For many years, two practices have been important parts of our spiritual lives: personal retreats of solitude and the slow, meditative reading of Scripture often called Lectio Divina. Slowing down with a passage—reading it several times, listening carefully, and resisting the urge to hurry on—has helped us become more attentive to the quiet prompting of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes a word or phrase simply seems to stay with us, inviting us to listen more deeply.

Over the years, those practices became closely connected with another value that has shaped our lives together: hospitality.

Through decades of ministry in Europe and elsewhere, we repeatedly saw how much people need a place where they can lower their guard, exhale, and know they are genuinely welcome. Whether around a table, in a retreat setting, during a conversation, or in a home opened to others, we learned that hospitality is about far more than food or lodging. It is about creating an environment where people feel safe enough to stop performing and simply be present.

That kind of welcome can become a safe harbor.

When the noise quiets, the expectations fall away, and a person no longer feels the need to lead, teach, fix, or accomplish something, there is often new room to hear from the Lord. We have seen again and again that rest, attentive listening, Scripture, silence, good conversation, and simple hospitality can create space for God to meet people in deeply personal ways.

That conviction helped shape the vision for The Shepherd’s Tavern.

We know that pastors, missionaries, and ministry leaders spend much of their lives pouring themselves out for others. They carry responsibility, expectations, decisions, needs, and sometimes burdens that few other people fully see. Our hope is to provide a place where they can step away for a while, become quiet enough to listen again, and rediscover the joy of serving from the overflow of their relationship with Jesus, the Good Shepherd.

The Shepherd’s Tavern is our invitation into that kind of safe harbor—a welcoming place where there is no program to complete, no role to perform, and no pressure to be anything other than who you are.

A guest may sleep late, walk a trail, sit quietly with Scripture, enjoy a cup of coffee, talk with a spouse, ask for spiritual direction, or simply sit in the stillness. Hospitality here means making room for whatever kind of rest is most needed.

Our desire is to offer a place for the restoration of the soul —a place where the surroundings themselves communicate welcome, where people can breathe more deeply, and where enough quiet is present to become attentive once again to the voice of God.

Come as you are. Lay down what you carry. Rest in God’s presence.

No striving. No pretense. Just come.

I grew up in Northern Virginia with two worlds practically at my doorstep: the woods near our home and the wonderful museums of nearby Washington, D.C. Both stirred curiosity in me—a love of creation and beauty on one hand, and a desire to learn and understand on the other.

During high school, that curiosity turned toward questions of faith. I began exploring religion and studying the history of the Church. In the midst of that searching, I encountered Young Life. The lively singing, funny skits, honest talks, and especially the warmth of the relationships were all things God used to draw me toward a saving faith in Jesus.

That decision changed everything. I wanted to know what it really meant to follow Jesus—not casually, but wholeheartedly—and to learn what it meant to love God with all my heart.

Then I married a cadet from VPI named Dave, and life became an adventure!

Our early married years brought travel and what sometimes felt like a fairly nomadic existence, first with the Army and later through Young Life. While living in Atlanta, Georgia, we welcomed our two daughters, Becca and Megan. Later, our ministry with Young Life/Club Beyond took us overseas, including many years in Sicily and Germany. Altogether, we spent about fifteen remarkable years serving with Club Beyond in Europe.

Those years gave our family experiences I treasure—skiing in the Alps, hiking in Scotland, traveling through Europe—but some of my most meaningful memories came through ministry itself.

It was during those years that I began more intentionally practicing spiritual disciplines such as meditation on Scripture, silence, and solitude. I discovered that making room to become quiet before God was not withdrawing from life; it was often what allowed me to return to life with greater attentiveness and love.

I also found enormous joy in women’s ministry and in planning and creating events for Club Beyond staff throughout Europe. Hospitality has always been one of the ways I naturally express care. I loved providing retreats for military women stationed overseas and for ministry staff, and I volunteered and worked with the service-center team to help create conferences and experiences that encouraged and refreshed people.

When we returned to the United States in 2004, we landed in the Midwest at Judson University. After becoming involved in our church’s women’s ministry, I pursued a Master of Leadership in Ministry degree. Later, I completed training in spiritual direction through Leadership Transformations’ Selah program.

Those experiences helped give language and shape to things God had already been growing in me for years: a passion for soul care, hospitality, spiritual formation, and creating welcoming spaces where people can slow down, connect, and enjoy God’s presence.

During my graduate studies, the vision became even clearer. I began thinking about what it might look like to create actual space for sabbatical and retreat—somewhere ministry leaders could practice Sabbath, silence, solitude, Scripture meditation, and other life-giving disciplines without having another program or schedule imposed upon them.

And then came the farm.

The Shepherd’s Tavern feels wonderfully suited to that vision. There are woods and trails, quiet places, open land, cottages, and room simply to be. A guest may choose silence and solitude, a long walk, time with Scripture, deep sleep, conversation with a spouse—or, if desired, a spiritual direction session.

I have come to believe deeply that listening and learning to rest are essential for those of us in ministry. We are not called to manufacture spiritual life through endless effort. We serve our gracious God from the overflow of our own relationship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Two passages of Scripture have been particularly meaningful to me. Philippians 1:6 reminds me that He who began a good work will faithfully carry it on to completion. And the opening words of Psalm 46:10 continue to call me back to the posture I want to cultivate in my own life and offer to others:

“Be still, and know that I am God.”

That, in many ways, is what I hope guests experience at The Shepherd’s Tavern: enough quiet, enough welcome, and enough room to become still again.

I grew up in Richmond, Virginia, the middle of three children, and for as long as I can remember I dreamed about flying. As a boy, I actually dreamed that I could fly by doing the breaststroke through the air! Years later, I entered the Army as an armor officer and was given the opportunity to become a helicopter pilot. Somewhere along the way, that childhood dream came true.

Virginia has always felt deeply rooted in me. My dad regularly took us to historical places around the state, and with so much early American history within a couple of hours of Richmond, I developed a lifelong interest in history—especially the Civil War. It seems fitting now that Appomattox is the closest town of any size to The Shepherd’s Tavern.

There is another connection to this part of Virginia that goes even deeper. We live only about twenty-five minutes from Green Bay, the little community where my grandparents lived and where my mother and her seven siblings grew up. Some of my favorite childhood memories are there: Mother’s Day picnics, softball games with cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, and riding washboard red-clay roads in an old truck with my granddaddy and Uncle Bob to visit the family farm where they grew tobacco and soybeans. It was also where I encountered my first hogs and piglets—and witnessed the memorable spectacle of a chicken losing its head!

Somehow, farm life settled into my soul long before I knew it. Looking back, I can see how those memories became part of our eventual decision to move to the rural Virginia property that became The Shepherd’s Tavern.

I attended Virginia Tech and majored in Political Science—yuk!—but much of my college life revolved around the Regimental Band, the Highty-Tighties. By my senior year, I was writing all the halftime shows for the roughly 100-member band.

More importantly, Virginia Tech was where my relationship with Jesus became deeply personal. I attended a weekend retreat with Campus Crusade for Christ—now Cru—and much of my early discipleship came through Cru and The Navigators. I can still recite some of those Scripture memory verses! As a new Christian, I remember asking God specifically for wisdom. It is remarkable to look back over the years and recognize how faithfully He has continued to answer that prayer.

Then there was Debbie.

I married her shortly after I graduated from college; she was still a sophomore. Of all the choices that have shaped my life, very few compare with that one. More than five decades of two people following Jesus together have woven our lives, callings, joys, disappointments, family, ministry, and dreams into something neither of us could have created alone. The Shepherd’s Tavern represents a new chapter in that shared story—and it is a chapter we gladly invite others to enter.

There are plenty of other things that make me, well, me. I love watercolor painting. I’m not especially good at it, but that has never stopped me from being fascinated by the movement of water and pigment across paper. I enjoy hard physical work, sweating, and working out. I have loved early mornings since I was about fifteen, when I first discovered how wonderfully quiet the world is before everyone else gets moving.

At the same time, I am very much an extrovert. People energize me. I especially love mentoring younger men, something I have had the privilege of doing during many years as a professor at Judson University. Some of those relationships have lasted long beyond the classroom.

Several passages of Scripture have become anchors for me because they speak of the astonishing freedom we have in Christ and the depth of God’s love for us: Romans 8:1, John 15:1–8, Galatians 5, and Psalm 139:17 and following. God’s Word continues to be life-giving to me.

Moving to rural Virginia and establishing The Shepherd’s Tavern has felt unmistakably like God’s leading in this season of our lives.

So my invitation is pretty simple:

Come for rest.
Come to work.
Come share a talent.
Come spend some time alone.

Just come.