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Following the Lead of the Holy Spirit

New initiatives, partnerships and exciting new growth taking place among our churches as we go boldly and in faith in a post-COVID world

By Rev. Greg Yee, PacNWC Superintendent

Our theme this year is Led by the Spirit.  Before the birth of the church, Jesus gave instructions through the Holy Spirit and told his followers to wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit that would come upon them with power.  They would be baptized with the Spirit and be sent out. Clearly, our last year of life and ministry together directly flows from these anointed streams. Two thousand years ago Jesus sent his disciples out exactly how he sends us out.  Like Barnabas and Saul in Acts 13, we were sent out by the Holy Spirit.  

This past year revealed among us a deepening faith against post-pandemic fear and anxiety.  There were greater explorations of new initiatives and partnerships.  Across our region, there was exciting growth: new visitors, community outreach, global partnerships, baptisms, changed lives…. This year gave evidence of how our 71 churches continued learning and experimenting with how to do ministry in this historical moment as our society – our mission field – continued to rapidly change.  We prayed and fasted. We’ve cried out to the Lord.  We sacrificed and gave ourselves over to God.  The Spirit continued to intercede for us with the intensity that scripture promises.  

Within the wider denomination, President Tammy Swanson-Draheim called us to a concerted focus on prayer.  I love what Charles Spurgeon says about prayer, “True prayer is neither a mere mental exercise nor a vocal performance. It is far deeper than that – it is a spiritual transaction with the Creator of Heaven and Earth.” Out of our awe and wonder of God’s presence comes our worship and direction.  We are powerless and mis-focused without it.  We called upon Creator as we continued to choose trust over fear and unity over division.  As our world grew more polarized, we fought to live into Jesus’ direct prayer for us, “I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message. I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one – as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me” (John 17:20-21).  This will be especially challenging in this election year.   

Organizationally and missionally, we launched into a reorg that helped us right-size our structures.  This also introduced new nomenclature and with that came new acronyms.  Our three new mission priorities are now Serve Clergy, Serve Locally, and Serve Globally.  Clergy and Globally will look very similar to our former Develop Leaders and Serve Globally.  The biggest change is the merging of Make and Deepen Disciples, Start and Strengthen Churches, and Love Mercy Do Justice into Serve Locally to bring greater coordination and collaboration among these key areas.  I’m sure we will get used to the new names quickly.  Yet I know many of us are still mistakenly saying “North Pacific Conference” or “NPC” even after we changed to the “Pacific Northwest Conference” or “PacNWC” almost ten years ago!  Onward!      

There were challenges as we sought to live into our pietistic roots and what it means to have and offer Freedom in Christ.  What does it mean to honor our shared commitments as churches and the vows taken by our credentialed pastors?  The use of the denomination’s and Covenant Ministerium’s annual meetings to contest our convictions has been disruptive.  For only the second time in our 138-year history, the Covenant Annual Meeting involuntarily removed a church due to being out of harmony with the Covenant’s theology and guidelines on marriage and sexuality.   This year in the conference, we had two churches voluntarily depart: Quest, Seattle, and St. Thomas, Salem.  That makes three churches in the last two years over similar differences.   

I, like those connected to these churches, carry the pain of these departures.  I feel the loss of history, relationships, and generational resources.  Alongside this heaviness, I am, however, grateful that these churches chose the voluntary route.  Historically and consistently, this has been what churches chose to do to preserve unity, honor the Covenant, and to live out convictions with integrity. 

A significant part of the gift of the Covenant is our ever-growing mosaic of churches.  We are reaching people in Chinese, Korean, Nepali, and Spanish-speaking contexts.  We have multiethnic churches led by African Americans, Asian Americans, and Caucasians.  We are reaching our growing ethnic and economic diversity in our communities.  I love that Faith Cov, Sumner, and Iglesia Esperanza Viva regularly worship and fellowship together and that Bethany, Creekside, Highland, and Grace Community have Spanish-speaking ministries and independent Covenant Latina churches.  What a joy to be at Cedarcreek and see lyrics during worship in English and Urdu.  I love being at Newport where they regularly have the scripture reading in English and another language from a member that speaks it.   

As you look at the conference and Covenant mosaic it is captivating as you gaze from afar.  This beautiful mosaic becomes more intricate and complex as you approach closer and are struck by the finer details.  Part of our life and ministry together is having a posture of life-long learning about each other’s stories.  In our prayers and passion for God’s kingdom to be established here in communities, we need to continue to allow our hearts to be moved by the effects of living in a racialized society.  We need to continue to be challenged to understand what biblical righteousness and justice means for us today.   

I commend all of you who stayed on the journey personally and the ways that you created learning spaces in your ministry contexts.  In our commitment to the whole mission of the church, let’s keep pressing into our shared vision for the conference to be a mosaic of churches working interdependently together to transform lives and communities.   I thank God for how he continues to lead us and empower us to do this.     

I look forward to you diving into this year’s annual report.  Through different leaders’ voices and in the images, I hope you will be encouraged and inspired.  I hope there will be an expanding sense of joy and gratitude that we are “in it together” as God continues to reveal more of his glory before us.   

Before you look at the other reports, let me get things started by sharing a few reflections and highlights within our three mission priorities: 

Supporting Pastors 

We have 162 active ministers serving in our 71 churches, other churches and in various institutions.  We celebrate three pastors who finalized their ordination this year: Kyle Harmon (Pine Lake, Sammamish, WA), Lynette Sanchez (Countryside, Sherwood, OR) and Rebecca Worl (Pine Lake, Sammamish, WA).  We especially celebrate Pastors Rebecca and Lynette’s recognition by the church as they are part of about 28% of our conference ministerium that are women.  We continue to have much work to do to nurture and unleash all called and gifted people.   

The pipeline of pastors has impactfully decreased over the past few years.  There has been a concerning low number of candidates available to offer pastoral search teams.  The reasons are multi-factorial including economics and how the church/pastorate is experienced/perceived in this cultural moment.  I also believe that one large factor is the local church’s lack of attention on discipleship, including leadership development.   

I am deeply grateful for our ministers and for the good leadership of our Ministerial Association.  Together we supported our pastors with retreat opportunities including a new partnership with Refreshed Soul.  We provided coaching, spiritual direction, counseling, cohorts, and crisis care.    

Starting Churches 

We continued to support our five church plants: Garden City (Tacoma, George Bedlion), Resurrection (Boise, Josh Cramer), Seattle Chinese Covenant (Bellevue, Ian Cheng), The Garden (Spokane, Phil Moore), and The Table (Seattle, Bob Do).    

This class of planters have been a wonderful bright spot in our shared ministry.  Many stories of concerted discipleship, reaching new people, investing in their communities, and changing lives.   Garden City just closed on their new building in a strategic location between Hilltop and Stadium Districts in Tacoma.   Resurrection works hard at discipleship including starting their own Journey to Mosaic-type experience in Boise.  Seattle Chinese hosted their annual Fire Conference with the help of 25 short-term missionaries from the Covenant church in Taiwan that came out in the fall to reach Chinese speakers in the greater Seattle area.  The Garden had powerful opportunities to work with parents and families with a concerted effort on children.  The Table successfully hosts open gyms twice a week as a fruitful front-door ministry for new people. The Lord continues to lead and work.  

Overall, we have two potential plants lined up for this next year.  One is coming out of Immanuel, Spokane’s church planter residency program.  We continue to look for other churches that might be open to doing something similar.  There are several conversations about expanding into Spanish-language ministries in our existing churches and/or planting new independent Latina churches.   

Strengthening Churches 

It was a slower year for lead pastor searches though many churches did hire staff pastors.  We welcome five new lead pastors Jacqui and Aaron Crumrine (Selah Cov), Brad Bergfalk (Bethany, Mount Vernon), David Arthur Johnson (Wiley Heights, Yakima), and Michael Hunter (Emerald City Bible Fellowship, Seattle).   

We saw more churches accessing the Covenant’s Missional Vitality resources such as “pH Check” and “Finding Your Why.’  These tools are created for churches at all stages of their development.  Please explore them and let us know how we can help.      

I’m excited that we just brought on Rev. Nancy Sugikawa for a one-year contract as our Discipleship Coach.  She will be working with pastors and churches on growing greater intentionality and clearer processes of discipleship.  We bring emphasis to this because this is our main call – to go and make disciples.  We’re excited to have Nancy’s gifts, experience, and passion for discipleship as a key resource this year.   

Our children and youth ministries continue to be one of the most exciting and fruitful things we do together.  We continue to invest heavily in it.   Thunder and MUD numbers were strong last year, and we are looking forward to Unite 2024 in San Diego this summer.   We hosted a retreat for Next Gen leaders and Emerge for young adults.  We helped support and network children and youth ministry leaders with monthly connections.   

God gave us the opportunity to restart Journey to Mosaic, our mobile, experiential racial righteousness experience.  We were encouraged by the momentum that came out of last year’s journey and are making plans for this coming year.  The Covenant also created Weaving Justice and Peace in a Wounded Land in Oregon which will have two offerings this coming year.  I also want to highlight us helping sponsor Radiant’s excellent work hosting their second annual Faith and Race Conference. 

We continue to work closely with the Camp and are overjoyed by this season of growth and expansion.  They saw strong numbers last year that translated to many testimonies of lives touched and changed for eternity.  They assembled and opened a brand-new adventure park largely from the generous gift received from the closing of Sunset Covenant (Portland) a few years ago.   God also provided an opportunity to purchase two adjacent properties that will immediately help with staff housing, increased income, and staving off potential over-development around Elbow Lake.  The conference was able to help with an interest-free loan to help with the down payment.  I am deeply grateful for Executive Director Rob Mohrweis and the incredibly gifted team there.    

We continued to expand and sharpen ways to keep you informed and connected to the wider conference and denomination.  Along our social media channels, we continued to grow The Catch and especially its companion The Catch of the Week with weekly interviews.   Please subscribe if you haven’t already.   

I want to thank the conference team: Cris Back, Erik Cave, Dawn Taloyo, and Peter Sung.  I know you experience each of them as an incredible gift.  They certainly are that to me.  They sharpen me.  They are such a joy to serve alongside.   I am also especially thankful to our executive board as they faithfully provided wisdom, good stewardship, and oversight.  They regularly pray for the conference on Zoom every Monday morning.  They too have been such a joy to work with.  I also thank God for all of you who served on denominational and conference commissions, boards, and associations.  We are better because of your faithful service.  Thank you for saying “yes!”  Lastly, thank you conference churches for your faithful and generous shared mission giving.  We continue to marvel at God’s provisions even with so many churches that have had financial challenges. God continues to provide all we need.   

As we celebrate 134 years of mission friendship, I love that we are at Milwaukie Covenant Church and at First Portland for the ministerium gathering.  First Portland is our oldest church, so we return back to our origins.  Milwaukie was an outgrowth of First Portland when seven families started meeting in a home in Milwaukie and named themselves the Milwaukie Prayer Fellowship.  They started with prayer!  The first committee they formed was the Committee on Outreach for Milwaukie. They wanted to go and make disciples!  How wonderful it is that we meet in these sacred spaces this year to celebrate all that God has done.   

“Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:28). 

God bless you conference family!