The Things We Leave Behind: A Journey from Fields to Faith
Brett Hicks learned about responsibility at 6 years old, when his father disappeared for 30 to 35 days at a time to work the oil rigs off Norway and Trinidad. The cows still had to be fed. The chores still had to be done. Whether his father was there or not.
"As a mantra that I still say, the cows gotta get fed," Hicks says, sitting in his office at the Brenham Church of Christ in Texas. "From an early age, six, seven years old, it was me and my older brother. I had two older sisters and my mom; cows had to get fed, chores had to get done. And whether dad was there or not, the work and the labor fell on me and my brother. I found a passion for it."
That passion would carry Hicks through 11 years of farming poultry for Sanderson Farms, building a real estate business that specialized in agricultural properties, and serving part-time in ministry. Then, in 2024, a business partnership dissolved and forced him to make a decision that most people never have the clarity or courage to make: walk away from everything he'd built to pursue ministry full-
The Making of a Farmer
Growing up in South Mississippi, Hicks witnessed a truth that every agricultural family understands but rarely discusses. Making a living solely from cattle is nearly impossible.
"Anybody in farming understands this," he says. "Starting or having a cattle ranch and making a living off of that to sustain a family alone is very difficult. Everybody in our area that was a, and I'm gonna use quotations, a successful cattle farmer had income coming from somewhere else."
After college, where he played punter for the University of Southern Mississippi, Hicks tried teaching and coaching. He hated it. Poultry offered a solution. The industry was thriving in South Mississippi, providing consistent monthly income that cattle couldn't match. So he made an impulse decision that would define the next decade of his life.
"I called Haley, who was my fiancé at the time, and was like, 'Hey, I really want to get out of teaching and coaching. I really want to get into farming,'" Hicks recalls. "And luckily, because of our parents, my dad and my mom, they were able to back us a little bit to help us with the collateral to buy the farm."
It was, he admits now, a lesson in why you shouldn't make quick moves. "Buying a poultry farm is not a good impulse buy."
The Weight of Multiple Lives
For 11 years, Hicks carried the weight of three demanding identities: farmer, real estate entrepreneur, and youth minister. It was a juggling act that would have broken most people, but agriculture had taught him something invaluable about compartmentalization.
"Farming really taught me compartmentalization of, hey, you've got tasks that have to get taken care of, or animals die," he says. "No matter what's going on in your personal life, you've gotta take care of this at the same time."
The lesson manifested in ways that still make him wince. During one Easter weekend, he was scheduled to take 22 kids to a youth conference in Nashville. On Monday, he got a call: chickens were arriving Thursday morning. He had to choose between his ministry responsibilities and his farming obligations. The chickens won.
"I had to pivot and call the church. Luckily, we had some men step up. My wife left without me with all these kids. I got chickens that day and had to raise them through Easter weekend," he says. "There are no holidays in the farming business. You just do what you do."
What kept all three lives from collapsing under their own weight? "God and a strong spouse," Hicks says without hesitation. "And I hate to say a lack of care of failure, but going back to as a child, when you have to shoulder the weight of things early on, I guess you grow stronger to where in life that weight wasn't nearly as heavy as it probably seemed to others."
Most people in agriculture know what it means to work hard. Fewer know what it means to walk away from something they built — not because it failed, but because something else was calling louder. Brett Hicks spent 11 years farming, building a real estate business, and serving in ministry at the same time. Then he made a decision that most people never have the clarity — or the courage — to make.
The Art of Incremental Change
Hicks recently ran a half marathon through Washington County, Texas. He never trained for 13.1 miles. He started by running one mile every day for 10 days, then gradually increased the distance by a quarter-mile at a time. The progression looked slow, but it built stamina, muscle, and mental fortitude.
"If I would've gone out day one and gone, I'm gonna see if I can run 13 miles, I would've quit or broken," he says. "And that's where I go to life. I don't think life is much different than incremental training for working out, for events, for anything. You can't be a thousand-acre farmer until you start with acre number one."
That philosophy guided him through college football at Southern Miss, where he learned perhaps the most important lesson of his life from coach Larry Fedora: "Your mind will quit before your body does." It was a revelation that would serve him well in agriculture, where mental toughness often matters more than physical strength.
"You could have the biggest ego in the world and the best plan. And I promise it'll get flattened in agriculture, that's for sure," he says.
The Divine Disruption
The end came suddenly in 2024. Hicks and his real estate partners had a falling out, leaving him with a choice: rebuild or redirect. Most people would have seen it as failure. Hicks saw opportunity.
"I had the opportunity for a clean slate to do whatever I wanted in life as my next career," he says. "And instead of looking at that and going, crap, I've gotta start over, it was more of a, I get to start over. I don't know why my mind went there. My mind didn't go to what I had lost. It looked at what I have the opportunity to do now."
When he called his wife to tell her what happened, her response changed everything. "She said, 'Hey, don't worry about it. We'll pray about it. It's gonna be all right.' And something about her going to the avenue of prayer and comfort of everything's gonna be okay made me go, you know what? I think this is something that I really have a passion for, which is ministry. I can make other people feel comfortable in life setbacks."
Within a week, he knew he wanted to pursue ministry full-time. The position in Brenham, a community deep in the Brazos River bottoms where agriculture still matters, felt like divine providence. He had bought cattle from the area years earlier, so the community wasn't entirely foreign.
"When we came here for the interview, we got 20 minutes down the road, and she was like, we're doing this," Hicks says. "And I was stoked."
Living on House Money
Now, at 40, Hicks serves a congregation that includes farmers, ranchers, and retirees who struggle with the same questions about purpose and fulfillment that drove him from agriculture to ministry. His advice to those still in the trenches comes from a place of hard-earned perspective.
"You are in the top 1% of this country of people that know how to work," he tells farmers. "Holidays, sickness, death in the family, those things come at you, and you still have a job to do. You're not normal, and I mean that in the most awesome, impactful way."
But he also offers something deeper: the freedom that comes from understanding that earthly success, while meaningful, isn't everything.
"I'm playing with house money," he says. "I'm here on Earth. I get to do these things. Worst case scenario, I lose, I'm still going to heaven. That's my outlook."
It's a perspective that allows him to see his departure from agriculture not as loss, but as transformation. Sometimes the greatest act of faith isn't holding on, but letting go.
