Life at Lost Valley Ranch with Tony and Brooke Warnock
The power of people in submission, coming together to build an experience, is what we’re called to do as Christians.
We’re called to build an experience of Christ, together.
This is an interview with two of my people. My brother-in-law, Tony, and his wife, my sister, Brooke Warnock.
“We’re going to have an incredible conversation. Why don't we start with a little bit about where you have spent the last decade or two of your life?”
“We've been involved with a place called Lost Valley Ranch for about 25 years. There was a few years where Brooke and I were off the ranch because we were at seminary in Dallas. We got married, started our family, and now we’re still at the ranch.”
“Tony, a lot of people don't know there’s such a thing as a real cowboy. Tell us your background and what makes you a real cowboy.”
“I would not call myself a real cowboy anymore. Now it’s a job. I spent a lot of my life on horseback and taking care of other people's cattle for a living. It’s been good and bad. It's not as glamorous as some might think, but it's a real job. You don't get paid a lot, but you spend your days outside on your horseback with a rope. You get to do all the things that people think cowboys do.”
“Brooke, tell us about your experience in living on the ranch, especially as someone who grew up in the city.”
“I always liked horses and I liked the cowboys. But when he was a real cowboy, he didn't even have a home. This was before I was a part of his life. Now I get to clothe, feed, and take care of this family of ours. That’s how we ended up at Lost Valley. Ending up on the ranch has been the best of both worlds.”
“I want you to describe Lost Valley. Tony, you’ve lived out there for a long time, and now you’re in charge. Talk about how you create and maintain the unique culture on the ranch.”
“Well, the ranch is unique. It’s all about a western lifestyle and being cowboys. The beauty of Lost Valley is that people get to live out the cowboy dream. They get to spend time on a horse and wear a cowboy hat. At the ranch we use this context to engage people's hearts in a way that maybe nothing else does. For us, being there is redemptive.
The ranch exists to transform lives for the gospel. The majority of our guests don't share our gospel worldview. However, we believe deeply that hospitality and God's creation in the mountains are profound, and these things together cause people to engage and interact with us in ways that disarmed them, give legitimacy to our hope, and enables us to share in a way that the church maybe doesn't get to.
The ranch is unique because we do hospitality with excellence. Brooke creates the setting, context, atmosphere, and hospitality that gives us the opportunity to have conversations that are typically very difficult to have.”
“On the ranch you're really out there in the wilderness. You have very limited cell service. You have 75 young adult staff members that you’re shepherding. And because you’re far from everything, this group becomes their community.
The reason I share this conversation with Brooke and Tony is not simply because they’re some of my people, but mainly because they live in a village context. I’ve seen the fruit of them doing life together in a deep of a way, and I’ve seen the difficulty of it.
We’re talking about finding our people and living in an interdependent way. Tony, for example, if someone on your staff if “young punk” and he’s living selfishly and has no desire to submit to authority, what happens?”
“First, we put structure around him. We have a healthy structure in place because if someone isn't healthy, or they're making bad decisions, and that person is put in a context that's not healthy, we’re never going to get traction. We have to make sure that our organization is sound before we move forward.
We put a lot of structure around people to set them up for success. Also, we try to take some of the obstacles away from their ability to serve.
When someone like that comes in, they realize the people around them are their peers. From the people they work with to the leadership, they see that everyone they’re surrounded by is a peer at their level. They end up feeling a sense of healthy peer pressure that says that there's legitimacy in what we're doing, and they realize they need to get on board with it, too.
The sense of community drives the culture more than management does. We give them direction, and we continuously cast the mission and purpose. Success takes place in the people that we're living with every day and their level of buy-in. Working from 4 in the morning until about 9 at night takes the desire to make bad decisions right out of just about anyone. The work, the culture, and the community all play together to keep the machine moving forward.”
“Let’s say you see someone hit a roadblock. What’s the hardest part about living alongside those people? Especially when they’re your coworker, your family, and your friend?”
“We believe strongly in the significance of the relationships between the staff. The health of each relationship, the conflict resolution, and the choices that each individual makes will determine the product of what the guests experience. The guests will pick up on the good and the bad.
Therefore, we're quick to resolve conflict. The darkest days for a staff member are the days that they try to escape conflict resolution. It gets hard if they don't want to submit to their authority, or they don't want to do that next mundane task. The darkest days that we've experienced with any staff member have been when they're trying to escape these things.
That's what's different about life out here. We call it the “pressure cooker” because we've realized it’s a natural and humanistic to try to escape conflict. But we don't get to escape out here. In fact, there's nowhere to escape because we live down a 9-mile dirt road. We essentially live off the grid.”
“What about the person that comes in as a “punk”, but leaves healthier? What does that look like?”
“The culture is pretty strong, and has been in place for about 60 years. We do a thorough job of choosing who gets to come in. We want people that are in their late teens and 20s, even 30s. We have an expectation that the people who come in are still wrestling with their own stuff and figuring things out. But we also look for those who have a willingness to get on board with the program, even if they don't fully agree or understand.
This age group requires a lot of work, but there's so much opportunity with them. They're less stuck in their ways. There's less pride involved. We love that age group.
That age group is also really aspirational. When you throw down a big vision, they get on board with it. We think of it like this, if we're all in river that's leading us to a waterfall, you have to swim upstream. There’s not an opportunity to take a day off, the river would only carry you further downriver. Not all of us are going to swim the same, but when you see someone that's not trying to go against the flow, it stands out.
There are a lot of behaviors that start to stand out. Everyone can see them, and we call them out in a way doesn’t carry shame or embarrassment. We want to engage so we can figure out what's going on.”
“So, you’re saying it’s nearly impossible for people to hide because you're working together all the time. Do you think this is a gift?”
“Yes. The worst thing someone can do is hide. If something is eating you up inside, or if something is breaking you down, the worst thing you can do for yourself is to keep it hidden until it takes you over.”
“Here's the thing, God is calling us to live interconnected lives. And this isn’t easy. It’s costly.
Tony, Brooke, and their ranch family have to live this way. And I've seen the benefit of them doing so. I've watched people walk out of the ranch as totally different people.
There's power, grace, and goodness when we live in submission to one another. And you can do this in your life, too.
What have you learned about living in the context? What will take with you if you were to move away from the ranch?”
“We always say to the staff, whatever we’re trying to impart to them are not truths about Lost Valley, but they’re truths about being a disciple of Jesus Christ.
And our hearts beat for hospitality. The heart of hospitality is why Lost Valley exists.
These days we split our time between living at the ranch and living in town in Colorado Springs. And it’s interesting how isolated being in town feels. It seems like it’s “every man for himself” out there. But in an environment like Lost Valley, we can see that we’re truly living in community with one another, and with God.
One day when we leave the ranch we’ll have to ask ourselves, “what will we consecrate to now? What will hospitality look like now?” and, “what will community look like? What do we value in relationships?”
At Lost Valley we work to instill the value of communal living to our staff. We see this actually change lives. And after their time with us, guests will express that something has happened to them and their souls. It even happens to the people who aren't coming from the same worldview. They might not have the same faith or traditions, but the unique experience is the same. We get to see this play out at Lost Valley in a way that is so pure, simple, and at times, intense.
When you hold to those values of relationships and say, “these are my people, and I’ll fight to the end for them” the world sees this as different, and they’re always attracted to it.
One of our theme verses for the staff is in John 13:35, which says, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
For us, it’s about living in a way that demands an explanation. The most transformative part of coming to Lost Valley is watching how the staff love each other well. It's something our guests can't ignore. It's rare.”
“One night we were sitting at dinner, and I'm telling Tony about how I was working on writing Find Your People.
And Tony said to me, “well, village life is great unless you end up with a village of cannibals.” So Tony, why don't you tell us where that comment came from?”
“We’ve all heard the phrase, “it takes a village”. And as someone that believes deeply in doing life in community, the concept actually agrees with the overarching idea.
I think that we need to always be very cognizant that the values of the village is what drives the village. I think it goes back to Old Testament law, like Leviticus. In Leviticus, why does God call his people to live so differently? Because the nation of Israel was designed to be missional from day one.
They were suppose to be different than the world around them. That meant that they had a set of values that seemed weird to the outside world, but the purpose was to set them apart.
For us at the ranch specifically, the values of communal living drive us. And even though it’s hard at times., we work incredibly hard at maintaining these values.”
“When you think of living in the city, how do you think people can connect and be on a shared mission together?”
“When we think about a village, what ends up happening most of the time is tribalism. What do we share? Look at sports teams and the level of tribalism, even to the point of physical violence. For example, in Europe, it's soccer, or it's games built around a soccer club or a soccer team. Why would they have such animosity toward another sports team? Because that sports team represents something about the community and the things that they rally around.
So when we talk about these villages, or these communities that we build these values around, what those communities build their premise or their justification for being there actually matters. For us, we recognize our role at the ranch continues to evolve.
Using the analogy of a village, we’re living in a community, and we have to be selective about who we spend time with, what investment looks like, and who's doing this together. Not all of these relationships are created equal, and some of them are closer than others.
Just because you have areas that seem to have commonality with someone else, that doesn’t mean that those are the relationships that are the most profound to built upon.
For us at the ranch, we base community on Philippians 2, viewing others as more important than yourself. That is how we do hospitality. We view others in a way that elevates them over our own temporal needs.
When we sacrifice our world around us to ourselves, for our own comfort, and our own idolatry, then our ability to engage with the world around us effectively is heavily reduced.
We want to engage with the world around us effectively, and this will be sacrificial. That’s what hospitality looks like. But the communities that will show up around us, to be effective, shouldn't isolate us, but should give us the ability to be healthy and encouraged.”
“All of this doesn’t come easy, and it doesn’t come naturally. But this is possible.
The intentional people that are willing to take on the initial challenge are the people that are experiencing the fullest life.
I’ve felt helpless and stuck before. I didn't know how to make changes. But this has been life-changing for me. I didn’t realize I have dominion and authority from God over these parts of my life.”
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