Dave Ripper is the lead pastor of Crossway Christian Church, a multi-congregational church in southern New Hampshire focused on spiritual formation. He earned a Doctor of Ministry in spiritual direction from Fuller Theological Seminary and the Martin Institute for Christianity and Culture and Dallas Willard Research Center at Westmont College. He’s the author of “Experiencing Scripture as a Disciple of Jesus: Reading the Bible like Dallas Willard and coauthor of The Fellowship of the Suffering.”

Dave opens up in this article about some of the people and practices that have been most meaningful in his spiritual formation. He describes some of both the struggles and joys of being a pastor, from how he deals with people painfully exiting his church and life to how he shakes off “leadership anxiety” by hiking and trail running. Continue reading to hear how Dave’s spiritual hero has fueled Dave’s passion to lead others through the Holy Spirit into an experiential knowledge of God.

QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT

The meals we enjoy are about so much more than the food we eat. So, how does a "go-to" meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind your web bio?

After preaching three times on a Sunday morning, one of my favorite ways to unwind is to load my family in the car and head to the Atlantic coast, which is about 45 minutes from where we live. Our first stop will be the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island, MA. We’ll follow the trails that traverse through sprawling sand dunes, watch people passionately bird watch (you should see the zoom lenses on their cameras — $$$$), and look for shells all along the beach. All of that feeds our appetite for fresh seafood at a local spot in nearby Newburyport, MA. (For any church history nerds out there, we often eat at a spot just three blocks from where George Whitfield — the famous Great Awakening preacher — is buried.) While it’s more of an indulgence than a go-to, raw oysters are my favorite thing to order. Tasting them is like getting to be in the ocean without having to endure the frigid New England water temps.

After the meal, we’ll head back home — going west — and enjoy every last hue of color left by the sunset. My stomach will be full, but my soul will be filled even more. I come closer to the point St. Ignatius described as being “too grateful to sin.”

QUESTION #2: REVEAL

We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So, what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activity do you love engaging in that also helps you find essential spiritual renewal?

I have an absolutely insatiable desire — and need — to hike. I have gear for all conditions, so there are very few days of the year when I’m not out on a trail somewhere. There are miles upon miles of trails within a 15-minute drive of my home that’s situated along the New Hampshire and Massachusetts border. So if I only have an hour or less, I’ll enjoy a familiar local trail. If I’m able to manage more of a day away, I’ll head north to the White Mountains. Over the last five years, I’ve been attempting to hike all 48 of New Hampshire’s 4,000-foot mountains and a group of peaks called “the 52 with a View.” These big hikes are always done with a friend or two, and a few have even been done with my young sons. Holy moments.

It’s been said that energy is neither created nor destroyed, but it can be channeled. Hiking and trail running helps me work out a lot of what Steve Cuss calls “leadership anxiety.” Not only that, but hiking New England trails in particular — with all their rocks and roots — focuses my concentration so intensely on what I’m doing that I almost entirely forget about my wounds and worries for a prolonged time. This dynamic is what philosopher Albert Borgmann refers to as a “focal practice.” Focal practices free me from distraction and enable me to be attentive to what is best about being alive. They restore the soul.

Most recently, I’ve been bringing along my Rhodesian Ridgeback puppy that my kids un-creatively named Ridge. (We opted to just go with it rather than give them a childhood wound by not allowing them to name their dog.) He’s 90 pounds and growing, and he has been keeping the black bears that have been getting too close for comfort on the trails totally out of sight.

QUESTION #3: CONFESS

Every superhero has a weakness; every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re all broken and in this thing together. So, what’s your kryptonite and how do you confront its power head-on?

Nothing discourages me more than seeing people come and go in and out of my life, and in and out of our church. If discipleship truly is a “long obedience in the same direction,” as Eugene Peterson describes, then “church hopping,” or continually uprooting one’s life, can be devastating to the discipleship process. It pains me when I see this happen.

I try to pastor a large church as personally as I can, so when people quietly move on and never directly tell me, it hurts. It makes me feel like my sacred vocation is nothing other than a consumer commodity. I feel treated more as a worker who offers a service and less as a person sharing my life — and my family’s life.

When painful exits occur, the Enneagram seven in me wants to look for the escape hatch. I think, “There must be a way to be a disciple of Jesus who makes disciples of Jesus without it having to hurt so much.” I sulk for a little while until the sting of the loss wears off. Then I remember this kind of relational woundedness comes with the territory of ministry. I’ll go back to the Gospels and see how many people reject, abandon, and walk away from Jesus. I’ll read Paul’s letters and feel the pain he felt as he was deserted, ridiculed and despised. Paul’s personal mission of helping “everyone become fully mature in Christ” was accomplished by means of “toil” and “struggle” (see Colossians 1:28,29). Confessing these losses to trusted spiritual friends, and finding solidarity in what Paul describes as “the fellowship of the suffering” (see Philippians 3:10,11), brings healing, humility, and strength to my soul. I’ve learned to pray: “God this hurts. Help me to heal.”

QUESTION #4: FIRE UP

Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?

Over the past four years I’ve been on a journey to discover and teach others how my spiritual hero, Dallas Willard, read the Bible. So many of Dallas’s insights into the Scriptures are absolutely revolutionary. But in his books, Dallas doesn’t spend a lot of time explaining how he reached many of his interpretive conclusions. Through my doctoral research, I poured through his books, articles, and lectures to discover everything I could about what Dallas believed about the Bible and how he read it. Here’s what stands out most: when Dallas read the Bible, he believed the author was in the room with him. This led him to read the Bible in a realistic and experiential way. The Bible for Dallas was a gateway to what he described as “eternal living.” And the same can be true for us.

I’ve attempted to distill everything I’ve learned from Dallas into an accessible way so that anyone can experience the presence of God through the biblical texts in my new book, “Experiencing Scripture as a Disciple of Jesus: Reading the Bible like Dallas Willard.”

My wildest hope for this book is that it might help churches take steps toward being centers for spiritual formation, as Dallas envisioned. While it’s not uncommon for churches to read or quote Willard, it’s much less common for churches to make spiritual formation their primary mission. If Scripture-anchored churches like mine learned to approach the Bible like Dallas did, spiritual formation could become the norm — and not the exception — in the life of local churches.

QUESTION #5: BOOST

Cashiers, CEOs, contractors, or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it's God when it happens?

I’ve been noticing the Spirit working in my life and through his church like I’ve never seen before. One of the most apparent ways we’ve witnessed this is through the disproportionate return we’ve seen on our ministry investments. We see more people we invite to church actually come to church than ever before. We expect an event’s attendance to be full, and, instead, it’s overflowing. It has been taking me less time to write better sermons, enabling me to spend far more time in one-on-one or small group discipleship ministry. Many of the pastors in my circles are experiencing the very same things.

One of the great fruits that has grown out of the Covid-19 pandemic is greater dependance on God. We’ve learned through pain that we must, as 2 Peter 3:18 says, “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” There is an essential dynamic at work here. Grace flows from knowledge. Not just informational or theological knowledge, but a kind of personal, interactive, experiential knowledge that comes from encountering the presence of God. This is the core of what I hope people discover when they read my new book.

I’ve found that the greatest gift I can give to the people and community I serve is the experiential knowledge of God that he extends to me through his grace. From the overflow of my experiential knowledge of God, I lead and serve and love. I often feel something like the rush of a stream flowing through me when I prepare and teach and listen and converse. I feel swept up by the Spirit, and I work to eliminate anything that would slow down or dam up the flow of that stream.

QUESTION #6: inspire

Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So, let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you in this season?

My research into how Dallas Willard read the Bible led me to formulate an approach to reading that I call the IMMERSE Method. It’s an acronym that stands for Immersion, Meditation, Memorization, Encounter, Response, Supplication and Experience. Incorporating this approach into my spiritual rhythms has deepened my walk with God in profound ways. When I open the pages of the text, I do so expectantly, believing that I am about to have a holy encounter with God. And, quite regularly, I do.

For almost 18 years, I’ve begun my day by reading and praying through one of the Psalms. I never feel quite like myself if I miss my morning immersion in the Psalms. Beyond this, I slowly apply the IMMERSE Method to a section of one of the four Gospels each day. Often the portions of the text I memorize come alive in some unanticipated way throughout the day. Beyond this, I often read through or listen to another book of the Bible. Currently I’m making my way through the Major Prophets of the Old Testament.

This practice seems to be making me most spiritually alive these days, but it’s far from the only one I engage in.

QUESTION #7: FOCUS

Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top three resources stand out to you? What changed reality and your heart?

Wow. It’s hard to limit this response to just three. But here it goes.

The spiritual trajectory of my life changed when I started receiving spiritual direction around the time I turned 24. Spiritual direction would be number one for me. It taught me how to become emotionally aware. From being emotionally aware, I started to become emotionally healthy and more spiritually whole. All this helped me to become more mindful of my internal experience of God. From this awareness, spiritual discernment grew to become an integral part of my life. Every day, through prayer and reflection, I’m invited to recognize and respond to the leading of God’s Spirit. I receive spiritual direction nearly every month.

Second, and closely related to spiritual direction, are the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. These can be completed in a 30-day intensive or over the course of approximately 30 weeks. I did the latter. Experiencing the presence of Jesus through the daily invitations to pray, reflect, and meditate on Scripture helped me learn to receive the love of Christ like nothing else has in my life. It helped heal my operating image of God so that when I think of God, I think of a Christlike being. These experiences help liberate me from the areas of unfreedom in life, so I’m no longer as driven by my false attachments or disordered loves. I completed the Exercises in my late 30s, which seems like a great time for someone to have gained enough experience and self-awareness for the Exercises to have their greatest impact.

Finally, and this should come as no surprise based on early moments in this conversation, the works of Dallas Willard have impacted my life more than anything else apart from Scripture. Don’t just read books that quote Dallas — including my own. Take the next 10 to 15 years to slowly make your way through his five primary books: “Hearing God,” “The Spirit of the Disciplines,” “The Divine Conspiracy,” “Renovation of the Heart” and “Knowing Christ Today.” Then read everything else with his name attached to it. You’ll discover an image of a loving, beautiful God, an invitation to life in the kingdom of God now, reliable patterns for experiencing spiritual transformation, and deep wisdom like nothing else I’ve ever found. He was simply and without exception the most brilliant person I ever met and the most Christlike person I ever met. His life showed me that a greater life with God was more possible than I ever dared to imagine.

We all have things we cling to to survive or even thrive in our fast-paced, techno-driven world. How have you been successful in harnessing technology to aid in your spiritual growth?

I think I might be going against the grain a bit on this response, but, overall, I have found technology to almost only hinder and not enhance my spiritual life. For that reason, I try to limit my use of it as much as I can. The two exceptions to this would be the YouVersion Bible App (audio Bible translations) and the occasional podcast.

Since I only have a four-minute commute to work, I don’t spend much time in the car alone. This would be when I’d most likely listen to something digitally. I have found these resources valuable, though, when I’ve been traveling greater distances to guest speak or lead a retreat.

But to be frank, the more time I utilize digital technology, the more anxious I feel, and the less present I am. It is spiritual de-formation for me. Technology is just too good at keeping me gripped to it. And know I’m simply describing me. I know this is absolutely not the case for everyone. But I guess the old-school, geriatric Millennial in me would revert to a pre-social-media technological world — and church — in a heartbeat. Maybe someday I will.

QUESTION #8: dream

God's continually stirring new things in each of us. So, give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?

In conjunction with the release of my book, I’m launching a new podcast called “Deeper Experiences with God.” The primary focus is inviting people who I’d consider to be spiritual fathers and mothers of the faith to reflect on what their actual experience of God is like. I believe an ever-deepening relationship with God is much more possible and much more available to us than we think. Hearing about the direct experiences of others, I hope, will help us believe experiences like these could be given to us by God as well. Guests on the podcast will actually lead people to prayerfully open their lives to God through spiritual exercises as well. It’s been very spiritually rich.

My overall passion in life is to help the local church become a center for spiritual formation. So I’ll continue to lead the church I’m privileged to serve at — Crossway Christian Church in southern New Hampshire — in this direction. Whatever else I would write or release more broadly would come from the overflow of what God is doing in our local setting. For instance, about three years ago, members of the church were the first people to go through the curriculum that has become the book “Experiencing Scripture as a Disciple of Jesus.” God is moving, and I’m excited to continue following his lead.

Dave Ripper has spent years discipling others to walk in the experiential reality of God. He encourages believers to approach Scripture reading with anticipation: “When I open the pages of the text, I do so expectantly, believing that I am about to have a holy encounter with God. And, quite regularly, I do.” How can you encounter God in new ways through the Holy Spirit? Ask God for a new sense of expectancy, both in your devotional times and in your daily life. Knowing that the living God wants to meet with you daily so you can experience his love and presence is life-changing.

Dave Ripper