In the mountains of western Colorado, tucked away on the opposite side of the highway from everything else, is Heron’s Nest—an RV park that many people call home. My wife and I have some good friends who’ve been there for 2–3 years and others who have been there for as long as 20. In a community where everything revolves around nearby ski resorts and cost of living is high, Heron’s Nest is basically the last stop before homelessness. In fact, the kids who live there are considered homeless by the school district. It’s a forgotten community, troubled by poverty, addiction, and drug use. Yet we believe God wants to use this community to launch a gospel movement across our region.
Our team uses the five components of a gospel movement as a framework for how we do ministry—those five are activating prayer, engaging culture, making disciples, growing leaders, and forming churches.
In Heron’s Nest we first began by engaging culture. We organized a weekly community meal, putting tables on the lawn and inviting all the residents of the RV park to come eat together. It was a great way to meet a tangible need and build relationships with people, two key aspects of the engaging culture component.
Our hope was to get a Discovery Bible Study (DBS) going alongside the community meal as a part of making disciples, the third component of a gospel movement. But for some reason all the DBSs we started fizzled out. People would come and go and we didn’t really see change in anyone’s life. We felt like we were hitting a wall in our disciple-making efforts.
After two summers like this, we had a big “aha” moment. We realized we’d been consistently implementing the second and third components of engaging culture and making disciples but we hadn’t been faithful and consistent in activating prayer. We were praying in different places across the region with our teammates, but we weren’t specifically investing in prayer on location in Heron’s Nest.
So this past winter, when everything shut down and people hid away from the Colorado cold and snow inside their homes, we decided it was time to up our prayer game. By that point we were aware of a lot of dark strongholds impacting the community—depression, the oppressiveness of poverty, drug deals, addictions. The spiritual climate was so heavy. We committed to prayer-walk every week in Heron’s Nest and really contend in prayer for that place.
So that’s what we did. I prayer-walked there every week all winter long. Sometimes I went alone, sometimes with my wife and little girl, sometimes with another team-mate or volunteer. But we prayed. And since I have a bent toward evangelism and relationship, whenever I’d see someone outside their house I’d engage with them in conversation, see what the needs were, and offer to pray. It’s one of the ways I could engage culture as I went along.
In early spring, just before we were about to start up our community meals to engage with more people again, the pandemic hit. We couldn’t do anything. So we just kept prayer-walking.
As it got warmer, more people started coming outside, and I got to talk and pray for more and more people personally. There were a lot of tangible needs shared with us during that stay-at-home season, and we were able to leverage our network of local believers and ministries to meet many of those needs.
One of the families we’d been able to help during the tough times of COVID had come to our DBS a few times the year before. When I’d first invited the wife to that DBS she’d exclaimed, “You don’t want me in your Bible study!” (“Actually, I really do…” I thought.) This family had been hurt by the church before, but they showed up—the wife, her husband, and the oldest son together. The husband was really not happy about being there.
During one study, the son found the Bible passage and handed the Bible to his dad. “What are you doing with that thing?” Dad asked.
“I just turned to the story for you.”
“I ain’t touching that thing!” Eventually he started thumbing through it, but it felt as if we were hitting a wall with that family.
Around the time that lockdown was lifting and we were preparing to start meals for the summer, both the husband and wife started asking me, “When are we going to do Bible study? When are we going to get a DBS going?”
“I’m ready,” I replied. “You just tell me when and where and gather some folks together, and we’ll do it.” It was a tangible sign that the spiritual climate around Heron’s Nest was different, and I could feel it.
In May we were allowed to don gloves and masks and restart the community meal in the park. Maybe it was COVID, maybe it was the prayer-walking, but our numbers exploded. Where previously having 30 people was a big night, now there were 50 people. Times were tough and the food was needed. People weren’t just hungry for the meals, though. They were also hungry for the word. During the meal that first night the same couple asked me again, “When are we going to do DBS?” and I gave them the same answer: “Tell me when and where…” So they gathered a few people right then and told me, “OK, we’re going to do it tomorrow night!”
We had our first post-prayer-walking Bible study and things were different. People who we’d known and invited to Bible study for years—who seemed to have stoppers in their ears and weren’t interested at all—suddenly started showing up to the study, happy and interested. The group was much bigger and more consistent in attending.
And that couple who asked me to get the DBS going were in a very different place spiritually. I quickly realized something had shifted and they had become open to Jesus. We were going through the story of Nicodemus in John 3...including John 3:16. As we were discussing the passage, I addressed the couple directly, saying, “You know guys, it says right here that whoever believes in Jesus will not perish but have everlasting life… When it talks about believing I think there’s this connotation that we’re turning away from ourselves and turning toward Jesus. Last year you guys weren’t there, but now it really seems like you’re in a place where you are turning to Jesus and believing him and wanting to follow him.” And the wife said, “Yeah. I am now.” The husband, who hadn’t even wanted to touch the Bible the year before, was still on the fence, but trying to figure out if he was there too. That was a huge change!
The spiritual shift we’re experiencing now isn’t limited to one household; it’s true of all the people coming. The spiritual climate of the whole place feels different. Before it felt like sowing on a rocky path, where the enemy was just stealing the Bible stories away and no one was producing fruit. Now people are really hearing the stories and they’re making an impact. People are being open and vulnerable. They’re telling other people about what they’re learning and following through on their “I will” obedience statements from the Bible study. Even that husband on the fence about Jesus followed through and told his boss—a multi-million dollar business owner—about the Bible story one week.
I recognize that the pandemic has shifted people across our entire valley to be much more willing to talk about spiritual things, so I don’t know how much of this change is the pandemic and how much is the prayer-walking. But I felt the spiritual shift taking place throughout the winter as I prayed, and my sense is that our decision to prayer-walk and take ownership over the space has been really significant.
There’s still work to do—the enemy still has strongholds in Heron’s Nest. But significant change has happened, and it’s bearing fruit—the fruit of new obedient followers of Jesus. And realizing the importance of having all the components of a gospel movement taking place in the specific community we were called to has made a dramatic difference.
NEXT STEPS
My wife and I spent several years in Uganda as missionaries, and we’re learning that gospel movements work a little differently in a western context than they do in other parts of the world. People are so isolated here; just because someone lives in a neighborhood doesn’t mean they will know their neighbors. Instead, people know their co-workers, or folks at the same gym, or people whose kids go to the same school. These social groups are commonly called “silos”—socio-demographic groups isolated from other people who aren’t in the group. In a place like Uganda, to launch a gospel movement effectively we’d work to have all five components of a gospel movement in our geographical region or among the people group we were trying to reach. But here in the West we need to ensure that all five components are taking place within the silo, not just the city or region. For us, that silo is the community of Heron’s Nest. For others it might be among the teachers and administrators of the local school district, or the members of a gym. Whatever the focus, we need to make sure that all five components of a gospel movement are present in the silo God has sent us to.
What place or group of people has God put on your heart? If you’re already engaging there, which components are you using? Are there any components that are missing or that you are weaker in? Ask God how you could fill in the gaps...and then see what happens next!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew Meador and his wife Kerri joined Novo in 2018. They live in New Castle, CO and serve with Ignite: Colorado, a ministry of ChurchNEXT. Andrew and Kerri lead ministry efforts in two missional spaces in their region—Heron’s Nest, which this story is about, and Apple Tree Trailer Park, where they and their daughter live.