From hosted gatherings to a permanent home: the Retreat at Annandale story

Some ministries begin as a strategy. Others are born out of a way of life. Sarah and I have carried within us the seeds of a permanent home for restoration and renewal for much of our lives.

We have had a pattern of welcome hospitality long before there was a public campaign to build a permanent retreat center. We have consistently provided care, shared meals, and created space for quiet, prayer, reflection, and honest conversation.

Pastors, leaders, friends, and guests were already finding that something about this place made it easier to breathe.

Our vision for The Retreat at Annandale is to create a faith integrated, ecumenical retreat center in the Texas Hill Country for people experiencing burnout, emotional exhaustion, compassion fatigue, and spiritual weariness. The roots of this vision have been formed through years of small-scale hospitality. We have already been hosting retreat experiences where people could rest and be restored.

​Our vision for ministry is not a brand-new idea searching for a building to justify itself. It is a living ministry growing toward a permanent home.

A ministry shaped by presence, not pressure

Since the early days of our mariage, Sarah and I have been living out a ministry calling that is shaped by the ordinary spaces of our lives. The calling started with welcoming people into our home and sharing a meal together. It expanded into providing a bedroom and a safe family for foster children. It expanded into encountering God in particular places like the front porch of the Annandale Ranch. Our story is not built around urgency or image. It has been built around attentivenes and care.

That may seem like a small distinction, but it shapes everything.

A retreat ministry formed by presence will always feel different from one built around volume, performance, or religious polish. It pays attention to people. It makes room for stillness. It values what happens slowly.

That type approach feels especially timely right now.

Across helping professions, people are carrying increasing levels of burnout and emotional strain. The CDC’s 2023 Vital Signs report found that 45.6% of health workers reported feeling burnout often or very often in 2022. Barna’s recent research found that 24% of senior Protestant pastors had seriously considered leaving full-time ministry within the past year.

These statistics come from different vocational worlds, but have a shared need. The need is for more places where people can receive care before exhaustion becomes their normal condition. Places that offer prayerfully and thoughtfully guided retreats that honor the body, the soul, and the call to serve.

Why a permanent home matters

For years, our ministry has taken place in smaller, more relational settings. We beleive that history is part of what gives our current campaign its credibility.

This is not a blind leap from nothing to a hopeful something. For us this is a faithful next step in what we have already been doing.

A permanent home matters to us because it allows the ministry to serve more people more intentionally.

It means:

• a setting designed specifically for rest, recovery, and reflection

• a clearer invitation to people outside the founders’ immediate network

• the ability to grow beyond one-off hospitality into a lasting center of care

• a place where pastors, doctors, nurses, caregivers, and leaders can be welcomed within rhythms built around restoration

In other words, permanence creates access.

It gives the ministry a visible, grounded center that people can find, understand, trust, and support—especially those actively seeking religious retreats that are ecumenical, faith-integrated, and rooted in pastoral care.

The land is part of the story too

Not only is our vision rooted in the hospitable care we have been providing for years, it is also deeply connected to place.

The Annandale Ranch has been stewarded by the same family since 1889. It has been a permanent home for a familial legacy. By placing this ministry on the Annandale Ranch, that legacy is not treated as background decoration. The land carries a history of care, preservation, and rootedness that fits with the deeper purpose of the retreat. It is part of the ministry’s imagination.

I believe this matters because true soul renewal is rarely abstract. We are shaped by our environments. Compact spaces, heavy traffic, large crowds, and constant noise have a tendency to induce anxiety, hurriedness, and frustration. Wide skies, quiet spaces, natural beauty, and an unhurried pace can help people shift out of constant alertness and into a steadier, calmer presence.

Research published in Scientific Reports found that spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature was associated with better health and well-being. For people in ministry, medicine, or caregiving, that kind of environment can become more than scenic. It can become part of how they begin to recover clarity, calm, and spiritual attentiveness.

Our vision for the Retreat at Annandale holds that reality with intention. As we develope out this vision, every element is being designed to support nervous system recovery, emotional healing, and spiritual renewal. The land is not simply where the ministry happens. It is part of how we care for people. We believe this approach sits comfortably alongside whole-person wellness without losing our distinctly Christian center.

A place for those who spend their lives caring for others

We envision an experiential place of retreat built specifically for pastors and minsitry leaders; doctors, nurses, and healthcare teams; missionaries, social workers, and other compassion-driven professionals.

A great many people who serve others have learned how to function under chronic strain. They often keep working while carrying emotional exhaustion, compassion fatigue, loneliness, grief, or spiritual weariness. In many cases, they do not need more advice as much as they need a place where they can be received with love, wisdom, and quiet hostpitable care.

That is the kind of place the Retreat at Annandale is becoming.

More than a building campaign

As much as this season is for us is described in terms of fundraising, design plans, or construction. They are not the deepest story.

This campaign is about creating a permanent space that is able to host more souls in need.

At its heart, this is about making room.

Room for weary people to rest. Room for reflection that is not rushed. Room for God’s presence to be noticed again. Room for leaders and clinicians to discover and recover something lasting than just survival.

A permanent retreat center is not the goal for its own sake. It is the container that will allow an already living ministry to grow in depth, consistency, and reach.

Our vision for this is not about trying to create a trend-driven program or a stylish navel-gazing self-absorbed experience offering flashing quick fixes to deeply rooted problems of the soul. It is a Christ-centered ministry of hospitality and soul transformation established over time.

If you want to explore the vision further, you can visit the main site, learn more about the founders and their story, or support the campaign to build a permanent place of sacred rest.

What began in small hosted gatherings is growing into something we beleive will serve many more people, in a very particular way, for years to come.