There were men on a boat in Jonah 1 whose names nobody bothered to write down.

They weren’t prophets. Most had never heard the name of Israel’s God. They were working men hauling cargo across the Mediterranean on an ordinary run, doing their job on an ordinary afternoon.

By nightfall they were throwing their own income into the sea just to survive.

They hadn’t sinned. They hadn’t disobeyed anybody. Their only mistake was booking passage next to a man running from God. The wind that nearly split that ship in half didn’t check the passenger list. It hit the guilty prophet asleep in the hold and the innocent sailors bailing water on deck, in the exact same storm.

So before you spend one more week asking God what you did to deserve this season, ask a harder question: who’s in the boat with you?

New series starts this Sunday, July 19. WHO’S IN YOUR BOAT. Peace isn’t a place. It’s a passenger list.

Last Sunday In The Room

Last Sunday the room was full. Chairs went out toward the walls, and a good number of those chairs were filled with people we’d never seen before. First-timers found seats late, sat next to strangers, and stayed anyway.

When we got to the moment where I asked you to name who’s still in your boat, people didn’t just nod along and move on. Some stood in the lobby for twenty minutes after, working up the nerve to say a name out loud for the first time, longtime members and brand new faces in the same conversation. That kind of thing doesn’t come through on a replay.

If you weren’t in the room, you missed the moment this stopped being a sermon and became a decision for the people sitting near you, some of whom had never sat in that room before. This Sunday we’re online only, so set your reminder now, and don’t let it be your story again the next time we’re back in the room.

Watch the Replay

The Storm You’re In Might Not Be Yours

This message ends right where the new series opens. Jonah’s storm. Joseph’s blessing. Caleb’s mountain. Watch how proximity works in both directions, and why obedience never made anybody waterproof.

► Watch the sermon

The Question We Keep Getting

After service, I lost count of how many of you asked some version of the same thing: what do I do if the person in my boat is my mother? My brother? My spouse?

I’m not skipping that question. I built an entire week around it.

Week 2 of WHO’S IN YOUR BOAT goes straight at Jacob, Laban, and Esau, the family that nearly destroyed him before it ever blessed him. “Honor your father and mother” was never a command to hand somebody the keys to your peace. You can honor a person and still not obey them.

If the name you’ve been avoiding shares your last name, July 26 is not optional.

This Sunday: WHO’S IN YOUR BOAT

Last week you found out the storm might not even be yours. This week we start naming who put it there. Four weeks. Real names. No more performing peace with people who are drilling holes while you sleep.

This Sunday is online only, YouTube and Facebook. No in-person gathering this week, so set your reminder now.

Sunday, July 19 · 10:30 AM Central · YouTube & Facebook

► Watch Sunday

Go Deeper: The Promise You Keep Whispering Is the One You’ll Lose

You’ve kept a dream vague on purpose, because a private hope never has to be defended and a promise you can quietly abandon is one you eventually will. I wrote about why the mountain you won’t name out loud is the one you’ll let die quietly, and what a woman in my office and an 85-year-old named Caleb both had to learn the hard way.

► Read it on Substack

Support This Ministry

You’ve been bailing somebody else’s water for free. Partner with a ministry that’s actually rebuilding your boat.

► Give at Mars Hill

Text MHGIVE to 33777

With love and expectation,
Pastor Clarence E. Stowers, Jr.

P.S. Caleb didn’t climb his mountain with a crowd. Sunday we name the one person you climb with, and the ones you finally put down. WHO’S IN YOUR BOAT starts July 19.

Watching from your couch counts. Being in the room counts more.

Sunday, July 12, 10:30am, we gather in person again at Mars Hill Anywhere. 7941 47th St, McCook, IL. New season. Bring someone who needs it, or come as you are.

Still online too, if that’s where you are. But if you can be here, be here.

See you Sunday.

Pastor Clarence E. Stowers, Jr.

Hey Reader,

You’ve done the work. Five weeks of it. You named the wilderness. You faced the giants. You stopped waiting to feel ready.

And you still haven’t said the one sentence that matters.

You’ve circled the mountain. Prayed around it. Called it being “open to whatever God wants.” But be honest, a private hope never has to be defended. Keep it vague, and if it doesn’t happen, nobody ever saw you want it.

This Sunday, in the finale of GIVE ME MY MOUNTAIN, we closed that exit.

The Big Idea

At 85, Caleb walked up to Joshua in front of the leaders of Israel and said seven of the most audacious words in the Old Testament: give me my mountain. He named the exact hill country, named the giants still living on it, and claimed it out loud in front of witnesses. The moment he did, it stopped being a promise and became his inheritance.

Your second act is not a request you whisper. It’s a claim you make out loud. A promise you can quietly abandon is a promise you eventually will, the whisper isn’t safer, it’s just a slower way to lose it.

Watch The Full Message

If you missed it or want to sit with it again, the full message is up now.

► Watch Give Me My Mountain

This Week’s Practice

Name your one mountain out loud in front of at least one witness this week, the specific mountain, not a vague “I’m believing for big things.” Then take the first irreversible step toward it, the one you cannot quietly walk back.

Join Us This Sunday

Our next in-person gathering is July 12, 2026 at 10:30 AM Central. We’ll be at 7941 47th Street in McCook, Illinois.

This is our monthly in-person service. If you’ve been watching online, this is your moment. Bring somebody with you, or just come as you are. New season. New room. We want to see your face.

July 12. 10:30 AM. 7941 47th Street, McCook. Be there.

► Plan your visit

Listen: Still Standing

This week’s episode goes deeper on the same fight: what it costs to stop whispering a promise and start claiming it out loud. If Sunday’s message got under your skin, this is where it gets personal.

► Listen on Apple Podcasts

► Listen on Spotify

P.S. You’ve claimed the mountain. Now you need a system to actually take the ground. That’s exactly what the Second Act Intensive is built for, the on-ramp from claim to conquest. Reply to this email and I’ll send you the details this week.

That’s the finale of GIVE ME MY MOUNTAIN. Six weeks. Thank you for walking the whole thing. Now go take it.

With love and expectation,
Pastor Clarence E. Stowers, Jr.

Sometime around 1400 BCE, an eighty-five-year-old man walked up to Joshua, commander of the armies of Israel, and asked for a fight nobody expected him to want.

The land he wanted was Hebron. Still occupied by the Anakites, a people so physically imposing that an earlier generation of scouts had stood at the edge of this same territory and reported back that they felt like grasshoppers next to them. That generation chose not to move. They spent the next forty years dying in a wilderness, waiting to feel ready for a fight they never took.

Caleb didn’t wait. Joshua handed him the deed to Hebron in one verse. By the next verse, the giants were gone. No gap. No preparation phase. No waiting for a better season or a stronger back.

What’s the one move you’ve been calling “not yet”? You know exactly which one. You’re not waiting on God anymore. You already have the word. You’re waiting on a feeling that was never going to show up before you moved.

Week 6 is this Sunday. GIVE ME MY MOUNTAIN closes. Be in the room.

Watch the Replay

Stop Waiting to Feel Ready

Caleb’s whole story turns on the seam between two verses. Watch what happens in that seam, and what it costs you to keep waiting for a feeling that only shows up after you move.

► Watch the sermon

New: Still Standing Podcast

This week’s episode goes further than Sunday could. Thirty years in, what stalling actually costs a leader, and what it takes to move before the feeling arrives.

► Listen to the episode

New on Substack

The full written version of Stop Waiting to Feel Ready, with the story behind it: a man who sat on a business idea for four years waiting to feel ready, and what actually happened the day he stopped waiting.

► Read the article

Support This Ministry

You already know the move you’re avoiding. So does this ministry. Every gift is us not waiting either.

► Give at Mars Hill
Text MHGIVE to 33777

With love and expectation,
Pastor Clarence E. Stowers, Jr.

P.S. July 12: we’re back in the room together, in person. Save the date.

Sunday morning, the room at 7941 47th Street was fuller than usual.

Fathers came in with sons they hadn’t sat next to in church in years. Men who typically join the stream digitally showed up physically, in the room, with their families, eyes forward. Something about Father’s Day made people move.

And then the message started with one line:

The giants are still there. Good. That means the mountain is still there too.

Caleb was eighty-five years old when he walked up to Joshua and made the most specific request in the Hebrew Bible. He pointed at the hardest territory in Canaan, walled cities, Anakites still armed, still enormous, and said seven words: Give me the hill country the Lord promised me. He named the giants in the same breath as the promise. Present tense. Still there. I will drive them out anyway.

That was not blind faith. Caleb had seen those giants forty-five years earlier. He knew exactly what was standing on that mountain. The giants hadn’t moved. But the man looking at them was no longer who he used to be.

Sunday, people left that room with something they walked in without: the name of one giant they had stopped pretending wasn’t there. If you missed it, you missed a room where something shifted. People went home with a sentence written on paper, placed under the thing they had been avoiding for years.

You’ll want to watch the replay.

Here is what this week comes down to:

There is one thing you keep steering your schedule around. One number you don’t check. One conversation you keep rescheduling. One door you drive past on purpose. You’ve built a whole routine around not having to stand in front of it again. And every time you avoid it, the story gets louder: the giant beat me, so the promise must not be mine.

The promise didn’t move. You did.

Week 5 is this Sunday. Stop Waiting Until You’re Worthy. Be in the room.

Watch the Replay

The Promise Didn’t Move.

The giants didn’t clear. They never got smaller. But Caleb named them and claimed the mountain in the same sentence, and Sunday, so did a room full of people in McCook, Illinois. If someone in your circle has been calling their retreat wisdom, send them this. What they’re calling patience might be silence.

► Watch the sermon

Also This Week: The Podcast Is Back

Still Standing Season 2 is live, and the first episode says what most people won’t.

You Stayed Too Long. Let’s Be Honest.

You knew before you admitted it. You knew when the work stopped fitting. You knew when showing up became maintenance instead of mission. But you stayed, and called it commitment.

This episode is 19 minutes. It will cost you more than that.

► Listen on Apple Podcasts
► Listen on Spotify

Support This Ministry

Sunday happened because people who believe this word needs to exist in the world give consistently. If The Promise Didn’t Move was the word your week needed, give with that same specificity.

► Give at Mars Hill
Text MHGIVE to 33777

With love and expectation,
Pastor Clarence E. Stowers, Jr.

P.S. Week 5 is this Sunday: Stop Waiting Until You’re Worthy. One week before the series closes. You don’t want to be on the outside of what’s coming.