This is What a Year Looks Like

Not a program. A rhythm. A year of being known.

"Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: if either of them falls down, one can help the other up." (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10)

Most programs give you content. A year in 4th Gen gives you something harder to describe and harder to replicate.

Time.

Not a weekend. Not a six-week series that ends before the trust has had a chance to build. A full year—September through August—of showing up for each other through whatever the seasons hold. Hard news and good news. Breakthroughs and setbacks. The waiting and the answered prayer. There are ordinary weeks and the moments that change everything.

By the time August arrives you will have journeyed through a year of the shared life of others. And they will have journeyed with you through yours.

It begins in person.

You arrive at a space that has been prepared for you—intentionally, thoughtfully, with you in mind before we've had much time together. What you won't know when you arrive is that women who have walked this year before you have been part of preparing that welcome. They've written to you. They've prayed for you. They're celebrating the fact that you said yes.

You arrive already received. Already part of something.

The retreat includes group time, your first 1:1, and space to rest and simply be with the women you're just beginning to know. We begin the way we intend to continue—with openness, with prayer, laughter, and a developing trust that we can let ourselves be seen.

Once a month the group gathers on Zoom for sixty minutes. We open with each woman checking in—a few minutes to share where she is and what she is carrying. Then prayer. I share something the Lord has laid on my heart, usually from my own journals, but always something real and present. Not a prepared teaching. Just what's been alive in me.

The rest of the time belongs to the group.

Once a month there is also a 1:1 — just the two of us, going wherever we need to go. Sometimes she brings something specific. Sometimes we follow the conversation and trust the Spirit to lead it somewhere neither of us expected. Over the course of the year these conversations become a thread — a running story of where she's been and where she's going, held in trust.

Reading runs alongside the group time. I recommend books that form rather than inform. Alicia Britt Chole's Sacred Slow. Andrew Murray's Humility. Caussade's Sacrament of the Present Moment. Willard's Renovation of the Heart. And at the closing retreat—Michael Frost's Surprise the World—an encouragement to take what she's received and live it outward.

The year ends the way it began: with intention.

Each woman receives gifts sent to her home before the closing virtual retreat. We have a group time and a final 1:1—a conversation to close the loop, to name what the year has produced, to send her forward. The women who walked this year before her are there too, celebrating her, the way they were celebrated at the close of their own year.

What was given to them they now give forward. Not as a program feature. As an overflow.

For women ready to take their faith outward, there is one more thing.

Within two months of the August close there is an optional mission trip to Europe—one of the most unreached regions in the world today. Not a tourist experience. An expansion of vision. An opportunity to see what God is doing in a spiritually dark part of the world and to discover that the formation of the year was always moving outward toward something.

A small group. A covenant. An investment that covers costs including the opening retreat. And an alumni community being built—because what begins in September doesn't end in August.

This is not a program you complete. It's a year you live—with women who will know you by the end of it in ways that change both of you. And when the year closes, you don't leave. You become part of what welcomes the next woman in.

If you're ready, I'd love to hear from you.

Reach me at [email protected]. And my book — You Were Made for This — is coming soon at runwithhorses.org