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You know this, but I’ll say it anyway. Culture is always emerging.

You get what that means, right? That the world and ways around you are always shifting — always innovating. The introduction of new things and new methods continues to happen every moment of every day, whether or not we are willing to embrace it. The larger question lies in how we choose to respond. Do we welcome the uncomfortableness of the new or do we double down with a comfortable existence in the world?

Regardless, shift happens.

Am I allowing this shift to happen in me? Always for the good? Always letting go of the old me in order to make room for the new, less comfortable me? I have to be honest with you for a moment: Every morning, I wake and have to check myself because it feels like the ground beneath my feet continues to shift. I feel compelled to regularly address the question: Who am I?

Around our country, overt hate and xenophobia have stepped out from behind a thin veil in a sprint to become the new norm. It’s bolstered by unapologetic fearmongering and outright lies. And, it’s insane. I refuse to allow it to gain a foothold among the space Christ calls me to steward in the world — a place of peace, hope, and justice. I simply refuse. Being a United Methodist demands that I “do no harm,” “do good,” and “stay in love with God.”

How do I allow myself to be undone and recreated by the grace of God? There’s enormous value in the process of unlearning my cultural identity as an American Christian and relearning what it means to be a follower of a rogue revolutionary, un-American, Middle Eastern-born person of color, represented in Jesus the Christ. Secondly, how does my personal undoing become a part of a corporate rebirth — shifting from individual to community?

I am always drawn to Matthew’s telling of the Sermon on the Mount, which you can read in chapters five through the beginning of seven in the Gospel of Matthew. There, you have this 30-something newcomer, sitting on a hillside near the Sea of Galilee, with disciples, followers, and the curious gathered around. Among people who have been shaped for generations under the Law of Moses, Jesus calls into question everything that had defined their perspective of the world. He basically said in varying ways, “You have heard the law that says _______________. But now I say _______________.” Jesus was rewriting the Torah on the fly! Surely people were reflecting (maybe even out loud), “Who does this guy think he is?” Can you imagine the internal struggle going on within those listening to Jesus? He called into question their cultural formation and challenged them to see the world — including the “other” — through a new lens. The lens of Christ.

This unlearning and relearning process can be painful, but it is a necessary part of spiritual growth and re-formation. It inescapably remains at the core of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. And if the statement “culture is always emerging” is true (and it is), then how are you I emerging as part of the Body of Christ within the neighborhood, community, region, nation, and world? How are our individual actions creating space for a fresh, communal voice to rise up above the bombastic noise we (and others) are hearing?

As we move toward a CrossOver Year in the Greater Northwest Area, beginning this Advent season, these questions could never be more important than they are now.

Shift happens. While making room for others, how will you respond in the midst of it and cross over to life? A new season is dawning. Let’s make the road by walking into the new.

Rev. Dr. William D. Gibson serves as Director of Innovation for a New Church for the Greater Northwest Episcopal Area including the Alaska, Oregon-Idaho and Pacific Northwest Annual Conferences.

Have questions about General Conference 2019?

In just over three months, a Special Session of the General Conference will take place February 23-26 in St. Louis. Most United Methodists are well aware that we are not of one mind regarding the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ folks in the life of the church, and many know this General Conference was called to help us to resolve these differences. From there our collective understanding can drop off significantly.

This General Conference, and the road we have taken to it so far, has not been easy to follow. There have been an extraordinary number of moving parts, and every step taken toward it has been scrutinized and spun with statements flying from key leaders, official UMC groups, and a growing number of unofficial caucus groups.

So, as we get closer to this date it is natural that people have questions. I’m hoping to answer a few of them in this space in the weeks to come so please send me yours. I can’t promise to answer them all, but I will read them and try to answer, or find the right person to answer, those that surface frequently.

So here is our first question. “Where can I get more information about the 2019 General Conference?”

And here is the answer. We’ve created a new page on the Greater Northwest Area website which collates such information from a number of sources. We hope it is a helpful launchpad for those who want to refresh their understanding, get a better grasp at some of the moving pieces, or dig deeper into the materials delegates will consider when they continue the Church’s work in St. Louis this February. We’ll continue to add content and perfect this page and will try to let you know when we do.

Click the button below to dig in and don’t forget to respond with your questions.

grace&peace

Patrick Scriven
Director of Communications, Young People’s Ministries

Pioneer held its first official “Town Hall” meeting on Sunday, October 28th in the church parlor. Open to the entire congregation, the parlor was full of enthusiastic lunch goers and meeting attendees as we met to celebrate the previous year and look to the future.

A wonderful soup lunch was served and donated by one of the Soup Kitchen teams. Baked items donated by many were available for purchase. The honor system was used for individuals to put into the ‘jar’ whatever donation they were able to contribute for their item. Final donations amounted to over $1100 being raised for the soup kitchen budget! The team who prepared and served the meal gives a huge THANK YOU to all who donated baked items and to all who generously purchased them!

Following the lunch, while some were still enjoying yummy desserts garnished with a generous dollop of whipped cream, Mary Huycke, our District Superintendent, gave a brief update on our current situation and steps forward during Pastor Juli’s absence due to her illness.

The Church Council then shared the accomplishments of the past year, 2018. Some of the accomplishments included–

• Strong continuance of the Soup Kitchen and on-going support of the YWCA projects/clients/staff.
• Family Camp at Wallowa
• The Youth Mission Trip
• Council’s development of Goals for the Future
• Monthly TAIZE evenings, PUB Theology, Youth Internships,
• Discipleship and Membership classes and more…

A review of the Church Goals developed was given–

• Goal #1—Increase opportunities for spiritual formation and deepening relationships for the congregation and the community.
• Goal #2—Research, evaluate, and assess a summer multi-week program focused on low income children that provides educational and spiritual formation opportunities.
• Goal #3—Create concrete opportunities and activities that appeal to an intergenerational congregation and community to engage men, women and children.

The narrative budget was distributed and discussed by Larry Nelson, a member of the financial team. The Trustee Capital Projects were reviewed and discussed. They included:

• Under contract projects
  • Insulate all ductwork on roof of education wing
  • Replace both boilers in boiler room downstairs
  • Replace single-pane windows in offices, library, parlor, and parlor kitchen
  • Replace dual-pane windows in chapel

• Under consideration
  • New heating/cooling systems for choir room and hand bell practice room

The Town Hall concluded with many attendees leaving with their arms full of baked goods.

Imagine the scene…silence…lights dim. On tables, on the floor and on the steps, dozens of candles flicker. There is no preaching, no teaching, no talk of sin or repentance or forgiveness. There is just this elegantly simple service: short chants, often in Latin, repeated over and over in the dark. Plus, some short Scripture readings or psalms. And silence, at least 12 or 15 minutes, sometimes more. In 45 minutes, it’s over.

Welcome to a Taize prayer service. Taize is the creation of a Protestant monastic community in Taize, France, founded in the 1940’s by a Swiss man known as Brother Roger. The brothers of the Taize monastery there are celibates who emphasize service and ecumenicalism, particularly reconciliation between divided peoples and divided Christians. Brother Roger was especially interested in bringing Catholics and Protestants together.

In our world today, when does the noise ever stop? What pastor would dare to include eight minutes of silence on a Sunday morning? For many, silence in the typical Sunday morning is more of an unwelcome interruption than a welcome encounter. Silence for some is seen as ‘dead air.’ Many in the church place more value on words than on cultivating an attentive, listening heart.

But what if that isn’t you? What if you find yourself needing silence, what if you are one to whom the pathway to the Spirit is silence? Where do you go to encounter the presence of the God we sing about, preach about and pray to? Let us not presume the value of worship can only be found in things that are said and done…rather than simply being present and open to the Divine.

Pioneer will once again offer a Taize-style worship service, a service cut from a different cloth. Beginning on October 14, at 6:30 pm, we will meet in the Chapel for a time of silence that is alive, not dead. Please join us, especially if you are curious. You might just hear the voice of the One who calls us beloved.

Wakanda is the home of the superhero Black Panther. It’s a fictional country, conveniently tucked out of sight between larger African nations. The Nuba Mountains are a lot like Wakanda, largely unseen by the rest of the world. And yet, just like the fictional Wakanda, it’s a fascinating region with a lot to teach others.

The Nuba is a region of Sudan that for decades has fought for survival and respect against the central government in Khartoum. When neighbors in what became South Sudan signed a 2005 agreement that led to eventual independence in 2011, the Nuba got left out. Since then they’ve been on their own. United Nations agencies and most aid groups won’t enter. So the Nuba are on their own.

Except for the church. During the last three decades of war, the church has maintained its presence in the Nuba Mountains, providing pastoral accompaniment, education, and health care, encouraging hope while the rest of the world looked away.

Angelina Nyakuru is a Catholic sister from Uganda who has served for a decade as head nurse at a church hospital in the Nuba Mountains. She refused to leave during several periods of intense bombing, when she quickly learned to trust the instincts of children.

“The children have better hearing, so they hear the planes first. I see them running and my body starts running as well. If they hear the bombs falling before I get to the foxhole, they yell at me, ‘Sister, lay down,’ and I hit the ground,” she told me. The children also convinced her to wear her gray habit rather than her white one during periods of bombing, as it makes her less of a target. Angelina refused to leave even when ordered out by her superior. “If we run away, what kind of shepherds are we?” she asked.

I often look for stories that are unreported, that other media ignore. The church’s work in the Nuba Mountains is one such story. So after two years of negotiations, in April I flew on a United Nations plane from Juba, the capital of South Sudan, to the refugee camp at Yida, a horrifically hot and dusty settlement on the border between South Sudan and Sudan. From there it’s a buttocks-numbing eight-hour ride through the bush along a corridor that rebels patrol to prevent attacks by the Sudanese military. In lieu of a visa, I had a travel permit from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army-North. Although technically I was inside Sudan, I had no permission from the central government in Khartoum, which has refused to issue me another visa since I covered their war in Darfur.

I spent nine days in the Nuba, listening to people talk about how faith has kept them going. It’s a fascinating place where the tribalism that has plagued nearby countries has been largely kept at bay, and where relations between Muslims and Christians have been overwhelmingly positive. People celebrate each other’s religious holidays, and have learned the hard way that falling bombs have no religious preference.

Gender roles are changing in the Nuba Mountains, and I interviewed people about a law that took effect while I was there that triples the bride price in cows for men who get a girl student pregnant. It’s designed to help keep girls in school and guarantee more balanced leadership in the Nuba’s future.

Because of its isolation, there has been almost no international coverage of these issues. The few journalists who’ve ventured to the Nuba Mountains in recent years have focused inordinate attention on Tom Catena, a US physician who for a decade has practiced medicine there in the middle of the war. Dr. Tom, as he’s widely known, is a great guy and a true hero, but much of the writing about him has cast him as the heroic white savior, ignoring the scores of Africans, many of them church workers, who have acted just as heroically. I’ve initially written seven articles which seek to profile those other people and the challenges they face, while also covering Catena but keeping his story in the larger context of the church’s mission.

This kind of in-depth journalism is an endangered enterprise in these days of fast-paced social media. I’ve been fortunate, because of your support, to be able to take the time necessary to tell these stories. And I appreciate media like Response, the magazine of United Methodist Women, for giving me the space to share what I learn.

The issue of Response just now going to press includes the stories of Korean women who worked as prostitutes at U.S. military bases in the 1950s and 60s. Now old women, abandoned by Korean society, they face loneliness and despair. Yet some Methodist women have provided pastoral and legal accompaniment, helping the women feel loved and dignified in their remaining years. It took a lot of time to listen to the women so I could write about their struggles, and it was your congregation’s support for my ministry that made that time possible.

Many of you have supported my work for years and even decades. It’s been a long journey together. So I want you to be among the first to know that I’m going to officially retire at the end of June next year. Although I’ll continue to travel and write, I’ll do so at a slower pace, allowing me more time to spend with my family, including my granddaughter. I’m also going to try to take better care of my aging body; I just recovered from my second bout with malaria (which I contracted on the Africa trip), and my body is telling me to slow down.

In preparation for retirement, I will itinerate one more time during March, April and May next year. I’ll be in touch late in the year as we start to figure out a schedule. It will be my last opportunity to express my deep appreciation for the unique opportunity you’ve given me over the decades to be in mission. Your congregation’s engagement in mission, both locally and globally, is a true sign of hope, and I look forward to celebrating that with you.

In God’s peace,

Paul