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 go to a prayer meeting

National Day of Prayer, Fresno Pacific University, Fresno, California
We were running late. Mindy got off work just fifteen minutes before the National Day of Prayer gathering began, and we didn’t have good information about where on Fresno Pacific University’s campus the event was being held. The red, white, and blue balloons helped --we were reminded of trying to find a new polling place: it doesn’t hurt to keep an eye out for patriotic bunting.

Fresno Pacific University was founded by the Mennonite Brethren back in 1944. It’s not huge, but isn’t tiny either, with a student body of 4000 undergraduates and postgraduates on a 42-acre campus with 16 buildings (a number of which are chapels.) But we eventually found the well-populated meeting room. We weren’t as late as we feared we’d be, and according to the program we picked up as we entered, there was plenty of time left to pray.

The National Day of Prayer, observed the first Thursday of May, was enacted by the United States Congress back in 1952. Since then, every president has signed an annual proclamation urging prayer on this day.

There were several midday gatherings in Fresno, but with our work schedules, this was the only one we could attend. Soon after we sat down, Pastor Josh introduced a prayer of confession on behalf of our community and nation with a reference the Biblical book of Daniel. He mentioned that Daniel was one of the very rare figures in the Old Testament whose sin is not detailed. Moses and David were murderers, Abraham and Jacob were liars, Joseph was a braggart, Noah a drunkard, Samson was...what didn’t Samson do wrong?

Daniel on the other hand, in the very difficult situation of being dragged from his homeland as a slave, seemed to do everything right. But in his prayer, recorded in Daniel 9:5, he said, “We have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and rebelled; we have turned away from your commandments and laws.” Following that example, we were urged to pray for our nation as fellow sinners.

We were asked to pray in the small groups that had been formed before, but since we’d missed that part, Pastor Angulus joined Mindy, our son Bret, and me. The room was filled with the sound of pleas for forgiveness.

A woman named Kathy introduced the theme verse for this year’s National Day of Prayer, Ephesians 4:3, “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”

This verse seemed particularly relevant in our polarized times, but when I looked around the room, I could see how truly people with differences were coming together. We were a group with a wide variety of ethnicities, races, and ages. The program made it clear that there were pastors from a number of churches. I’d also venture to guess that not everyone in the room voted the same way in 2016 or would vote the same way this coming November, yet we were joining together as people of one Lord, one faith, and one baptism.

One portion of the meeting was specific prayer that different ethnicities and races in our nation would come together. The speaker leading that portion pointed out that diversity was God’s idea -- in Revelation 7:9, people of every nation, tribe, people group, and language pray before the Throne of God. That bit of the God’s Kingdom to come is something we need to bring to earth now.

I enjoyed how the congregation was called to pray with different styles. “All right, now let’s pray popcorn style” with people praying short, one or two sentence, prayers.

“Let’s pray Korean style” meant we all prayed aloud, creating a rumble of prayer going to heaven. (It reminded me of martial arts films when fighters choose “Monkey Fist Style” or “Eagle Claw Style.” I may very well be the only person in the room who was reminded of this.)

The only sour note came during one of the popcorn prayers as we prayed for the communities of Fresno and Clovis. Someone prayed, “Lord, the greatest plague in our community is caused by drinking wine and beer which only leads to drunkenness.” To me, the prayer made as little sense as praying about the great plague caused by cutlery, which only leads to murderous knife fights. Almost all the other prayers that evening seemed to have an underlying sense of humility; this one had the tone of Pharisee of Jesus’ parable who thanks God he is not like the sinner praying next to him.

“Those who are able” were asked to kneel to ask for God’s protection, for security for our community and our nation. We rose to pray for a spiritual awakening for our nation. We joined our voices to sing praise to the name of Jesus. And we held hands before we went out, praying that the unity we had in that room would go forth in the community and the nation.

So whether you pray Popcorn Style or Korean Style, aloud or silently, Monkey Fist or Eagle Claw, I would urge you, too, to pray that God will bring this country, this world, His unity and peace.

"But how can you afford to do this?"

Over the past few months, when we've told people about what we'd like to do during 2016, we've been asked some version of "Are you crowdfunding?"  We gave involved answers at first, referring to Bible passages where Jesus sent his disciples on journeys with only the clothes on their backs. We want to be that trusting in God's loving provision as we follow this adventure, so we don't have an GoFundMe site, or an Indiegogo page, or even Kickstarter. However, there are other passages where Jesus tells his followers to consider what they're doing before they start to make sure they have what's needed to finish. We want to be that wise, too.

So, we've got three different crowdsourcing campaigns going. The first covers our immediate needs, and involves folks in our geographical area only -- and no money at all. The second is monetary, and anybody who wants to help can. The fourth is the most important. The third might involve the least effort. Two (possibly three) have incentives!

1. If you live near Santa Rosa and have a few free feet of storage space, we'd appreciate being able to store a box of books or photos. Incentive: we will pray for you every day during 2016 (and we really want you to keep us informed of your needs so we can pray intelligently).

2. If you'd like to help us financially, we're set up as "creators" on Patreon, which is a little different. People who donate are called "patrons" because they're supporting artists (and writers and film makers and whatnot). Some creators are set up for support by the creation; we're asking for monthly donations, since we'll be posting at least five times a week on the three blogs we'll be writing this year. We're asking for this kind of support because while we have savings to cover most of our day-to-day expenses, we know there will be car repairs, insurance needs, and unexpected costs during the year. This way, anybody who'd like to help financially can do it easily and securely, either one time or on a monthly basis. Incentive: there are several based on donation amounts.

3. We're still figuring out our destination in a few states. If you're involved in a church and could let us sleep on your floor for a few nights, we'd love to hear from you! Please get in touch in the comments or by email at DeanandMindygotochurch <at> gmail <dot> com 

4. All good missionary letters ask for prayer, and we're no different. We couldn't do this trip on our own. The kind words of friends (and strangers!) have helped prepare us for the year to come, but unless God is with us, there's no point in our going. Please pray that we will follow only where He leads and that He will supply our needs.

So the answer to the crowdfunding question is yes, we have a crowdfunding campaign in place, but it's not the only way you can join us on the ride. Thanks for asking!

-- Mindy