Pray for Your Pastors and Elders
Jim Ladd
I want to ask you to pray faithfully for your Pastors and Elders at ECC. It has never been more crucial than in days like these.
Church leadership has always been a challenging call, and the pressure faced since 2020 has exceeded any in my lifetime. Here are just a few of the challenges your Pastors and Elders face:
We cannot Pastor the internet, and yet there is so much division, hostility, and attack there, and it influences the people we serve.
We embrace the task to teach our people how to think Christianly, while recognizing that we are being overheard publicly and can be misrepresented, misquoted, or canceled at any moment.
People are more passionate than ever about their ideology (their source of identity) and are outraged that it is not being embraced by the majority culturally, politically, and socially. They also want their Pastor or Elder to have a response to the subject of the moment that is immediate, that matches their own, and that shares their same level of outrage or passion. It is impossible to do this and to shepherd God’s people at the same time.
People who have trusted and affirmed our spiritual leadership, maturity, and authority now leave us over one failure to agree on a passionately held ideology, or a decision on how COVID, masks, BLM, or the topic of the hour will be addressed as a Church.
Because people cannot find a majority that share their ideology and outrage, there is a growing fear that democracy is failing and that our country is being torn apart. This feeds a fear frenzy that is hijacking people everywhere.
The complexity of pain, dysfunction, anxiety, and disorders in the world are overwhelming. Pastors and Elders want to lead a church to be a safe place for all people to find and follow Jesus into wholeness and life. However, people with messy lives often find the church to be unsafe or unwelcoming. SO, some Pastors steward their notions to abandon the organized Church for methods of spiritual community that are smaller, more process-oriented, and more people-accepting.
I could go on and on, but you get the idea.
The good news is that Jesus is on the throne and He has amazing plans for both His people and for the local Church! He also is using this great disruption to clarify His calling on people’s lives, deepen our desire to walk with God and grow in our own discipleship, and to birth whole new ways of being the Church in the world.
Because of the above topics and more, we have some staff changes happening, and more staff and elders who are wrestling with God about His leading in their lives. I am so very proud of their courage to follow Jesus, and confident that He will lead us through the disruption that personnel changes bring.
Ken and Jalee Rice, my friends for over 26 years, have decided to follow Jesus into business as marketplace missionaries. They finished their time at ECC last week and plan to continue to be among us and a part of ECC while they follow the Spirit’s lead into entrepreneurship.
Kyle Stutzman has also decided to resign his Pastoral position on October 15 so that he and Madison can follow the Spirit’s leading into a smaller, more relational mission with Jesus, to help discern His clear call for their role in faith communities in the future. They, too, will be remaining a part of our family at ECC while they follow this clear prompting from God.
I could not be more proud of these leaders and their commitment to follow Jesus well and be fully obedient to His call on their lives! They have made a huge difference among us and their fingerprints are all over the place at Evergreen. They have demonstrated for us an incredible commitment to seek God, grow personally, and serve powerfully!
Please love on these amazing people and pray faithfully for your Pastors and Elders. You can find their pictures and names on our website at https://www.evergreenpnw.com/ourteam.
As for me, I am loving being a Pastor more than ever and I know that the Lord has powerful dreams for us as His people, in this local church, serving this region, together.
I love being your Pastor!