In the Company of Travellers: Season 2, Episode 10 (Bonus): Steve Quakenbush, SIL

November 2026

Jim Killam: Hi everyone. Jim Killam here. I serve as the producer for In the Company of Travelers and this month we have a special between-seasons episode for you. Our hosts, Jo Johnson and Hannes Wiesmann, interviewed Steve Quakenbush. Steve recently retired from SIL as the spiritual life team director. In fact, this conversation took place on just his second day of retirement. This is a wonderfully candid conversation about spiritual formation, both as it applies to individuals but then also what can happen when it becomes an organizational emphasis.

One thing to note: a few names come up during the conversation and those names may not be familiar to many of our listeners. The people mentioned are significant of course, but if you don’t recognize them, don’t let that distract you from the overall points about organizational spiritual formation. We think there’s a lot here that alliance organizations can learn from and be inspired by.  

So without further ado, here is Jo and Hannes’s conversation with Steve Quakenbush.

Jo Johnson: Perhaps you could start us off with telling us how you became interested in spiritual formation?

Steve Quakenbush: Ah well, of course from the start we’re disciples of Christ, right? And so we want to follow him. And yeah, as a high schooler just about to graduate from high school, I had an experience with God where he spoke to me through his word. And he said, “I will never leave you. I will never forsake you.” And those words pierced my heart. They helped me into the Bible translation movement because I was a believer in how the word of God works in us and, yeah, he led me along the way.

When we were in the early years in the Philippines, I went to a retreat and I think that’s where I first heard about private retreats, taking private retreats, and I thought, “Oh, I need that.” So I started taking these half-day retreats on my own with the Lord, and they were just wonderful times of being able to pour out whatever was on my heart and to be refreshed. So I don’t even know if I called that spiritual formation back then, but it was a delight. So I’m a linguist, right, PhD linguist, and I was involved in sociolinguistic survey and in a language project, and branch director and academic coordinator, and most of my years were in academic services, which I loved. But I reached a point during COVID where I was overloaded and not in good shape. I would say approaching burnout, and I was looking for something to help. And I told my boss, Andy Clark, “Andy, I’m not doing well.” And he said, “Well, I noticed you were kind of grouchy, but I thought you were just having a bad day.” I said, “No, it’s more than a bad day, Andy. I’m not doing well.” So, he worked with me to eventually relieve some of my responsibilities.

And about that time, I heard about this online retreat through Leadership Transformations. And I attended that retreat. And as part of that retreat, they sent us away on our own and they gave us Psalm 51 to meditate on. And I got to this verse where it said, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation.” And I thought, “That is exactly the cry of my heart.” That was another time where God’s word spoke to me—it spoke to my heart at that point. And I realized that was my prayer. And I think God began to turn me around and shifted something in me in that moment, in that prayer.

And then I thought, well, that was wonderful, what more could I do? And Leadership Transformations offers a two-year certificate program in formational leadership. So, I thought, I’ll do that, and Andy encouraged me in that. So, now I’m taking some official training in spiritual formation type stuff—something I’ve never done before. And it was so life-giving. It was like a retreat every six months online with reading and interaction with small group and with a guide, a mentor.

So I finished that, that was great. And then I thought, well, they offer this other course in spiritual direction. I’ve been going to a spiritual director now for a few years by this time, and I thought I would never want to be a spiritual director because I don’t want to hear people’s problems. Whenever I talk to my spiritual director, all my problems come out and I don’t want to just sit and hear people’s problems. But I went to this online webinar about what spiritual direction is, and it struck me that I don’t have to fix people’s problems; I just sit with people as they deal with God and I pray for them as they deal with God. And we had this little practice session in that webinar and I thought, I love this.

So I took training to be a spiritual director 2022 to 2024. And it has been such a joy to be able to have this front row seat in what God is doing in people’s lives. What a privilege that is. So I love that. So I’m taking this training and I thought I should be reporting to somebody in SIL about this because I’m doing it, I’m using work time, it’s kind of professional development. So I reported to Neil Carlton, who was at the time—he might have still been called our Global Prayer Coordinator. And then as he watched what happened with me and as he planned to retire, he recommended to Kate King that she consider me as the incoming spiritual life team director by that time. So that’s how I got into a 4-year final assignment with SIL as spiritual life team director and it was just a great way to finish up.

Hannes Wiesmann: So can you tell—you shared your personal story now, thank you, that’s fascinating. Can you tell us a little bit how SIL came to give spiritual life such a priority over the last few years?

Steve Quakenbush: Yeah, over the last few years. But first, I want to say that in the beginning, spiritual life was a priority. I got to study under Kenneth Pike in Norman, Oklahoma in the 1970s and I would listen to him in the lecture room and then we would go to chapel and I would hear him in chapel, and he wrote a book called With Heart and Mind. And so there was this wonderful wedding of spiritual and academic, which really suited me coming from the academic world but really wanting something significant to give my life work to. So I came in knowing that there were these heroes of mine who loved God and loved neighbor, and that all went together—that was a package.

But there was something that was too bad, really: There was the classroom and there was the chapel, and they were not to be mixed because we were in the US and you could not pray in a classroom. So there was this division that happened that I think kind of took root in a regrettable way. And yet I would find my heroes along the way who were very integrated in their spiritual life and their service, whatever kind of service that was to the Lord. But in years—I consider 2014 and a group of five women who were praying for the spiritual life of SIL to be kind of a watershed moment. Melinda Lyons told me about this, and Becca Boswell was part of that group; she was the wife of then executive director Freddy. There were five of them and they said—each one told me received a word from the Lord that SIL needed a man to lead in prayer advocacy, shall we say, for the organization, and they began praying for that.

Jo Johnson: Amazing.

Steve Quakenbush: That was 2014 before a global leadership meeting, and so they prayed. And I’ve forgotten the year—it was probably like 2016 that Michel Kenmogne asked Neil Carlton to be the global prayer coordinator for SIL. And that was the beginning of something because we’d never had that. Two things: We outsourced our prayer to our home sending organizations to Wycliffe, and we were so hesitant to be public about our spiritual motivation in SIL, so we never made a big deal of that.

So there’s that 2014, 2016. And I’ve forgotten right now the date that Michel Kenmogne became our executive director, but I think his coming into that position was a wonderful beginning for us at reintegration of who we are as an organization—our service to God, our love to God. Our mission statement for SIL says, “Inspired by God’s love, we advocate, build capacity…” blah blah blah, and it’s got that “inspired by God’s love” at the beginning. And I think it was just crucial to have somebody like Michel who brought things together for us in a new way, and I think he did that partially because he was African, he was Cameroonian, and his worldview is more integrated than a bunch of Western linguists academic types.

And so he saw the need for prayer. He called for 40 days of prayer near the beginning of his term, and he eventually asked Neil to be the global prayer coordinator, and he did it in a beautiful way. He said, “I want this to be organic. I don’t want anything mandated from on high that people must pray or people must do anything, but I want this to grow.” And so he also appointed Kate King—community and culture, I forgot her title, but it was about community and culture. And he gave her a mandate to lead the global staff of SIL closer to God and closer to one another in a spiritual community that flourishes. And when I heard that, I thought, “Yes, I want to be part of that.” When they asked me to consider spiritual life team, I thought, “Yes, I want to be part of that.” So that’s been my joy the last four years to pray into that, to move into that, and to see our team grow. So we have to just credit God with whatever has happened, that’s good. But I think those are some special moments in our journey and special developments.

Jo Johnson: I find it really interesting that even though Michel was trying to influence or lead the organization in a specific direction, he wanted it to grow organically. He wanted it to be something that everyone desired, I guess. Were there particular conditions or environment that helped this priority to take root?

Steve Quakenbush: I think Neil finding Roz was a big moment too—Roz being appointed, Rosalyn Manson, as Global Spiritual Formation Coordinator, recognizing that spiritual formation was a thing and that it was worth assigning somebody to, and then them working together. The tone that is set by the leadership at the top is also crucial. I think those of us who were close enough to see that anyway were inspired by that. And we found as we started talking more about spiritual formation through our leadership pillars program—our leadership development program—it was included as an explicit part of developing as a leader: You develop spiritually as well. That I think was really key too, because everybody who is coming through getting this basic orientation for “Who am I as a leader?”, this is part of who you are as a leader—your walk with the Lord, your development of your relationship with him. And just getting that named and being able to talk about it that way I think made a big difference. People seeing it modeled, referred to, valued.

And another thing—this is just God’s Spirit at work—when we did talk about it, when we did have opportunities, when we were invited into area meetings to provide some spiritual life component to it, we found people were hungry and receptive wherever we went. There’s always some, “Okay, so that’s not really the work that we’re doing, let’s concentrate on our strategic planning.” I mean, there’s always some of that kind of response, but overall and to a surprising extent, we found people hungry and wanting more. So when I got to lead morning prayer and evening prayer for an Americas Area event, it was just a delight to find people coming. I mean, maybe it was 10% of the people who showed up at the actual prayer times, but it was a real ministry and something genuine happening in people’s hearts. And we’re pretty good at Bible study anyway; we did that kind of stuff too, and people are always ready for that.

Hannes Wiesmann: Can you put your finger on how this emphasis changed the culture of SIL since the moment—maybe not the moment, but in this whole process of spiritual life taking deeper roots within SIL culture?

Steve Quakenbush: Another thing I didn’t mention that you probably read about was—I guess it was 2016 ICON—these things were brought up organically by delegates at conference that they wanted to see an emphasis on our spiritual development. So, it was something that was bubbling up anyway from multiple places. And I guess something else that’s been an encouragement is that our global prayer coordinator and our global spiritual formation coordinator developed little communities of practice. So, people from different parts of the organization come together like 10 times a year. I think it’s monthly, but they take a month off in December and June. And that’s a great encouragement to people who otherwise feel that they’re very much alone.

Jo Johnson: So were these communities of practice times to “strategise” about spiritual life, or were they more retreat-type meetings that were for the spiritual formation or edification of the participants?

Steve Quakenbush: Right. Well, Rosalyn’s formation community of practice has a kind of rhythm of types of meetings that she likes to do, and some are more professional development-oriented and some are more personal refreshment-oriented. Some of them are sharing our practices that we do in different parts of the world to give ideas to others, and some are bringing in presenters from outside on special topics. The prayer community of practice always had a devotional part of it and a real prayer time part of it, I think that’s fair to say. But the difference—a development, a recent development—is that first it was for everybody who had a prayer coordinator assignment, and that was great, but now it’s more explicitly for anybody who wants to come and pray or anybody who wants to learn about prayer. And I think that’s a good place to be right now for us.

Hannes Wiesmann: So back to the question whether you have seen any changes within the SIL global culture that you tie back to this higher priority of spiritual life?

Steve Quakenbush: I think yes, that gradually we are able to lead in a way that is more God-focused, shall we say? I think it is more natural and less surprising if somebody says, “Well, let’s just stop and pray about that.” I mean, I think that’s one little indicator. Another thing God has used recently is the book Lead with Prayer, and it’s amazing how he’s done that. I got the book and it’s right here just as soon as it came out, and I told Kate, and Kate told or discovered Michel was reading it there. So there were just people finding this book, and Kate encouraged me to develop something that would promote the book in the organization.

And so we had—I’ve led four different six-week learning group sessions, a learning group series on this book. You might call it a book discussion club, but I didn’t want to call it that; I wanted it to be more than that. And so, I’ve been able to do that several times. And those have blessed me and blessed the people who have participated to integrate prayer, because this book is not just about how to pray, it’s about a walk with the Lord, it’s about a journey with him. So, that’s another maybe just little evidence of what’s going on and how God is moving among us, and it’s a great encouragement to me now. So I just finished the last one the week before I finished up with SIL, and there was a young Indonesian woman who said, “Yes, I’d be willing to train to do this kind of facilitation and maybe we’ll even do it in Indonesian.” So I mean that’s really exciting.

Jo Johnson: Very cool. Yeah. So looking back on these past few years that we’ve been focusing on, what surprised you the most about what happens when an organization more seriously seeks to become more like Christ?

Steve Quakenbush: I think it was people’s receptivity to it that surprised me, because we expected a lot of pushback for some reason. But like I said, at that Americas Area meeting where I was, there was such openness to it. It was like, “Oh, we’ve gone too long without paying attention to this.” So that was a very happy surprise. And I don’t think I’ve had any terrible shocks.

Hannes Wiesmann: I don’t know for you, Jo, but it reminds me of the experience we had at Global Gathering (2024). Just what you also mentioned, Steve, we had also morning—well, actually only a morning prayer that we did together, but we had a big, big group coming. Do you remember how many?

Jo Johnson: We had at least one or two mornings a third of the participants showed up for prayer at 7:00 in the morning, which was…

Hannes Wiesmann: Yeah, and to me that…

Steve Quakenbush: We encountered God, didn’t we? So…

Jo Johnson: It set the tone for the whole gathering, because here we were just acknowledging to each other and to God how dependent we are on God’s blessing for the next 12 hours to be good.

Hannes Wiesmann: And probably same as you, Steve, we were a bit surprised at the positive reception.

Jo Johnson: We had to go to a bigger room!

Steve Quakenbush: I love that. The other thing, maybe that’s more common now, is that there will be—well, for ages past when we had branch conferences, we would have a spiritual emphasis component. But I think those kinds of things show up more in other work-related meetings that we have now. So like the international language assessment conference, you wouldn’t think that would be a place to go on a spiritual retreat, but they host one beforehand. And so we make use of other opportunities when we gather to offer—I think we do that more than we used to.

Jo Johnson: So for opportunities like that, who then organizes those? Would that be just the same people who organize whatever event it is, or would they bring in, in quotes, “the specialists” who do that?

Steve Quakenbush: Yeah, like in that case of the language assessment conference, John Edmiston asked the spiritual life team if we could do that, and of course we were very happy to do that. He also asked a team, an organization called Refresh and Resound, to do the music for the opening times of the conference, and they also provide some counseling and prayer ministry. So, it’s a mix of whether we do it from in-house and who we invite from outside. It’s wonderful to have local musicians come in to help lead worship and that kind of thing.

Hannes Wiesmann: Back to the SIL journey with that, did you also experience that you had to toss out stuff that were part of SIL practices in the past, but because of this new dynamics development priority, and you realized there are things that no longer serve us or we no longer need them?

Steve Quakenbush: I think it was more that we had to build in time in agendas for this sort of thing. And it’s often a matter of simplifying and less is more. And when we plan times for encountering God together, those are generally pretty simple times too—not filled with a bunch of content, but we try to make those spacious for people to experience stillness and quiet. You know, there’s something beautifully bonding about people being silent together. It can be uncomfortable, but it can also be beautiful to just know, I mean, here we sit in this room in the presence of God and we are together. There’s something wonderful about that.

Hannes Wiesmann: Yeah. I imagine that in the early days of this, people expected something different. I used to be a member of SIL working in Burkina. So we had our branch conferences with spiritual retreat, which was basically a speaker coming and preaching to us, and it was often very good and inspiring. But now I prefer what you just described. So the expectation, I’m assuming, was a different one. And also culture-wise, I’m just preparing something that hasn’t to do anything with spiritual life, but it’s for Eastern European alliance organizations and we were told they expect us to just lecture on whatever the topic, and we say we want to explore stuff together because we believe it’s way more, you know, transformative and it sticks better with people and all that. But how did you manage the expectations, especially in the early days of this?

Steve Quakenbush: Well, let’s say, take that Americas Area thing that I keep referring to, because I was personally involved in that. We did have the Bible study times that people would expect, maybe. I don’t think we had any preaching. But we did have gathering around the word in table groups and sharing from that, and I think that was a good foundation and filled a real need for content. And we also had the morning prayer and evening prayer, which is kind of a new thing. Even calling it that was different—it was more of a worship, monastic kind of thing to call it than morning devotions.

And so we’ve also had an event that we offered—we opened up to people how to have nourishing, more devotional times, just to share ideas about that, what could be done. And that was well attended. There was a lot of interest in that actually—how can we do something that’s really more nourishing than our typical morning office devotionals.

And I think about SIL Australia, again, where Roz Manson is, as an example. And that’s because Graham Scott, the school director/principal, wanted more of a spiritual environment for that community. And they have what they call “God focus”, so they didn’t call it morning devotions, and Roz does all sorts of creative things in there. And she says that has been a journey in what people expect and can respond comfortably to.

Jo Johnson: So was it a matter of you started with small things and built up over time?

Steve Quakenbush: Yeah, yeah, I think very much so. Also the team has grown; the team is stronger now than it was numerically, and I think personally to a person. And I think part of that has been because of suffering that team members have endured.

Jo Johnson: Can you tell a bit more on that, about that, not breaching confidentiality?

Steve Quakenbush: Yeah, just personal circumstances that involve either personal pain or the health of loved ones. And also Mary Pierce was part of our group. You know, she went to be with the Lord recently, and we were with her through that, and her journey of faith is unforgettable—the example she gave to us. And so at one point we said, “You know, it’s like we’re all under attack. We need to have prayer for us as a team because to a person there’s something really significantly difficult going on in that person’s life.” But I guess as we trust God in those situations, he strengthens us and refines us and uses us.

Hannes Wiesmann: I was just sharing with Jo about something I heard about a new leader in Wycliffe who shared that he had a difficult moment in life, and when he introduced himself—he was unknown to Wycliffe basically—he was willing to be vulnerable enough to share that in this difficult time he screamed and cried and lamented to God. And I sat there and said, “This is a good person. This is a man who went through difficult times in honest ways and can talk about it.” So the crucibles of hardship have a way of forming us in ways that nothing else can in a way.

Steve Quakenbush: Yeah. And as a spiritual life team, too, I believe we have been there for each other in those times too. And I thank God for that. Another thing that happened during COVID was we had an online lament session, and who ever heard of that? Before we did that, people haven’t talked about lament so much.

Jo Johnson: The Summer Institute of Lament!

Steve Quakenbush: Yeah! To recognize that, to allow space for that. That was something new.

Jo Johnson: So bearing in mind the difference between SIL and the Alliance, there are many differences obviously, but one of the differences is that the Alliance is an alliance of over a hundred organizations, and each of those organizations is self-governing rather than SIL being one big organization—and I know that’s changing and that’s a broad generalization—but from our point of view, we are looking to encourage this in lots of individual organizations. What are some simple ways that people can start to develop this kind of culture within their own organization?

Steve Quakenbush: Yeah. First, I have to just think it’s amazing that you’re asking me this question. I think modeling is a huge thing, and giving people tastes of it when you have that opportunity, and then I find that people will ask for more of it: “Oh, can you do this for my group?” So that’s one of those organic things, right, that we don’t make it a bylaw or something—modeling. And I have to think about this book Lead with Prayer and about that story of Melinda Lyons and the five women praying in 2014, that God moves through prayer. So praying, seeking God for this kind of renewal, shall we say, among our friends and fellow organizations—that’s got to be in there pretty central, right? Communication would be another thing. Ann (Kuy) because of her communications background, has just started the spiritual life newsletter, which I never did. And so that’s just a way of raising awareness, letting people know, encouraging people. So I guess a way of sharing, a way of modeling, and a way of praying would be pretty key.

Jo Johnson: Thank you. I find it really interesting that all of those are just an invitation to participate rather than “this is what we’re going to do now.”

Steve Quakenbush: Yeah. You know what I love about Jesus is that he says “Come to me” and that he says “Come and see” and he said “Come and have breakfast.” I can get on board with that!

Jo Johnson: Yeah, I love that.

Steve Quakenbush: Of course, there’s aspects of our spiritual lives where we’re supposed to be in training and we’re supposed to, what, strive and hold on, reach out, take hold of Christ for what he took hold of me. I mean, there’s some muscle involved too in all this. In Lead with Prayer, it talks about developing our “no” muscle and developing our muscle of being able to be quiet, developing that like developing a muscle. So there’s some training involved, but at the heart, it’s that invitation—it’s that “Come to me.”

Hannes Wiesmann: I’d like to circle back to this approach to the spiritual life that your team apparently models, which seems to be very much aligned with what I find helpful personally. How did SIL arrive to choose from all the many options how to invest in spiritual formation and spiritual life? How did you land on this particular—you used the term “monastic”, maybe also contemplative, meditative silence—why particularly this one, which isn’t our tradition?

Steve Quakenbush: I think again it was a hunger maybe within ourselves. Michel’s encouragement that it be organic and not programmatic, I think helped. And I think it’s just so much what we need for people who are so action-oriented, so impact-driven—that we don’t need so much another way to plan strategically, but we need to nourish our souls. And once we get a taste of what that is in silence and solitude, but also being with one another, I think once we get a taste of that, we want more of it. There’s—I think it’s in the Lead with Prayer book, we’re talking about taking personal retreats and the author says none of the leaders who took a personal retreat ever needed any convincing after the first time, that that was a good practice for them to maintain. Introducing, kind of balancing out our spiritual lives—a full-orbed spiritual life involves all those things. Yeah.

I mean, Jesus—the rhythms that he kept of going into solitude and being with people, of work and rest—I mean, why would we not want to follow his example? Why do we think we don’t need—do I think we’ve focused more perhaps on the contemplative side of things because that’s where many of us are weaker? But it’s just so good.

I did want to say thank you. Thank you for inviting me to talk today. It’s also good for me to be able to look back and to see what I can learn from what God has been doing and what I got to be part of. It’s a gift you’ve given me today, too. Thank you.

Jo Johnson / Hannes Wiesmann: Thank you.

Jim Killam: Thanks again to Steve Quakenbush and to SIL. The book that Steve mentioned, by the way, is called Lead with Prayer: The Spiritual Habits of World-Changing Leaders. It’s by Ryan Skoog, Peter Greer, and Cameron Doolittle. And you’ll find a link to that book in the show notes. In the Company of Travelers is a podcast of the Wycliffe Global Alliance. For much more from the Alliance, including podcasts, videos, stories, resources, and lots of general information, please visit wycliffe.net. See you next time.

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