Welcome everybody to Midday Magazine for this Wednesday, January 29th, 2025.
Have your host James J. Mayloff here.
At 430, we're going to talk with producer, director, Nathan Deming, talk about his new film
February.
Right now, we have with us in studio, DeNita Carlson, executive assistant over at B Still
Inc.
And we have Jesse Urban with us as well.
You too, thank you so much for being here.
Thanks for having us.
Really appreciate the time you guys, and looking forward to getting into and letting the
audience know more about B Still and some of the other great things that are going on
with you guys in this organization.
Let's dive right into that, DeNita, if you will.
How you guys are involved with this and everything.
Where did you want to start?
Oh, where I want to start is to have Jesse tell the story about how B Still started.
I think that I heard him start.
It's a great idea.
You're all on the dice having both of us in here.
I love this.
I'm just going to eat my, sit back and eat my popcorn to watch this stuff.
Jesse, could you tell us a little bit about the organization?
Yes.
So B Still Inc. started in 2015 after my wife and I witnessed a pastor that was burnt out.
We were at a church service.
He was going on sabbatical leave.
And we really questioned if you would come back from sabbatical leave.
We were wondering, like, if that's a common problem when we went home, we started doing
some research on clergy burnout and we're looking at these statistics of 35% of pastors
have considered quitting.
And we started talking about what that would mean for us, what that would mean for our
community, if something happened with our pastors and they burnt out.
And then we just started asking the question, you know, who's got our pastors back?
Who's looking out for church leaders, if not us?
And that led us doing some serious soul searching and asking God about how do we, how do
we stop burnout, like what, how do we do it?
And he pointed right at Jesus and the fact that Jesus often withdrew to get alone with
the father and nature away from distractions and he never modeled burnout.
Like, he had all the recipe for burning out, but he didn't burn out.
And so after that model, we said, well, what are the reasons that church leaders, missionaries
aren't able to get away?
And we decided to build a cost-free, retreat facility in Plainfield, Wisconsin.
So a cost wasn't a factor.
We're able to serve at a local facility, at a place that was designed specifically for
church leaders.
It's not a back bunkhouse in the corner, it's not a basement.
We want our guests to feel five star quality and know that we're, we made a place specifically
for them to get alone with God, build their relationship with Him, their spouse, their
staff, and healthy church leaders make for healthy community.
Before we dive into the, the B&B and some of these things and help people can use these
resources, find out more and everything.
I want to start off right away commending, both of you, you and your wife, Danita, the
whole organization for just approaching this topic, for even getting into it.
Danita and I have talked about this and I've talked about it on the air many times.
I was raised in a multi-faith household with Christianity and Judaism.
I grew up understanding or learning almost every religion under the sun, but not having
a lot of faith myself, and that's nothing about, I pray all the time and everything, but
as far as a strict denomination, I was never really nothing called to me.
It's part of the reason, I bring this up in part because one of the most beautiful things
that I've ever seen in the world is somebody being called to a faith, deciding to be a preacher,
a reverend or something like that.
I cannot think of many things in life that are more honorable or beautiful to me than
somebody choosing to do that with their life.
One of the saddest things I could think of is somebody being burned out from that, somebody
being to a point where, for whatever reasons, and there's a variety of my imagine, that
would not want to be able to continue this.
That breaks my heart, like literally breaks my heart to think of that.
To think of you in this organization wanting to cut that off at the past, if you will,
before it becomes too big of a problem or something like that, is so commendable.
It's right up there with the actually deciding to do this for a living.
I really admire it.
I think that it's something that's a topic too.
I have to be honest, I had not thought much about before.
I had not thought, most of the growing up, there was a rabbi that my family was very
good friends with.
This is one of the strongest human beings I'd ever thought of, but I actually thought about
him with this.
He survived the Holocaust.
He survived so many different things.
When I knew him, that man was really burned out when I think about it back in the day,
but he kept going.
He kept going because I imagine that people like that could use something like this so much,
a recharge, because that's what it feels like to me is a lot of what happens here is the
ability to recharge, to refocus in some ways.
I am positive that you guys can speak to them as better, but I really wanted to make sure
to get that out there.
I think this is noteworthy on a number of levels.
Maybe first and foremost, the idea of just approaching this topic and we're talking about
it, that we're having this discussion.
We know in the Midwest, we don't tend to lean on people very much.
We don't tend to complain as much, or really, we don't ask for it.
We don't ask for things very often.
I think that this is vitally important, too, in the Midwest, where we all know Midwesterners.
We're all the same.
We don't lean on each other enough.
I think this is, we need more of that.
Having this in place, let alone what could happen to it in the next years to come and
everything is really unique.
Yeah.
How, having the ideas fantastic, getting it off the ground, that seems like a little more
difficult.
Can you tell us a little bit about that, Jess?
Yeah.
So, once we knew, we've been praying for a few years over our family's hunting sanctuary.
We've got 500 acres in Plainfield, and so we were praying about something we could do
that gave back to the community, glorified God and built this kingdom.
And so, when we saw this problem, we really, we sold our house, we trained a lot of accounts
and put up the capital to build the place.
Normally, you do a big fundraising campaign, you're sharing the vision.
I got laughed out of a few offices not having a funding business model on the front end
of this thing, and they're like, what are you modeling after?
I'm like, God told us to do it, so we're going to do it.
So we put up the capital to build five overnight cottages.
My parents had already renovated barn that was built in 1932 as like a family party barn.
So they allowed us to utilize that for meetings, and then early on, we had a local church that
raised funds and donated a day cabin because there's local pastors that like to get away
for a day.
So, we had the background in the cranberry industry working with different contractors and utility
companies to get the infrastructure put in the ground for the retreat facility, and then
we ended up going with park model RVs where you prep the area and you pull them in on a
triaxle trailer, and we had them up and ready the next day after they were delivered.
So, it's pretty sweet.
Yeah.
How long has this been?
You touched on this a little bit, but how long has this been going on to get to this
point?
Yeah.
We incorporated in 2015.
We were hosting guests in 2016.
We had 350 guests that we served, and then by 2019, we have the capacity to serve 180
free nights on average each year.
So that ends up being like 1,200 guests a year that we're serving for free, and in 2019,
we were booked out full capacity, three month waiting list, and so then that's when we
really started praying about thinking about how do we expand from this local retreat facility
into solving this on a national scale, maybe even a global scale, taking the fight there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because this is certainly something that I would imagine around the world could be useful
and helpful.
Yeah.
Again, just the resource even being there could be reassuring for many people in this position.
That's interesting.
Do you need a, how did you get involved with this?
Well, how did I get involved?
So I was, as you know, I've done mental health work in the community for quite some time.
And I had left love ink and was volunteering, helping getting Mary's place up and running,
and had known Jesse and Lindsay just maybe just on the fringe or something through going
to church at Christian Life Fellowship and Port Edwards.
Jesse had known who I was and had seen the work that I was doing and had approached me a
little bit over a year ago now and had asked me if I would be willing to come on board and help
expand into the, be still be and be portion of the ministry.
Because right now or before the, he's like he said, the retreats had been going on for
quite some time, but they saw the need.
They saw the need to expand because they could only have 1,200 guests per year.
And reality is, as you were talking about before, that maybe some people don't understand
that clergy are burning out.
And I've actually had people say to me, clergy burn out, is that a thing?
And reality is that there's a bonus survey that was released in 2021, that revealed that
38% of clergy in America considered quitting.
And so we look at that number and Jesse mentioned earlier that healthy pastors make for healthy
communities, healthy churches make for healthy communities.
So when he had approached me, I thought, you know, this would be perfect.
I actually own a short-term rental.
And so as we're looking at expanding into the, be still be and be, what that is is looking
at others who own short-term rentals and then asking them if they would be willing to
be generous and host pastors and missionaries at their places free of charge.
And so what we're working on now is trying to recruit hosts, people who own either
vacation properties or short-term rentals and asking them, would they be willing to give
up a weekend a year, a week a year or two weeks or three weeks, maybe it's a month.
For me, my short-term rental is located in Rome.
And so we are, by fire, busiest during those summer months, the golfing season, but then
we have downtime in the winter.
So I'm able to open up those months in the winter and have clergy and missionaries stay
at my home, and that is free of charge.
And so right now I have a pastor and his wife, and they're staying at my home, and they
are able to rest and relax and do that.
Just get away and recharge.
And really what we want to do is prevent burnout.
We are hoping that we aren't serving those that are in crisis, but sometimes that happens.
But really we want to be prevention.
We want to keep our pastors healthy, and that, again, fit perfectly with my prevention
work in the past, and was super excited when Jesse had reached out to me.
When I first saw this and started diving into this topic, I have to admit that there were
a couple of things that popped in my head right away.
One, many of the conversations I've had over the years was Sheriff Becker on air and
off air, and how we see that badge, we see certain people and individuals, and they
just, well, that's a strong human being right there.
And they're perfectly fine.
And there's nobody who's perfectly fine completely.
We have all got stuff going on.
We've all got thoughts of some more than others, and some need help more than others.
And it's a good reminder to our community that these individuals, while they are leaders,
every leader also needs to lean on people from time to time.
I think there's another cool part about this too.
And I do think it's a wonderful thing to be able to do that just really ties into things
as well.
There's something that feels amazing about being able to help people that you don't normally
get the chance to, and how empowering that can be for those individuals in that community.
And for a community to be able to help a community leader, that goes both ways.
As great as it feels for these people in these positions to help their flock, to help
their community and everything, that community gets to feel just as good helping these individuals.
And that mental health wise is such a great tie-in, and a great added benefit from this
as well.
I think that's noteworthy with this.
There are sweets for, I'm sorry, I've been staring at the sweets for treats thing
the whole time, and I have to admit, I have a sweet tooth, so I caught my eye a little
bit.
But do you want to dive into that, Danita, and talk a little bit about that?
Sure.
I think overall, Jesse, I don't know if you've really done events like this in the past.
Have you guys?
This is the first annual sweets for retreats, but I don't know if you've done something.
So we've done some events out at the retreat facility so that people can come and see it
and do hayrides and things like that, but my wife, Lindsay and my mom, Cheryl, they've
been dreaming about hosting a dessert auction for years.
And this year, being our 10th anniversary of serving in ministry, they're like, it's
now or never.
This is the time we're going to kick this thing off, so we decided to do it a little late
in the season.
We're definitely going to be planning for the next one sooner, but it's coming together
beautifully.
We've got some great sponsors that stepped up to help us get this thing kicked off.
And yeah, so what it's called as sweets for retreats, really because of be still retreats
and supporting the operations of be still retreats in Plainfield.
I think we said, but maybe we didn't, that this is free to all of our members, the membership
is free.
So this is free for pastors and missionaries to stay at the retreat.
It's also free for the pastors and missionaries that are staying at the short-term rental.
So this is sweets for retreats, dessert auction.
And it's being held on February 15th, which is a Saturday, so right after Valentine's
Day.
And it's being held at the Regis Gulf course in banquet facility.
And we've got, Mattelco has come alongside us and DigiCopy has come alongside us along
with Lodge lovers, the booking platform that we partner with.
And they are our legacy sponsors for the event.
So doors open and social hours at 4.30, we've got Pam Ross who will be singing.
So any of the Pam Ross followers make sure that you check this event out, it'll be fun
and you'll be able to hear her beautiful voice.
The dinner starts at 6 p.m., we are having chicken oscar with beef medallions and mashed potatoes
of vegetable and salad, and then the dessert auction will follow.
And so this has been like Jessie was saying, we've had a pretty short runway.
But as always, I find that this community just wraps their arms around non-profit organizations
and they come along and support so easily, they're always so generous.
And so we have about 20 bakers that have already said, I want to donate a dessert for this auction.
And so we've got some amazing desserts that we will be auctioned off that night.
We've got silky smooth Venezuela and flan, a Boston cream pie, mom's apple pie.
We've got some businesses that have stepped in and said, I want to embrace that faith aspect
for the event and they're going to create an elegant worship theme, maple brown butter sponge cake.
So we've got cheese cakes, we've got pies, we've got a lot of different cakes that are being auctioned
off, different kinds of cakes, red velvet, chocolate, neapolitan.
Just a really great variety.
So there will be something for everyone at this dessert auction.
Well, really, it's an excuse to raise money because these cakes are amazing.
And they're worth what's getting bit on.
But like DeNita said, we're completely publicly supported.
Everything we do is for free.
We don't have a huge trust account or anything that's pumping this thing.
And so we're looking to establish something that people look forward to each year.
That's a fun event that we can run up the prices on these cakes to support a good cause.
Look back at 10 years of ministry and fund the next 10 years of ministry and have a fun time doing it.
Right, right.
And so like we had said earlier, Pamross will be there.
We've got the dinner, as I mentioned earlier, then the auction will take place.
And it is a time where you can just maybe pay a ridiculous price for a cheesecake,
but you're supporting something beautiful that's happening.
And you're really supporting a healthy community because we are supporting multiple
pastors in the area, multiple congregations in the area.
We are the only free facility in Wisconsin.
And so Jesse, I can't remember if he mentioned, there's a waiting list.
So stay up, be still, retreats in Plainfield.
And so I'm not quite sure if people understand what the true need is,
but we'll have Jesse, we'll be talking about giving a little snapshot of be still retreats,
be still B&B, and then we'll also have pastor Jeff and Kerio Connor.
They'll both be there and talking about the impact that staying at be still retreats
has had on them and their congregation.
So it'll be a wonderful evening.
And we're really hoping that people will go to our website at bestillretreats.org.
And there you'll find an events tab and you'll be able to register there.
The cost per ticket is $35 or you can buy a table of $8 for $240.
And so we're really encouraging people to connect with family, friends, come out for
a night of fun and just celebrate with us, celebrate 10 years of fighting clergy burn out.
Get registered by February 10th.
Good points.
Good points.
We want to make sure that we've got a good count for the dinners and make sure you get
your ticket before they're sold out.
Did you want to mention as well?
Well you guys have a perfect evening lined up and I can't stress it enough.
It is a perfect evening from the music to the food to all these things and the prices
as you mentioned there, Deneer are great.
But what you cannot put a price on is a cause like this.
And how good it feels to be a part of something like this.
Again, I commend you guys for this and some great work and a great conversation today.
Thank you both so very much for everything.
Let's tell people again how they can find out more about be still retreats and how they
can sign up for this great event coming up.
This is one more time remind them of that to need.
You can go to bestillretreats.org and then click on the events tab there and you'll be
able to sign up for that event and we really encourage people just to look through our
website and see a little bit more of what we're about.
Encourage you to also to spread the word about this event and make sure that more and more
people know about this and support the cause as much as you can whenever you can and be
a part of this great event everybody and spread the word about it.
Thank you both so much for the time and what you're doing when it comes to this.
I appreciate the work you guys.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We'll take a quick time out.
We'll come back with more midday magazine right here at 975 FM 1320 AM WFHR.
We are locally grown radio.
