By the time you read this, I should be driving somewhere in western Kansas, probably wondering why I didn’t fly to Colorado Springs. Every year about hour six of the drive, that question occurs to me. But by the time I get farther west, I remember why I drive. The two-day trip has become something of a labyrinth for me: a long, slow way of unwinding, laying down some of the burdens I’ve been carrying, and deciding which ones God might actually be asking me to pick back up.
My destination is a little 500-square-foot, off-the-grid cabin in the Wet mountains of Colorado that I’m graciously allowed to use for free. For the past several years, I’ve spent five to seven days there planning, praying, studying, and writing for the ministry year ahead. There is something about the mountain air, the elevation, and especially the silence that allows me to think, pray, write, rewrite, rethink, worship, and listen in ways I simply can’t do at home or at church.
And I want you to know how grateful I am that you make this possible. Not only by allowing me the time away, but by supporting it with your prayers, your input, and, yes, financially supporting the travel and time that make this part of my ministry possible. I believe the intentional planning we’ve been doing since 2021 has become one of the strengths of our life together.
A couple of years ago, my best friend Matt, a pastor in Nebraska, joined me. Last year, our friend Brian from Nashville joined us too. We each spend our days doing our own work, but in the evenings we gather around a gas fire pit—no forest fires!—and talk about what we’re imagining, where we’re stuck, what we’re hearing, and how God might be calling us to shepherd and lead our congregations. The process has evolved over the years.
The first year, I arrived in Colorado already knowing much of what I wanted the year to look like. I had what I now call the “containers”: topics, trajectories, and Scriptures placed on the calendar. My work in Colorado was mostly filling those containers: choosing texts, developing sermon titles, and sketching where each sermon might go.
I learned two things that year. Three days wasn’t enough. And the planning would be much more fruitful if I brought your voices with me.
That’s one reason I developed our annual preaching and ministry survey. You tell me what is on your hearts and minds, what you believe the church needs to be talking about, and what you want to explore more deeply. I take those responses with me, discern the larger themes, place them into the calendar, and begin filling those containers with Scripture, sermons, questions, and possibilities. Then I bring the work home and share it with staff and leaders as we plan together. This year is a little different.
If you took the survey, you probably noticed why. We have already been building a big container for more than a year: commUNITY. From September through May, much of our worship, preaching, formation, and ministry will explore what it means for God to form us into community with one another and for the sake of the world. So, this year I’m heading west with the container largely built. My task is to listen carefully to what you shared in the survey, discern where those hopes and concerns belong, fill in the year ahead, and hopefully get a head start writing some of this fall’s sermons.
But I’m also going to Colorado this year needing some silence. It has been a summer of construction. Church construction. Construction across the street from the parsonage. Road construction. Parsonage construction. Sometimes I feel a little like the Grinch up on the mountain complaining about all the “noise, noise, noise!” And sometimes all that noise makes it harder to hear.
So part of my hope for this retreat is not merely to produce something. It is to dwell in God’s presence. To listen. To worship. To pray. To let some things go. And perhaps to hear something I couldn’t hear amid all the noise. I left yesterday, August 27, a day earlier than usual because one of my cousins, who lives in Colorado, has asked me to officiate his wedding this October. Leaving early gives me the gift of meeting him and his fiancée for lunch in Colorado Springs before I finish the drive into the mountains before dark. Then the work, and the silence, begins.
So would you pray for Matt, Brian, and me? Pray that our time is productive and fruitful for the congregations we serve, certainly, but even more that we might simply dwell in the presence of God and listen well. And please pray for Meghan and my girls as they hold down the fort for a week without me. I will be home Saturday, September 5, ready to wrap up our Toy Story series together on Sunday.
Thank you for your prayers. Thank you for your input. Thank you for your support. And thank you for believing that sometimes one of the best things a pastor can do for the church is disappear into the mountains for a few days, get quiet, and listen to the Lord.
