Finding a Home on the Range

Even in small towns, people get lost. Lost in discouragement, lost in sorrow. Lost in riches and selfishness. Lost in political divisions and social stereotypes. If that was the sum of life, residents might despair or go mad. But if there were a place where people could leave their differences at the door...if there were a place to find encouragement and joy, it might change lives outside the doors as well.

Kersey Community Church is such a place.


Struggles and hardships, along with achievements and blessings, teach life’s lessons. Experience, strength, and enduring hope shape a legacy from long-time church members who provide stories that link the present to a rich history. They recognize those who are old friends and dear, and their discernment identifies those who are faltering and uncomfortable. They demonstrate in concrete ways how a shared burden becomes a lighter load.


Young people occupy a special place here--precisely because many of them will leave. The church holds a deep conviction that it is called to prepare and send out healthy, integrated, Christian young people. There is guidance for their steps and others to walk alongside to help keep them on track. That brings a noticeable connection into lives. It builds community.


Other gifts from this small-town church are the people who turn up in town often for only a short time. In some cases, these are young professional people on rural assignments - teachers, doctors, lawyers. Sometimes they are moving to stay because they made a lifestyle choice to live in the country or retire to a smaller community. Kersey Community Church welcomes newcomers and embraces them as their own.

Kersey Community Church may be a small church in a small town, but it provides vitality, strength, community, rest, and hope on a global scale.



Special thanks to Pastor Solomon Adams and members of KCC who took time to share their experiences during a tree removal project!

Nothing Plain About The Plains

THOUGHTS OF THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE tend to focus on the delta region now comprising Louisiana. But the often ignored northwest part of the purchase encompassed large parts of present-day Colorado. Although most often identified with its mountains, significant portions of the state are part of the GREAT PLAINS.

Here was the range of the bison and of the Native American tribes-- Blackfeet, Crow, Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Arikara, Mandan, Pawnee, Wichita…Europeans arrived in the 1500’s ushering decades of westward expansion.

The Lewis and Clark expedition opened the doors of settlement—leading to the near-extinction of the bison and the removal of the Native Americans to Indian reservations. The Homestead Act of 1862 (and later the Kinkaid Act), with promises of free land, drew hundreds of thousands of people to this vast land.


Land brought many to the region, and land is why they stay. It is their home; their livelihoods are here—roots deep in the soil. It is not unusual to find families connected to those first homesteads.

Others are drawn by the stark beauty and immense contrasts. Modern machinery parks next to a 100-year-old house. Distant mountains puncture prairies and pierce the sky. Winds gust unchecked. Skies saturated in blue fill with thunderclouds split by lightning, and stars startle the night skies.

On the Way Somewhere Else

Kersey is a small town on the plains of Northeastern Colorado. I am a stranger here—a guest; my bearing and person are noticeable in a small community where ties are generations deep. Equally, what is commonplace to the people of this town is new and different to me.

The blog series that follows captures tiny pieces of this community and provides glimpses of places overlooked, passed through, deemed undeserving of poem, story, or blog.

When I took these pictures, it was Veterans Day, and the flags strengthened in the winds. I envisioned photographs of undiluted patriotism and remembrance. Yes, those elements are there on the surface, but there is more.

Hill Street divides town from prairie—businesses from farmlands. That of the air—clouds, sky, wind, contrast to the horizon of brown earth.



The flags serve to connect all of the elements of contrast—in a photograph and perhaps in a nation. One behind the other--diminishing into the horizon.