We go to church while a pastor's away

West Seattle Church of the Nazarene, Seattle, Washington
I wonder whether the pastor's vacation is the very best or the very worst time to visit a church. Pastor Shaun was on vacation when we visited the Church of the Nazarene in West Seattle, and Pastor Terry said, “I have no idea how they are doing, and I’m glad about that.” He explained that being pastor of a church is a great burden, and that getting out of town without phone or text access is a good thing. Still, Pastor Terry said he was looking forward to Shaun’s return on Friday.

The bad side of visiting when the pastor is away is that we can’t observe an important component in the ministry of the church, but the good side is getting the opportunity to watch a healthy church with plenty of congregants to pitch in when staff is away. That seemed to be the case at this church.

When we checked the church’s website before Sunday morning, we were tempted to go to the 9:30 am breakfast that precedes the 10:00 Sunday school time, but we opted to wait for the 11:00 am worship service.

As we walked toward the building, we noticed it was weathered -- on the other hand, you could say the building has character. The wood pallets at the front of the sanctuary beneath the screen, like several other rustic elements throughout the building, are attractive, decorative touches. A cross on the right hand side of the room has a table with votive candles below it, and what I assume are prayer requests hanging on the cross itself. A communion table near the center of the room was the focal point of the horseshoe of chairs, with a few round tables on the corners of the horseshoe.

Before the service started, I heard someone say, “Is Bonnie sick today?” and a bit later I heard someone say, “Oh, good, Bonnie is here.” People were greeting each other with love and affection (“Let me compliment you on your shirt; it’s dope!”) Terry introduced himself as we came in, and a few minutes later he asked those assisting with the service to meet in the pastor’s office.

We sat down in a back row, and an older gentleman turned around and welcomed us. As the service began, he turned around again and said, “We sing newer songs. I hope you like them.”

While the first song was “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” and we also sang “Be Thou My Vision,” there were also several songs from the 21st century. And yes, we liked them.

During the announcements Terry discussed helping “Pastor Laura” move to the area. (During the service I never quite learned who she was or what her responsibilities would be, but people seemed excited that she was coming.) There were boxes of Krispy Kreme Donuts in the front of the church. Pastor Terry announced that anybody who helped unload the Penske moving truck after church would get Krispy Kreme donuts -- he showed us the boxes, but put them away until Pastor Laura’s belongings were out of the truck.

There were other announcements about the church's efforts to build affordable housing in the neighborhood. (Affordable housing is a big deal in Seattle.) This was just one of several projects designed to serve the community. A smaller project is opening the church’s playroom to the community so that families can bring their kids to play while the adults enjoy free wi-fi and coffee or hot chocolate. That should be starting in September, and there was a request for hosts to monitor the space when the room was open.

Lorenzo, the minister of music, came to the microphone and said, “In exchange for letting me preach in jeans and a t-shirt, I promised to do a sermon that is only eleven minutes long. That is the only joke I’ll tell in this message.” (For the record, he went about thirteen minutes and said a couple of other things that made people chuckle.) Pastor Lorenzo spoke on Jesus and the need for rest and Sabbath and used images on the screen to illustrate the message (primarily from The Lion King and Moana).

After the sermon, Terry asked a woman who works in a Christian school in American Samoa to share some prayer requests (there are a number of Samoans in the congregation). After that, all were welcomed for the time of communion, which was served by Pastor Terry and Pastor Bonnie.

Before we left, Pastor Bonnie sought us out and thanked us for coming. I asked her about the strengths of the church, and she noted the church’s diversity. She said they were truly a family. She was sorry we had missed Pastor Shaun, but we were glad to visit the family just at it was that particular Sunday.

 

We go to a church in transition

West Side Presbyterian Church, Seattle, Washington
“Summer is full of comings and goings,” Pastor Shari mentioned early in the morning worship service. The high schoolers were just returning from the MOVE Conference at Biola University in southern California. During the the prayer time, Pastor Shari prayed for people moving into the area. (We moved to West Seattle on the 4th of July, so we appreciated the prayer for us.) But the "going" that was on the mind of most in the congregation that morning (and when we returned for the evening service) was Pastor Shari’s, because this was her last Sunday.

Shari Jackson Monson has been serving as the interim senior pastor at West Side Presbyterian Church for the last two years, but now she’s leaving to serve another Presbyterian Church in the area -- again as an interim. West Side will have a “Bridge pastor” until they’re able to call a new Senior Pastor. I’m not sure how a Bridge pastor differs from a interim pastor, but there you go.

We knew that this was Pastor Shari’s last Sunday before we came, because Mindy had visited the church’s website. She was impressed with how user friendly and informative it was (she particularly liked that the week’s announcements -- this week’s, not last week’s -- were already posted on Saturday).*

Parking is generally at a premium at churches and other businesses in Seattle, so we parked a couple of blocks away. As we walked toward the church, we agreed it looked like a Presbyterian church. It is an attractive brick building with a nice old tree in front (signs asked us not to climb it. We appreciated the warning, because we are often tempted to climb trees).

A line of people stood at the door to greet those entering. A table on our left was set up set up for people to write notes of appreciation to Pastor Shari. Two women behind the welcome center behind the table greeted us, and we chatted with them before going into the sanctuary.

We found our seats on pews near the back, and I noticed a couple of screens in the front that partially covered the carved wood decorations on either side of the platform. Otherwise, the sanctuary seemed typical of a Presbyterian church built in the late 1940s (1948 according to the cornerstone).

Though the message on the screens read, “no signal” at first, that was soon remedied. When the first song was announced, I was surprised it wasn’t projected, but rather found in the hymnal. Frankly, it’s been quite a long time since we sang all the verses in a song from a hymnal accompanied by an organ.

During the greeting/passing of the peace, one of the women sitting behind me said, “I know you’re a visitor.” I wondered how she could tell. I don’t think it was how I was dressed, although I saw older men in coats and ties and younger men in jeans.

The high schoolers reporting on their conference (and the adults who’d accompanied them) wore blue t-shirts. In both the morning and evening services, students shared “messages of hope” from their experience. One young woman talked about singing praise songs with 1600 other students, many who raised their hands as they sang. She said that as a Presbyterian, she wasn’t used to that style of worship, but that the group from West Side soon felt comfortable joining in.

Prior to leading the prayers of the people, Pastor Shari said that on this, her last Sunday, she felt free to confess something. On a Sunday early in her time at West Side, she’d realized she didn’t have a pen or paper to write down the prayer requests that were shared. Thinking quickly, after each request was shared, she asked if another congregant would pray for that request. With her conscience clear, she asked the congregation to do the same thing on this Sunday. As a visitor and stranger, I appreciated being able to share a request anonymously and to know that others are also bringing our request to God.

Pastor Shari said that, as usual, the prayer time would conclude with the Lord’s Prayer and that there were differences in the way people learned that prayer. She said that you couldn’t make a mistake, just pray. (I think I noticed that evening that Pastor Shari began to say “forgive us our trespasses” instead of the traditional Presbyterian “forgive us our debts.” But as she said, it’s all good.)

The morning’s speaker, Jeff Vancil, used to serve with Young Life but is now part of Leadership Development, an organization that runs Prayer Breakfasts. I hadn’t known, until he told us, that the Prayer Breakfast movement had its roots in Seattle when Abraham Vereide (who worked with the poor during the Great Depression) was approached by a rich man. “You do good work with the down and out, have you ever thought of helping the up and out?”

Eventually this movement led to the National Prayer Breakfast, which began in the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower. Other than the State of the Union Address, the National Prayer Breakfast is the largest gathering of elected officials in Washington, D. C. Jeff facilitates such events in Olympia, Washington state’s capital. He said that elected officials from both sides of the aisle leave politics aside as they come together to pray, leading to greater civility in the capital in these uncivil times.

After introducing himself, he spoke on James 4: 1 - 3 (the church has a summer series on the epistle of James). He talked about the great incivility in this culture, and argued that James pointed to the need to acknowledge that we must look to ourselves as the base of such problems, not others. At the conclusion, a woman behind us said, “Wow, what a message!”

The same message was delivered in the morning and evening services. At the conclusion of the morning service there was the installation of the incoming class of deacons and elders. The evening service concluded with communion. The morning service was followed by a reception for Pastor Shari. The evening service was followed by a sandwich dinner. Both services provided a time to worship the Lord and fellowship with His people, and we appreciated both.

*As we mentioned last week, this blog is, like West Side Presbyterian, in a transitional stage because we are in a transitional stage. We plan to keep visiting new churches for the blog, but we’re also trying to find a church we can call home. We’ll try not to make our search the focus of posts, but it’s bound to come up now and then.

We walk into a church and a street fair

The Junction Church, Seattle, Washington
This week our daughter Paige suggested we might want to listen to the latest episode of This American Life, which had a story on church planting. Watson Jones and A.J. Smith were trying to launch an urban church in Philadelphia. The story makes it clear that there are big challenges in starting a church these days. But there are also big challenges in maintaining an older church as well.

Outside The Junction Church’s building, you can see a cornerstone with the year the building went up, 1950. Inside, we heard that the church (not just the building) began either in 1904 or the late 1800’s. Whatever the exact year was, those dates aren’t too far from each other. It’s an American Baptist congregation, and we learned that in years past the sanctuary was filled with pews and, on Sunday mornings, a couple hundred people. When we entered the church at 10:00 am this past Sunday, barely on time for the start of the service, there were no pews and fewer than a dozen people, including ourselves.

Gil introduced himself and mentioned that he was the pastor of the church. We told him we were from California, and he told us about living in Hayward. He has been attending the church for four years, but two years ago the pastor left, and Gil “stepped up” (according to Rob, another congregant) to the role of pastor.

A young man and woman, Chris and Jessie, led the singing time that opened the worship service. There were older choruses, such as “I Will Sing of the Mercies of the Lord,” which was fun, along with a couple of more recent offerings. The slides kept up with the choruses, which doesn’t always happen. After church, Mindy and I agreed that we enjoyed the singing time, simple as it was, more than we appreciated the music in various larger churches we’ve visited.

Gil spoke on Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” He used photos throughout the service, starting with cheerleaders in their eighties, illustrating the “old” part of the verse well. Another slide was of those great theologians, the Three Stooges. Finishing up, Gil talked about the history of the church as he held up hundred year old Bibles, and he talked about the need for the church to reach out to the community.

Usually, he said, they have communion every Sunday using bread and wine (not juice? We weren’t clear on it) made by members of the congregation. Not this Sunday, though. Gil encouraged people to go out into the community to West Seattle Summer Fest, a street fair held literally at the church’s doorstep. So we all took a walk.

We walked up and down the street with Rob and Susan, who are regulars at the church. They have three grown kids, as do we, so we talked about that. We heard some of their history and shared some of ours. We smelled some great food and had some samples. We saw some clever crafts. And I learned about the proposed subway system that might someday go from West Seattle to Downtown. When we got back to the church, Rob opened the door (he had a key), and we went inside and chatted a bit before heading home.

Earlier, during the worship service, we saw people inside the church wave to people walking by outside. And the church will continue to get more of those outside people in. It’s something God can do.

We go to three churches at the same time

Eastridge Church, Seattle, Washington
For most of the almost four years we’ve been blogging about churches, we’ve been one-time visitors -- and visitors only. We’ve mostly gone to churches with no intention of returning on a regular basis. We started slowly in 2014 by visiting just a few local churches near our home in Sonoma County, California. In 2015, we visited churches throughout California (by theme, as some of you may recall). We spent 2016 traveling from state to state, visiting at least one church in each. When that trip was over, we moved to Fresno, California, early in 2017. We felt we already had a home church  at The Bridge, though we still visited other churches most weeks.

Over the past month, life has changed for us. Last week, we moved to Seattle, Washington, and we’re looking for a new church home. When we visit churches now, we’ll usually be thinking, is this where we want to stay? Even if we find the perfect (for us) church in the next few weeks, we plan to keep visiting churches through the end of this year. But we need a home base. If you’re a praying person, please pray for our search for a church home.

Don’t expect these posts to change a lot, though. We don’t expect to announce either, “Eureka! We’ve found our church!” or “Yuck! We won’t be be coming back here!” This blog is about first visits, and we always want to be kind. If we don’t want to return to a church, it wouldn’t be kind to announce it to the world, and if we really like a church on a first visit, we’re unlikely to decide to stay until we’ve visited several times --- and we don’t plan to write about those visits.

So enough preliminares. This week we visited the West Seattle campus of Eastridge Church, a multi-site church. The much larger Eastridge campus is in Issaquah (about a half an hour’s drive away). The church’s third campus is in Addis, Ethiopia (yup, the one in Africa). We were delighted that we’d visited on a Sunday when we got to hear a lot about that third campus.

The teaching time, televised from the Issaquah campus, was Pastor Steve Jamison’s interview of Doug and Tasha Myers (who lead the Addis congregation). Doug and Steve have a long relationship.

When Doug was 12 years old, he felt the call to missions while listening to one of Jamison’s sermons. Years later, Doug went on to work as a youth pastor under Jamison. During that time, the church leadership asked Doug where he thought he should be, and he said Africa. They asked what was keeping him from Africa and he said school debts. So the church made a commitment to pay off those debts.

Doug and Tasha have served years in Africa. As missionaries with the Assemblies of God, at first they followed traditional methods of ministering in rural areas. The emphasis had been on training local pastors for ministry, all in native languages, but they had a vision for a different kind of ministry.

Addis, Ethiopia is the headquarters for the African Union, a 55-nation organization that deals with economic issues, treaties, health concerns, etc. Representatives from all over the world, from the Americas, Europe, and Asia, to work with the Union, and the official working language for the African Union is English. So Doug and Tasha have begun an English language international congregation in Addis. The ministry is growing, so Pastor Jamison challenged the two congregations to raise $50,000 for the congregation in Addis.

We enjoyed worshipping with the people of the West Seattle campus. During the singing time, people were encouraged to come forward with prayer requests, for physical healing, work, financial needs, decision making.

After announcements, people were encouraged to chat over coffee, strawberries, melons, bagels, donuts and other treats before returning to the sanctuary for the message. John introduced himself, though he was a visitor as well. He is here from India to visit his daughter.

I met Andy and asked him why he attended this church. He said his wife wanted to go to a community church. I asked how long he’d been attending there, and he nodded at his daughter, who was 12, and said they’d been attending since she was little.

After the service ended, we were able to spend a little more time chatting with people. Mindy chatted with Heather, who’s Pastor Jamison’s executive assistant, while I talked with her husband, Brian. I asked what he liked about the church.

He noted that the West Seattle campus had the advantages of a small church, so you can get to know people. (Craig, the campus pastor, said during the service, “It’s good to have a critical mass in the room.”) Brian said they also benefit from the large campus in Issaquah. (For instance, the kids from West Seattle will be bussed over to the Issaquah campus to share their Vacation Bible School.)

We loved being in one place, West Seattle, and yet feeling a part of the church a half hour and half a world away. That's how the Church Universal works.