John 17 in a weekend
Who are you?
Our newsletter audience is about 80% in the Tucson area, and 20% everywhere else. Both groups are growing! (And welcome to all our new readers in Southern Arizona and beyond!)
And so, if you’re in Tucson and have just been waiting for the announcement to sign up for the next set of John 17 Weekends, you have my permission to skip the next paragraph. (I know you wouldn’t even consider skimming an article without permission, haha!)
What’s a John 17 Weekend?
John 17 is Jesus’ strategic prayer that all His followers in every generation might be as unified as He is with His Father, so that the whole world could come to know who Jesus is and how much God loves them. Do you suppose the world around us needs to know that, including every person we’ll cross paths with later today? Absolutely, like never before! While a John 17 Weekend isn’t primarily focused on evangelism, a healthy one will most definitely lead to more people entering the Kingdom of Jesus for a couple reasons. One, because each person comes away from these retreats with a rejuvenated love for Jesus individually, and two, because we end the Weekends far more aware of the whole Body of Christ than most of us have ever experienced previously.
So do we spend the 72 hours memorizing John 17? Not at all! Focusing on unity would be one of the worst ways ever to achieve it! We focus on Jesus while building relationships with one another! And just like Jesus promised, when He is lifted up (through presentations, testimonies, prayer, and worship), He draws everyone to Himself and therefore closer to each other (see John 12:32).
And now, presenting…
We are SO excited to be able to announce that we will finally be able to offer two sets of Weekends in 2026! The first men’s Weekend will be February 19-22, and the women’s Weekend will be March 5-8. The second set of retreats will be in the Fall, dates and location TBA. We’ve had people asking since before the summer 2025 Weekends even happened about the 2026 dates, so here we finally have it! You can find out more and/or register HERE.
If you’ve already attended a Weekend but have never considered serving before due to all the Saturday preparation meetings, great news there too! More details to come, but let's just say changes are being finalized as I type.
If you don’t live in Tucson and aren’t considering flying out in February/March, look for a Tres Dias Weekend near you (TresDias.org). While we aren’t an affiliated Tres Dias weekend, that’s the closest you’ll likely find in your area. Our two unique requirements for holding a weekend are that it be multi-denominational and multi-ethnic.
Location, location, location
If you missed last week’s newsletter, this is a solvable problem, as the lead articles can all be found HERE. We announced last week the development of the long-sought southern Arizona retreat center that will make it possible to hold these John 17 Weekends more often, and more predictably. It won’t be ready for our Spring 2026 Weekends, and possibly not yet by Fall either, but we can see the construction dust settling from here. In the meantime, we’ll be scrambling for just a little while longer. And God keeps pouring out lots of additional possibilities in the future, not just for the development of a retreat center/ event center/ conference center/ youth camp, but also for the expansion of our John 17 Weekend opportunities.
So, to say that the excitement is growing, it would be an understatement! We can't wait to experience Jesus' John 17 prayer in newer and bigger ways!
Dave Drum, J17 Ministries Founder
