Meet Our Founder

We are all called to serve.

That’s the value that has defined Dominic Dutra’s career for decades. As a leading real estate organization, an adjunct professor at his alma mater Santa Clara University, a member of the Fremont City Council for two years, and a committed Christian, he has dedicated his life to using the talents and resources that God has given him to serve others. He does this because he believes that we can only fully fulfill the promised life if we sacrifice everything we have to God (John 10:10).

Now he’s trying to expand the message with his latest book Closing Costs: Reimagining Church Real Estate for Missionary Good. Dominic challenges church and faith leaders to reevaluate their properties in the light of God’s call to use all our resources for the good of the Kingdom. When we resist the urge to accumulate resources and, instead, humbly invest everything we have to serve others, we make God’s love a reality. In this way, our communities and communities can be revitalized through humble and selfless service. That is the call of the cross, the call to come and die, in the 21st century.

Dominic D. Dutra, author of Closing Costs: Reimagining Church Real Estate for Missional Purposes, believes that church leaders and their congregations have a historic opportunity to selflessly invest their underutilized church facilities and surplus land to give New Life to future generations.

Scriptural admonitions include, but are certainly not limited to, the Parable of the Talents, the Year of Jubilee, and, perhaps most notably, the powerful metaphor of Jesus meeting the two travelers of the Road to Emmaus where He communicated via scripture and His own personal testimony that His death was not to be mourned, but embraced as a key to realizing New Life.

To do so, Dominic has founded the Emmaus Group as a means of providing the confidential forums and professional facilitators to spur these conversations.