A New Path Forward
On Sunday night at the EBC Annual Business Meeting I shared with the EBC Members about a new path that we are and have been pursuing as a family. For the last year and a half, we have been pursuing the question of whether the Lord is leading us to serve at Rock Nest Ranch on a more permanent basis. There is a fair bit of back story, so if you’d like to understand what brought about this pursuit, and some of what that pursuit has looked like, you can read the story of how we got to the place we are at today here.
So where are we at today? We are actively pursuing a path to join UIM as missionaries, in order to serve part-time at Rock Nest Ranch in Houston, BC (UIM is the parent organization that oversees the ministry at Rock Nest Ranch). And as a part of this path, that would also mean continuing to serve on the pastoral staff at Evergreen. The vision for this role, as it’s currently constituted, is that we would continue to serve at Evergreen during the school year, essentially mid-August through mid-June. And then we would serve at Rock Nest Ranch in the summer, from mid-June through mid-August. My role would be as a hybrid Pastor-Missionary. We have a vision for 75% of my time to go to fulfill my role here at Evergreen, and 25% of my time to go to fulfill my role at Rock Nest.
We are so thankful for this path to hopefully serve in both ministries. We love Evergreen so much, and it is wonderful to think that we would be able to not only have Evergreen as our missionary-sending church, but that Evergreen can continue to be our home church too! There are still several steps in the process. The next step is that we are expecting that we will be going, as a whole family, to Arizona this March for an official interview with UIM, International. We are quite hopeful that they will agree to this unique hybrid role, and we have shared about this vision with them.
One of the things we are just now beginning to do is to put together an email list of people with whom we can share regular missionary prayer letters. If you would like to be on our email list, you can subscribe to that here. It is not too soon to begin asking for prayer as we pursue this path. We have ideas, hopes and dreams, but we want to walk in step with God’s Spirit. We have been so blessed to have people who know us and love us praying for us as we have been considering this path, and we would be so blessed to have you join our team in praying for us. And if you have any questions, want to know more, etc, don’t hesitate to ask! We are so grateful for our EBC Family.
Again, if you’d like to read the back story of what brought us to our current path of pursuing this hybrid pastor-missionary role, you can read about it here.
Pastor Ryan Donovan
Categories: Evergreen Connection