Church Awakening, a ministry started by Pastor Alec from Westgate Chapel in Edmonds, is hosting a conference this Thursday and Friday. The ministry, which began 20 years ago, focuses on prayer and revival, and now attracts around 700 pastors, intercessors, and church leaders from across the country. Pastor Alec explains that many pastors arrive at the conference feeling discouraged, particularly in the wake of Covid-19, but leave feeling emboldened in their faith and equipped with resources to bring back to their home churches. There is great loneliness within pastoral ministry that most of us don’t even realize. He shares about the importance of support networks within congregations for pastors.
Catch hope & encouragement with Erica on weekday mornings from 5:00 AM – 10:00 AM, and Sundays from 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Erica:
It’s a time for your pastor to fill back up. After all, they’re the person that fills up your cup, right, and mine? SPIRIT 105.3. I’m Erica, Church Awakening is coming to Edmonds this Thursday and Friday. You’re going to want to tell your pastor about it. Pastor Alec from Westgate Chapel in Edmonds is with us this morning. They’re hosting this incredible event. Really appreciate you taking time to be with us. Pastor Alec, how did this wonderful thing Church Awakening get started?
Pastor Alec:
About 20 years ago, I really felt a burden to reach out to my colleague, pastors in the Pacific Northwest around the subjects of prayer and revival, and the need for revival. And back then the subject wasn’t particularly picked up by pastors, and they weren’t particularly interested. I think the circumstances of change so significantly that now there’s a great interest in some of the historical revivals and what God wants to do in the Pacific Northwest right now, with the circumstances we’re in. So, we started a ministry 20 years ago called Church Awakening, and we have annual conferences where we bring in national speakers on the themes of prayer and revival and spend two days together. I think right now about 700 pastors and intercessors and church leaders from around the region. Some different parts of the country are coming in for this Thursday, Friday all day and into the evening sessions on Revival.
Erica:
Wonderful. So, how would you say a typical pastor walks in to Church Awakening, and then how do they walk out? What kind of difference does Church Awakening make?
Pastor Alec:
Yes. This is our fifth year now to have consistent conferences every year. And I think a lot of pastors, particularly in the Northwest, and particularly right after Covid, came in discouraged and we all have seen the stats about the numbers of pastors wanting not just to resign from their churches, but to quit the ministry and choose another career. That’s I think, the general state of pastoral ministry today. There’s such division in the nation and bled into the churches that pastors are disheartened. So, they come in kind of with the hands hanging down, discouraged, thirsty, and honestly, the minute worship starts in the 10:00 AM session Thursday morning, the atmosphere changes completely. And there’s tremendous worship pastors from all different denominations, different theological distinctives, different worship styles, and yet they seem comfortable in one room with obviously our worship environment, and they enter in. The speakers have been challenging and one speaker we had last year, Alan Hood, at the end of his message, nobody moved, no musicians moved into place. You just begin to hear weeping all over the sanctuary until the altar areas probably had two, 300 pastors just on their knees calling out to the Lord. So, I’d say they come in discouraged and they leave emboldened in their faith, encouraged, and with some resources and materials to carry back the spirit and the need for revival to their home churches.
Erica:
What a picture you just painted. Pastor Alec, we were made to worship. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. What happens when you and I enter into that space with God? What happens in the human heart?
Pastor Alec:
I think like you just said, I think we were designed by God in His image so that we could enter into His presence and experience the wonder and the glory of who He is. And in that experience, our hearts are nurtured, encouraged, convicted, challenged, changed, blessed. And honestly, I believe worship obviously the Bible tells us that God tabernacles, He resides in our worship. So, I think worship is the entry room for people into the presence of God where He is allowed to do things in our lives because the condition of our hearts are softened in His presence. He’s allowed to do things in our hearts at moments like that, that no amount of preaching alone can do, or no amount of worship alone can do. It’s a combination of entering His presence, having our hearts warmed, like John Wesley’s was, by the presence of God and then the receptivity of our hearts to God’s word and the transformation that comes.
Erica:
Pastor, what is something that you wish more people would know about being a pastor, what it’s like? If you could just somehow sit down with somebody across a cup of coffee and say, you may not know this, but what would you say?
Pastor Alec:
I would say, and I’m sure it’s not novel or unique perspective, but I would say the one thing that most people probably don’t understand because they see the pastor functioning in his element on the platform and being required in a sense to be upbeat and positive. They don’t understand the loneliness of pastoral ministry, and the absolute necessity for intercessors and some of the men of a congregation to come around the pastor. We have a ministry that got developed by one of the men in our church called Men of Valor, have 140 men in 12 different tribes that pray for the pastors at Westgate every day. And then before you walk onto the platform, groups of them will gather, assigned to gather in my office, to pray for me before I go on that platform. And then they go and pray in the classroom during the service, and then they will attend the next service. So, I would say the loneliness of pastoring and leadership and the necessity of people in the congregation with a heart after God, coming around that pastor as part of his support network.
Erica:
So good. Pastor Alec from Westgate Chapel and Church Awakening, thank you for hanging out with us on SPIRIT 105.3. So appreciate you.
Pastor Alec:
Thank you. God bless you.
Erica:
You too.
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