In 2022, Pastor Shane and Sarah Boyd followed a call to start a discipleship movement that looked different from a traditional brick-and-mortar church. They downsized, moved their family into an RV and set out to minister among people living a nomadic lifestyle.
Four years later, Gathering of Nomads has expanded — and it is now only one part of a broader movement called the Gathering of Neighbors Collective (GONC). Co-executive directors Shane Boyd and Cody Bren are encouraged by the ways GONC has evolved and is continuing to grow.
Pastor Cody, who is also the lead pastor at Village Church in Red Rock, Arizona, first supported Pastor Shane’s work with Nomads as a partner. Over time, he said, “We kinda started asking the question of, if Nomads was for RVers only, or people who were full-time on the road, what happens when they come off the road? Are we just gonna say, ‘Good luck!’ Or are we gonna do something about that?”
The question led them to the word “neighbor,” and soon they recognized that the same tools could serve communities beyond RVers. Pastor Cody said, “A lot of our efforts now have been towards building a platform that is meant to equip, and to raise and train, everyday followers of Jesus to reach their context, wherever they are.”
Pastor Shane said, “When we set out on this adventure to go and reach people in the RV community, we learned there’s just a lot of uniqueness in almost every subcommunity of the world.” People find community around things that matter to them — from going to the gym to collecting hats and beyond. “We started to kinda look at, what does it mean to reach your subgroup of people? Like, your unique community of people?”
During Gathering of Nomads’ first year, around 20 families joined the movement to share Jesus with RVers. After the expansion to Gathering of Neighbors, GONC grew to include another 20 chapters within a couple of years. Many of them were “house churches, simple gatherings that were meeting in their general context,” Pastor Shane said.
GONC chapters meet in coffee shops, in barns and other everyday spaces. One church even holds Sunday services at a bar, where they have seen at least five people turn their backs on alcohol for good.
GONC champions diverse expressions of ministry and discipleship, but its model is designed to strengthen local churches, not work around them. The question leaders keep returning to, Pastor Shane says, is “How does this benefit the local church?” To answer that question, they connect chapters to central hubs, usually local churches, that can provide resources, leadership and organization.
At the Exponential conference earlier this year, Pastor Shane met a young Wesleyan church planter from the Mountain Plains District who shared a similar vision. The pastor was excited by the possibilities GONC’s training offers, and months later he told Pastor Shane he was grateful to have tools that helped him equip and send people without spending months building a system on his own.
“The training platform is designed so that we can allow more people to say yes to the calling of God on their lives,” Pastor Cody said. No commitment to GONC is required to access it, and the training itself is simple, replicable and free. Making their tools accessible has been a priority for the GONC crew, and they are seeing the fruit of that decision.
“The reach of this thing is much farther than what we’re able to figure out currently,” Pastor Cody said. As GONC grows, leaders hope to build the capacity to support more chapters and eventually expand beyond the United States.
Their real priority, though, is not building the biggest possible network — it is following God’s leading. “Our goal is not to try to make as many chapters as possible,” Pastor Cody said. “Our goal is just to equip as many people as we possibly can, you know, with this life-giving hope of Jesus.”
Jerah Winn is a writer for The Wesleyan Church. She is passionate about sharing stories with others for the glory of God.
