In cal’s words…
Posted as update 7/18/2025
These blog updates will typically be in my (Patience) words, but we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Cal’s willingness to act on thoughts and nudges from God over the past few months. So it seems appropriate to tell the story so far…
…In Cal’s Words
(first drafted May 31, 2025)
We recently studied in James 4:13-15 “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’”
This verse keeps ringing in my ears. For years, we dreamed about plans for a trip to Switzerland in our first year of retirement. God seems to have a different plan. This initial detailed post is to thank you for your prayers, support and input into creating a mission for us in retirement and share our current update, although it will almost certainly continue to change.
Our initial plan was to be in Switzerland for three months, from August through October 2025. Our goals included to live like the locals (not be just tourists) and build relationships with people. In December, we started to feel God's tug for us to turn this into a mission trip. We were thinking maybe help out for a week or two somewhere, or possibly just get involved in a local church. I quickly discovered a place called Catalyst International, which hosts a retreat center for missionaries. After an initial inquiry I was invited to come and staff this retreat for a week as a counselor to missionaries. Inspired by this opportunity, we spread a wider net. Using only the Internet and a few personal connections, we made email contacts that resulted in around a dozen zoom calls with pastors, primarily in Switzerland (but some got forwarded to people in Germany)! We ended up with three solid invitations to come and be involved in ministry, a couple more that could turn into ministry invitations if we pursued them, plus many friendly invites to visit Sunday services.
We feel led to headquarter in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany and get involved with the Calvary Chapel church there. We have been warmly invited to come be a part of their congregation and build relationships there, with the potential to do things such as a class, seminar or even marriage counseling within the church fellowship.
Through the Calvary Chapel connection, we met a man named Lars, a psychiatrist who is involved in a team that is starting a brand-new Bible school near Freiburg. This school will have a strong biblical foundation and two special subjects: pastoral counseling training for laypeople and learning how to run a “kingdom” company—a small business strategy to enable church planters to support themselves. I have been invited to come teach the lay counseling course for young pastors. The vision for the school is to send people to the former East Germany to start businesses, churches and do counseling: essentially tent-making church planters in the former communist part of Germany. Lars is a deeply spiritual man; he has a passion to create a Bible school that would not become liberal over time but stay true to the Bible. (Many Bible colleges and universities in Europe have become very secular.) He and his family are committed to investing time and financial resources to bring this vision into reality.
This endeavor has been encouraged by Calvary Chapel in Freiburg (https://ccfreiburg.de/en) and will eventually have accountability through Calvary Bible Institute (Calvary Bible Institute). There are five other churches in that region also independently backing this effort.
In addition, Stadthafen Kollektiv in Stuttgart Germany (two hours away) has invited us to come and be involved with them. A young pastor named Raphael has planted a unique church in a downtown café. They are a small mission-minded community with a young leadership team focused on reaching unchurched people in their neighborhood (https://stadthafen-kollektiv.de/). Their vision is "We dream of a heaven together here" – because they don't want to think of church as an event-oriented organization, but rather as living in warm, authentic relationships.
We have other churches in Switzerland where we could likely also be involved if we pursued them further. But we feel the above opportunities in southwest Germany are very exciting and challenging. They are close enough to each other that we plan to be involved in all of them during our planned 3-1/2 month trip.
One more thing: as many of you know, I've been involved in a ministry called Marked Men for Christ for the last four years. They now offer many international weekend retreats, and four are within a couple hours of where we will be this fall, so I could potentially help staff one or two weekends if scheduling allows.
We prayed for three things: To live like the locals, to build relationships with people and to be part of training church planters in their own country. God has answered our prayers. In addition, he is giving us a genuine burden for the unreached German people. It seems clear so far that God would have us focusing in southern Germany instead of Switzerland. We are very excited about the opportunity to be used by God there. We believe that God has brought us through our health journey and other spiritual growth in recent years to prepare us for doing mission work in this season of life.
Please pray that we will continue to be guided by the Holy Spirit to lean into the right opportunities both now and when we’re on the ground in a few short weeks!