When Josh Elliff and his family moved to northern Colorado to plant a church, he knew the assignment would be difficult.
As a fourth-generation pastor, Elliff had already spent two decades in ministry across Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas. But planting a church in the West was different. After completing Send Network’s church planter assessment in 2021, he and his family launched River Church in Loveland, Colorado, in 2023. The community he entered was spiritually resistant and largely unchurched.
“We’re in an area where it’s about 92% un-evangelical,” Elliff said. “There’s one church for roughly every 30,000 people and one brewery for every 7,000.”
From the beginning, he approached the work not simply as a pastor but as a missionary.
“When we came out here, I really felt like we needed to view this as missionaries,” he said. “We’re here to build relationships, earn trust, and faithfully do the work.”
Loveland, a city of nearly 90,000 residents in the Fort Collins metro area, has a culture that tends to push back against anything temporary. For Elliff, that insight shaped his strategy. While many church plants in the region struggled to grow beyond a portable gathering space, he believed longevity and visible presence would matter.
“I felt like the Lord told me early on, ‘My standard for you is faithfulness.’ It’s like Paul said in 1 Corinthians, ‘I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.’” Elliff said. “We’re just to be faithful to do the work, and then God will grow His church.”
That conviction carried him through the challenges of starting a church from scratch in a spiritually resistant environment.
A Year of Pressure
Church planting often requires pastors to “build the plane while flying it,” Elliff said. In Loveland, that metaphor proved true.
Within the first years of River Church, the ministry experienced both breakthroughs and setbacks. At one point, nearly 30 people, many part of the church’s early core, moved away due to job changes and family relocations.
“That gutted us,” Elliff said. “It was a huge chunk of our core people.”
At the same time, Elliff and his wife, Jacqueline, were taking on new responsibilities at home and in ministry. Jacqueline, who holds a master’s degree in counseling, launched a counseling practice as the church continued developing its outreach in the community.
Then came another major challenge: securing a permanent building for the young church. The story of that building would become one of the clearest demonstrations of God’s provision for River Church.
A Building Only God Could Provide
Elliff sensed early on that River Church needed a permanent location to establish credibility in the community, but finding and affording a building seemed impossible for a two-year-old church plant.
Then, Josh met a local man in a coffee shop whose family worked in commercial real estate. That connection eventually led him to a property that seemed ideal for the church.
The challenge was the cost, but God had bigger plans.
After a series of conversations and unexpected developments, the building’s owner contacted Elliff directly. During their conversation, the owner revealed he was a follower of Christ and had previously helped another small church secure a building decades earlier.
“He said, ‘Your story is so intriguing because 20 years ago I partnered with a church that was small and getting started,’” Elliff recalled. “He said, ‘I feel like God is telling me to do the same for you.’”
Originally listed for more than $3.5 million, the building’s price was dramatically reduced. After Elliff created and launched a campaign, gifts began arriving from church partners and supporting congregations.
“In August, we didn’t even have half the money we needed,” Elliff said. “By the second week of September, we had $1.15 million.”
River Church moved into the building that October.
“It’s just one of those stories where you look back and say, ‘God did this,’” Elliff said. “I’m not that talented. I’m not that gifted. It was just praying, fasting, and seeking the Lord.”
The miracle strengthened the church, but it also came at a cost.
Exhaustion Sets In
Behind the celebration of God’s provision, Elliff felt the cumulative weight of ministry. By the fall following the building purchase, he realized how exhausted he’d become.
“I called my dad and told him how tired I was,” Elliff said.
His father, also deeply involved in ministry, wasn’t surprised.
“He told me, ‘Do you know how many pastors quit after a building campaign?’” Elliff said. “The number is really high.”
The reality made sense. Over the previous year, Elliff had led the church through rebuilding after losing a substantial number of core members, raised significant funds for the building, shepherded a growing congregation, and supported his wife’s new counseling practice.
Elliff had also been confronting another reality familiar to many pastors: spiritual warfare.
“When you do this work out here, the devil loves to attack every angle he can,” he said. “He’s attacked our kids. He’s attacked our health. He’s attacked our finances. He’s attacked our marriage. It’s relentless.”
Sometimes the attacks were obvious. More often, they were subtle.
“You just start asking, ‘Why is this so hard right now?’” Elliff said.
Friends and mentors began urging him to step away briefly for rest and renewal. For months, like most busy pastors, he resisted.
A Retreat He Almost Didn’t Take
One of Elliff’s provisional elders, a mentor pastor who supports River Church from another state, repeatedly encouraged him to take time off. At first, Elliff hesitated.
“There was never a good date,” he said. “I kept using the excuse that I was busy—and I was busy.”
Eventually, his mentor pushed him to make a commitment.
“He basically said, ‘If you don’t put a date on the calendar, it’s never going to happen,’” Elliff said.
Finally, Elliff and his wife scheduled time away in October. Ironically, they chose the week before they even knew the building purchase would close. Two weeks after moving into River Church’s new home, the couple traveled to a Refresh Retreat, an event designed to help pastors and their spouses rest and reconnect with the Lord. The timing, Elliff said, could not have been better.
Learning From Battle-Hardened Pastors
One of the things that immediately struck Elliff about the Refresh Retreat was the group of pastors gathered there. It wasn’t a room full of ambitious young leaders trying to build platforms or showcase success. Instead, many of the attendees were seasoned pastors who had spent decades in ministry.
“These were guys who were battle-hardened,” Elliff said. “They’d been wounded. They’d been in ministry a long time. And they were there because they needed to be refreshed in the Lord.”
The humility of the gathering made a deep impression on him. Many had walked through hardship, disappointment, and spiritual battles, and they had come not to impress but to be refreshed. That perspective helped Elliff process some of the emotional realities he had begun experiencing in ministry.
“I never understood how older pastors could become bitter or discouraged,” he said. “But after the last few years, I can see how that could happen if you don’t guard your heart and refresh your soul in the Lord.”
The Gift of Simple Rest
While the retreat included teaching and testimony, one of its most meaningful elements was something much simpler: rest. At one point during the weekend, attendees were given free time in the afternoon. Elliff and his wife had initially planned to explore the mountains and scenery around the retreat center. Instead, they chose something else.
“We just took a nap,” he said.
It may have seemed small, but the experience was surprisingly powerful. Throughout the retreat, Elliff noticed a distinct absence of the pressure he had grown accustomed to carrying. For the first time in a long while, he experienced what it felt like to simply be present without the burden of leadership pressing in on him.
When he returned to Colorado, the contrast became obvious.
“I remember the moment I got back and felt the pressure again,” he said. “The weight of ministry. I had almost forgotten what it felt like not to carry that weight.”
The Refresh Retreat helped him recognize not only the heaviness of that burden, but also the importance of stepping away periodically to rest, seek the Lord, and regain perspective.
A Lesson in Surrender
Perhaps the most transformative realization from the retreat came through a shift in how Elliff viewed his role as a leader.
For much of his ministry, he had embraced the responsibility of carrying heavy burdens, especially to protect his family and lead his church well. He saw himself as someone who needed to have the strength to handle difficult situations without passing that burden on to others.
But the retreat challenged that mindset.
“I’ve always thought of it as my shoulders being broad enough to carry those things— certain things in ministry, certain difficult conversations,” Elliff said.
But during the retreat, he realized something deeper.
“But the Refresh Retreat taught me to see that my shoulders are not broad enough. I don’t need broader shoulders, I need quicker knees because Jesus says His shoulders are broad enough for all my burdens,” Elliff shared.
What he needed was not greater capacity, but greater dependence.
That shift reframed his approach to leadership. Instead of attempting to manage every burden, he was reminded of the necessity of surrender—continually bringing the weight of ministry before the Lord and trusting Him to carry what only He can bear.
This posture of dependence, Elliff realized, is essential for long-term faithfulness. Without it, the pressures of ministry will eventually overwhelm even the most capable leaders.
Renewed for the Mission Ahead
Today, River Church continues to grow in Loveland. Guests regularly attend services, and the church has already celebrated several baptisms this year. Elliff remains grateful for the building God provided and the people coming to faith in Christ.
“There are men, women, and kids in northern Colorado who didn’t have the legacy of Jesus in their family line,” he said. “Now their story is different because of what Christ has done.”
But he is equally grateful for the retreat that reminded him where his strength must come from. The pressures of church planting haven’t disappeared. Ministry in a spiritually resistant environment remains challenging. Yet Elliff now carries those challenges differently.
“To do what God has called us to do here for the long haul,” he said, “I have to continually take those things off my shoulders and put them on His.”
And for pastors walking similar roads, he believes moments of intentional rest and spiritual renewal are not optional but rather essential.
“The only way to do this faithfully,” Elliff said, “is to stay in a place of surrender.”
For more information on how Refresh Retreats help pastors and their wives refocus on spiritual, emotional, physical, and financial help, click here.