The Overland Story: How God Built a Church in the West

Show Notes

In this heartfelt final episode of Wisdom for the Wilderness with Pastors Zack and Josh, they sit down to tell the full story of Overland Church — from the very beginning to where it stands today.

Pastor Zack shares how the Lord moved his heart toward church planting while serving at Buck Run Baptist Church in Kentucky, the difficult decision to leave the Bible Belt for Fort Collins, Colorado, and the bold step of faith their family took in 2017. Hear the stories of the small core team that moved west, the miraculous way God provided their building, the challenges of early preview services, growth through COVID, major leadership transitions, and the joy of sending out new church plants to Durango and North Fort Collins.

This episode is packed with encouragement, laughter, and powerful reminders of God’s faithfulness — including how the name “Overland” was chosen and the church’s core values: Proclaim, Disciple, Serve, and Multiply.

Whether you’ve been part of Overland’s story or you’re simply encouraged by real church-planting testimonies, this is a powerful reminder that Jesus builds His church.

Thank you, Pastor Zack, for your obedience and leadership. The best is yet to come.

*Wisdom for the Wilderness will take a break over the summer of 2026. Lord willing, the new version of WFW will return in the fall.

Creators and Guests

JH

Host

Josh Hutchens

What is Wisdom for the Wilderness?

Join Dr. Josh Hutchens, director of Gateway Seminary's Rocky Mountain Campus and pastor at Overland Church in Fort Collins, Colorado, as he explores spiritual faithfulness amid life's challenges and suffering. Through discussions on theological questions and inspiring stories, Wisdom for the Wilderness offers guidance and hope for navigating the complexities of faith in a broken world.

speaker-0: Welcome to Wisdom for the Wilderness, a podcast from the pastors of Overland Church where we talk about the Bible, theology, current issues, and sadly, this is our last episode together. I'm sure you'll come on at some point in the future, but this is our last episode together in this form. That's right, that's right. So, this is the beginning of June as this is coming out, and by the end of June,

speaker-1: Yeah, with me as a pastor.

speaker-0: it'll be the end of your time at Overland, which we talked about that transition on another ⁓ show, another episode. But what I wanted to do for our last episode together is really just talk about the story of Overland Church, the history ⁓ behind it, so that we could just kind of get down for, you know, generations, you know, how this all happened, and how there was once no Overland Church, and now there is an Overland Church. So, ⁓ you up for that? Absolutely. All right. So, you were born—no, we won't start back that far. But, ⁓ so, you you talked about this a little bit in the sermon where you were announcing to the church that you were transitioning away, but I'd love for you to kind of recount where did this church planting journey begin for you?

speaker-1: Happy to talk about it. Try not to cry. Yeah. you know, obviously it began for me at Buck Run. know, Buck Run was a church that was started in 1818 and the, the founding pastor of Overland Church was a man, ⁓ named, sorry, sorry, of Buck Run. ⁓ it was a man named John Taylor and he planted 10 churches, ⁓ across, ⁓ central Kentucky.

speaker-0: crunch. Yeah.

speaker-1: Okay. And, ⁓ you know, I, I began to, ⁓ really read about the history of, of Buckrun and, and was, you know, man, isn't that incredible that there's, was 10 churches in here 200 years later, ⁓ because of the faithfulness of, of John Taylor. ⁓ you see the gospel still going forward. And I really began, got an appreciation for, church planning and

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: You know, often people don't think about where a church comes from. How does it start? Where does it come from? You know, I told a story in that sermon about ⁓ Gabe Sloan texting Greg Gibson and I saying, hey, we ought to read this book, Church Planner by Darren Patrick together. And my quick reply back was, I'm not reading it. I'm not planting a church, you know? And I joke and say, that's like really was the moment in which the Lord started turning my heart. But in that... I was leading missions and we went up to Indianapolis and we were helping a church planter up there and I saw this dude didn't know what he was doing. It's like, you know, this dude's trying to start this church. He has no clue how a church operates. What is this to do? And like, I felt compassion for him and began to like partner and try to help church planners. And that's just kind of where it got on my radar.

speaker-0: Is that church around today or do you know?

speaker-1: I have no clue. Actually, I do know it's not around. There's a different church in that building, but that guy's not around. ⁓ And so, you know, start asking the question, how do churches start? And begin thinking about it and reading through it. ⁓ I began asking the question about what's next for our family. What's next?

speaker-0: At the time you were at Buck Run, still student pastor?

speaker-1: Yeah, I was still student pastor and ⁓ I loved student ministry. I'd go back and do student ministry. Student ministry would be on the table for me. But there was an age with my children, really, where I was like, all right, I'm going to miss a ton of their childhood if I stay in this role. So what's next? And began praying through and asking God, what do want me to do?

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: And really I ended up on church planting. lot of people kind of ended up because it's like a cool hip in thing. I'm typically adverse to cool. Like if something's cool, I'm not doing something because it's cool. ⁓ you know, I always say what's cool today won't be cool tomorrow. It's cool. Tomorrow won't be cool. You know, what's true today be true tomorrow. True forever. ⁓

speaker-0: And just for people who live now, or some of our younger listeners who didn't live through this era, like, the 2010s was like the pinnacle of the church planting, you know, like, it was really cool, really great, you know, you had Acts 29 was going strong, you had Sin Network started in the Southern Baptist Convention, and so it was on the forefront, and a lot of our peers went into church planting. Some of them, you know, hopefully a lot of them for good reasons, but sometimes it was like, ⁓ well there's a lot of problems.

speaker-1: Yeah. A lot of people play at churches, but it was like the church is doing it wrong. I'm going to go do it right. And I was coming from a church that I thought was doing it pretty well. Yeah. I'll tell you what they do really well. They love Jesus and they love each other. You know, I mean, there's, they do those two things really, really well. They've reached the loss. make disciples, but I mean, they love Jesus and they love each other. So, you know, to me, it was about going, we were praying through, do we go overseas?

speaker-0: Yep. Yeah. Peace.

speaker-1: Do we stay here? Like there, there was, mean, anything was on the table. And so finally, I mean, the Lord was putting church planting on our heart. ⁓ my heart, should say my heart, cause it wasn't on Jennifer's heart. ⁓ yeah, you know, it was, it was in my heart. then, ⁓ after kind of Jennifer got on board, we began praying through where, and you know, one of the, one of the main things was I wanted to be out of the Bible belt. Right. The first step of evangelism in the Bible Belt is convincing someone they're not a Christian. And I wanted to be out of the Bible Belt, so we were looking outside of the South. I just want to put a little caveat to say, I know some of you were thinking, well, why are you leaving and going back to the Bible Belt? Well, I'm not, for one. South Florida is not the Bible Belt. We're within a couple hours of the Bible Belt, but South Florida is not the Bible Belt. And two,

speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, South Florida is not the best.

speaker-1: I would go back to the Bible Belt at this point in my life, but it would be for a different set of ⁓ convictions.

speaker-0: It's important for people to see, too. Like, the need is greater outside of the Bible Belt, but there's also pockets of need within the Bible Belt. When you take, for example, Nashville that is growing hand over fist, I mean, or Atlanta, or, you know, some of these huge metro areas need new churches because the current church structure, you know, they're dying, and then there's new neighborhoods just like here.

speaker-1: huge needs are there. Dying.

speaker-0: popping up out of nothing, and there's no churches there. So, there is some need there as well.

speaker-1: Definitely not the same level of right. So we said, okay, we're going to be outside of the Bible belt. ⁓ where, where do we go? Basically decided we want to be west of the Mississippi. Where do we go? Decided we wanted to be in the mountain west. Where do we go?

speaker-0: Was there this like Erum and Thumum, know, okay, making this clan and then this...

speaker-1: Yeah, basically. But we had a connection. had come, we had come in and visited, visited Arapahoe road, Baptist church, and I had been out, ⁓ a few times I'd been to Denver, didn't like Denver, ⁓ still don't like Denver. That's not changed at all. ⁓ I, if, know, I don't want to go any, you know, I don't want go any farther south in Cabela's. ⁓ like that's, that is like as far south as I want to go. ⁓ particularly don't like to do that, but.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: With Bas Proko and up here, I wouldn't have needed to, anyway, Schills pretty much has me covered. So we just began praying through where landed on Colorado, wanted to be in a college town. That's a huge part of my ministry and a conviction I have and strategy that I have wanted to be in a college town.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: Fort Collins is just the best college town in Colorado and it's not, there's not a close second. That's right. know, but Boulder is the spiritually darkest place in Colorado. ⁓ but, ⁓ I'm, I'm not a Boulder person. ⁓ every time I go to go to Boulder, I'm afraid I'm gonna get kicked out, you know? So, ⁓ not a Boulder person really thought we could connect well.

speaker-0: You're not a boulder. Yeah.

speaker-1: with in, in Fort Collins thought we could make the, you know, like obviously you've got a lot of Western slope and Eastern planes thought we could connect there. Thought we could make the jump to, the front range folks easy, easy enough. ⁓ and so we decided on, we decided on, ⁓ Fort Collins. we moved, you know, we, we knew we were coming.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: But we kept it super quiet and didn't tell the church, like super quiet because I was executive pastor leading through this building campaign. And like I mentioned in that sermon, Herschel and I kind of came to an agreement on the front end that I would be the executive pastor oversee ⁓ this building and campus relocation. And after that, they would plant us out. So that was the agreement that we had on the front end. so the second we told the church we were church planting, I would really lose a lot of my leadership ability in the eyes of people. That's just how it is. I knew that on May 3rd, as soon as I said, Hey, I'm leaving, that a lot of people are like, you're dead to me. You know, there's a, there's a reality to that. ⁓ what does it matter? You're not going to be here when it comes to decision-making. So we kept it, we kept it super quiet. And then, ⁓

speaker-0: Yeah. Thank

speaker-1: On our soft lunch, was the only time Hershel would say it was the only time in the history of background he's told people, do not invite anybody to church on this one Sunday. Because like we got to work out the kinks we got to do. On that Sunday, our family came up and we told the church that we were leaving.

speaker-0: Okay. Yeah, yeah. Do remember what day that was?

speaker-1: I want to say it was like November 5th of 2016. Yeah. November 5th, maybe it's possibly six, but, ⁓ it was that first Sunday in November in, 2016. it would have been time change Sunday. I mean, it was a big Sunday for us, but yeah, wasn't election day, but we told them, and I remember it was, people couldn't believe it.

speaker-0: Okay. Election day.

speaker-1: Herschel had, Herschel had like for months been teeing up. Like you're going to see, this isn't just about a building. This is, this is about the gospel and training up and equipment and sending people out. it was to, to applause and tears at the same time. Like, all right, we're sending out a church planner. You know, Herschel would always say, you know, we're going to send out our best and our brightest. I laugh at that. ⁓ cause I don't think I was the best or the brightest, but, ⁓ Jennifer, guess.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: fits the bill. ⁓ but Hershel Hershel would say that. And, and so then from, ⁓ really Hershel was very, very kind. We from, from that Sunday to the end of the year, we had like punch list kind of stuff to take care of the building. And then he really allowed me January, ⁓ starting in January at 2017 to really begin putting together core team to visiting, to fundraising, to, help them with, you know, getting partner. churches on board to help us plant. got to travel around and make pitches to churches and get partners. And there are several churches that I would just tell you from the very beginning have been great partners. ⁓ Wellington Bible Church in Lexington, Kentucky, Monument Point Fellowship in Jacksonville, Florida. From the very beginning. Little churches, little country churches given a hundred dollars a month, ⁓ just faithfully bought in ⁓ the vision of planning a church out west. Obviously Tri-Cities Baptist Church and Buck Run, ⁓ huge those two and how their staffs have supported us, how they sent people, they sent mission teams from the beginning. Some of like Severe Heights is a later partner, but some of those are owned from the very beginning. ⁓ so then we kind of, we, we got a core team, obviously the Samson's put their, ⁓ yes on the table. They knew before we told the church, ⁓ I went to assessment before they, ⁓ told the church, by the way, in assessment, when you, when you go to assessment, Brandon just went through assessment and he got what we call a green light ready to plan. When buddy went through assessment, he got a green light ready to plan. Got an orange light.

speaker-0: What light did you get?

speaker-1: And so orange light, they don't have it anymore, but it's obviously between a yellow and a red light. were like, this dude probably shouldn't plant a church. That's what they gave me. And they're like, yeah, he's probably not cut out to be a church planner. But I was like, well, I'm going to do it anyway. The Lord's called me to do it. believe I, know, and there's a reality. I church planning is hard. ⁓ there's different statistics out there, but like the reality is like nine out of 10 church plants fail. can just, I have a list in my phone. of the number of church plants that did not make it out here. And the Lord has been so gracious and so kind to help our church make it. we had a team and obviously Buddy and Brooke, there was another couple, Garrett and Leah Duff, that were going to be a part of it. Another couple, Matt and Amanda Doherty, that ⁓ Buddy and Brooke met in the airport going to

speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah.

speaker-1: South Corita to adopt Jude and that couple was going to adopt Jude. mean going to adopt their their kid. And then there were a bunch of single folks. know, Kyle, well, Colin Buckley Hancock, Even when I started, they weren't married, but by the time they moved here, they were married. They were a couple. And of course now Kyle and Buckley are in, in Durango. uh, by the way, Kyle's getting ready to, uh, to be, he's in the elder candidate process to be, uh, be an elder in Durango. So that's really cool. Brian Cox, Alex Palu, uh, rich Kemper, you know, all these, all by the way, none of those names.

speaker-0: Yeah, people who are here now don't know most of those names other than Buddy and Buckley.

speaker-1: So that was, that was the team.

speaker-0: So how many total was that? about 12?

speaker-1: Yeah. Like adults. then, then you've got kids, Then you've got kids, you've got the Samson kids and the Thurman kids. And, and I would just tell you, ⁓ they were the kids were a great part of the mission team. mean, our kids served, our kids invited people. Our kids did the things behind the scenes. Our kids cared for the building. You know, I remember watching, you know, some, some people dry, you know, tracked in mud.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: And there's John Owen back there, he's like a fourth or fifth grader getting up the mud out of the carpet that he had worked hard to lay with dad. know, there's a care for the building and there's a care for the things that, you know, a lot of people don't have because they were a huge part in building the church and, know, the whole process. They're part of the church planning team. Often enough, our kids don't get credit. And then you see it happen again when the Sampson's go to Durango.

speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah.

speaker-1: you know, what a force their kids have been when the first thing they started was a student ministry. So, you know, they started a track before they started any sort of college service. that was the plan was to start college and they get down there and start a student ministry because their kids reach people. So Jennifer and I moved out in July of 2017. The very first

speaker-0: So you announced in November 2016 you moved July 2017. Yep.

speaker-1: Yep. We, we sold our house. I'm going to tell this story real quick because I'm getting ready to do the exact same thing. Praying that the Lord.

speaker-0: Lord to remember the faithfulness of the Lord right now.

speaker-1: We needed to get top dollar for our house in Kentucky. Yep. And we needed as much equity as we could get to move out because we're moving to a really expensive market. thought, ⁓ at, at the time and, We weren't going to hire realtor. have the same situation then as now, like in a church, when you've got like a bunch of realtors in the church, how do you pick one? When you got, when you're like one of your elk hunting partners, realtor, like everybody's a realtor. So how do you pick one? And so it was the same, same thing there. It's like, who, who do I want to offend? You like get to make one person happy and a bunch of people mad. So we were going to sell our house, ⁓ thinking that we, there'd be a realtor, a buying agent, and that they would, they would walk through and we just put it on.

speaker-0: Yeah. Yes.

speaker-1: Zillow, we get people to share it on Facebook. Uh, we get our house on, you know, that that's how we listed it. Wasn't on the MLS or anything like that. We're going have a, we're going to have a showing on Sunday from two to 4 PM. An hour before the open house. This dude just walks in our living room and I'm like, hello. He goes, I'm here for the open house. And he's like, was like, it's not started yet. It's a, it's an hour away. Well, can you just show me the house? I'm here already. quickly just walks through our house, looks around, walks back upstairs and goes, I'll give you your asking price for it. And that didn't happen. And you bid under 15, $20,000. I'll give you asking price for it right now. I said, okay. ⁓ you know, I'm like, did I do this or I not do this? Okay. And he goes, do you have a contract? went, no.

speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. Miss something.

speaker-1: I don't, was thinking you'd bring your buyer's agent with you to buy the house and he's like, go to rocket mortgage and whatever. And let's print one off. like we printed one off. We signed it. ⁓ We came out here just like two or three days later, John Holston was our realtor ⁓ here. John Holston's the elder at Calvary Severance now is really good, really good dude. And we bought our house for under asking price.

speaker-0: care.

speaker-1: ⁓ out, out here in, know, our house is six tenths of a mile from the church. We had no clue the Lord's sovereign plan and putting us so.

speaker-0: Right. that, was still south side. It was still south Had no clue where Overland was going to be at in land. clue. Yep.

speaker-1: outside Baptist Church. The Lord was so kind in that. and so we, we threaded the needle. We moved from out there, a whole team of people from Buck Run basically took a mission trip and moved us out. A lot of work to be done in our house and they, they helped us. then July 2017, you know, we just said, we're going to have as many people in our house as possible. We're going to meet people. We're trying to meet a hundred people in a hundred days. And the very first person we met was Michelle Edgerly. who's now at our church and her and her family. It's so awesome that years later that she ended up there. And we just met and met and met and had people over and we met skeptics and ⁓ Muslims and Mormons and you name it. We just met everybody.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: The Samson's arrived in December of 2017 and other couples started arriving beginning in January. Kyle and Buckley were one of the last to get here in ⁓ August. August of 2018. And then, you know, our plan, you know, we were hopeful to launch in the fall of 2018. Just weren't there. And so we started, we had our first preview service.

speaker-0: August of 28. Yeah. Yeah.

speaker-1: In the Hilton Hotel right off of Prospect below campus. Yeah, there were about 40 people there Yeah, you know, there's about 40 people there a few College students ⁓ our first college student was a kid named Ben Crawford. He was from Las Vegas He showed up and he just served for years. He was awesome ⁓ another another young guy named Dylan McNamara ⁓ he

speaker-0: I've seen pictures of

speaker-1: ⁓ I think he was the first person that Buddy led to the Lord. was Buddy's neighbor. It was a college house right beside Buddy. and you know, Buddy ends up, ⁓ Dylan ends up at that first preview service Dylan's now wife at the time, her name was Krista. ⁓ she worked in the Ram Scaler at CSU campus and we found out she was a drummer. She went to Mill City, but we robbed her for our preview services because we needed a drummer. had this killer female drummer. Now check this out. So Dylan.

speaker-0: Okay.

speaker-1: Buddy Lett of the Lord was baptized at Overland. Dylan works in Palm Beach Gardens now. Oh wow. And he and I were texting the other day, so I'm going to be able to see Dylan on a regular basis. That's really cool. We started there in Hilton right as school was starting, so we had a lot of preview services because we wanted to hit that one in August. We started a college ministry first, or at least tried to start a college ministry first ended up having a ton of international students, uh, particularly because of one lady, Alex Ballou is just really gifted with internationals and, and they were coming. Of course, all that changed after COVID, but we went from like 35 or 40 at the first preview. And at the last preview, we were about 70 people. We grew from like 35 to 70 and that was in January. We a Christmas Eve service. Yep. And the last preview was actually.

speaker-0: Yeah. Okay. we. Argus to. 29.

speaker-1: in the what we now call the lodge it wasn't didn't look like a lodge then before we moved in where we started on January 27th to 29 2019

speaker-0: Yeah. At some point, didn't you guys meet at Rocky?

speaker-1: He did. We tried out Rocky, ⁓ I think in November and it, yeah. And it was a really, it was, it was good. think we might've tried one other, one other place. were trying to figure out where we were. And, then in November, like the end of November of, of 2018 is when, you know, ⁓ James Anderson, the associate pastor at Southside came to me and said, you know, he, he called me one night and said, Hey, would you get, would you.

speaker-0: Rocky Mountain High School for people around here. What would be your regular spot?

speaker-1: meet me for Chick-fil-A tomorrow and then said, ⁓ you know, we sat down and he goes, well, our church is going to close our doors. Do you want our building? And it was just nonchalant is that. And I'm trying to play it cool. I'm swallow big old swallow and like, much, how much debt do you have? And they're like, we, have no debt and we think we'll have about $10,000 in the bank. And I was like, yes.

speaker-0: Yeah. I have to look at it. Okay.

speaker-1: Yeah. Now there was one thing about the building at the time. There was supposed to be a cell phone tower that would be right like remote, like our little cars park right beside it. It would have been right there. 50 by 50. This, this cell phone tower is like going to be a bell tower actually taller than the steeple. was going to look horrendous. they were supposed to start construction in January. So

speaker-0: Which, to a struggling church, that would have been a good income source.

speaker-1: $4,000 a month. It was enough to keep the doors open. But they also had a school and the school was leaving him because of the cell phone tower. So they were going to have 4,000 months income, but the school was like, we don't want our children. The cell phone tower is going to give our children cancer. We're pulling out. that tanked them. So they hand us the keys on December. 30th of 2018 and did we barely let them get out of the parking lot before Buddy and I started going. Like we filled up, we flipped that thing. We flipped the worship center in five rooms. We threw away two 40 yard bins of trash. know, we, Buddy and I, and our families were up there just nonstop for a month. I'm talking late nights, early mornings, mission teams, like it was wild.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: You know, we've done all the work in that inside that building ourselves, except for the polish in the floor, essentially everything else, maybe a little bit of carpet was laid, but then after they showed us how to lay it, we laid the rest. ⁓ the outside, obviously the parking, there's some cool stuff on the outside of the building, but, ⁓ you know, primarily the outside of the building was mission teams and Donnie, Sullivan painting it for his community service hours, which is another incredible, incredible story.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: ⁓ So here's me this one other really cool thing I'll tell you ⁓ The cell phone tower company Their contract expired by it was like January 3rd it expired and on January 4th They showed up to say hey, we're gonna start marking for construction and I walk out and I'm saying sorry guys Your contract is expired. We no longer want your cell phone tower. Yeah, and they were I mean they went nuclear on me and You know, I have a friend that's a contract lawyer and I got her to look over the contract and she goes, I think you got a case, but it's going to take a lot of money to win it. And I said, I ain't not worried about it. I said, man, the Lord's so in this thing. And so sure enough, three or four days got called, you know, go by and the dude calls me back and goes, listen, if you don't want the cell phone tower, we're not going to put it in, but we're not going to keep bugging you. We're going to, we're going to, we're going to bug you until you let us do it.

speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah.

speaker-1: And it took about three years for to stop bugging me, but ⁓ It wasn't that we were opposed to the cell phone tower. We were opposed to the placement of the cell phone tower It just did not make any sense

speaker-0: there wouldn't

speaker-1: Expand the building and they couldn't think they couldn't think of a reason that you would expand the building so we have our first service and Like I said our last preview service is about 70 people our first preview service was a hundred and fifty four and so just a remarkable difference and ⁓

speaker-0: Yeah. Okay. 70 people at your last preview service, your first real service was 100?

speaker-1: And of course there's a lot of out of town visitors. There's neighbors that showed up, you know, Sam and Kathleen Stevens walked in the door for the first time. so by week three, we were back down to about 70 and which was to be expected. But after we hit 70, we just began to climb. And we basically in a year's time, we climbed back up to about 150. So. You know, 154 down to 70. Then over the course of the year, we built back up to in that 100, 140, 150 place and man, people, know, there's, there's families that begin to come like, uh, Katherine, uh, Tom, know, the, no, the Katherine Shane, uh, Thomas hunt that are up at North now, uh, Bethany Warner.

speaker-0: the Townsend's. Okay.

speaker-1: came at that Easter. Later that summer, River City shuts its doors and Andrew McKnight as the elder leads a good number of them, about 20 people, to come over and join what we were doing. Ken and Ashley Stratton were another part of that. Cody and Carrie Small, they came in and they just came in and one caught their breath and they didn't come into roles of service. Andrew stepped down as an elder. They just came under be shepherded and then, you know, you couldn't keep, you can't keep good men down long, you know, and they all jumped in and they became like a huge part of, of Overland and Andrew then eventually becomes an elder and one that's man leading so well, ⁓ today, such a beautiful part. So they brought a lot of momentum to the table in that, in that, in 2019. So 2020, we're announcing that we're going to, two services. We're going from one to two.

speaker-0: Yeah. this Sunday.

speaker-1: The Sunday that we were supposed to go to two services, we didn't have church because of COVID. And of course we were, we were down a number of Sundays. You know, we, we, there'd never been a service that we hadn't live stream. So it wasn't like hard to get it all together. Right. ⁓ worship was a little funky, but we did it. Yeah. And then when we came back, we came back to two services because we had to, had to social distance, right?

speaker-0: ⁓ that's. OK. Yeah, I got.

speaker-1: Right. We had to, and we were, I think our first Sunday back, we were about 70. And we quickly climbed over the summer back up into the 140s. so.

speaker-0: How long was it that you weren't allowed to have any services?

speaker-1: Like 40 days. forget, I forget what it was. I forget what it might've been more than that, but, no. Yeah. It wasn't, it wasn't 40 days. It was longer than that because it was 40 days after Easter because it was basically Pentecost Sunday would have been our first Sunday, Sunday back. But here, here's the reality for COVID. COVID was really good for our church. ⁓ we served the community really, really well. had drive through food, Destro-

speaker-0: to stop the curve. Okay.

speaker-1: distributions, we were helping with counseling. We were like small enough that no one on the city level was looking to go, what are they doing? We were young enough that there wasn't, you know, the oldest person was like 45, right? They were all healthy. There wasn't the same concerns that a lot of pastors had. had a lot of college students. They were together anyway. So it wasn't that hard for us to navigate. We were more like a

speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, right

speaker-1: is the difference in, we were like a warship versus a cruise ship. We were able to turn and make changes and it was fine. And the Lord gave us a lot of favor in it. just, know, from there, from 2020 ⁓ up until the time we sent out north, you we worked up in three services, we keep working up to about 500. It's really hard for us to hit that number. So we just get stuck in the fours. Somewhere we fill up and it kind of drives people away fill up and you know, so Not the 8 a.m. There's plenty of room in that a.m

speaker-0: Come to 8 a.m. in August when we start back.

speaker-1: You know, it's just been incredible to see. then obviously, you know, I think probably close to 150 baptisms in that time frame. We send out Overland Durango.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: Let me see. We sent them out in the spring of 23. They launched the spring of 24. They were on a year the year there were 29 people that once worshiped at Overland Fort Collins that were worshipping.

speaker-0: How long of a process was that in discerning and sending out Buddy? mean, it's his own story, but it's part of the story of Midtown too, so. Okay.

speaker-1: So summer of 22, really kind of got there the summer of 2022 to send them out in the spring of 23. Brandon smoked them. know, Brandon and Maddie were way faster. But they obviously weren't.

speaker-0: they weren't moving across the state.

speaker-1: Yeah, so, you know. Not counting small children, counting their kids and teenagers. Like the Sampson is part of the planning team. It was in the 20s ⁓ that went to plant there. And then, of course, we just sent out north with 70.

speaker-0: Yeah. You know, back at sending out Overland Durango, how big a piece of the culture and history of Overland do you think that was?

speaker-1: So, man, maybe one of the most important things that happened to Overland was that when we sent out Buddy, our college slash associate pastor, Josh Wisder, our worship leader, and Buckley Hancock, our kids director. Boom, right there, like major leadership. And if you were to look in sending out those 30 people, there's never, like on the graph, there's not even a dip in our attendance. It just goes up.

speaker-0: Yeah. Yep.

speaker-1: But what we lost was a lot of leaders. And out of that came the servant leadership cohort. We already had the pipeline, know, Buddy and our team at the time, Brandon was a part of that. Buckley was a part of that. Really worked to build the pipeline and the structure the way it is. But the servant leadership cohort became how we backfilled all those leadership positions to go, never again. from that point going never again will we send a church planting team that doesn't have all these people trained. We were able to north this time with leaders and we were able to backfill on our end.

speaker-0: Yeah. When you were sending out Buddy, were there any voices inside or outside the church, especially in like the church planting ⁓ world where they think they know it all, saying to you, hey, you've just gotten to a point where you are really steady, you know, you shouldn't do this, you know?

speaker-1: Yeah, there definitely were folks, not in the church planting world necessarily, but I everybody realized what it meant for me to send Buddy. One, you're sending your best friend to, you're sending like a very big charismatic personality. ⁓ yeah, he's going to make a great church planter. And obviously same thing with Brandon. Like people get comfortable, they get comfortable ⁓ the way that things are and

speaker-0: Yeah. Yes.

speaker-1: They go, but this is going to change things. And I'm going, yeah, it is. And it's going to be awesome for the kingdom of, kingdom of God. And it's a chance for a, you know, and I look at, I look at us leaving the very same way. ⁓ and I've already seen so much fruit of me leaving and I'm not even gone yet. So.

speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. Thank Ha!

speaker-1: Just the number of people that are stepping up to go, want to help. We're in the number of people that go, Hey, we're in, I've got people going that we're in. We, we, need to join the church. And I'm like, you haven't, you've been here three years and hadn't joined the and I'm leaving and you want to join. Maybe that's about me. don't know what it is, but I just, there's so, so encouraging. Like I believe the best is yet to come for, for overland it that the Lord has. You know, Andrew McKnight has brought this up over and over and over. You know, the Lord has done so much for Overland and gone before Overland fought for the people of Overland. makes, what would make us think that by you leaving, it's going to stop? I don't think it's going to stop. think the Lord is going to continue to do it. um, let me tell you one last story.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: where the name Overland Church came from. And you may be hoping this is going to be a spiritual story. It's not spiritual at all. Sitting in Buddy's house in Kentucky. And we're like, are we going call this thing? And I'm like, well, there's a few strategies here. Seth York, Dr. York's son was with us in it as well. He was sitting there having the conversation.

speaker-0: Yes. Okay. Yes. He's a creative guy. did the logo.

speaker-1: The logo. He created the logo. He's brilliant. He's a creative, he's a brilliant guy. And I just pitched the idea. were throwing out some church names and said, what do you guys think about Overland Church? But he's like, Overland Church? Overland Church. And he goes, why? And I said, well, if you read the history of Fort Collins, Fort Collins became Fort Collins because of the Overland Trail. It's going across And it was actually, it was going north of here and there was a military camp here called Camp Collins. because of, uh, uh, native American attacks on the Overland Trail, they rerouted it down to here for a time and Fort Col, Camp Collins became Fort Collins because of the Overland Trail. I was like, it's the Genesis of the town itself. And it is very confusing that the church is not on Overland Trail.

speaker-0: town. That's right, which is actual roads.

speaker-1: still here. ⁓ But I was like, so I said, there's that. And I was like, and how does the gospel travel across the West? And Buddy goes, over land. was like, boom! And we all agreed on it. And Seth went and came up with a logo. ⁓

speaker-0: Which resembles the Colorado Sea

speaker-1: And then we went with like sort of not knowing at the time, kind of like Bronco friendly. ⁓ so that's how, that's, that's how it got its name.

speaker-0: Colors. Colors. Yeah. I don't think that's... I think that's spiritual. think, you know, there's history to it. ⁓ There's an ambition in it that, you know, just as these pioneers went out across this trail, across the West, you know, that's what we're wanting to do here is send out pioneering planters.

speaker-1: It's pretty cool. So I'll tell you like the one last thing. ⁓ Buckrun's mission statement was, we glorify God by proclaiming Jesus Christ. And they had three things, ⁓ three values, proclaim, disciple, serve. And when we moved out, we wanted to honor Buckrun and we kept it and we added multiply. And by God's grace, I think that is what we have done as a church. We proclaim the gospel.

speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

speaker-1: We've made disciples. We've got people who serve.

speaker-0: Amen. Amen. Well, brother, I just want to say, you know, that it's been a lot of fun doing this podcast with you, and neither of us are going to cry right now. We're going to not do that. ⁓ But, you know, you are loved, you're going to be missed. But, you know, the world's a small place, and you're still going to be part of our lives and ⁓ part of the story of Overland, I'm sure, in new different ways as we see what the Lord does. Yeah, and the Lord is good and the church is going to be fine without you because the head of the church is Jesus Christ. Not the Pope. That's right. Not the Pope like in our last episode.

speaker-1: much as you'll let me. So I'd love to be here. That's right. The head of the church is Jesus Christ.

speaker-0: But I'm just thankful for you. I'm thankful that you brought me here and let me be a part of the story of this church. You know, it's just an incredible blessing that, you know, this is, you know, I came here because of you, and now this church is home to me, and it's family to me, and I really hope, you know, the Lord can do anything with my life, but I really hope that I get to spend a long majority of it here in this city with this church. So, yeah, praise the Lord.

speaker-1: Glory be to God.

speaker-0: Praise the Lord. Well, this is our last episode, and together.

speaker-1: podcast is going to take a pause and we'll see what future iterations you bring to the table in the future. Obviously, you know, I would just tell you church, pray for Josh. He's got a lot on his plate as he's taken over as the director of Gateway Seminary and associate professor of New Testament there. That is huge. You're going to kill that. is incredible job. But also in leading the church as the interim

speaker-0: Yes. That's right.

speaker-1: pastor and leading and shepherding is the church and shepherding his family. And so, you know, probably once he gets one of those hats off a little bit, he'll be able to bring it, bring it back. with a new pastor, can, they can, they can make with it what they, they.

speaker-0: Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yep, we're going to take the summer off. Maybe in August or September we'll come out with a new version of Wisdom for the Wilderness. But thanks, everyone, for listening, and may God bless you. And for those of you here or elsewhere, please continue to pray for Overland Church and for the Thurman family as they transition to Florida. May God bless you and keep you.