Our Story — Stonebreaker Ministries

Dan Phillips

Founder, Stonebreaker Ministries • Renton, WA

The Founder

A maintenance man.
A Navy veteran.
A divorced father.

Dan Phillips spent four years aboard the USS Constellation as an Operations Specialist in the United States Navy. He spent thirty years in facilities and maintenance — fixing buildings, managing systems, keeping things running. He knows how things are built, how they fail, and what it takes to restore them.

He also knows what it means to watch a marriage end. To stand in the wreckage of a life you built and wonder what comes next. To take your kids to city parks because parks are free and Goodwill because Goodwill is honest.

That combination — the man who fixes things and the man who has been broken — is exactly the qualification God chose for this assignment.

"Fix people like you fix things." That is what Dan heard in the winter of 1999. He has been building toward that ever since.

Where It Began — April 1999

The ministry was born in a parking lot.

"I couldn't afford anything.
So I took my kids to city parks
because they were free.
And to Goodwill
because Goodwill is honest."

In April 1999 Dan's marriage ended. He was a father with children who needed him — and almost no resources to show them. No budget for entertainment. No money for experiences. Just a man and his kids and whatever the city offered for free.

That season — the parks, the Goodwill runs, the discovery that presence matters more than provision — became the seed of everything Stonebreaker is. The ministry was not born in a conference room. It was born in the specific poverty of a divorced father who showed up anyway.

Every man who comes to Stonebreaker arrives carrying a version of that same story. Dan knows the address. He has already been there.

Starbucks Coffee Company
Clackamas Barnes • Store #00436
Clackamas, OR 97015

$3.10

December 12, 1999 • 5:47 PM

The Commissioning — December 12, 1999

He went looking for a date.
God sent a prophet.

Eight months after his divorce, Dan walked into the Barnes & Noble Starbucks at Clackamas Town Center in Oregon. He thought he was meeting a woman. He was wrong about that — but right to show up.

The woman sitting across from him that evening was not there as a date. She was there on assignment. What she spoke over Dan in that Starbucks — over two cookies and $3.10 — became the prophetic foundation of Stonebreaker Ministries.

He kept the receipt. Not as a memento. As evidence. As a document that says: this happened, at this address, at this time, on this date. The ministry began here.

Twenty-six years later that receipt is still in his possession. Some men keep trophies. Dan kept the receipt from the night God told him what he was supposed to build.

The Threefold Cord

"A threefold cord is not quickly broken."
Ecclesiastes 4:12

Stonebreaker's theology did not come from a seminary. It came from three generations of Phillips men who fixed things with their hands and never stopped showing up. This is the cord that formed the founder.

The First Cord

Lewis "Pooch" Phillips

Grandfather • Phillips Service Station, Zearing, Iowa

Grandpa Pooch ran Phillips Service in Zearing, Iowa — a Phillips 66 and Sinclair station where the phone number was simply "60." He fixed engines, kept books, knew every customer by name, and ran his operation with the kind of integrity that left artifacts behind: a screwdriver, an ashtray, a ledger.

Dan spent ages 3 through 10 at that station. He didn't know it then, but he was being formed. The theology of Stonebreaker — fix people like you fix things — began at those pumps in Iowa. This is the man himself. Those arms built things. Those hands fixed things. That posture shaped a grandson.

"The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest." What Pooch built was not wealth. It was character, transferred.

The Second Cord

Jerry Phillips

Father • Air Force Diesel Mechanic • Over-the-Road Trucker

Jerry Phillips served in the Air Force as a diesel mechanic. He went on to drive over-the-road — long hauls, early mornings, the solitary discipline of a man who shows up regardless of how far the road goes.

He was a man of few words and capable hands. He taught his son that fixing things is not just a trade. It is a posture. You assess the problem, you find the root, you do the work. That is the same posture Stonebreaker takes with every man who walks through the door.

Dan and Jerry at Mt. Rainier — the second and third cord, side by side.

The Third Cord

Dan Phillips

Founder • Navy Veteran • Maintenance Professional • Divorced Father

Thirty years in facilities and maintenance. Four years aboard the USS Constellation. A divorce that stripped everything down to the studs. A prophetic commissioning in a Starbucks. Twenty-five years of building in faith before a single cabin existed.

Dan is the third cord — the one in whom the lineage lands and the assignment becomes specific. Pooch fixed machines. Jerry fixed engines. Dan fixes men. Same discipline. Different material.

"For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." — Ephesians 2:10

The Artifacts

What Pooch left behind.

Grandma Hazel kept the books. Grandpa Pooch fixed the engines. These objects survived because the people who held them understood that ordinary things, handled with integrity, become sacred over time.

Artifact 01

The Screwdriver

Phillips Service • Zearing, Iowa • Phone 60. A promotional tool from a service station where the phone number was two digits. Still in the family.

Artifact 02

The Ashtray

Sinclair Power-X • Phillips Service • Zearing, Iowa • Phone 60. Glass. Promotional. Survived sixty years because someone knew it mattered.

Artifact 03

Grandma Hazel's Ledger

Garner's Daily Report Book — March to June 1970. Perpetual inventory for service stations. Handwritten entries, every day, no exceptions. This is the trust model for Stonebreaker's operations.

The Station — Zearing, Iowa

Phillips Service • The Actual Pumps

The real gas pumps at Zearing, Iowa. This is where Dan spent ages 3 through 10 watching his grandfather fix things and serve people. This is where the theology of Stonebreaker was first demonstrated — long before it had a name.

The Long Obedience

Twenty-five years
is not a delay.
It is a preparation.

Between the December 1999 commissioning and the Summer 2027 campus opening is twenty-five years. That is not a failure of momentum. It is the formation of a founder. Every year added something the ministry requires.

1999

The divorce. The Goodwill. The Starbucks. The vision lands on a man with nothing left to protect. That is the right condition for a commissioning.

2000s

Building in obscurity. Facilities work. Fatherhood. Faith. The vision stays alive without a platform or a plan.

2020s

The build phase begins. Documents, frameworks, curriculum, board, EIN. The structure starts to appear around the vision.

Apr 2026

EIN received — April 1, 2026. Stonebreaker Ministries becomes a legal nonprofit entity. The foundation is poured.

2027

Phase 1A opens. Four cabins. A lodge. Five stations. 88 acres. The first Foundation Weekend. The first man who drives in and says — this is exactly what I needed.

"You did not break. You sharpened." Twenty-five years of waiting is twenty-five years of edge. The man who opens those doors in 2027 will know exactly what is inside them — because he needed them himself.

What Is Coming — Summer 2027

The campus opens.
The door finally opens.

Streams of Life Retreat Center is being built on 88 acres in rural Washington State. Phase 1A launches Summer 2027 with four cabins, Trinity Lodge, and five stations — each one corresponding to a pillar of a man's restoration.

The Weaver's Loom monument will stand at the center of the campus — a physical representation of Ecclesiastes 4:12. The threefold cord made visible in stone and steel. Pooch, Jerry, and Dan — woven together, unbreakable.

Acres in rural Washington State

Cabins, Phase 1A

144

Foundation Weekend participants per year

2027

Phase 1A launch

Twenty-Five Years
in the Waiting.

A maintenance man.
A Navy veteran.
A divorced father.

The ministry was born in a parking lot.

He went looking for a date.
God sent a prophet.

"A threefold cord is not quickly broken."
Ecclesiastes 4:12