By Greg Yee, Superindendent, PacNWC
I recently heard this quote from English novelist Arnold Bennett,
“There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.”
Love this. I’ll come back to it later.
As Evangelicals, we believe that the Bible is God-breathed and that it is the only perfect rule for faith, doctrine and conduct. This Creator-inspired holy script wholly instructs, inspires, and corrects us. It sits in our lives and our life together as our foundation and our life-lamp. It is world-view shaping and counter-cultural. The words we read are not just English translations of ancient manuscripts. The Hebrew author tells us that the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. The Covenant’s first and foundational affirmation is the centrality of the Word of God and states that the dynamic, transforming power of the word of God directs the church and the life of each Christian. We boldly confess and live out the fact that, today, God continues to reveal Himself to us through the Old and New Testaments.
I start there because my heart is heavy about the challenges of our life together as a mosaic of 77 churches. I’m concerned because I perceive that we like the idea of being a diverse conference, but I’m not sure if we’ve counted that cost and given ourselves completely to it. I’m afraid that what we are called to do and be too quickly gets labeled as non-biblical or not about the gospel. I want us to do thorough biblical work and understand what scripture challenges us to do and be. I believe that this is what we are called to in this season.
It’s our conference vision. We are a mission movement that believes that God calls us to be a mosaic of churches working interdependently together to transform lives and communities. We follow God’s word and together commit to each other to reach as much of the Pacific Northwest as we can. By “to reach” I mean more people giving their lives to Jesus, and “to reach” I also mean communities/cities/regions/countries/the planet being transformed as God’s kingdom ways are established here and now; personal wholeness and societal wholeness; God’s shalom.
I love the growing, beautiful mosaic God is building in us. We are seeing more and more of the image of God through our diversity. We have six different ministries for Spanish speakers from Aloha, OR to Burlington, WA. We are planting our first Chinese language church in Bellevue. And don’t forget our Nepali-speaking congregation in Kent, four Korean-speaking churches in OR and WA, and a Liberian, Pan-African, and other Latino churches we’re currently talking to. The PacNWC is about 30% multiethnic. We are in agricultural and in our largest urban areas. We are near universities, military bases, in all of our state capitols, and around the largest and leading companies on the planet. We are a diverse missionary people call to this incredible slice of the world.
We are an growing, beautiful, potent mosaic. God invites us forward…
So, together as a diverse conference, on mission together, and founded on the centrality of Scripture, how do we live and serve together? I especially wonder how we live and serve together when difficult things happen. So often during tough times, we instinctively quote good scripture to each other like, If one part suffers, every part suffers with it… How do we suffer together and how do we see God’s Kingdom established amidst pain and difficulty? How do we incarnate ourselves and lay our lives down for each other? How do we see others interest as more important than ours? How do we follow Jesus in this way (Phil 2:1-11)?
When we hear about somebody shooting up a WalMart and intently targeting Mexicans on August 3rd and then hear about the largest workplace immigration raid in a decade on August 7th, how do we respond? Don’t read this politically. We have immigrants in our churches that were terrified after these incidents; fellow Covenanters that continue to be profoundly affected even today. How do we do life and ministry together amidst that? What is our responsibility to each other? What is the gospel work here?
Andy Larsen (Quest/MENA), Mat Hollen (St. Thomas Cov, Salem) and I joined 34 others two weeks ago on the Covenant’s Sankofa Journey. This 4-day cross-racial immersive experience visited historical civil rights locations and followed the trajectory of life for African Americans. Sankofa was profoundly revealing. It was disturbing to plumb our history and even more concerning to see how much it affects life today: red-lining, implicit bias, and mass incarceration to name a couple. I’m also aware of stories from our ranks. Recently a pastor shared about his son being unfairly treated at his school and the unprofessional responses from the administration. Another leader saw her son detained and searched as he was walking to his car in front of their house. Another leader was pulled over so many times while serving in his region that he had trouble renting cars. Other Covenanters share about their elevated levels of stress and physical ailments as a result of generations of anxiety and trauma as African Americans. How do we do life and ministry together knowing these things? What is our responsibility to each other? What is the gospel work here?
God’s holy and perfect Word confronts us.
Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, and plead the widow’s cause, (Isaiah 1:17).
The red letters clearly tell us as Jesus said,
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments (Matt 22:37-40).
It brings me back to Bennett‘s quote, “There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.”
May we experience each other and draw closer together. May we be stirred by each other’s experiences and actually suffer when the other suffers. May we have righteous indignation and be moved to kingdom action. As 77 churches on mission together, may we clearly answer together, how do we do life and ministry together knowing these things? What is our responsibility to each other? What is the gospel work?