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Generational Faithfulness

By Rev. Greg Yee, PacNWC Superintendent

I am deeply grateful for our two northern-most churches – Lettered Streets and Bellingham Covenant – for hosting our Ministerial Association and conference annual meetings this year.  These churches wonderfully reflect who we are at our best as “Mission Friends.”  Their passion and creativity in living out the whole work of the Church have been exemplary. 

     There is a groundedness here. Bellingham Covenant, our eighth-oldest church founded in 1905, is still open. Lettered Streets Covenant is a church plant which joined in 2012.  That frames our mission-fueled immigrant history.  We inherit this foundation, and today, in our 135th Annual Meeting, we continue in that same flow.  We call it our Annual Celebration because we gather to celebrate God’s faithfulness and goodness across generations.  

     This is our theme this year: “Generation to Generation.” We are remembering what has been passed down to us, and recommitting to what God entrusts to us today.

Our vision and present reality

    God continues to shape our conference with the vision to be a mosaic of churches working interdependently together to transform lives and communities. Among our 69 churches, 30.4 percent are multiethnic, including nine that reach Chinese, Korean, Nepali and Spanish-speaking communities.  Geographically, we have two churches in Montana, one in Idaho, 16 in Oregon and 50 in Washington, nine of which are east of the Cascades.  From Bellingham to Eugene, and from Cannon Beach to Helena, we make up today’s beautifully diverse generation of Pacific Northwest Mission Friends.  

     As I reflect on this past year, let us first reaffirm these anchor truths.  We worship a Creator who promises “to never leave us or forsake us.”  Our faith is in our Savior Jesus Christ, who is building his Church — we are his bride, the ones he chose to die for.  And we are filled with Holy Spirit power, who turns on the high beams and fog-lights our paths and gives us everything we need for the journey ahead.

     These truths have kept us steady through a challenging season. Many churches continue to navigate the realities of ministry four years after the global pandemic. Some face critical questions about viability.  This past political cycle tested and continues to challenge our Christian character and identity.  The pool of available pastors has shrunk with searches often taking longer. Rising costs both in staffing and in cost of living in most of our region remains burdensome. 

     Among the challenges there was an increase in prayer and testimonies of God’s provision.  Leaders and churches leaned in.  

Signs of growth and milestones

     Along the challenges, we also witnessed exciting movements and milestones this year.  Our five church plants have completed their funding cycle and are now self-sustaining.  Garden City in Tacoma and Cedarcreek in Maple Valley moved into new buildings, while Selah Covenant finished paying off its mortgage.  Almost half of our churches applied for the Employee Retention Credit, collectively qualifying for $2.5 million. 

     Pastor David Greenidge at Tigard Covenant celebrated 20 years of service, as did Pastor Ted Yuen at McMinnville Covenant, which celebrated its 50-year anniversary. Bellingham, Encounter on Mercer Island and Federal Way Calvary are exploring building plans due to growth.  Praise Covenant in Tacoma and Faith Covenant in Sumner are starting new schools. All of us found creative and meaningful ways to reach our neighbors like Crossroads (Yelm), which built a new baseball field and expanded its sports ministry this year.   Seattle Chinese Covenant continued its “Fire Conference” revival in partnership with the Covenant Church of Taiwan.  MUD/Thunder/Unite reached hundreds of youth, inviting them into deeper walks with the Lord. Across the conference, scores of youth were confirmed and people baptized, including 23 at Columbia Grove Covenant and 32 at Countryside Covenant.  

     God continues to invite us into His presence and His work.  He never promised it would be easy, but He does continue to ask us to join him in making all things new. I invite you to read more good news items in all the following reports.

Challenges and invitations

     The annual report is more than a collection of numbers and highlights.  It is more precisely a historic document for us. It gives us a snapshot of our collective life and ministry together. As you read the different sections, the Executive Board, conference staff and contractors and Ministerium invite you to join us in thanking God for His faithfulness.  We hope it inspires you to ongoing commitment to our shared life and ministry.  We trust it prods you to keep praying.   

     Within this historical snap shot, I want to offer four challenges. 

THE FIRST CHALLENGE is to renew our commitment to discipleship. You’ve heard me camp on this for over a year now. This has been the primary work of the Church since Jesus rose from the dead.  We need to constantly take time to see how we are approaching this core work.  This past year, we significantly invested in this effort, thanks to two very generous individual gifts that allowed us to contract with Rev. Nancy Sugikawa last year and through 2025.  She and Associate Superintendent Dawn Taloyo gathered a team to develop a discipleship pathway that can be applied to any church despite its size, location, language or age.   We are eager to share it with you. My challenge is to set deliberate time to learn the pathway, and to do a thorough evaluation of where your church is.   

THE SECOND CHALLENGE is to strengthen our culture of generosity that has always been a hallmark of this conference. Over the years, along with your faithful shared mission giving to the conference, we have also had very generous individual donors that helped move forward church planting, our youth programs, IGNITE scholarships and to help our exhausted ministers and their families get away to Cascades Camp during the pandemic.  Some gifts have been large, while others — such as June Barker’s $20 monthly gifts before she joined the great cloud of witnesses this past summer — remind us that faithfulness is never measured in dollar amounts but in our collective “in it together” heart set. As a Conference, we’ve also used the proceeds of closed churches to expand our Spanish-language ministries, help plant new churches (including one in the Southeast Conference), and help kickstart the new Middle East North Africa mission region.  This past year, we tithed from the sale of the St. John’s property in Portland to bless the Alaska Conference.  Even in a season of contraction, God continues to amaze us with His provisions and all that He entrusts to us. 

     I encourage every church to continue growing in your mission giving to the conference and denomination.  I loved hearing from Pastor Michael Lee from Encounter about their commitment as a new member church to start their relationship with the full tithe: 3.5 percent to the conference and 6.5 percent to the ECC.  After expressing my deep gratitude for his leadership, he quickly replied, “I believe in who we are and what we’re doing!”  Amen!

     I also recently learned from Pastor Austin Bailey at Pine Lake Covenant in Sammamish that they actually codified their tithe to the denomination into their Bylaws.  Lettered Streets has never veered from the old 10 percent/5 percent mission giving.  And on top of their 5 percent to the conference, they also tithed from their Employee Retention Credit.  Shoreline did as well.  Thank you for your generous and faithful giving over the years!  For churches that are not yet giving a full tithe, the challenge is to increase giving by at least half a percent this year and to begin percentage giving if you have not yet done so.  Let’s continue to lean into our “three-strand-strong” partnership: Denomination, Conference and Church. 

THE THIRD CHALLENGE is to remain steadfast in our focus on the Biblical Jesus in these divisive times.  This past year tempted us to be discipled more by newsfeeds and politicians than Christ himself.  Let us be a people whose affections for the Kingdom outweigh our affections for country.   Let us not seek political power, but instead, the power of the Holy Spirit, who led Jesus not to conquest, but to sacrificial servanthood.  Philippians 2:5 exhorts us to have this mindset as Jesus, one of humility and obedience.  Friends, I urge us to be continual learners clothed in humility while displaying all of the characteristics of the Fruit of the Spirit in these days.  The enemy is dead-set on attempting to deceive, divide and destroy us.  Let’s repel against that.  May our surrender to Christ and our love for our neighbors be the very things that spark revival among us. 

     Lastly, this year marks the end of my third, four-year term as your superintendent.  I am deeply grateful for the honor it has been to serve you.  I am grateful for all who partnered with me on the conference staff team over these years, our ministerium and for each of you that make up this chapter.  There will be a report during our annual meeting about the superintendent renomination process that leads us to a re-election vote.  I feel the weight and responsibility of a possible fourth term.  It’s partly the personal stage of life/ministry I am in as a 58-year-old.  It’s also the state of the church in America and our reflection of that. 

     But my conviction is firm.  In God’s sovereignty, He has you and I here in this place at this time.  That’s not random nor a mistake.   He calls us to our communities and asks us to give up our lives.   Let’s do that together.  Let’s be radical in our surrender and be open to where God will take us.  And with that I return back to where we started.   What remains true from generation to generation is that the Creator of the universe promises “to never leave us or forsake us.”  Jesus promises to build His church.  And the Holy Spirt gives us power and all we need for the journey and the mission he calls us to. 

     God – Father, Son, and Spirit – has us.  My challenge to myself and to you is to not hold anything back from your worship of our great God. Let’s follow him together.  

     Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!  Amen.

     – Ephesians 3:20-21