Big Moves to Small Town (Yep, that’s our new pad!)
Whoa. What a year! Trying to summarize our experience of 2020 is a little like 2020 itself: difficult.
Remember January 2020? Cold, snowy, icy, but normal. If you can remember back that far, Bethany and I were busy discerning whether or not to plant a campus with Restore Community Church. She began her last semester of clinicals, crushing nursing school! Late February found us at the warm beaches of Orlando for the Exponential Conference. I felt a clear desire to continue in ministry and wanted this to take the form of planting a campus with Restore. My “clarity” helped solidify Bethany’s uncertainty for this move for our family. As we pressed into this tension (read: Landon learning how to listen to his wife), COVID-19 really began to change life in the nation. During this time of solitude, I read books on the process of discernment. To make a long story short, I realized that I was trying to fit myself into an amazing role and opportunity with a great team – but a role and context that was not a good fit for me or some of the most deeply-held values I have. Through the coaching of Restore, the kindness of supporters, counseling, the patient spiritual friends and books I was conversing with, I became more aware of who I am, and began to accept myself more fully than ever before in my life. Bethany already knew (of course) this true identity and helped me own up to it. For that reason, along with COVID-19 making the future of a campus plant more precarious, we chose to end our time at Restore.
Fast forward a few months and Bethany and I were navigating (read: hobbling through) life together with her job on the night shift during a pandemic, and figuring out how to make ends meet if I was not working full-time in ministry. Eventually Bethany decided to end her time at KU Med after a few months. We then took a few weeks to discern what would be next. I knew.
You see, me owning more of myself was, in reality, a confession of fashion. (Stay with me.) Down on myself one day, frustrated with a lack of integration in my life, and hopeful for our family to flourish and not just make money, I told Bethany that I feel most like myself when I put on a pair of work jeans and a flannel shirt. What I was really saying is that I like to work. Not just with my head or with people, but with my hands. I like to care for land, create things, grow, cultivate, care for, and nurture plants, animals, and even people to their full potential. No doubt, this is the farm boy in me. I came to realize that when I said things like, “In an ideal world, I would farm and be a pastor,” I could choose that reality. So, all through the summer, I dreamt of places we could buy land outside the city. Land that we could care for, steward, be responsible for, and a context within which I could teach these postures of care to our children. But even in that my heart kept turning to my hometown. So, I continued talking to close friends, I journaled, I worked, and I thought I would wait years for this dream to become reality! And then, well like this year, unprecedented things happen. And we moved to small town Missouri.
I said yes to a Senior Pastor position at First Christian Church in Richland, MO and we moved in late November. Bethany began working as an RN at a local hospital. This move is prompted by many things that would take pages to state. The top three might be:
- I love (most of) the work of pastoral ministry, especially in the context of a small-town. I love the small-town church reality of long-lived histories, dense family networks, and the many thrifty, hard-working people you find still living on the land or in the often declining small-towns across America. I love the challenge of discovering, cultivating, and nurturing a way of life that helps people, churches, and communities flourish.
- We want to take active part in God’s first order to humankind: to care for the earth. We want to live rooted in a real place and take active ownership of land and community, real responsibility for a particular place and a particular people. We choose this particular place and people, resisting the general inclination to be dislocated from people and place, as well as the disembodiment of much modern work or life. (Think endless Zoom meetings during COVID.)
- We desire to learn about the real sources of our life and be more and more connected to reality. We want to be connected to what is real, not manufactured or disposable. Relationships, neighbors, good work, gardening, communities, honest local business, all these are ways to be tangibly rooted in reality. Our current political climate helps us overlook the common ground that binds us together as human. Literally the ground we share, the food we grow, the work we do to build culture and create a life for us and generations to come. We desire to be healthy, whole, and integrated. This includes the food we eat and the growing practices employed. So, we have plans for a big garden to help us connect more and more to reality and our own food system. We are continuing to learn about sustainable agriculture and look forward to other opportunities in the future to live out these values. And we are still dreaming about living on our own land someday, perhaps with a small community of friends, practicing spiritual rhythms and embodied experiences (think: farming and gardening), and cherishing the life and culture those commitments could form in us.
Currently, we are settling into our new reality. I am learning the contours and nature of the church I have the privilege to lead and serve. Bethany is readjusting to 12 hour shifts with a rather pregnant body (pray for her!). Emytt is a champ, adapting well to a new environment and going from having two parents at home most days to having two parents work full time. My grandma is wonderful lady who cares well for him when we both work. We are about 40 minutes from my hometown, so I also have the chance to help my dad on the farm or with his businesses.
We continue to dream about what the future may hold, particularly around being intimately involved in growing our own food, building a community of people that steward land and their lives well (both deeply spiritual practices), and how to embody an alternative vision of flourishing in small-town America. Please pray for us as we continue to dream. Thank you for your partnership along the way. Let me know how your 2020 was, how we can pray for you, and if you need a refreshing break out in the beautiful nature of Missouri, come visit us!
*If you have resources about or friends involved in sustainable or regenerative agriculture, please share! If you have ever thought, “I want to have a little homestead,” or “I want to cultivate quality food and nurture health in my people and community,” or “I want to live a more holistic, embodied life,” or you are just plain curious, let us know! Tell us about your dreams, your hopes, your conversation partners, your questions. Stay healthy out there, friends.
To Be Human 