Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're listening to a live recording from.
[00:00:02] Speaker B: Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
My family and I went to the movies yesterday. I'm a big, big movie. I'm not like a film guy. I can't tell you about the directors and the actors and all those things, but going to the movies, this is something that means a lot to me. All the way back to going to the movie six in Grants pass, Oregon, which I think is just a parking lot now, and walking into the smell of that popcorn, right? And somehow at this movie theater, they had the exact same red carpet that every other theater and pizza parlor had at that time in the nineties. I'm not sure how they all ended up with the same carpet, but they did same kind of stains and everything like that. That's gross.
I remember going in and just experiencing the storytelling, right? And when you go to the movies as a kid, the big screen, the big sound, is something different than what you find at home. And these stories that they would tell in such a powerful and dynamic way. Right? The history is long. It's the Ben Hurs and the gone with the winds that I grew up with, and then, of course, the Star wars and then everything that's come in between. And since then. These movies are intended to tell us not just a story about another world, but they're intended more deeply than that, to tell us a story about ourselves. They help us discover a bit of what's in our heart and in our souls and in our communities and in our context. We tell these stories so that we can learn lessons, so that we can grow and that we can understand. And I had this experience again just last night taking my kids to wild robot. And Roz, the main character in the story, without any spoilers, says this at one point, where they come to this moment in the movie that a lot of movies come to, right? Where there's a group of people or creatures, and they have to band together in order to do so something great. And Roz says this. He says, sometimes to survive, we must become more than we're programmed to be.
I'll say it again. Sometimes to survive, we must become more than we're programmed to be in order to do something great. What has to happen with a group of people is that we have to transcend just our basic human nature, our ambitions, and our selfish wants and needs. We have to sacrifice and give to one another so that a great and bigger thing can be accomplished. And in a nutshell, that is the story of Westside Church, a group of people that came together often denied their own ambitions for the sake of something greater, a movement of God, the gospel, going forward in central Oregon, so that all might know and hear about the grace and the forgiveness of Jesus Christ.
So how did that happen over the course of time? Right. What did that actually look like once people decided to make that sacrifice? I actually think the apostle Paul in the book of Romans and in chapter eight gives us a bit of insight into what has happened here and even gives us a bit of insight into what God will do as we go forward. So in Romans chapter eight, we're going to start in verse 14, it says, all who are led by the spirit of God are children of goddess. So you've not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God's spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him Abba, Father, for his spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God's children. And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ, we are heirs of God's glory. But if we are to share in his glory, we must also share his suffering. Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory that he will reveal to us later through the spirit of God. We are now all called children of God, brought into the family of God. Verse 26, skipping down a little ways, it says, and the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don't know what God wants us to pray for, but the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father, who knows all hearts, knows the thing that the spirit is saying. For the spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God's own will. And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. In verse 31, it says, what shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since he did not spare even his own son, but gave him up for us all, won't we also give, excuse me, won't he also give us everything else? Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one. For God himself has given us right standing with himself. Who then will condemn us? No one. For Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us. And he is sitting in the place of honor at God's right hand, pleading for us.
This gives us assurances as we enter into a greater life of prayer. Hopefully, every single day, that our prayers don't have to be right and laser pointed at every single moment, we have the Holy Spirit that contends for us. Also, can anything ever separate us from Christ's love? In verse 35, does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted or hungry or destitute or in danger or threatened with death? And as the scriptures say, for your sake, we're killed every day. We're being slaughtered like sheep. No, despite all of these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. And I'm convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God's love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow. Not even the powers of hell can separate us from God's love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below. Indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I wonder if the question that Paul would ask this church, west side, today, I wonder if the most poignant question he would ask us today is, can anything ever separate us from Christ's love?
Of course, the answer is no.
And the reason for that is that this movement in Bend, Oregon, is built and borne by the Holy Spirit.
It's not simply just an effort of us as individuals and those who began this entire thing. It's actually the spirit of God that does something greater. It creates a community and a family for people. Now, I understand that this idea of family can be, you know, let's just say, kind of difficult based on our own experiences sometimes, right? Maybe at the very least, awkward. Some of you were sitting with family and you didn't want to laugh at that just now.
This idea. No, we're invited into a new family. It's like, no, no, no, we're good. I got one Thanksgiving and one Christmas, and that's all I need. I'm out.
And of course, this family is a lot like the family that we have now, in that it's imperfect and that it includes other people. Oh, man. I don't know about you, but I love this idea sometimes of having a family where it's just quiet and it's just me.
Oh, I just love my family.
It's going to get weirder, I promise.
But through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit doesn't just do works of, you know, miracles and power and these kind of outsized, incredible, mysterious things. Well, really, it is an outsized, incredible, mysterious thing that the Holy Spirit would draw a community of people together that especially in our world today, we have every single right to simply walk along independent of everyone else, trying to get what we believe belongs to us.
Putting the blinders on and saying, I'm just going to go forward and I'm going to take care of me, myself and I, and then maybe a family. But instead, the Holy Spirit beckons us to be entered into community with one another, with people with whom we disagree with deeply on many large issues and small issues, with people who have proven to us that they are flawed and imperfect, to even walk into situations where we have been hurt, to receive forgiveness and ask for forgiveness and continue to walk forward again.
Westside has grown and done many things with incredible beauty and grace and forgiveness, as well as awkwardness and imperfection.
And God has been there in the midst of it all.
But through the Holy Spirit, we remain together and we walk forward even with all that imperfection.
Eugene Peterson says in the message translation in romans eight, verse twelve, he says, so don't you see that we don't owe this do it yourself life one red scent?
There's nothing in it for us. Nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your life. But God's spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go. Eugene Peterson would encourage us and say, no, this life isn't about, again, just grabbing ahold of what we can get for ourselves and then waiting until death happens. Instead, it's about this collective thing. It's about doing more than what we're programmed or even what our own human nature is to do through the power of community and what God can do in this place with us.
He goes on to say, this resurrection life you receive from God is not a timid, grave tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike what's next, Papa? God's spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is and we know who we are. Father and children, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are no longer slaves to sin. What you will discover, I believe, about west side, and hopefully about all of us as individuals as well, is that we will not function as a community, simply reacting to what we are most afraid of.
Do you know what they're doing? You know they're trying to take down the church. Do you know what's coming for us? We don't exist to react to that fear, but because of what God has given to us and what we believe that we can do going forward is we can receive this adoption as children of God. And as children, we are heirs to these promises. And when we are heirs to these promises, we have confidence that our future and our children's future, and generationally down the line, there is nothing to fear. But instead we are called to embrace into that Holy Spirit.
Paul also shows us that we are called to share suffering in verses 17 through 19. And this is again Eugene Peterson's translation. He says, we go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him. That's why I don't think there's any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what's coming next.
What we've experienced here at Westside has been a shared suffering at times.
We're not ignorant to this fact. I used to believe that true faith was almost glossing over the difficulties of life, living in as much ignorance as possible for the sake of some kind of spiritual optimism.
But what I've come to know, especially through Westside, is that this suffering, not only is it part of life, but it's a part of our faith. Not in a masochistic way where we bring it upon ourselves, but we have all dealt with grief together in this place.
We've all shared in suffering together. And in this world filled with pain and brokenness, Paul's words are offering hope to us.
Paul doesn't minimize our struggles, and neither should we. Instead, he lifts our eyes beyond them to this promise of glory, a future where creation itself is renewed and restored. All of creation, Paul says, is groaning in anticipation of this future redemption.
And what I have discovered is in this suffering, often we discover, even though sometimes heartbreaking, our purpose, the church's purpose.
One thing that Evan asked me to do as we were getting ready to, as I was getting ready to teach his sermons, he asked me to just actually come up with, personally, what Westside church means for Ben. Well, I've been here for basically exactly eight years, and I gotta tell you, I feel like that makes me an old time bend person. Now I'm just gonna put myself into that group.
That was a joke. I'm sorry, old time bend people.
I've been here for 40 years and. Okay, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
What does west side mean to me? Well, west side means Casey Parnell, who used to be on staff here, part of our creative arts department and leadership team. It means him letting me live on his couch for two months as I transition to live here.
It means Evan loading up my subaru legacy with coolers and marshmallows and sending me out to Cultus Lake, a lake I did not know where it was outside of the directions that Evan gave me, where he says, you know, 14th. I say, yes. He said, just keep going on that.
Okay, so, you know, I put my faith in my maps after that, and I still got off onto some weird forest roads and somehow made it down there only to unload my car. Not knowing any of these ten young adults that I was supposed to meet in camp with, thank God Abe Morgan found me and delivered me from all of my fears.
It means baptisms in the Deschutes.
It means a crazy snowmageddon in 2016, which was our first winter here, where the piles of snow in the parking lot were so huge, we actually had to get them trucked away.
It means, a little bit more recently, the stupid argument that we had as a staff in which I asked many, many, many people as a hot dog, more a sandwich or a taco.
And I'm happy to say that today we're gonna be serving tacos after this service.
For it to be a sandwich, you have to have two independent pieces of bread. Okay, I have the microphone. I will not be accepting comments right now.
It means that beauty and grace and awkwardness and difficulty and welcoming and camaraderie and community.
It also means being invited into a space that all of us were, maybe through our own experiences or through the experiences of the leadership.
It means watching Beau Brady process the loss of her husband Steve to Als, watching Evan and Alyssa earwicker battle with Alyssa's cancer diagnosis, and watching Steve and Suzanne Mickle grieve the loss of their son, Chase.
This was a process that all of us got to hold together. We grieved and we prayed together, we wept together.
And again, for me personally, in my experience, this was the first time that I ever felt like I was invited into a process of wrestling and questioning and doubting God without the pushback of this idea of, you lack faith and you don't belong.
Instead, that doubt and anger and frustration didn't disqualify me from faith in our community. Instead, it deepened our relationship together.
I believe that your presence here is also an invitation to doubt and to wonder and to lack faith for sometimes long periods of time without wondering if your community will disqualify you and shut you out. Scripture is littered with prophets and apostles and disciples, all doubting God. At one point, or another. And we believe that this is the place to do the same in our day and age and the undergirding of all of this, the deepest truth of all of this, the reason that we can be invited into shared suffering after being born by the spirit to share these difficulties and victories of life together, is because of the unbreakable love of Christ.
Again, the message translation says, this says, so what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose?
If God didn't hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own son, is there anything else he wouldn't gladly and freely do for us?
Paul uses this series of rhetorical questions to emphasize the security of God's love.
If God gave his son for us, what could stop us?
Who can bring a charge or condemn us? Of course, the answer is no one. Not in 70 years of west side's history, not today and not tomorrow. Far long after all of those of us in this room are gone.
One thing that I've noticed as a parent over the last nine years of parenting is that Rebecca and I are the fail safe for everything. For my children, the worst can happen or the not even close to worst can happen. And we are the ones whose numbers are called right.
Sometimes my kids like to get my attention by insisting again, I love my family. You know, this happened last night. There was some pajamas that my son could not find, and he was in another room. He cracks open the door and goes, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom. We're just talking. We're just talking. We're still in the room. We haven't gone anywhere.
I can't find my PJ's.
Look, I did harder.
I felt it in those moments, and I've also felt it in other situations where maybe we're out in a place that was a little darker than we thought. Maybe we're in an unfamiliar city or an unfamiliar place in an unfamiliar city.
And what do the kids do? Even without saying a word, if they find themselves frightened or wondering what might happen next, they just get a lot closer, and they grab ahold of the leg or the waist.
And, of course, what is that meant to do for them? Well, that's meant to help get rid of the fear.
I truly believe what Paul is getting after with this overwhelming statement about the love of God.
Is he saying, if we understand and we grab ahold of this, if we know how deeply we're loved?
My kids know how deeply they are loved by Rebecca and I.
And again, we are imperfect and impatient and often ourselves, difficult to deal with. And yet they know that in any moment of wondering, all it takes is grabbing mom around the leg.
West side church will be a people that, in a moment of uncertainty, will simply run to Jesus.
We know we'll not run to a defensive posture.
We will not run to anger and hate.
But we will run to the one who is the prince of peace, mighty God, who has delivered us from our sins and will deliver us from our sins.
We take on this adoption into this family. We find ourselves close in that way to the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit.
I'll close with this story. So what are we to do now?
What a wonderful thing God has done among us.
And now I believe that God wants to commission us into our next era of community and church together.
And it reminds me of this story in Matthew, chapter 17. This is a story about some of Jesus disciples and Jesus himself. It says, six days later, Jesus took Peter and the two brothers, James and John, and led them up on a high mountain to be alone.
As the men watched, Jesus appearance was transformed so that his face shone like the sun and his clothes became as white as light. And suddenly Moses and Elijah appeared and began to talk with Jesus. And Peter exclaimed, because, of course, it's Peter. Peter is outrageous and outspoken and excited and emotional. He says, lord, it's wonderful to be here.
If you want, I'll make three shelters as memorials. One for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. We'll have a cul de sac. We'll put a basketball hoop in the middle of it. This will be home.
But even as he spoke, a bright cloud overshadowed them. And a voice from the cloud said, this is my dearly loved son who brings me great joy. Listened to him, and the disciples were terrified and fell face down on the ground. And Jesus came over and touched them. Get up, he said, don't be afraid.
And when they looked up, Moses and Elijah were gone, and they saw only Jesus.
The disciples experienced something that I believe many people at Westside have experienced over the years, the glory of God. An incredible moment under the leadership of Cliff and Mary Haynes and Ken and Linda Johnson and Stephen, Suzanne Mickle.
[00:22:25] Speaker A: Ben.
[00:22:26] Speaker B: Fleming and Evan Weirwicker.
And the temptation is to say, this is it. We found it. This is the moment. This is the glory of Goddesse. Can we keep it this way?
Can it stay here forever?
Because this is what we have been looking for.
And of course, that's not it. Westside will move forward into a new culture, a new context, a new way, a new year. Maybe everything will change over the next 50, 60, 70 years, but the power of the gospel will still remain the same. In the middle of all that change in movement, we have no fear of what the future might bring, not at all, because we believe that God is with us. And even more than that, we believe that God has given us to a people. So, of course, the following verse in Matthew, chapter 17 is in verse 14, it simply says this.
At the foot of that mountain, there was a large crowd waiting for them.
There is a world outside of these doors and walls and off of the side of this hill that, whether they know it or not, is desperate to hear of the peace and the love that only Jesus can bring into our lives again. In this individual context, in society, where we're simply trying to get mine and continue on until death.
The world needs a community of loving people, of folks that are willing to give anything at all so that the gospel might be spread to central Oregon.
A group of people that are willing to hold people as they weep and to celebrate with people as they laugh.
A group of people that have no cap on the amount of love and grace that they pour out on someone broken and hurting we can be and are those people as while the glory of God is sweet and remains with us, still, at the foot of the mountain, a crowd is waiting.
So I'm gonna invite you to bow your head and close your eyes just for a moment.
Just want you to take a second to be thankful, to express gratitude for what Westside has been and maybe even just what your life has been up to this point.
Maybe you've experienced the darkest and roughest of times.
Maybe we can be grateful for the strength that some of those things have created in us, grateful for the people that embraced us and prayed for us.
Now let's take a moment to envision the future.
Envision people not that would come to church at Westside. What a shallow goal.
But to envision a people that would experience the glory of God, maybe for the first time embrace a love that they know is not based on what they have done or what they will do, but it is pouring out constantly for them, not because of us, but because of the love of the Father that while all of us sinned, Christ died for us.
Lord, we see that city.
Dear Jesus, may the Holy Spirit guide and strengthen us, that in this and in all things, we may do God's will in the service of the kingdom.
On behalf of Westside church, we receive the work. We give our prayers encouragement and support to the way of Jesus.
Give us courage, patience and vision.
Strengthen us all in our vocation of love and service to others. In Jesus name we pray.
Amen. Would you welcome to the stage former senior pastor Steve Mickle.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: Thanks, Ben.
Thanks, Pastor Ben. It's really great to be with you guys. Unlike what Ben and Evan would say, I was not here when the church started in 1954.
Don't believe it.
I've been overwhelmed today with a deep, deep gratitude for this community.
Personally.
Most of you probably don't know that this church sent me out and Suzanne, when we were all of 24 years of age to plant a church and sisters. And so for the next 30 years, this community has been a part of our lives in one way or another and has been deeply transformative for so many reasons that I don't have time to go into. So thank you for allowing me to be part of this moment. Ben Evansde, thanks for giving me this opportunity to stand before you today with gratitude for all that Jesus has done. I was in worship this morning in the first service. I was praying for if there was a prophetic word that God might want me to share, and not knowing what Pastor Ben was going to share, the Lord led me to Haggai. If you ever get haggai, drop into your mind, just go there, because there's no other reason than Jesus sending you there. Where is Haggai? You know, it's Old Testament prophet.
Very random.
But after I heard what Pastor Ben said, I was like, oh, that's what Jesus is doing. He wants to double tap on something. And the israelite people are longing for the way it was. They're longing to go back to a day where they felt like God was on the move. What they were experiencing was less than what they thought it should be. And I was thinking about that as I was. I was very nostalgic. Today, I'm not a nostalgic person at all, but today I'm very nostalgic. And I was thinking about that. In light of this verse. I'm going to read to you that nostalgia is good, but sometimes it can keep us in the past.
Sometimes nostalgia inadvertently causes us to not embrace the current and present and future work of God in our lives where we say, I want.
I don't want just a repeat of something that happened to me, even in this room years and years ago. I want a fresh move of God's spirit.
I want to see the tangible, manifest presence and power of God now, and not just. Not just live on what was, you know, and it's in that context that God comes through haggai in chapter two, verse nine, and says these words to the people of Israel. And I believe this is a word for west side church, that the glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house, says the Lord Almighty. And in this place I will grant peace, declares the Lord Almighty. Would you with me, like, welcome the fresh move of God's spirit in your generation to posture ourselves like what Pastor Ben read from romans eight in the message to posture ourselves in this kind of expectant, futuristic like, Lord, I'm in whatever you want to do. Where Paul writes, there are things to do and places to go.
This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid grave tending life past, right? It is adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike, "What's next, Papa?"
