Greetings, friends!
I am writing to you at the end of a very busy travel season, with 25 days spent on the road in the last two months. I’ve traveled to Montana, South Dakota, California, and Alaska. Sarah was on all of these trips but also went to British Columbia.
I was in Alaska serving on the accreditation site team for another ABHE school; I met also with a number of new and existing ministry partners in Alaska and Phoenix. Sarah joined me for her first trip to Alaska.
This week IBC students and staff are gearing up for a weeklong trip to Many Farms, Arizona for the annual Ministry Immersion Trip (MIT). Students will be serving at Many Farms Bible Church, which is pastored by longtime friend of IBC, Billy Tallas. Billy was baptized at this church in the sixth grade and returned with his wife and two sons last January to re launch the church with an emphasis on discipleship (you can learn more at manyfarmsbiblechurch.com). Students will be coming alongside the Tallas family to help with projects on the church property (including the construction of a basketball court) and contribute to the church’s programs throughout the week, including Sunday service, teen night, and a weekly dinner and Bible study held in the Tallas’s home.
Please be praying for the students and staff as they prepare to leave for the MIT this Friday. Students participated in Confession Chapel last week in preparation for the trip, which was a great time of reconciliation, mending relationships and finding freedom in Christ. Pray that students would continue to pursue and cultivate unity so that they can offer a clear and compelling reflection of Christ to this community they are serving in the heart of the Navajo Nation. Pray for the health and safety of the entire team, which includes not only students and Student Life staff, but also a few members of IBC’s academic staff who will be travelling out to offer support for part of the trip.
Here’s a video of the 2025 MIT trip to Cortez, CO!
Reflections from 20 years in Arizona
It was exactly 20 years ago this week (late March 2006) that Sarah and I moved to Phoenix, pregnant with our first child, Abigail. We had only been married 15 months, but knew the Lord was leading us from Oregon to start a new life. We moved to help plant a church with a group of mostly young people from the Midwest (at 32 and 27 we were older than most of the church planters!) The church, Poiema, was focused on reaching the music and arts community of downtown Phoenix, and was led by a charismatic pastor and evangelist.
We bought a home in Chandler, 20 minutes from downtown, because it was more affordable than places closer to the city. This home was perfect for hospitality, and we planned to use it to disciple believers and reach nonbelievers—both of which came true through some amazing “pool parties.”
We were idealistic and naive, thinking the Lord had brought us to Phoenix to thrive. Instead, we struggled to barely survive. The commission-only job I took quickly failed (the branch office later closed), friends that moved with us soon abandoned us, and the lead pastor ended up hurting many of those who served with him, including Sarah and me. The housing market flattened, then crashed; the home we bought ended up being worth half what we paid for it. We almost lost Abby in childbirth. We made a number of mistakes and poor decisions and our family ended up in financial crisis. Sarah went back to work as an engineer, and at one point I was working four part-time jobs at the same time just to provide for the family. The Lord had led us into the desert to have a desert experience. We were lonely, disillusioned, and confused. We battled depression and despair. But the Lord was shaping and forming our faith, character, and hope.
By summer 2009 we had raised some significant support to join the staff of the church, and then, suddenly, it became clear that this was not a church that we could continue to be a part of. With my pastoral experience I could have looked for another church, but we felt like staying in Phoenix would interfere with the Poiema’s best chance to thrive. Just two years after landing in Phoenix we knew we couldn’t stay.
It was about 10 days after this shocking realization that we discovered that Indian Bible College needed an Academic Dean who could raise support. We had some support, we had both wanted to serve another culture as missionaries, and I had a doctorate in progress because I knew I would teach at the Bible college or seminary level someday. Could this be what it was all about?
The Lord quickly confirmed this was indeed why He brought us to Arizona in the first place. We made our plans to move to Flagstaff, just two months after the birth of our second child Elizabeth. But we didn’t know how much trouble the school was in. The semester we interviewed the school had six students. In 2008 the college was almost $5K/month in the red. Over the previous 20 years the school had developed a troubled reputation among Native American Christians. And all of the staff were thinking they would need to leave.
The previous president resigned just a few weeks after we moved in August 2008. It felt like the school was spiraling around the drain. But it had some good board members and a core of quality staff and some faithful prayer/financial partners that had been loyal to it since the founding 50 years earlier. When I was appointed as the 10th president of the college in February 2009 I didn’t know fully how much pain the school was in, nor how much pain it would take to help it become the school it is today. But it has ALL been worth it.
Just as the Lord used crisis and catastrophe in our personal lives in Phoenix to get us to where He wanted us (both spiritually and geographically) He was using crisis and catastrophe in the school to move it to a place of desperation for change— change that ultimately led to the core values and a radical shift to grace-based transformational disciplemaking education. God is in the business of bringing “beauty out of ashes.” And that is our Arizona story—like a Phoenix rising from the ashes, the Lord brought us to a place of beauty and influence that is making a difference for eternity in the lives of our Native friends.
Some of you reading this have been alongside us all these 20 years…thank you for your loyal friendship! Some of you have just engaged with us recently…thank you for joining the team!
We plan to serve Native people the rest of our lives, even after I hand over the presidency to a Native American in a decade or so. And that church we helped plant, Poiema? In 2011 it merged with another church to become New City Church, which now reaches Grand Canyon University students and has over 1000 attendees. The Lord is the BEST storyteller! And we love the story He is writing in and through us here in Flagstaff, Arizona!
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