This blog post is about 4 days later than I intended it to be. Unfortunately, I came down quite sick just after we closed escrow on Tuesday. (I’m recovering still…) Anyway, it was a no-drama close (which is the best). Everything went as hoped - the money funded, the paperwork was signed, and there were no surprises. Elizabeth and I celebrated with a special meal out on Tuesday evening… what a crazy ride this season has been. God is so very good!

It’s hard to believe that Iona House now has it’s full necessary footprint secured - all 71 acres. This includes our water needs, our road access, and a lot more infrastructure than we had a week ago… not to mention the homes, horse barn, 10 sheds / outbuildings, fenced garden, and more.

We’re gearing up for a busy season of preparing the campus for short-term usability: cleaning, rearranging, furnishing, fixing, etc.

We’re grateful to have such an incredible, generous, and enthusiastic community behind this mission. What joy to do this together.

So far in this Capital Campaign, participation has been INCREDIBLE!

• 129 distinct households

• representing 63 different congregations

• donations ranging from $50 - $300,000

Amen!

Today is a day of great rejoicing! We’re absolutely astounded and blessed beyond words by the goodness of God and the generosity of His people. It gives me great joy to announce: We have officially hit our goal of $1.5 million in gifts and pledges (on paper) - meaning that while we don’t have the full amount in our bank account, we have gifts and pledges in transit to us to cover the full $1.5 million amount needed to close escrow next week. We’re awaiting about $200k to arrive in our account, but we’re reasonably confident that it will arrive in time.

So far in this PHASE II capital campaign, Iona House has received 147 distinct gifts from over 100 households representing more than 50 churches. I’ll fill in the exact data in an upcoming newsletter blast. But for now, here’s the updated giving pyramid graphic.

Happy Easter! He is risen. Alleluia!!

I’ll share more soon about the summary of the fundraising to date. This is supposed to be a day off for our family after a very full Holy Week… so I’m keeping it short and to the point.

PRAISE BE TO GOD!!! We’re so close… We’re currently right around $20,000 short of our initial Phase II fundraising goal - to close escrow on the property. We’ve been blown away by the phenomenal response to this vision and the way the Lord has provided for what is needed through a broad and generous community. Our prayer continues to be that all of the funds (including the remaining amount) will arrive and get settled in our account in time to get the money transferred to escrow next Monday.

In spite of some rain on Friday morning, we had a wonderful Good Friday service together at the “Tent of Meeting”. We had a solid crew of locals and a few out of town folks. The service included singing, a homily (which I failed to record), prayers, silence, and our bell from Jerusalem being rung 33 times (one for each year of Jesus’ life) at 3pm. It was a beautiful and sacred time of contemplation. People also enjoyed walking around the property and spending time in silence, contemplation, and prayer.

It turned out to be perfect weather on Saturday for a Community Day. We had around 25 folks come out to join us for a great day of fellowship, manual labor, delicious food, prayer, silence, and more. Work-wise, we got a lot accomplished: several drainage projects, many piles of wood chips spread, a children’s activity tent put up, bonfires burning dead tree limbs, benches put together. We had a solid crew representing San Francisco / East Bay Area along with folks from Galt, and local community members.

With every passing day, the momentum for what God is doing here at Iona House is growing. It’s a thing of beauty to see it happening. All praise and glory to God!

Today we are 14 days from closing escrow, Lord willing, on the Phase II property. We can’t wait to see what will happen next.

We always knew that developing Iona House would take a broad, generous, and deeply committed community. We are in awe of how God is putting together just this sort of community!

Over the past month we’ve been hosted for five different “Taste of Iona House” events in which a person / couple / handful of people puts together a gathering with a meal and an invitation for us to share the Iona House vision with a group of their friends. I guess technically speaking these are “fundraising” events. But truthfully they’ve felt more like community-building or movement-building events (and our invitation to financial partnership is quite gentle).

What happens at a Taste of Iona House event?

We hear from people in the room about their experience of following Christ / seeking spiritually in this particular moment of history and then we share our story of God giving us the vision of Iona House in the midst of serving at a church in SF. We connect dots for people about the ways that we believe Iona House will be significantly helpful to building up both individual faith as well as strengthening churches across our region and beyond. We end the time together with prayer (and sometimes singing). It has felt deeply joyful and highly connective.

The food has been delicious at each event! We’ve walked away thinking that we’ve met some of the most wonderful people. We’re deeply grateful for this expression of partnership displayed in the hosts of these gatherings. Many thanks to Andy Ku, Ben Chelf, Ivy Lau, Evan Schindewolf, Peter Sanford, Sophia Chao, Ben & Margaret Fisher, Will & Jenny Stegall, and Tom & Michele Ruby. You have blessed us and the work of Iona House so much.

If you would like to host a “Taste of Iona House” event for us to come and share at, let us know. It doesn’t have to be complicated or elaborate. Even an afternoon tea or a dessert is great. The best size seems to be a group of about 10-15 people (including hosts). Let us know if you’d like to partner in this way.

By the way, we’re in an exciting season of seeing some additional gifts come together for the Phase II capital campaign. Here’s where we’re at today.

Today is St. Patrick’s Day. As a kid, all I remember about St. Patrick’s Day was that it was the one day I had to be vigilant to dress correctly (i.e. wear green) or I would pay for it all day long (pinches). Truthfully, I don’t think I even knew that Patrick was a real person until somewhere in my 20’s. It seemed like St. Patrick’s Day was nothing more than an Irish cultural awareness opportunity and an excuse for people to get sloshed on green beer or talk about leprechauns and four leafed clovers. Frankly, none of this appealed to me.

Fast-forward to the present. I got my kids up, fed & dressed them, and dropped them off at preschool this morning only to discover that we were the only household that failed to dress our children in green (I knew it was St. Patrick’s Day, I just forgot about the green clothes thing). My kids in their red sweatshirts stood out like a sore thumb. Parent fail. Luckily, preschool kids are too young to know about pinching each other over not wearing green.

The day started out on the wrong foot, but it ended on a much better note. My older son came home today, predictably, talking about leprechauns and pots of gold (which is precisely what was emphasized at his preschool)… so we decided it was important to educate our boys about one of the MOST significant Christians in the history of the Church. We talked about St. Patrick at dinner and then decided to reinforce it by finding a short animated retelling of his life to show the kids. Nathan (our 5 yr old) was captivated. Truthfully, I was too. Not so much by the very low budget animation, but by being reminded of the incredibly inspiring story of a man who truly embodied the way of Christ. If you don’t know his story, you should familiarize yourself with it: enslaved as a teenager, discovered faith for himself while enslaved, escaped slavery and returned home, studied and became a priest and then a bishop… and then courageously returned to his enslavers to reconcile them to God; spent the rest of his life in mission to the Irish people.

There is incredible wisdom in the historic Church’s decision to dial our attention in on the lives of the saints throughout the year. As you may know, every day of the year is some saint’s feast day. We usually only stop to take notice of the more well-known or significant ones (for example, recently it was Perpetua and Felicity’s feast day - a phenomenal story of courage and sacrifice). Why do these days matter? They are a powerful means of enfleshing the gospel. They take our theology and faith from the realm of abstract or sentimental ideas and ground them in the life of a real person. They show us what the way of Christ (lived especially well) looks like in hundreds of different settings - various eras, locations, life situations, challenges, etc.

Today was confirmation for me again of how I need to hear the stories of the saints. I walked away inspired by Patrick’s courage and faithfulness… by his willingness to go “all-in” for Christ. I needed that again today. It grew my faith and reinforced my commitment to live all of life in reference to Christ.

At Iona House, one of the things we’re excited about doing is celebrating a good number of the feast days (saint days) throughout the year. We’ll enjoy a tasty, communal meal, re-tell the story, and offer a prayer of gratitude in honor of the departed faithful person’s life as we worship God together.

What a joy it is to belong to an incredible, global, historic, and massively diverse family. Today I thank God again for the “communion of saints”, as we say in the Apostles’ Creed.

We’re coming into a very exciting season: the final push to gather the funds necessary to close escrow on the Phase II property. We have around 4 weeks left… and we’re on the edge of our seats watching and waiting to see what will happen. Who will be the people who stand up to offer the generous gifts necessary to purchase this vital land that will open up so much potential for Iona House? We’re in prayer nearly constantly about this.

It’s not been an easy context for fundraising. The macro-economics, particularly of the Bay Area, are not ripe for receiving larger capacity gifts right now (tech stocks have all taken a beating over the past year or so). But that being said, we’re seeing AMAZING generosity pour forth. I could tell you stories about people sacrificially giving… and those are just the stories I know of.

To date, we’ve received (including a $50,000 matching grant that we’re only $7500 away from completing!), right around $780,000 in gifts and pledges. THIS IS PHENOMENAL! We have over 70 households, representing nearly 40 churches involved. God is building a beautiful movement of generosity and partnership. For us, fundraising isn’t just pragmatic… it’s about God putting together an invested movement of people who believe with us that Iona House matters here and now!

When you look at the history of places like the original Abbey on Iona or any number of other influential monasteries or missionary centers, there is always a corresponding narrative of generosity that made it all possible: a family legacy, a substantial sacrifice, or some other inspiring story. Sometimes the story emerges directly from a mystical encounter where a person was praying and God spoke; sometimes the generosity emerges from a crisis or a story of great loss (a gift made in honor of a lost child or spouse or loved one). But whatever the case, the story is usually a story of faith. - Someone sees potential… sees God at work in a very seed-stage and decides to take the risk.

We’re praying that God would tap the right people on the shoulder to make the Iona House vision a fully tangible dream. Pray with us!

A screenshot showing Iona House as the winner of the 10k giveaway

We were one of 15 nominated Bay Area organizations who were eligible to receive a live, online $10k giveaway from a wonderful organization called Generosity Bay Area. All we had to do was get out the vote… AND YOU ALL CAME THROUGH!!! We had a fantastic crew of faithful folks show up.

All of this just happened 30 minutes ago; Elizabeth and I are sort of dumbfounded… filled with joy and gratitude. It was incredibly encouraging to us - especially as we’re in the midst of this final weeks of trying to raise a substantial amount of money to purchase the Phase II property. What we take away from this is more than the $10,000 (which is great!)… it’s a sense that there is a movement of people who believe along with us that Iona House is vital for this time. Our prayer tonight: Thanks be to God!

We had a cold storm come through that dumped about 10-12 inches of snow at Iona House. Typically we get about 5-6 storms a year that drop a nice, pretty dusting of 1-6 inches, which usually goes away in a day or two. This was a more substantial storm.

The pictures (below) don’t do it justice. It’s absolutely stunning. Looked like a winter wonderland. It was already starting to melt when I was there taking pictures (for which I’m grateful). We love the elevation of Iona House because of the four distinct seasons that we experience. We’re also grateful that it’s not too extreme in any one of these seasons. This allows us to be a 12 month-a-year retreat center.

Oh, and yes, the “miracle tent” is still standing after all this snow - with no observable damage. Praise God!

Here are some pictures of the other side of the campus (the part we don’t yet own) in the snowstorm that preceded this most recent blast 2 days ago. These are courtesy of the ladies who live in these homes who are selling them to us right now as part of our PHASE II capital campaign.

The traditional ash mark received at an Ash Wednesday service

by Elizabeth Jones

It’s Ash Wednesday tomorrow and I have been thinking continually of an Ash Wednesday I experienced a few years ago. There was lots of excitement surrounding this Ash Wednesday. Our little church plant in San Francisco was invited to partner with a very large church in San Francisco for what would end up being our largest worship service to date. Since the large church’s worship leader was out of town, I ended up being scheduled to do music for this service, for which I felt very honored and excited. What many others didn’t know is that my husband (Ryan) and I were also excited because I was pregnant. 

Unfortunately, the week before Ash Wednesday, when I went in for one of my ultrasound appointments, we discovered that there was no longer a heartbeat. We had lost the baby. All of the excitement of the pregnancy, all the excitement we had shared with our friends and family when we told them about the pregnancy, and the excitement of our little church getting to be part of a big worship service, was absorbed into my grief. I felt within myself that I was no longer carrying the life of my baby; but that rather, I was carrying the lifeless body of my baby. I was filled with the strange shame that comes with miscarriage and told my husband to share the news of our sadness with everyone with whom we had previously shared our joy. I didn’t know how to move from a place of expectant joy to a place of hidden grief for someone whom I alone had had the privilege to physically embrace. 

When I entered the Ash Wednesday service a few days later, I was still feeling the physical repercussions of having a miscarriage. But instead of feeling the shame of having moved from life to death, I realized a unique space and time had been created in the church. It was a set aside space which gave me permission to grieve what I had lost and to grieve the extensive ways that all is not right in the world and in my own heart. Yes, Jesus came and He has given us the Holy Spirit and the hope of new life. But there is still death, there are still horrific injustices and traumas that affect people their entire lives, there is still war, there is still so much in this world that is not right and will not be right until Jesus comes again. 

Ash Wednesday, and the subsequent penitential season of Lent, is the primary space where the church historically has collectively leaned into lamenting the ways that our souls and our world are still broken and dying. 

At Iona House we follow the historic church calendar and lean into days like Ash Wednesday and seasons like Lent. Just like the natural, created order exists in seasons transitioning from death-growth, cold-warmth, pruning-fruiting, we also need seasons where we have space, time and solidarity to grieve, repent, and confess in order that we may rejoice, feast and celebrate. After all, it is on Ash Wednesday when we are reminded in the words of Genesis that we are creatures: “you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Apart from Christ these are words of despair, but in Christ our mortality is overcome in His resurrection life. The season of Lent always bursts into Easter, just like winter bursts into spring. 

We have been nominated as a top 15 organization eligible to receive up to $10k in a live giveaway by Generosity Bay Area (GBA). GBA is a fantastic Christian organization whose mission is catalyzing a movement of radical generosity amongst Christians. Their vision is captured in this inspiring question: What if every person in the Bay Area knew a Christian they thought of as radically generous?

We feel a deep kinship to this mission, as our own vision is so deeply tied to radical generosity and hospitality.

Anyway, this event is part of their generous vision - helping organizations like ours. Receiving these funds would be so great for us!

Would you be willing to help us as we try to secure this grant? We will need your nomination at a live event (online).

Register for this free event and join us on the evening of March 2nd.

Thank you!

We had a wonderful time together with the folks who came out for our community day this past Saturday. The rain held off until we had packed up and were heading out. We accomplished some tasks (burned three huge piles, put together more benches, spread wood chips), enjoyed a delicious meal together, and had the chance to get to know each other while doing simple tasks. But the most important thing we did was spend time praying and interceding for the capital campaign and the future ministry God has planned for Iona House. It was wonderful being together in prayer before the Lord!

This post is building on my earlier post about the vision of Iona House…

Broadly speaking, the Church in America is in a challenging season. A recent article in the Atlantic highlighted data pointing to the painful conclusion that, “30 percent of congregations are not likely to survive the next 20 years.” If that is actually the case, it is extremely significant. The pandemic has already left its impact on church attendance (it’s down across the board, but especially amongst younger people). The article goes on to celebrate the potential of the institutional Church’s demise in favor of new forms of spirituality. Basically the article is saying that religion is not going away… it’s just changing forms. I think this is largely true. However, contra the article authors, I do not not see this as something to be celebrated. It is simply the secularization and individualization of Christianity.

While there is plenty to reform about the Church, deconstructing the institutional, historical dimension will be the demise of Christian faith, not its salvation. The Bay Area is already been operating in this mode for decades. For one dimension of how this secularization / de-institutionalization process is happening, see the audio / video content from our event in SF this past fall: “Work, Pray, Code”.

The reason I’m highlighting this is to suggest that the Church needs all the support it can get right now! One of the central aims of Iona House is to be a vital resource to the local churches of Northern California (and beyond). Having spent the past 14 years in downtown San Francisco in church ministry, we’re quite familiar with the challenges, pitfalls, and opportunities - especially, of urban, post-Christian, secular contexts. The vision for Iona House emerged from this setting as a means of addressing the challenges inherent within such contexts.

How will we partner with the Church?

I could easily write multiple pages about each of these potential avenues of partnership and why they matter. But for now, I’ll just leave them as headers to be “filled in” sometime in the future.

• Retreats, workshops, conferences, writing / teaching - addressing the challenges presented to the Church in a post-Christian, secular setting. Iona House will be a place to thoughtfully and faithfully grapple with the most important questions of our time.

• Spiritual formation retreats for lay people - designed to give a vision for deep discipleship rhythms that can transcend the challenges of our era

• Healing retreats for lay people - churches often aren’t equipped to go deep with people to explore their wounds and trauma and bring lasting healing; healing takes time and a communal setting with resources beyond what a typical local church has to offer

• Pastoral / Ministry Leader retreats - both personal retreats via our hermitages as well as midweek group retreat options for clergy and staff; silence, solitude, stillness… sacred space and time (very difficult to find these days)

• Spiritual Direction ministry - we will offer individual and group spiritual direction and plan, eventually, to offer a training program to help unleash a wave of classically trained spiritual directors (who go beyond the “therapeutic” mindset often found in contemporary spiritual direction)

• Catechist training - Our vision is to offer a training program / community / resources for lay people to get trained and developed as effective teachers for their local church. Training a wave of lay people to know how to engage and address the challenges of our time is essential.

• Sabbatical / Restoration Setting - Iona House will offer a unique setting for people (particularly those in ministry) to recover and be renewed after taxing seasons

• Introduction to Great Tradition spirituality - Iona House will be a resource for those wanting to explore the Christian faith and practice of the first thousand years (before there was Catholic / Orthodox / Protestant divisions). This is a vital means of strengthening the overall mission and identity of the Church in our rootless / fractured era.

• Clergy Support - Iona House with our growing library of 2500+ books will be a phenomenal place to come for the day to work on a sermon or spend time in prayer in a beautiful and peaceful setting or receive spiritual direction or mentoring.

What I’ve expressed above is the just tip of the spear. Much of the value of Iona House to the Church will emerge from the distinctive, immersive ecosystem that we cultivate that allows strategic, purposeful margin from everyday life in an immersive setting of faithful Christian practice in order to become more attuned to the Father’s voice and reflective about how to live differently upon return to ordinary life. As a pastor, I’ve longed for this kind of setting for myself as well as for my parishioners. It is vitally important as a means of escaping the echo chamber of our culture long enough to know how to faithfully re-engage mission.

We believe God has called us to be a resource center for churches (definitely not a replacement nor a mere supplement). We have an extremely high view of the local, institutional Church. We want to see it built up and unified and empowered to be what God intended it to be. It is the Bride of Christ, the place of Communion eternally willed by God as the means of our salvation (see Ephesians). Our deep and abiding prayer is that Iona House will be a great gift to the Church… and Lord willing, your church.

As you know if you live in Nor Cal or if you’ve paid attention to the news, we’ve had incessant rain and wild weather the past 3 weeks. The rain is welcome. We need it… maybe not all at once, but we need it. Iona House has a stand of around 15-20 Ponderosa Pines that died this past summer due to the bark beetles that ravage trees during seasons of drought. The land is crying out for water. And now it’s getting what it asked for. We praise God for this.

Along with the rain, we’ve had some serious wind action as well. I don’t remember storms like this with wild wind when I was a youngster growing up in this area. Elizabeth and I are particular dialed in on the wind right now because we have the large canopy tent set up on the land which is intended to be a safe haven from the weather. We had no idea when we set it up in November that this winter would be as rainy and windy as it has been. Multiple nights we have woken up at 4 in the morning to howling wind and instinctively moved to prayer. In the greater scheme of things it’s a small thing if it is destroyed… several thousand dollars and several days of work. But for us, it is a symbol of some kind. So each time we go out to the land after the storm and see if it is still standing… and each time it has still been standing. A few parts are being strained, but the whole thing is intact and has survived. It’s truly remarkable considering that it has now withstood as much as 60mph gusts. Nearly every night when we pray together for Iona House, we thank God that the tent is still standing. It’s become for us a sign of steadfastness and hope in the midst of adversity.

May He sustain you and bless you and make you steadfast, anchored to Him - the rock of our salvation.

PS - The land has held up quite well under the storms so far. No real damage to report… just lots of down branches from the wind and some big-time mud puddles.

Happy New Year from Iona House. It was a wet weekend with more than 7 inches of rain. This is welcome as a means of escaping the drought… but everything is soggy and muddy.

In other news, below is the giving update for the Phase II capital campaign as of New Years Day. We’ve had 35 different giving units (households) make contributions so far with a tally of just under 600k. We’re off to a great start. We’re giving God thanks and praise for a fantastic 2022!

Merry Christmas from Iona House. Yes, it’s still Christmas. In the Christian Tradition, the Feast of the Nativity (Christmas) lasts 12 days. We’re only on day three.

It’s actually raining cats and dogs today at Iona House. However, I took the picture above a few weeks ago when we got a dusting of snow. :)

The PHASE II Campaign is gaining momentum. We had another batch of gifts come in. Truthfully, we’re going to need an enormous amount of generosity from the widest possible community to achieve our goals. Would you join us in praying for an outpouring of generosity?

This is a reflection I wrote up for our newsletter, highlighting some of the reason why we believe Iona House is vital.

We are deeply social creatures. We overlook this in discussions of Christian formation to our peril. Perhaps the greatest hindrance to real, in-depth Christian formation is simply the inability for individuals to imagine a life ALL-IN with Christ in EVERY area of their life. Imagination is a much more communal thing than we usually acknowledge. What we can imagine is shaped most powerfully by what we have seen in the life of someone else... and even more powerfully by what we see transpiring in an entire community of people.

We often set our internal "benchmarks" for Christian life by simply looking around to see what seems "normal" for most other Christians we know. This is an unconscious experience for most people and often produces less-than-desirable results. The reason is that, sadly, the degree of maturity and depth in much N. American Christianity is simply too weak and shallow to provide anything other than a Christian veneer over the top of mostly mainstream American values and ideals. What is actually forming N. American Christianity is mainstream culture absorbed socially in the lives of those around us and reinforced through media, entertainment, technology, etc.

The most potent form of deep Christian discipleship (the only form powerful enough to counter mainstream "norms") comes in being immersed in a community of people who are all-in for Jesus and drawing their common life from something other than mainstream norms. Put a person in the midst of an intensive communal experience where the culture of the group is grounded in deep, historic discipleship, and faithfulness to Christ and something happens that can never be produced by simply reading a great book or by doing individual practices. I've seen glimpses of it happen with retreats, mission trips, and other immersive social experiences in the context of our ministry in San Francisco over the course of nearly 14 years. It's a powerful thing to see!

We shouldn't be surprised by any of this; a social model is exactly the method that Jesus used to shape disciples. He gathered 12 men and formed a distinctive community that did life together in reference to Himself and His teaching over an extended period of time. Note: He did not give them a stack of books and send them off; He did not merely give them some spiritual disciplines to try on their own. No, He forged an immersive life together. Beyond these 12 men (apostles), there were others - a number of women and those who spent only a season around Jesus, and those who provided hospitality to Him (i.e. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus). What is clear is that the basis for Jesus's formation "curriculum" was the formation of a social group embodying a distinctive culture - one centered around Him, His way of life, and His teaching. This is the pattern that the Church relied on to form people in the first three centuries in the Catechumenate of the early church. It continued in the Desert Fathers and Mothers and has been ongoing in the monastic streams of the Church. It is the same pattern that emerges whenever there is renewal in local churches across the world. It all comes back to a socially reinforced identity shaped by a practicing community, consciously living in an alternative pattern to the world around them. 

So, here's the question: Where can an individual or small group go to experience a deeply immersive experience of this kind of all-in Christianity in a thick, immersive social setting living according to an alternative pattern from the world? Or, said differently, where can an individual or small group of people go to have their imagination captured by a life of deep discipleship rooted in the entire history of the Church? 

This is the question that has shaped the vision of Iona House. When we picture Iona House, we see it as a place of deep, immersive, communal formation that offers an alternative to mainstream cultural norms. We imagine it as a place that is spiritually potent and relationally thick enough to give people a new imagination for what a new normal life in Christ could look like. Iona House is a place to experience a holistic, social formation that touches all aspects of who we are: body, mind, spirit. But it's not simply a location or a clever curriculum or some new spiritual practices; it's a communal experience rooted in the Great Tradition of the Church that transpires in an intentional ecosystem designed at every level to be holistically transformative (from the beauty, silence, solitude, animals, agriculture, structured times of prayer, communal eating, emphasis on the Church calendar, art + architecture, music, and more). 

Where does this currently exist in Northern California? It doesn't. This is the reason for Iona House.

To put it bluntly: We believe Iona House is desperately needed, right now. We're living in a time when the Church needs individuals and, more importantly, entire groups of people to discover a new imagination for what faithfulness looks like. We need a thicker, more rooted, and more robust version of life in Christ to become normal across an entire region. To imagine this, people must experience a taste of it. Thus, Iona House. This is something that has the power to bring renewal to the Church and unleash a new era of mission. We believe, Lord willing, this could be the legacy of Iona House.

If you resonate with this reflection, join us in prayer and financial partnership to see it happen. Come Lord Jesus!

We’re thrilled to see folks partnering together with us to see Iona House step into this new phase! Many folks have told us they’re prayerfully considering their year-end gift as part of this PHASE II campaign. Here’s the progress to date:

We’re sooo excited. Another piece of the dream is coming together. Praising God this evening: After many months of conversations with our lovely neighbors, we all sat down today and signed a purchase agreement for the remaining 40.5 acres, which includes three homes, a horse barn, and much more.

Now: roughly 120 days to gather $1.5 million.

Learn about what’s happening at our Phase II page…