By Jill Riley, Communications Assistant

There was a time when I thought it was a bother, a nuisance. Traveling, meetings, classes, and seminars. All the work that it took to be gone away from my primary responsibilities, family and schedules was bothersome.  So why do it? Why make the effort? This is not a question to be answered just because of our annual “Gather”, happening in California.  This is a question for pastors to answer of themselves, on behalf of the church.

Every week we invite people to leave their over-scheduled lives and join us in worship. We interrupt their weeks with small groups, engage one another in ministry teams and work together in the community. We encourage parishioners to welcome the stranger and be open to the possibility that a relationship could form out of seemingly mid-air.  But what once I considered it an interruption, now I consider it a privilege.

I took 6 years off from meeting together, passing the peace and engaging in beautiful covenant relationships.  After 42 years of being in the church I just quit. The reasons were personal but the result was, predictably, detachment and isolation. While it was a needful time of reflection it was an anxious time of considering what was essential, who was important and, in the pyramid of daily responsibilities, what was foundational.

As I shook out the bag filled with my responsibilities, obligations, and self-care, what plopped out as the biggest, most essential part of the pile was, gathering together with saints, friends and family who loved me, despite my anger and absence.  I had missed it. Not the busyness. Not the chaotic schedule. I missed the easy conversations about faith and life. I missed the encouragement of friends to hold strong in my faith, despite the winds of change whispering around me.  I missed hearing other voices raised in songs that extoled the virtues of my Jesus.  And I missed the still small voices of reassurance, love and acceptance that waft through crowds of people when they follow Jesus.

So many people today feel they can be the Lone spiritual Ranger.  Rugged, independent and solitary. In my opinion, having walked that road,  community sharpens us, makes us stronger, refines our faith and lifts our spirits. Those factors are hard to come by when walking alone.

We are familiar with the writer of Hebrews reminding us to, not “give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. (Heb.10:25)

Don’t do it.  Don’t give up meeting together.

Meet together. Gather in classes and seminars. Worship in groups. Never take for granted the privilege it is to be together.  Cherish those precious moments.

I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord.

Psalm 122:1 

By Greg Yee, Superintendent, PacNWC

The Covenant annual meeting agenda is now posted and communications about participation and preparation have ramped up.  The Gather registration deadline is June 18 (Ministerial Association Annual Meeting registration deadline is June 5).

The PacNWC staff was pleasantly surprised that our conference currently has the second-largest number of delegates next to the host and largest conference, the Pacific Southwest.  We are encouraged and proud of our level of investment and concern for our shared life and ministry together.  Overall numbers are over 170% of what was expected in person and online, with two-thirds that will be on-site. 

We continue to follow President Swanson Draheim’s call to a concerted season of prayer.  I want to also call us to fasting as well.  As we are less than one month away, I feel an urgency to add to our occasional or casual prayers.  As Jesus taught that some spiritual realities necessitate prayer AND fasting, I believe that the weight of the issues before us call us to similar attention.  We are considering the involuntary removal of two churches, voting on a new organizational structure for the ECC, initiating the adoption of the Freedom and Responsibility resource paper, and the Ministerial Association is starting a process for their proposal concerning contested credentials.  That’s a lot.  Let’s join in fervent prayer and fasting, my friends.

As I think about Gather, I begin to think about my backyard.  The kids and I did a deep clean of our outdoor space for Mother’s Day.  We power-washed, re-stained the deck, cleared out 10 years of accumulated stuff, and ordered a new outdoor rug and a couple of chairs.  It feels like a new backyard!  Mary was very pleased!

We live in a typical tract home with a small backyard.  A few years ago, Mary had the vision to put in trees, various plants, and bushes to create a more private extended living space.  Last year, we also put in a new paver pathway that has been a game changer for us to keep the diversity of the landscape defined and orderly.  It certainly is much easier to wheel the green bin from the back to the front of the house now. 

As we make our way to Gather, I offer my backyard as an analogy.  My garden is made up of many different varieties of plants and trees:  Japanese Maple, apple, Hydrangeas, Ninebark, Osmanthus, and blueberry pots,  just to name a few.  I liken the Covenant to this; more of a garden.  We are not a uniformly organized single-crop field that’s machined to precise expectations.  Our Covenant garden is diverse in the size and expression of life and ministry.  The ECC has rural, small town, and urban churches.  We have churches using historical liturgies, others that are charismatic, and everything in between.  In our conference we have churches worshipping in English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, and Nepali.  We have churches in each of our state capitols and near all of our major universities.  We have churches in the heart of our agricultural centers and throughout our cities’ suburbs.   

This is all part of the vision God gives us to be a mosaic of churches working interdependently together to transform lives and communities.   We are a stunning garden! 

My analogy isn’t perfect, but as we approach Gather, I sense that we are at a moment when we are questioning the placement and perhaps the type of fence that delineates our beautiful garden. Boundaries, expectations, and vows have been defined and committed to, but we understand our shared life and ministry together as dynamic and continually processed in community in realtime.  We are continually living at the intersection of the timeless truths of scripture applied in the context of an ever-changing missional setting that God places us in. 

There are no easy answers, but I am proud of how we have leaned into each other in our conference.  As I work with our conference pastors, I am grateful for the instincts we have to draw closer to and engage each other.  We fight the temptation to push away or to make unhelpful assumptions.  I am thankful to hear reports of so many of you who have done the same kind of work with the same heart-set in your churches.  We continue to stay committed to building a culture of humility and respect.

How do we communicate and exhibit the love of God (John 13:35; 1 Peter 4:8) to all?  How do live in the world but not be of it (John 17:14-19)?  How do we hold the disruptive message of Christ that presents as an aroma of life to some and an aroma of death to others (2 Cor 2:16)?  How will our unity point all those who see and experience us to Jesus (John 17:10-21)? 

Don’t get the analogy twisted.  Fences are not bad.  We already have them and we most certainly need them.  So, as we continue to work on the placement and type of fence that marks out our garden, I pray that we would find a common path that will help us pour more energy into our core mission together.  I pray that God would transform our exhaustion into joy and excitement.  I pray the realities of Psalm 133 for us – how good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters live and serve together in unity.  Amen! 

See you in Orange County or online.  I join you in prayer and fasting in these coming weeks.