When God says go.

It caught me off guard: late this winter a friend of mine asked me, “What would it take to get you to leave SpringHill?” Honestly, I told him, I hadn’t thought about it.

SpringHill has been such an important place in my life, and the life of my family.

Amanda came here first, as a kid, to summer camp. She stayed in the now retired covered wagons. And it was here that she learned to love horses. It has always amazed me that, somehow, life came full circle and we now live in the house on the hill overlooking the north horse pasture and the barn where she learned to ride.

I came to SpringHill a few times in High School. We never came to the formal programs, but we came here to serve, once helping to clear the trees and brush from the place where the Norway cabins would be built, and another time on a student leader retreat. I can still here Geoff Moore and the Distance playing “A Friend Like U” from that old juke box when I walk through the game room. And I can still show you the spot in the woods where I sat when our youth pastor sent us out and told us not to come back until we had “heard from God.”

SpringHill was the first place I really experienced the statewide ministry of His House Christian Fellowship. We had been invited to come along on their Fall Retreat as we considered joining the staff full time as a campus minister. During that weekend, I was baptized in the indoor pool by Matt Schantz, and then I turned and baptized my wife in that same spot.

And SpringHill was where I baptized both Josh and Nathan, as they came to understand what it really meant to follow Christ as Lord and trust Him as savior. I expect this is also the place where I will one day baptize Sarah; perhaps soon.

And then, just over two weeks ago, as my fifth summer camp season came to a close, I went down to canoe beach with one of our staffers to baptize her. Before I did, I shared with the group of summer leaders what we were about to do, and what the Bible teaches about baptism. And, after Tessa was baptized, I asked the question I had asked so many times before in campus ministry, “There is plenty of water, is there anyone else?” And somewhere at about 14, we stopped counting.

Yes, SpringHill is an amazing place. So what would I take to get me to leave? I guess there’s only one thing. When God says go.

And He has. Yesterday was officially my last day on staff with SpringHill. We’re not completely sure where God is leading us, but we know that He has an amazing track record of provision, and we are willing to trust Him as we take these next steps.

We don’t know yet if we will also have to leave Evart, this community that we have grown to love and call home. We don’t know yet if we will continue in camping ministry, or find some other way to live out God’s calling on our lives. But we do know this, when God says go, we go, wherever He leads.

We are blessed to call so many at SpringHill friends.

Thank you, Michael Perry, for investing in me as a leader, for encouraging me to blog, and for trusting me with the retreats ministry for so many years.

Thank you, Andy Hust, for inviting me to join your team. It has been a pleasure to call you my boss and my friend.

Thank you, Sarah Gillespie, for trusting me when I invited you to move from the middle of nowhere in Kansas to the middle of nowhere in Michigan. I always slept better at night knowing you had trained our staff well.

Thank you, Matt and Erin Hildebrand, for keeping me on track, reminding me to care about the people on our team, and for living out so well the reality that every part of what we did at SpringHill was ministry.

Thank you to all the youth pastors, pastors, speakers, and musicians I’ve had the privilege of serving. I hope you know that I was as committed to the success of your ministry as I was to ours. My prayer is that SpringHill will continue to be an amazing place for you and your churches long into the future.

Thank you to so many others, who cook, clean, fix, build, plow, mow, account, market, plan, program… and so much more. You are an incredible team, and I believe strongly that God has a good and perfect plan to use you to reach many more for the His Kingdom.

And now I join a great group of people who used to work at SpringHill. Incredible men and women from all walks of life who left it all on the field, and responded when God said go.