By Greg Yee, Superintendent, PacNWC
Happy New Years – a new decade begins! My prayers were for a safe, beautiful, and enlightening Christmas and start to 2020. I hope it’s been.
This year’s annual meeting theme is TOGETHER. It is taken from one of Jesus’ most forward-looking prayers as the entire chapter of John 17 captures. Jesus prays a farewell prayer that beautifully points to what is most true and important to him as he faces his physical demise. Betrayal, ridicule, torture, and slow death are all before him. What is core to Jesus in this clarifying last moment?
Jesus prays that as he, the Father and Spirit are in community sharing perfect oneness, he prays for us to know the same. That’s what he wanted. There were many things he could have prayed, but more than anything else, he prayed for our togetherness.
“I pray that they will all be one…so that they world will believe [in me]”
See that’s the key. It’s our oneness, our unity, that will be the ultimate witness to the world. Togetherness is our superpower for the mission God gives us. It is when we are working together that mission will be most effective.
We were drawn to this theme because Jesus’ prayer seems especially pointed for us today. It seems particularly important and bold in our current polarized climate globally, nationally, locally, denominationally, and even in our churches. We will always have conflict and disagree about matters. This is natural and normal. I believe this is why Jesus prayed for us – he knew this. But a spirit of disunity is poisonous. I’ve seen it devastate churches and consume leaders and pastors. I’ve seen it distract us and pull us away from each other taking us off mission.
Our early impulses as a denomination were to be friends joining in mission. We called ourselves Mission Friends. Our passionate commitment was that we could do abundantly more together than we could ever do as independent churches. But what is different today is that we are a much more diverse church living in more diverse realities. We are no longer the mono-cultural denomination we were when these commitments were first made. Being friends and joining arm in arm in mission is more complex and challenging today. It demands more from us: more time, more conversations, more learning, more patience… Together is a lot of work.
But Jesus continues to pray for us as he sits at the right hand of the Father right now interceding. I am certain he prays for our togetherness.
Our strong and sure witness is our diversity. Within the realities of our growing mosaic of churches and in a region where Jesus is not very well known, I believe that we need each other more than ever. We must remember this is our superpower. We reflect the Trinity. We are an answer to Jesus’ prayers. We move forward in mission best when we are TOGETHER as a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-class multi-lingual church.
We look toward to being together at Harbor Covenant Church (Gig Harbor, WA) April 24-25. Please plan now to attend our Leadership Matrix workshops on Friday afternoon. We’ll be sending more information out shortly. We also look forward to hearing from my colleague the Reverend Superintendent Catherine Gilliard from the Southeast Conference at our opening worship service. Please send delegates to the annual meeting on Saturday. We look forward to having more times of discussion and prayer together.
Your love for one another will prove to the word that you are my disciples (John 13:35). Let’s do it!
[Click Here] to visit the PacNWC 2020 Annual Celebration Event Page