Hi! I’m Marty Boller.

It was only a few short years ago, I found myself sitting in the living room of a very nice lady who was hosting Dave Nixon and a Sustainable Faith Year One training cohort in Spiritual Direction. At the time, my life was in crisis. I’d been laboring long and hard at pastoring a small church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa for nearly 15 years and was at a point of total burn out. My church was struggling at the time and though I’d successfully maneuvered through difficult times such as this before, I’d never reached a point of crisis like this. Sandy, who has graciously walked alongside me over my 30 years in pastoral ministry, was burned out as well, but was thinking clearly enough to encourage me to join her in this one year of hands-on training in Spiritual Direction.

My pastoral coach had suggested to me that I needed to slow down and begin to listen for the voice of the Lord once again, but as many of you who serve in busy churches know, it’s much easier to talk about soul care then it is to actually practice it. But with the encouragement of both my coach and my wife, here I was sitting in a lovely home in Minneapolis, MN, meeting for the first time a wonderfully kind and compassionate man named Dave Nixon.

Over the next nine months, Jesus began an open-heart surgery on this old pastor-heart of mine. Slowly yet surely, the Master dismantled the safety nets that I’d carefully constructed for myself and plunged me deep into the heart of God where I discovered once again (yet it seems like the first time) the amazing grace of Christ’s agape love. By the time we’d reached the end of the Sustainable Faith course-work, I was hooked! Totally addicted to God’s unyielding mercy, I was convinced that I’d never be able to go back to doing ministry the way I’d been doing it for the last 30 years.

You can read more about my radical transition on my website (www.pastorboller.com), but suffice to say that today, through the work of the Spirit that was brought through the capable hands of Dave Nixon and the ministries of Sustainable Faith, my life and work are now, once again, on track with Jesus. Our church in Cedar Rapids has survived my personal crisis and has now re-created itself into a church where the care and cure of souls has once again been restored front and center.

So today, without any hesitancy at all, I invite you to come alongside Sustainable Faith as we together take the ministry tools of Christ-centered Spiritual Direction and offer them to even more folks out there who are waiting for a fresh drink of water for their dry and thirsty souls.

Sustainable Faith is now growing at a phenomenal rate! What was once a small ministry geared at raising up a few church leaders in spiritual direction has now become a multi-dimensional, cross-denominational ministry that is touching thousands of people across North America and even Europe! One recent report has deemed us “the largest spiritual direction training group in North America!”

My goal here today with this blog is to tell you a bit of my story and invite you to prayerfully consider helping us with a financial contribution to this ministry. Your generous gift toward Sustainable Faith is tax-deductible and will go toward helping us continue our mission of training and equipping men and women in the ancient traditions of Christ-centered spiritual direction. Watch this informational video for more details…

And click here to find out more how to become a Sustaining Member of Sustainable Faith!