes building empathy and actively including those on society’s margins are essential to a more peaceful future.
Lucas Schulte
curriculum & REsEARCH SPECIALISt
- 402-934-2955 ext. 101
When Lucas Schulte first heard about Tri-Faith through an NPR story roughly a decade ago while in graduate school in California, he had hoped to become involved. He finally joined the Tri-Faith Initiative in January 2023 as Program Associate. His role will help develop curricula, facilitate programs, and uphold and expand diversity, equity, and inclusion practices.
Born and raised on a small family farm near Pleasanton, Nebraska, Luke first became interested in interfaith relations while learning about a Second Vatican Council document on non-Christian religions as part of his Catholic youth group in high school. As an undergraduate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, he petitioned for an Individualized Program of Study major in Comparative Religious Studies for his Bachelor of Arts. He then completed a Master of Arts in Religion focusing on Bible at Yale University Divinity School and was awarded the Two Brothers Fellowship for Biblical Studies. Moving from Connecticut to California, Luke then earned a Doctor of Philosophy in Religion at Claremont Graduate University, with particular focus on the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism, and the ancient Near East. While at Claremont, Luke helped co-found and co-chaired the Religions in Conversation Conference, an annual interfaith conference that ran from 2007 to 2016. During graduate school, he helped edit books and volumes on the Dead Sea Scrolls and also a textbook on Zoroastrianism. He also worked summers as part of international teams of scholars on archaeological excavations in Israel at Ramat Raḥel (near Jerusalem) in 2008 and 2009 and Tell Akko (near Acre) in 2010.
For ten years, Luke taught undergraduate and graduate students as an adjunct professor of religion at a wide range of colleges, universities, and seminaries, such as Pomona College, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Eden Theological Seminary (to name a few).
In 2016, he published as a book through Peeters Publishers a revised and expanded version of his doctoral dissertation on interfaith elements in the biblical book of Nehemiah within the historical, sociological, and religious contexts of the first Persian Empire. More recently Luke has contributed the chapter “Isaiah in the Persian Period” in the forthcoming book The Cambridge Companion to the Book of Isaiah by Cambridge University Press. After years of part-time contractual teaching assignments as well as full-time positions in the insurance industry, Luke was thrilled to join full-time the kind of inter-faith work for which he had been preparing for the past 20 years.
When not working, Luke enjoys reading fiction (particularly from NPR’s book concierge), riding his bike, cooking until the smoke alarm goes off, helping out on his parents’ farm, playing games and watching Star Trek with his 2 kids, and also traveling and watching K-dramas with his significant other, Ligyeom.
Interns
In addition to our staff, the success of Tri-Faith Initiative depends on the extraordinary commitment and efforts of a number of committed volunteers, clergy, lay leaders and the administrative staff of the three faith groups.
Spread the Word
