By Peter Sung, Conference Coach, PacNWC

I have two sisters who do not wear the label “Christian,” and I always have them in my head whenever I’m writing a sermon, or even just explaining some bit of reality to myself. They would say that they do not respect Christianity, let alone Christians. Christ, they’re fine with, I think, but not the way Christians deem him to be. Given my love and attachments both to my sisters and to my faith, I find myself always in the gap, believing this impasse to be all just a big misunderstanding, and that if I could just get everyone in the same room, we could work things out. Can we? Will we?

This gap between the church and our culture seems to be greater than ever before, both in width and length and height and depth. Sigh. I totally want to give up sometimes.

But then there is Ephesians 3:17-19: And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

This always happens. I’m tired and hopeless, and frankly, feeling hurt, when I come across something that gives me another skinny but certain glimmer of hope. I think: “Could it be? Is God’s love the thing, maybe the only thing, that can bridge the gap? Not Christians, not Christianity, but the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord? If the answer is, “Yes!” then now, I don’t want to bridge the gap; I want to get out of the way so that Christ can, not only bridge the gap but fill it! Okay, but how does that happen? How can the people of our culture come to know and experience the love of God that is in Christ?

I don’t know if this passage means what I think it means but here it is, Romans 10:14-15: How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent?

Is the church, the local, gathered body of believers still called and relevant? Our current pandemic has certainly revealed, accelerated, and forced a bunch of weaknesses about our churches, for sure. But it has also confirmed that we were made to belong to one another, most especially in Christ.

In such a time as this, how would really excellent missionaries convey the love of God? What core truths would they preach? What would preaching even look like? How would they design the church in resonance with cultural norms? Would the church be more hierarchical and centralized, or less? How would technology be leveraged and integrated and normalized? How would the church go about meeting needs for belonging and connecting? Would the role of the pastor or staff members be different?

I’m searching, inside and out, but I don’t have all the answers just yet. I’m not even sure what all my questions are. I do know that cultures and constructs are always changing because that’s the rule. I also know that what remains yesterday, today, and forever, is the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord, and because of this love, I’m willing to stand in the gap.

By Stephanie Rosic

In August of 2020, while the pandemic raged in our city and nation, we at Portland Covenant Church launched a movement of care and compassion for our nearest neighbors. Sitting in our pews every Sunday, are graduates of Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary just down the street. King Elementary is our local neighborhood school but it holds more than sentimental feelings for those at Portland Covenant. It is a small beacon in our city of black and brown life and representation in a city that has been largely gentrified. And as the pandemic blazed a path of destruction we also knew that COVID-19 affects black, indigenous, Latinx, and other people of color the most. Our neighbors were at risk.

Our vision statement for this strange, unorthodox year – in which we met on Zoom for Sunday services, for Soul Care classes, for coffee hour – was to create a community of care and compassion. This was for us as a congregation, yes, but also for our neighbor; those also struggling in unprecedented waters of job loss, housing insecurity, and food scarcity. With each of these amplified by our city’s racial and social injustice. We quickly realized that our mission of care and compassion needed dollar signs to keep people in their homes, put food on the table, and pay the electric bill so the lights stayed on. These were tangible needs, and ones we decided to meet by writing a grant. Once approved we engaged our local networks to match the actual dollars from the grant up to $15,000.

The generosity of our little church, partnered with the missional dollars from others in our wider community, reaped a total of $16,800. We had asked people to give and they out gave our biggest hope. Moved by God’s goodness and the desire to see those in their community who were at risk stay in their homes, feed their families, and more, saw just that — a community held intact. Of the $31,800 raised for families in the King community, $20,000 has already been distributed as of January 2021. Funds went to housing costs, utilities, medical bills, basic needs, and to help undocumented families turned away from other programs. Jill Sage, principal of King Elementary School said this, “The generous support of Portland Covenant Church has meant that many of our families have been able to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. It has truly been a lifeline keeping our families safe and our students learning. This type of community support exemplifies the beauty of this community!”

Creating a community of care and compassion still remains our vision at Portland Covenant as we endure the final gasps of the COVID pandemic. What we know is that God shows enduring care and compassion for us, and in turn we must seek out ways to live that truth practically in our community. At Portland Covenant, we remain commited to do just that.

[Click Here] to learn more about Portland Covenant Church and the King Family Stabilization Fund

By Erik Cave, Director of NextGen Ministries, PacNWC

Young adult ministry has become an unintentional casualty of the COVID-19 Quarantine. As churches have scrambled to shift services online and figure out how to survive in an age of social distancing they have consolidated their efforts to the essentials. Unfortunately for most, young adult ministry isn’t essential. The result has been a growing disconnection between young adults and church. Young adults are seeking hope in Jesus and welcoming community. The question is will you raise the importance of reaching the next generation in your ministry?

In an effort to challenge and equip PacNWC churches in engaging in ministry to young adults we hosted a webinar with Beth Seversen on February 25th. Beth’s book, Not Done Yet: Reaching and Keeping Unchurched Emerging Adults was written through hundreds of hours of research with Covenant churches who are making a difference in young adults lives. Beth researched ECC churches while on staff with the ECC, and wrote the book after going to work for North Park University.

In both the book and the webinar Beth shares about the growing number of young adults who are “nones”, having no religious identity, and young adults who are “dones”, having become disillusioned with the church. Even within this dynamic Beth has found churches who are seeing growth among Young Adults. She has put together framework, she calls “5 Invitational Practices” that outlines what her research shows were the common factors among these churches. Churches and Christians making a difference in young adults lives are are actively and immediately initiating, inviting, including, involving and investing in young adults.

Beth’s passion for young adults comes through loud and clear in this webinar. Her positive outlook and abundance of stories are inspiring. Please take an hour to to watch this webinar and then read Beth’s book. It will motivate and equip you to reach and keep unchurched young adults in your community.

We are making plans with Beth to for a cohort to go through Not Done Yet staring sometime this summer. [Click Here] to email Erik Cave if you are interested in getting updates on this cohort.

Beth is available to meet with pastors and leaders who wish to read the book together as a church ministry staff or small group for a discussion and Q and A. [Click Here] to contact Beth.

By Aubrey Larsen, Director of Discipleship and Outreach, Praise Covenant Church

This past Fall we did a book study on the book, The Art of Neighboring by Jay Pathak and Dave Runyon. We chose this book because during this time of COVID we recognized that many people were looking for authentic connection and community. God has been teaching me in this season that the church is not a building, it is us as the body of Christ and our ministry is our daily lives.

Through this study, we looked at Mark 12:28-31, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  There is no commandment greater than these.”

We learned what it looks like to love our literal neighbors, the people that are live around us. For some, this was the first time they reached out to their neighbors and learned their names, for others it was a way to develop a friendship with their neighbors.

One woman has lived in her home for over 10 years and didn’t really know her neighbors. During the month of November, she sent around Jerome the Gnome to every house in the neighborhood and had the neighbors write what they were thankful for. This created a huge sense of community as each of the neighbors were able to read what their neighborhood was grateful for. It spread gratitude as well as created a sense of community and belonging.

This study was a reminder that evangelism starts in our homes and in our neighborhoods. God can use everyday lives for His glory. Your life is a ministry and you have impact in living your everyday life.

[Click Here] to visit Praise Covenant’s web page

This is part four of an ongoing series on prayer and evangelism prompted by a meeting with the Grace Cov, Bremerton leadership team and Pastor Grant Christensen.  It was a very ordinary monthly meeting with ministry reports, budgets, and decisions made.  What I was not expecting was their monthly rhythm of individually checking in with each other about their evangelism “temperature,” a practice learned at the evangelism cohort.  It was refreshing to watch how they are choosing to keep sharing Christ front and center as a leadership.   As often stated, “you cannot lead where you have not gone yourself.”  After they shared, Pastor Grant then walked through evangelism related Bible studies that he created. I asked Grant if he would share his material and he graciously said that his only requirement is that it would never be sold.  So much for the conference fundraiser!  I include it below to encourage and to stir.  May we walk as those full of the Holy Spirit as we share Christ today. 

Greg Yee

By Grant E. Christensen, Pastor, Grace Covenant Church, Bremerton

1 Chronicles 4:10 (nkjv)  And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, “Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!” So God granted him what he requested.^[1]

When Bruce Wilkinson’s book, The Prayer of Jabez, was first published in 2000 it became a very popular, albeit little book. At the same time Mr. Wilkinson took much criticism from those who thought the book taught a very self-serving message. Our own Director of the Board of Ministry half humorously, half seriously, wrote to Covenant ministers not to include the book as one of their books read for continuing education.

Because of the popularity of the book, I purchased a copy and read through the short book. Prior to reading Mr. Wilkinson’s book, I was unaware that there even was a Prayer of Jabez. When I read the book, I looked up this very obscure little prayer which—oddly enough—is situated in the middle of a genealogy in 1 Chronicles, chapter 4. Why, in God-breathing this text, did Yahweh see fit to include this prayer, and to include it of all places in the middle of a genealogy? Did He mean to hide the prayer away in an obscure place, making it difficult to find?

Nevertheless, as I have reflected on this prayer since, I sense that this prayer has—as do all of the promises of God—a New Covenant application. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the covenant of Circumcision and Law for the most part promised temporal blessings, blessings of prosperity and wealth. Within that context of material and physical blessings (see Deuteronomy 28:1-14), Jabez’s prayer was in harmony with the expected blessings that God promised in that day. However, in the New Covenant in Ephesians 1:3, Paul states that we as believers and followers of Jesus have been “blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies.” The blessings of the New Covenant are—for the most part—spiritual blessings.

When Jabez prayed his prayer, he meant to have God enlarge his physical territory; he was asking for more land. In praying that God’s hand would be with him, Jabez was praying that God would prosper him. Praying to be kept from evil was a common Hebrew prayer to be kept from temptation. Lastly, Jabez asked that as God increased his land holdings, prospering him along the way, that this venture would not cause others pain. So often one’s wealth and prosperity can be another’s poverty and shame.

Yet, when I ponder this prayer through the lense of the New Covenant and in view of the primary mission of the body of Christ within the Covenant of Grace I see something quite different. To pray for increased territory is to pray for increased evangelistic territory. What is wrong with asking God to increase my or our evangelistic territory—whether personally or corporately as a church body? Secondly, to pray that God would be with me, is to pray that as I go out into this increased territory, God would be the One who accompanies me on the mission—prospering my witness along the way. Thirdly, to pray that Yahweh would keep me from evil, is to pray that in the midst of the inevitable spiritual attack that comes to those who actively seek to share the gospel, that Yahweh would keep us from falling to the many temptations of sin and from the onslaught of the enemy’s spiritual attack on all those who would share their faith. The enemy is always gunning for those who seek to share Christ with their world, attempting to soil and destroy their witness through hypocrisy and sin. The desires of our own flesh also, when given into, drastically harm our witness. Lastly, to pray that we would not cause pain is to pray that, as we evangelize, our witness and our approach to witnessing would not cause others undo pain. When I have sought to share my faith with others largely motivated by my own flesh, I have caused people pain in the past—through conversations eroding into argument, through bashing them with a confrontive approach, through pushing when the Holy Spirit isn’t leading me to do so.

This obscure, little prayer of Jabez then, applied to evangelism, is more than appropriate! Is there not much wisdom in praying this prayer, applying it to our witness whether individually or corporately as the church? Applying the prayer to evangelism becomes a heartfelt prayer for a greater reach for our witness, and that as we go, God would prosper our evangelistic efforts, keeping our witness unsoiled from temptation and from the attacks of the evil one and from our own flesh, while also keeping us from causing others undo pain from our overstepping the Holy Spirit’s guidance while sharing our faith! We have not because we ask not…

© 2019 by Grant Christensen. “Freely you have received, freely give.” (Matthew 10:8b niv) You are free to share—copy and redistribute in any medium or format—as long as you don’t change the content, don’t use commercially without permission of the author or author’s family, and include attribution with the following Creative Commons License:

^[1]  The New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

Prayer and Evangelism

[Click Here] for part one of the series titled, “Asking for the Holy Spirit”

[Click Here] for part two of the series titled, “Praying for the Power of the Holy Spirit for Witness”

[Click Here] for part three of the series titled, “Praying for the Spirit’s Leading”