Gary has been involved in starting ministries to single-parent families at several local churches. He received his Ordination to ministry from Woodland Park Community Church in Woodland Park, Colorado on July 9, 2000.

Gary has worked extensively with children and families with special needs, including grief recovery, residential treatment, foster care, adoption, and family counseling.

Gary received a Master's Degree in Social Work from Loyola University of Chicago in 1986. He received a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology and Sociology from Trinity College in Deerfield, IL.
ABOUT
 



Gary's Word

Run the Lodge or Do Ministry – The Million-Dollar Question!

It is 3:00am on Easter morning and I just cannot sleep. It is 21 degrees in Woodland Park as snow is falling lightly on the cars and the deck. I have been wrestling with God the past few months trying to answer this million-dollar question – Should Lois and I run the lodge or do ministry?

Because I am by nature “a thinker” I have tried to answer this question by looking at what it would be like to do one without the other. I start with what it would look like to do ministry without the Lodge…

For the first 15 years, we executed our ministry without a facility. We traveled twice a month all across the country directing seminars for kids, conferences for single parents and training events for leaders. We also led a small local ministry for single-parent families out of our local church. We brought hope to many families and equipped thousands of leaders without a ministry “center”. Yet, over the past 2 years since having a facility to carry on the same types of ministry activities, we have seen the ministry explode! Our local ministry has grown from just one church to a community-based outreach where single parents are given the ability to grieve losses, learn life skills and receive practical help addressing four main areas of difficulty: kids, car, house and money. We have opened up the Lodge (our ministry center) for monthly dinners, weekend retreats and holiday celebrations (Easter, Memorial Day and Thanksgiving). Our most recent ministry development has been to open up a counseling room at the Lodge where single parents and their children can receive therapeutic intervention from the emotional, relational and spiritual struggles of life. To say that the Lodge has been an effective vehicle in order to reach more single parents effectively is a huge understatement!

With regards to Leadership Development, the Lodge has opened up a “new way” to think about and do the equipping of leaders. National Conferences are flashy and exciting, but they are very expensive and we just could not compete with the limited dollars budgeted each year by churches to send their leaders to ONE training event annually. With a Ministry and Training Center under our direction, we now can do these training events at “our place.” Leaders can travel to Colorado to be trained in smaller groups of 25 at a time. Our training now becomes more personalized, intensive, specialized, efficient and cost effective. To say the Lodge has enabled us to better equip leaders is more than accurate. At this point in our ministry life, we would conclude that doing ministry without the Lodge as our ministry center is not an option.

Now, what would things look like to run the Lodge without doing ministry? There are certainly days that this option is desirable. Ministry is Messy and running a conference center purely as a for-profit business venture is viable. Lois and I are excellent innkeepers and the Lodge has become a great additional revenue source. The only problem with running the Lodge without ministry is that we have been given a calling from God to “do ministry with single-parent families.” James 1:27 is not just a challenge from James to “visit widows and orphans”, it is the Sprague Family’s ministry call to walk alongside single parents and their children. If God has given you a calling as specific as ours, you need to take it seriously. Believe me, we have done a lot of soul searching over the past 3 years (since the employee theft incident) about whether or not God was releasing us from our call to SPFM, and the answer flat out is NO. We believe that God still is calling us to minister in a big way to single parent families. So at this point, we see running the Lodge without using the Lodge to do ministry with single parents is not an option.

You may be thinking, what is the big deal? Why doesn’t Gary just thank us for our support, close the letter and go back to bed? The answer is that what I am about to tell you IS a big deal, in fact it will become our BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) for 2008. We believe God is leading us to purchase the Lodge in this calendar year for the reasons already stated above. We will raise $900,000 over the next 9 months to accomplish this goal. We have already spoken with a few of you and now we are ready to ask all of our friends and donors for their support. We are currently praying for 21 families to partner with us through generous donations:

12 families to each give $25,000
6 families to each give $50,000
3 families to each give $100,000

Exciting times are ahead for the Lodge at Elk Valley (ministry center for single-parent families). We would ask you to consider being one of our 21 family partners in order for us to continue the call to “Pure and Undefiled Religion”.

Jesus is Risen!

Gary & Lois Sprague
The Lodge at Elk Valley
Ministry Center for Single-Parent Families
www.SamPeterFrankMary.com

P.S. Thanks for your prayers. Please consider a financial gift to our ministry today in order for us to continue our life-changing work with kids and their parents from single parent and step families.

Home | Resources  | Events | Store  |  Membership | Partners | About

©2005 Center for Single-Parent Family Ministry. All Rights Reserved.