DURING BRIAN’S COLLEGE DAYS, he couldn’t decide between two deep passions and loves—the study of religion and outdoor recreation. Brian grew up in a Presbyterian Church that stood right at the foot of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. His encounter with the Sacred sometimes showed up in the fellowship and worship with his church family. But he just as frequently encountered the Sacred while cycling over Trail Ridge Road, skiing above timberline, and fishing for trout in a crystal clear mountain stream.

Maintaining his two loves in his professional life has often been an awkward dance. While the church has stimulated his mental and emotional life, the church is also largely a sedentary culture. Most of the church life is lived out sitting in pews, eating around tables filled with scrumptious potluck dishes, and making decisions around boardroom tables. Brian was always itching to slip out of his work clothes and into his biking shorts or snowsuit or kayaking gear.

In 2011, Brian discovered the world of pilgrimages. Facing a particularly weighty time of loss, Brian set out on bike to reconnect with all the places he had lived in his life. One life was coming to an end and he needed to rediscover his deepest and core self. Over ten weeks and 4,000 miles Brian wheeled himself from town to town covering eight states in the American West. The experience was so profound that in 2014, he embarked on another ambitious cycling journey that he called “From Rome to Rumi.” Intuitively sensing that the West was experiencing a religious shift he began at the Vatican in Rome (representing religious orthodoxy) and ended in Konya, Turkey, the site Rumi’s Tomb (representing religious mysticism) traveling 3,000 kilometers through Italy, Greece and Turkey.

Those experiences came amidst of lifetime of serving the church as a pastor, chaplain and regional executive. Like all pastors alive today, his work has come in the context of a historic decline in church membership, attendance and relevance. Brian has developed an expertise in helping churches work through the organizational grief of a disappearing culture and helping churches put in place their legacy before the doors of the church close.

Brian is now bringing together this lifetime of experience as a pilgrim who knows the transformative power of the road and as a pastor who has walked with dozens of churches coming to terms with the dying of the church culture. Brian believes that one religious world is disappearing just as another world (with roots in ancient mysticism) is re-emerging. He believes his lifetime of experience suits him perfectly to this transformational cultural moment.