Category: Start New Churches

Getting to Know Bread and Wine, a Community in SE Portland

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By Sharad Yadav, Lead Pastor, Bread and Wine

The word “church” – just like the word “family” – means radically different things to different people, depending on what your experience has been. Some people remember it as the last place they were loved, a time when they felt like their lives were on track or a hopeful disposition about their future.  Of course the opposite is true, too. It can be the deepest memory of betrayal and abuse.  And of course for even more people it conjures something less vivid than either of those things, which can be worse. It is a tepid, well-meaning but desperately out of touch assembly of uninteresting people, forced upon us in youth. Those reactions summarize my ministry environment in Portland pretty well.  It has a small population of people who love the church, a larger population of people who are disgusted with it and the majority of people whose indifference is only faintly flavored with love or disgust, like the barely detectable peach-pear aftertaste of a LaCroix. 

When I moved to Oregon from Idaho in 2013 to help lead an independent evangelical church called Bread & Wine, I immediately felt more suited to the religiously cynical environment than anywhere else I’d ministered. Even my college age conversion (from an adolescent, Nietszche fetishizing, punk rocking atheism) began with skepticism about my skepticism.  A subsequent hunger for certainty thrust me into a fundamentalist environment which ended up nurturing my cynicism even more deeply. My developing faith began to mirror my childhood racial identity as a second generation Indian in a rural community: it was an ever tightening tension. I am neither American nor Indian but somehow both; my passionate relationship with God has always been characterized by an internal dialogue of doubt.

Portland had turned these alienating dimensions of my personhood into a profound opportunity for connection. Its story of racial violence is something that lives inside of me.  The tension in all the individual quests for spiritual meaning alongside a pervasive skeptical posture maps the dynamic of my own soul. For that reason, ministering in this city often feels like ministering to myself.  But that, too, can generate a profound feeling of loneliness, especially in an independent church. Pastoring in an urban environment had all its own challenges, with the constant change and rotating core of people carrying us into the work of re-planting. But the need for belonging, which characterized so much of my own journey, became unbearable.  I felt invisible. God heard my cry over the last few years in Jon Lemmond, a Covenant pastor in Salem. Having been a close friend and pastor of my twin in his previous post in Santa Barbara (where my brother is a theologian at Westmont College), I happily served as a genetically identical substitute. It was that relationship which exposed me to the wider church family of Covenanters. In the relationships that developed, with Joel Sommer (Access Covenant), Stephen Bjorlin (Portland Covenant) and Nate Salinas (Sunset Covenant), I became visible.

Standing on the border of a new reality conjures both hope and fear. The last significant induction into community I experienced was in my conversion; but the belonging I was offered in that fundamentalist tradition came at the steep cost of my selfhood. This environment was to become the soil in which my roots were surrounded throughout my early discipleship, seminary training and the entirety of my ministerial life. Making my way out of the wilderness has brought me to many false frontiers in the quest for belonging. In an interview Greg Yee once mentioned that they’d never had a church engage as much as ours before coming into the family. I’d guess that story has something to do with it. 

One of the immediate signals that we’d found “our people” was the highly relational way we were invited into the family.  Our leadership team spent several months connecting with the PacNWC staff as we evaluated our fit. I had a few meals with the illustrious Peter Sung, as we discussed my ministry journey, giftedness and obstacles until we decided that the best way to tumble into the family was as a church plant. Dawn Taloyo met with and corresponded our team. Erik Cave made himself available to our children’s ministry team.  I was invited into a multiethnic pastoral cohort that provided a place to process the unique challenges of my own identity – for the first time in 20 years of pastoring. I attended Midwinter where I could more closely investigate the culture of the Covenant and wander right into the middle of the family’s open wounds around the boundaries of fellowship and human sexuality. In all of that engagement the burning question for me was, “Is this safe?” Is this a safe place to prosecute my experience of reality, to flower into the redeemed version of myself, to pursue beloved community, to open myself in vulnerable relationship, to listen together for the voice of God?  One of the most beautiful insights of the Pietist tradition is that the answers to those questions are all rooted in freedom of conscience. 

That’s what we detected most profoundly in the Covenant family, which stirs our longing to call it home. This is what my soul has hungered for in a Christian community, not the agreement which comes from the list of doctrinal perspectives, ministry methods or historical figures we happen to share – but from the holy ground upon which our God engages the heart.  Our fellowship isn’t based on the hardened, finished doctrinal, practical or heritage we have chosen, the end product of having struggled with what we believe. It is based on that space inside the kiln, where we encounter God in the process of our spiritual formation, where the Spirit is doing His work. I want to be part of a community that can wait in the fire until Christ Himself removes us from the oven, where the struggle is the holy ground. That’s what freedom of conscience means – the honoring of the process in one another. 

COVID-19 has delayed us in the process of coming into the Covenant. The assessment track we were pursuing froze along with everything else in the societal seizure of this pandemic. The potential funding we were pursuing along with the process of ordination has been smothered in uncertainty. But not our sense of belonging. It’s the one thing that doesn’t seem to be in question. It’s hard to overstate the strength it has given me, not only to minister to skeptical people in uncertain times, but to carry my own skepticism and uncertainty before the God who shapes me in the fire.

One of the reasons I love the name of our church, Bread & Wine, is because it’s the symbol Jesus used to communicate how God wants to meet human beings – not in a temple or elaborate ritual, but around a table where people are invited to bring who they really are.  We are invited to gather around a representation of God that is unlike the easy certainty of fundamentalism or the self-confidence of atheism. In the Eucharist we come to a God who is broken on the cross like bread is torn at the table. He is someone who suffers like us, suffers with us and suffers for us. He says “father forgive them” not as someone above it all, but from the vulnerability of his own nakedness on the cross.

Our hope is to be a safe place for people to ask hard questions about what their lives mean.  We want the reality of God’s love to be seen, heard and felt among us.  The forgiveness we’ve found in Christ creates security to carry the tensions inside us without being drummed out of the community or labeled unworthy of love.  For now, at least, it seems like Bread & Wine is that kind of place. For the sake of our city, as much as ourselves, I’m hopeful that coming into the family will ensure it stays that way.

[Click Here] to find out more about Bread and Wine Community

[Click Here] to support Bread and Wind with a financial gift

Napali Covenant Church Supporting Children in Napal

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By Bashu Prasai, Pastor, Nepali Covenant Church of Kent, WA

My mission trip began from Seattle to Assam India, Bhutan and up to Nepal.  There I did teaching in Bible training and ended with a Children’s program. Every year we give up to 40 children school supplies including backpacks, shoes, sandals, slippers, socks, school uniforms for boys and girls and winter jackets.  We have found there are many needs here for poor children.

We are working on partnering with some Nepali Government Schools in Nepal in order to help very poor and underprivileged children in community.  We are seeing and finding 100’s such children whose parents are not able to afford these school supplies, dresses, winter jackets and shoes.

We need your prayer and financial help to help these helpless kids in Nepal.  Reach the nation Nepal ministries is taking steps to help these kids. Without you and your help it is impossible to help these kids. I would like to invite you to join with us in making a difference in kids’ lives.

Please contact Pastor Bashu Prasai at Bashuprasai@yahoo.com or 206 228 5694 or Dilli Rai  at 253 332 0821

Thanks, Nepali Covenant Church

A Different Light

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By Peter Sung, Conference Coach, PacNWC

Matthew 5:14-16 You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.

Jesus had quite the magnetic effect. Where he went, crowds formed. When he spoke, people forgot to eat. When he called, people dropped their nets and followed. Jesus commanded a broad spectrum of people, from the young to the old, the sick to the healthy, the lost to the found, the men to the women, the rich to the poor, the Jew to the gentile, the weak to the powerful. People, all kinds of people, were drawn to Jesus. Like moth to a flame.

Things are quite different with the church today.

When Jesus sat down with his disciples on a hillside, Jesus shared the key to his gathering power. To his ragamuffin band of bumbling imitators, he said, “You are the light of the world. Let your light shine in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father.”

The key is in this little phrase, in such a way. Let your light shine in such a way.

First, there is a world of difference between shine your light, and let your light shine. Shining your light is obnoxious. Think about the officer’s Mag Light shining in your eyes when you get pulled over. It’s blinding and you turn away. Or picture the oblivious show-off, or the tone-deaf, self-affirming storyteller who’s always the hero of their own stories. Shining our light is the failed version of letting our light shine.

What is this light that shines all on its own?

If you go a few verses up, Jesus unpacks it quite obviously. It’s the contrasting light of being poor in spirit, of mourning, of meekness, of hungering and thirsting, not for wealth, power and fame, but for righteousness. The light of mercy, of purity of heart, of making peace – it is this supernatural light that is so different than the natural light of human nature and human history that can’t help but shine. In fact, this light of Christ is the only light that is truly light against the landscape of so called light which only amounts to darkness. In the next chapter, Jesus laments: “If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

Only when our works are illuminated by such a different light, then all people, a broad spectrum of people, will see our good works and glorify our Father. The kind of illumination determines how the works are seen and determines to whom the glory is given. Shine a human light, and humans will give glory to humans. Shine a divine light, and humans will give glory to God.

Common is human light. Different is the light of Christ. So let your light shine in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father, that they may gather in your churches, that they may see the church in a new light.

Where do we start? Start with prayer and humility before God. Then learn how to:

  • Be patient, and love unlovable, undeserving, wrong, and evil people;
  • Sacrifice, lose, and suffer loss;
  • Listen, ask, serve, care, and die to yourself.

In other words, walk and talk like everyone else if you want to blend in. But if you want to be light, be a different light.

Heart of Flesh

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By Peter Sung, Conference Coach, PacNWC

Over time, I became disgusted with my family’s immigrant church. Politics, status, money, legalism, hypocrisy, judgment, emotionalism – these are the things that I witnessed week after week, and soon enough, enough was enough. In protest, I left.

In college, I openly spoke out against ethnic-specific ministries that spoke English and accused them of being social instead of demonstrating the reconciling power of the Gospel. Why can’t I bring my non-ethnic, non-Christian friends here? These so-called ministries became dead to me.

So I started starting churches, churches that were truthful, diverse, gracious – better.

When I first came upon the Covenant in 1999, I was promised fewer fleas on this dog. Over time, I found some fleas. Sometimes, it seemed like a lot of fleas.

When I was a little boy, when my Sunday school teacher put his warm hand on my bloody knee and prayed for God to comfort and heal me, I remember believing. When I was in middle school, I remember looking up into the Pennsylvanian night sky and feeling really small. When I was in high school, I remember the moment I felt the conviction of sin. When I was in college, I remember giving my life once again to God as I switched grad school plans from medicine to theology.

God’s been walking with me for 45 years and this year, God took my heart of stone and put a new spirit within me. He removed my heart of stone and gave me a heart of flesh. How he did that is another story but here and now, I want to remind all of us, as we enter into Advent and wait for his coming, that Christ can be everywhere but he is nowhere if he does not enter in and give you a heart of flesh. Nothing can really change if you don’t. But, if you have a new spirit, behold, all things will be made new.

I was listening but unable to hear; sighted but unable to see. How wondrous are the works of God!

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. Ezekiel 36:26

How to Play the Game

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By Peter Sung, Conference Coach, PacNWC

Sometimes it can feel like there is only one way to play the game, and the church has to play by their rules.

They make the rules because:

  • They have more money;
  • They are connected to mainstream culture; and
  • They work towards a concrete product.

The church is, on the other hand:

  • Lacking money;
  • Working with volunteers; and
  • Working towards a less concrete product.

In other words, most entities play the short game while the church is tasked with playing the long game.

There are 3 kinds of games: the short game, which seeks to achieve immediate results, the long game, which looks to build something greater, and the infinite game, which works towards gains beyond now or later. The longer the play, the less concrete the product.

Guess which game the church is called to play?

In the work of the church, every short game is to be framed within the long game which itself is framed within the infinite game. Without the long game, the short game is meaningless. Without the short game, the long game is impossible. Both games are steps of faith towards the infinite game.

In the church, the telos, or end of all games, is ultimately Christ.

Actually, in all games, within and without the church, the end is Christ, according to scripture. No org can persist with just the short game. Even the long game runs out (just ask Bill Gates). So ultimately, there remains only Christ, anywhere, everywhere.

So maybe the church has been set up by God to play the only game that ultimately matters. The church is playing the ultimate game.

A new church tends to focus on the short game and make plans for the long game. An established church tends to be familiar with the long game but may have lost its touch in the short game. A question that emerges is: How can both categories of churches partner up to level up in the eternal game of being the church?

What I See In Church Planters

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By Mark Meredith, Church Planting Coach, PacNWC

“We know a thing or two because we’ve seen a thing or two.” Not just an ad slogan, but don’t you think it is just true? Isn’t it part of God’s design, that we acquire wisdom as we go? I am counting on it and it’s why I get great joy out of coaching and meeting with church planters. So, what’s the thing or two I have seen?

For one thing, as a church planter, I saw how discouraging it could be. There is an old saying in church planting: “the highs are higher and the lows are lower.” And I would add, the lows last longer in the soul.  Without infusions of encouragement on a regular basis, church planting is hard on your soul. I was fortunate to have two great encouragers who were intentional about giving me an infusion on a regular basis. I don’t know where I would have been without it. As leaders, we owe it to ourselves and those following us to put ourselves in places we can be encouraged. It gives me joy to be a supplier of encouragement for church planters.

But the second thing is wisdom. Wisdom is so needed and it comes either from experience or learning from others who have experience. In general, it is much less painful to learn from others. As a church planter, my encouragers were also wise. They weren’t always right, as each context is different. But they helped me process decisions with greater wisdom, decisions which had a huge effect on the church and its mission.

So, my hope and joy is that I can bring some encouragement and wisdom to church planters. That is the thing or two I have seen in my own life. Of course, we all need encouragement and wisdom. These are wonderful gifts from God.

Headwaters Covenant Celebrates 10th Anniversary

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By Don Robinson, PacNWC Associate Superintendent

Headwaters Covenant Church, Helena, MT, celebrated its 10th anniversary as a congregation this month. It was a full day of celebration. Here’s a description from Pastor Seth Dombach:

“Thanks for all your prayers and support. We had a wonderful day celebrating God’s faithfulness in all that he has done in our past while looking forward to all that lies ahead. We read notes from our planting church, Life Covenant, from the Pacific Northwest Conference and had a video from our founding pastor Matt Randles. We know that without these and many many others partners we would not have reached this historic milestone. Following the special worship service, we went out to a private water ski lake, had a BBQ and tons of fun connecting with old friends and sharing stories of all that God has done in us and through us. This is just the start and we can’t wait to see all that our Triune God has for us in the future as we continue to embody Jesus in love truth and action together!!”

Headwaters was planted out of Life Covenant Church by founding pastor Pastor Matt Randles. In July of 2011 Pastor Matt Randles, his wife Meredith and their two daughters were called back to Seattle after their faithful tenure in Helena. In October of 2011 Headwaters called Pastor Seth Dombach and his wife Rachel (with 2 sons; two others sons were born in Helena) to pastor this 2 and a half-year-old church plant.

Throughout its history, the church has been characterized by a strong commitment to the Helena community and a wonderful partnership to a shared ministry with the Pacific Nort

hwest Conference and the Evangelical Covenant Church. Headwaters Covenant Church has been and remains an inspiration through their community engagement, outreach and mission. Service projects have consisted in a variety of projects from building and maintaining a community garden for teen mom’s, cleaning up and remodeling the local women’s shelter, trail maintenance on local mountains, and helping local non profits run their fundraisers. Community outreach and engagement is a particular calling and passion of Pastor Seth. He is committed to caring for and serving the community through pastoral care, presence and active participation in service projects. The vision of Headwaters is to be a Church; that ENGAGES in worship that glorifies God; that EQUIPS one another to love like Jes

The congregation meets at 1030 Choteau Street, Helena, MTus in a broken world; that EMBODIES shalom and hope in every influence of life. Theme verses for church come from 1 John 3:16,18 “We experience and understand what love is by laying down our lives for others like Jesus did
we do this not by talking about it but in action and in truth (together)”

I walked outside. And it ruined me.

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By Anna Hoesly, Church Planter Exploring Partnership with ECC.

When my toddler graduated from a crib to a toddler bed, we were terrified by what this would do to our lives. Surely, those crib rails were the only thing standing between a peaceful little girl who sleeps at night and a tyrant who does what she wants, when she wants. We took off the rails and waited with bated breath. But a fascinating thing happened. Every morning, she sat patiently in her bed for us to come get her out. Sometimes she even called to us to let her out. The crib rails were gone but she had gotten so used to them, it was like they were still there. Somewhere along the way she had constructed an invisible glass wall that was just as powerful as the actual rails. Eventually we had to train her to deconstruct the invisible wall too, so she could see past it and get her own darn water. 🙂

This reminds me of our world. We have invisible glass walls all over the place that artificially divide our world into little cultural microcosms. The walls are human constructions. Invisible, but powerful.

Invisible walls between our nuclear family and the village of people that lives outside our door. Invisible walls between socioeconomic bubbles that exist geographically in our communities. Invisible walls between the American Western Christian culture in our churches and the local culture just outside them. Invisible walls that run solidly between the political echo chambers in our current world. We’re so used to these glass walls, so soaked in our own cultural microcosm, so busy with the needs of our particular bubble, that we don’t even think about these walls very often, let alone make a point to walk through them. For most of my time in ministry, I was pretty comfortable in the cultural bubble of my church and my nuclear family. Both kept me very busy.

My journey toward church planting started when I began to walk outside. Not figuratively, I’m ashamed to say- literally. I rarely walked outside my front door except to put my head down and get into my car (sometimes to drive to an outreach meeting at my church!).

Statistically, I’m not alone. Research shows that the longer an individual is a part of a church community, the less and less relationships they have with those outside the church. This was happening in our church so clearly. The more I recruited people into good church activities, good small groups, good volunteer opportunities, the more distanced they got from their neighborhoods. This realization hit me like a rock. I was pulling people out of their neighborhoods and into a world with glass walls.

I knew if this was going to change, I had to go first. I had to walk outside. And so I went to my front door with this simple charge.

Walk outside. See where God is working. Join Him.

And then I summoned all my courage and said, “You know
 it’s almost dinner. Maybe tomorrow.”

As I reflected on my reticence, I realized I was afraid. I was afraid that if I crossed over this glass wall, it would take over my life. I was afraid I’d have no time for my family because I was already spread so relationally thin in my role at the church. It was like I knew
 that if I crossed the proverbial threshold, it would change things.

That night I had a dream. When I woke up I couldn’t remember exactly what happened in it. I only remembered two things. The important things. A) It featured Ryan Reynolds. Obviously. B) it was a rich emotionally salient image of the parable of the talents. And I knew clear as day what it meant. All around me, right outside my door, outside my glass wall, were relationships placed right in front of me. It was like I saw a beautiful landscape that was active and alive, ready to burst outside my door. And I was staying inside, in the dark, burying my call to invest in those relationships.

That morning I felt grief. It was a real heavy sadness at the beauty I was burying by making my world small. But I was still afraid too. And then it was as though my whole body sensed God saying to me,

“Yes. You’re right. This will change things.

And. I. will. protect you.

I will never call you to hurt your family. I will not call you somewhere that will break you.

But I will call you out.”

So finally I walked outside. I began to just “be” out in my neighborhood. I walked with open eyes and open heart. Without agenda, I began to develop acquaintances, which led to friendships. I began to really see and enjoy the lovely people right outside my door. I felt alive and a part of my neighborhood, and found that spiritual conversations emerged quite naturally as we began to care about each others’ lives.

And I wasn’t wrong. This changed things. It shifted my home base from my church to my neighborhood. It shifted my sphere of influence. It shifted my understanding of the world I was trying to reach. It ruined me for my current way of doing life and ministry.

The more I spent time “out there,” the more I realized the culture of my church would be a giant cultural leap for anyone outside those walls. We, frankly, had geared our church to our most present audience
 those raised in the cultural microcosm of the Western American church. Anyone raised outside of that would feel like a complete foreigner walking inside those doors. They would trip over all kinds of cultural trappings standing between them and Jesus. Many of my friends were interested in the spiritual- in being a part of something bigger than themselves, but they weren’t interested in my cultural microcosm.

One day, one of my neighbors sat me down and told me she wanted to have a talk with me. This neighbor is someone who has all kinds of spiritual rumblings and had a beautiful sense of spiritual intuition, but had had less than positive interactions with institution of the church and no real interest in being a part of it. She sat me down and said “I don’t know if you know this, but you have the ability to foresee the future”.

Now, normally that would be a weird way to start a conversation. But I knew exactly what she meant. She had noticed that there was something bigger taking place in our interactions. I had just given her a small gift, that was tailored to her in a way I couldn’t have planned, and it brought her to access an emotional place deep within her. She went on to tell me that she has been thinking about this, and she had this vision that I am meant to create a place- a community for people right around us. She talked about how in our current culture, so many of us wouldn’t walk into a regular church, but that something in us is yearning to be grounded. To have a community where we can tap into something bigger than ourselves and grow together.

At that moment a seed was planted in me that increasingly, I could not deny. Here was my friend, who was not a church-goer and was not drawn to Christianity but was drawn to God. And she was asking me to bring the church to her.

Fast forward to present day.

We started not long ago, driven by that seed, that call, that passion, to meet people where they are. To step outside of our cultural bubble and go to them. To create a place for them to meet God right within their own cultural microcosm. And to be honest, that call was mildly to highly terrifying. This was completely unknown territory. Our team did not go into this with dazzling confidence, a giant network, or well
 resources. We went into it with a call we simply couldn’t deny.

Now we are a very small little church plant, just at its beginnings, trying to hold a laser focus on that call. We are in a rustic little starter space where there’s no heat and the electricity shorts out sometimes. But what we seem to be developing is a place that feels like home to people outside the church bubble.

One couple is made up of an atheist and agnostic who are discovering God in unexpected circumstances. Another is a couple who gave up on going to church years ago, but when they heard our vision it sparked an excitement and hope for a place that might be able to come as they are, and belong.

As we grow as a church, we are committed to keep “walking outside”. Our fiercest call is to continually look for the glass walls around us, and not stop crossing the threshold. We took months just listening to our community, discerning what God is calling forth and already doing in our neighborhoods. We are finding who is doing good and partnering with them. Our home base is in the bedrock of the hopes, concerns, and good work of the people of our community.

I will be honest, I have found that this is easier to do when you are planting a church because you aren’t rowing upstream against an established cultural microcosm. You have the opportunity to embed in the community right where you are. Statistics bear this out. Research shows that a church plant gains 60-80% of its members from people new to church, whereas an existing church gains 80-90% of its new members by transfer from other congregations.

This is not a knock on the existing church by any means. We need both existing churches and new churches. This is simply a call to all you pioneers out there. The church is meant to reproduce. We are made to open our doors to every culture on earth, to see our creative God do His thing in a whole new context, among a whole new people who will light up our world in a whole new way.

Do you feel that call inside you? Do you feel like your voice yearns to speak to an audience outside your bubble?

Go outside. Start spending more of your time living outside the bubble. Say no to some things inside the bubble. Do what it takes to begin to shift your home base. See what happens.

Fair warning- it might ruin you.

 

Anna Hoesly is a church planter in Milwaukie, OR who is currently in the process of exploring a partnership with the ECC. She has worked as a Discipleship Director and as a counselor with an MFT in Marriage and Family Therapy. She also spends her time working as a certified Mediator and consultant for non-profit organizations and living life to its fullest with her husband and two little ones.

 

 

Womb to Tomb?

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By Peter Sung, PacNWC Conference Coach

In an occupied human womb, at week three, 40 germ (stem) cells begin their two week migration to the reproductive region of the female embryo (which looks like a curled tadpole) and start dividing to become 10 million eggs, the final number of eggs that a single female human will carry for the rest of her life. This means that we carry inside of us, not just our future children but also our grandchildren. As one researcher put it, the biological imperative is not to make one other but to make an infinite generation of others. Or as another scientist says, “a chicken is just an egg’s way of making more eggs.”

These amazing biological facts confirm what I think I already know: I exist, not for my own perpetuation but for the flourishing of others. Or, to put it into both/and language: My perpetuation is through the flourishing of others. The Bible seems to say the same thing. The left bookend is God creating us in His image followed by his first command: Be fruitful and multiply. The right bookend is Jesus giving a final command to His followers: Make disciples. These thematically similar bookends are filled with the same imperative: Bless others. Love others. Give. Serve. Die. Seek the flourishing of others so that you too may live.

I’d like to offer three areas for application: One, personal. My life is mostly consumed with consuming. Ugh! Disappointingly true. How do I begin taking steps in the right direction? Two, culture. Our culture is consumed with consumption. Yuck! If I step back and just notice it, it’s quite disgusting! Let’s not keep getting sucked into it! And three, church. When did existing and maintaining become the everyday business of the church? Do we have better, missonal roots to return to?

I marvel at the thought that a baby in utero is busy and automatically making their own kids, all the while, the mom may not even be aware that she’s pregnant in the first place – that’s how definitive and hardwired the reproductive imperative is! Ultimately, we are not talking about biology or even human drives but who God is – He is Life. He is Source. From Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things – and the nature of His being, which is Love. It is Love that creates and gives and serves. So that’s why we plant churches that will plant churches. And this is how you, individually or as a church, can join God in what He has always been doing.

Is Our Church Disgusting?

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By Peter Sung, Conference Coach, PacNWC

I’ve been learning about one of our core emotions: disgust. It’s an emotion that’s authored by our brain stem, i.e., it’s a primitive, core emotion that’s necessary for survival, and it turns out that disgust is an emotion that is learned. For example, poop is not something we are born to find repulsive but rather learn from the facial expressions around us. Another interesting thing is that when we don’t like something or fear it, our tendency is to run from it but when we feel disgust, we want to destroy it, to stomp it out of existence. Are you making the connections to churches yet?

In my research, I could not help making the connection between what I feel from the culture towards the church. Not only do I sense disgust, I also sense hostility, a primitive anger towards organized religion, religious authority, and even devotees who may appear naive and unthinking.

I think this may have been what the Apostle Paul felt – repulsion and hostility – towards the church while he was still called Saul. In Aramaic, Paul heard: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.” As I ponder human psychology in general and Paul in specific Jesus’ response makes perfect sense. Here are three key points Jesus hit on:

One, Paul had a genuine experience of Christ. A personal encounter. Experience, not information, tends to drive human questioning. Paul, though committed to a certain viewpoint, could not deny what he felt, heard, and saw. The role of the church is crucial in facilitating genuine experiences for those in our communities.

Two, Jesus choose to ask a question, rather than making a case. Questions are powerful because they place the right burden on the right person. This was Paul’s process and Jesus left the problem-solving responsibility squarely on Paul’s shoulders. Rather than taking on the anxiety of the outcome, Christians can be better friends by creating and holding processing space.

Three, Jesus appealed to Paul’s well-trained rationale. Why? What’s your reason? Does this make sense to you? What’s really going on in your heart? What do you gain by hurting yourself? Jesus spoke the language that was meaningful for Paul. What language will get through to those you love? Do the languages of fear, manipulation, or over-simplification work for those you’re trying to connect with? Are people able to appreciate the language of the well-churched? For me, the language that integrates the disciplines of science, theology, and coaching works well. I can hear it. I can move towards it. It opens me up in a way that nothing else quite does. Mix that in with non-anxious questions and personal experience, and once again, I find myself kneeling before the Lord of lords and the King of kings.