Missionary. Founder. Your Personal Travel Advisor.
Your ministry travel advisor: why experience matters
Choosing the right ministry travel advisor makes all the difference between a vacation that leaves you more exhausted than when you started, and one that genuinely restores you. I am not a travel agent who happens to work with churches. I am a support-based missionary who became a credentialed travel advisor because I kept watching ministry leaders try to plan rest with nobody in the industry who understood what they were actually carrying.
As an Independent Affiliate of Outside Agents — one of the largest host travel agencies in the United States — I have preferred pricing with the cruise lines and resorts, professional booking systems and industry relationships that an individual traveler cannot reach alone. But the credentials are not what sets this apart. It is the perspective. I have lived fundraising support, serving overseas, and trying to be present for my family while carrying the weight of ministry. When I plan your trip I am not processing a transaction. I am investing in how long you last.
Rest is part of the calling too
A practical guide to planning time away that actually restores you: where to go, what it costs, and how to come back different.
Ministry Vacations is not a travel agency that decided to target pastors.
I built it after watching, from the inside, what sustained and unrelieved ministry does to the people who have given their lives to it — and deciding to do something about it.
If you are a pastor, a church staff member, a missionary, or a ministry leader of any kind, this is built specifically for you. Not as a marketing niche. As a mission…
I have spent nearly thirty years as a support-based missionary — raising my own financial support year after year, serving among unreached people groups in some of the most demanding environments imaginable, and doing all of it while raising a family on the field.
My wife and I served fourteen years in Oaxaca, Mexico, where all three of our children were born. For the past sixteen years I have been serving among refugees in Clarkston, Georgia — one of the most ethnically diverse square miles in America — through Global Frontier Missions, the organization I founded. It is work I am still doing today.
So I know what it costs. The weight of raising support, the exhaustion of serving people whose needs never stop, twenty years without a sabbatical, and the quiet guilt of trying to justify a real break. I know what it is to come home on furlough and then need a vacation from your vacation. I have felt every one of those personally, and that is exactly why Ministry Vacations exists.
I have not left the field to sell holidays. Global Frontier Missions is still my work, and this is an extension of it rather than a departure from it — a Business as Mission venture. It funds ministry twice over: once through the Gratitude Giving Program, which sends a share of every commission to the church or missionary you name, and once by supporting my own support-raised ministry, so nobody is funding a middleman. Booking a trip through me is not a transaction with a charity bolted onto it. The business is the mission.
Passionate about serving ministry leaders
I can assist in planning transformative journeys, ensuring ministry leaders can find renewal and purpose in travel designed specifically for their mission-driven lives.
Why Ministry Vacations exists
The research is sobering. A 2025 Barna Group study found that 24 percent of pastors seriously considered leaving full-time ministry in the past year. The Fuller Institute estimates that over 1,500 pastors leave ministry every month due to burnout. And 85 percent of pastors have never taken a sabbatical — the single most preventable cause of long-term ministry collapse.
I started Ministry Vacations because someone needed to make it easy, affordable and guilt-free for ministry leaders to take the rest they badly need.
What I plan
Ministry Vacations handles sabbatical journeys, mission trip travel, family vacations, anniversary and couples retreats, cruise packages, missionary furlough travel, church staff retreats, denominational conference logistics, and Holy Land and biblical heritage tours.
Every booking gets my personal attention — no automated systems, no call centers, and no one who does not know your name. I work hard to find the best available pricing through my preferred relationships with the cruise lines and resorts, and I am always transparent about costs. There are no hidden fees and no pressure.
The Gratitude Giving Program
Pastors and missionaries: there is a second half to this — what happens when your congregation or your supporters book, which is where one gift becomes thirty.
Here is what makes Ministry Vacations different from every other travel agency you could book through.
On every completed trip, I give 5% of your booking back to your church, your missions organization, a non-profit of your choosing, or a missionary you support — as a genuine appreciation for trusting me with your travel. Just let me know the ministry and I will send a donation so that we both get the joy of giving to that cause!
Because if your travel booking can also bless your church or send resources to the mission field — it should. Find out exactly how the Gratitude Giving Program works, who qualifies as a recipient, and how much I give back based on your booking.
You have earned your rest
Christians need a good theology of work, but it is equally important to have a good theology of rest.
Jesus did not say rest was for people who had finished their work. He offered it to people in the middle of it — to the weary, the burdened, the ones still showing up. That is you. And you do not have to earn it.
Ministry Vacations exists to help you take it — with no guilt, no stress, and no detail left unhandled. I will personally take care of every piece of your trip so that when you arrive at your destination, your only job is to breathe.
There is no obligation or pressure. Just a real conversation with someone who understands your world and wants to help you rest well so you can serve and advance the kingdom for the long haul.
Thirty Years on the Mission Field
Having to raise my own financial support for thirty years, combined with all of the stress of being on the mission field serving among unreached people groups, has made me passionate about people in ministry relaxing and getting refueled so that they can continue pouring themselves out for others. You cannot give what you do not have. Rest is not a luxury — it is how you stay in the game.
What you can expect when you work with Grant
- A real conversation, not a sales pitch — I take the time to understand your needs, your budget, and your season of life
- Direct access to me on every trip — no call centers, no automated systems
- Transparent pricing with no hidden fees
- Specialty expertise in sabbatical planning, group mission trip travel, family vacations, river cruises, Alaska and Hawaii getaways, and Holy Land tours
- A Gratitude Gift donated to your church or missions organization with every completed trip
There is a verse I have returned to over and over across thirty years of ministry — one that shaped the theology behind this entire agency.
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened,
and I will give you rest...
