Alan Metzel’s version of vacation is turning his phone off. 

He spent the last week in the Kerrville, Texas countryside with family, alternating from reading to pickleball while his phone sat without service. Useless. Metzel stands refreshed before the congregation now awaiting his Father’s Day sermon. The vacation is over, but the phones still don’t work. This Chapel is too deep in the East Texas piney woods to get a signal. 

“When you take away the hamster wheel of chasing time, it’s amazing how an hour feels like 60 minutes,” Metzel says.

Metzel doesn’t chase time; he attacks it. He juggles two full-time professions that require overtime hours – the head coach of the state champion Gilmer Buckeyes and the pastor at Chapel in the Woods. Metzel is the first call for anyone in these two communities enduring a personal battle and needing advice or prayer. He maximizes every hour a day has to give and, when night falls, wishes it had more. 

“You’d have to search all across America to find anybody that’s come even remotely close to impacting the number of people that Alan Metzel has,” Tim Russell, his longtime friend and coaching peer, said.