By Greg Yee, Superintendent, PacNWC
As the final annual meeting delegates and Harbor Cov staff departed, the conference staff sat outside the church in the warm sunlight, finishing our box lunches. We all reflected on the blessing of our annual meeting experience. We had so many highlights: being in person after three years and interacting with so many of you, the incredible hospitality of Harbor Cov, worshipping and praying together Friday night, and the diversity of anointed voices that led us and successfully pulling off our first hybrid meeting,
If you missed it or would like to look back, you can access all the resources and the Friday night and annual meeting recordings here.
As we continued to soak in the warmth of the sun, we did what we always do. We dived into a +/∆ (plus/delta-strengths/changes) time immediately so our memories and feelings were fresh. We took copious notes and are already thinking of not only what could be improved, but how things could potentially be different.
As I drove across the Narrows Bridge, my mind continued to reflect. I started to think of more radical ideas, seemingly impossible ideas. But then I kept stopping
“Something needs to change, but it seems that … is impossible to change…”
“We can’t break tradition…”
“How on earth could we even pull that off…”
At the beginning of Peter Sung’s Friday workshop “The Post Church Church” (recording posting soon) he shared this picture of poppies growing in the middle of a scorched forest and read this quote from the Sierra Club:
“During wildfires, the nutrients from dead trees are returned to the soil. The forest floor is exposed to more sunlight, allowing seedlings released by the fire to sprout and grow. Many trees have evolved fire-resistant bark, like ponderosa pine or eucalyptus; others, like the giant sequoia or lodgepole pine in Yellowstone National Park, require fire to open their waxy cones and release seeds. Fire also acts as a natural disinfectant, incinerating diseased plants and removing them from the flora population. After fires, the charred remnants of burned trees provide habitats for insects and small wildlife. In a moist post-fire climate, native plants will thrive. Sometimes, post-wildfire landscapes will explode into thousands of flowers, in the striking phenomenon known as a superbloom.”
“One of the beautiful things about California fires is spending time in those areas as soon as you start getting rains,” Dr. Stevens-Rumann says. “There’s an abundance of beautiful flowers and vegetation that you only see after fire years.”
Some of my own thoughts as Peter shared: What are we doing personally and collectively that needs to be burned back? How do we more purely and wholly surrender ourselves to Christ and be the church?
As we continue to experience this massive forest fire that was these past 2+ years, do we know the living waters of God’s rain that leads to a superbloom in our hearts and in our churches?
I read Psalm 26:2 both individually as David wrote it and collectively as Israel sang it:
Put me on trial Lord, and cross-examine me. Test my motives and my heart. (NLT)
I love The Message’s version:
Examine me, God, from head to foot, order your battery of tests. Make sure I’m fit inside and out.
Put us on trial, evaluate us, God. Test our motives and hearts. Make sure we’re fit inside and out.
God’s truth about evaluation is reflected in the business world as well. Peter Drucker says, “Unless strategy evaluation is performed seriously and systematically, and unless strategists are willing to act on the results, energy will be used up defending yesterday.” Unless evaluation is natural and normal we’ll age-in-place.
Okay, maybe change doesn’t look like this! But what does need to change? The opportunities for kingdom impact are incredibly abundant. The global church is rapidly growing unlike any other time in history. The harvest fields are ripe. We are fueled by Holy Spirit octane power. Jesus himself sends us out. And he stands at the shore and looks at each of us in our eyes and asks us to drop EVERYTHING in order to follow him.
So how are you/we doing?
As we walk through these days of reconstruction, I realize there’s so much that we just don’t know. As I sit in my post-meeting thoughts. two things are clear. First, God continues to call us to total surrender and that following him will not always be easy or comfortable. Second, I know that honest, probing evaluation is desperately needed.
So like the staff and I experienced after the annual meeting, my hope is that you too can sit outside the church, share a meal, experience togetherness and gratefulness, soak in God’s sunshine/sunshine, and find your own rhythms of doing your own +/∆.
Praying for a superbloom.