Skip to main content

“I offer to you my hope and prayer that if we seek [God] with all our heart, he will speak and he will transform us.”

—Phil Assink, in his remarks upon being elected vice president of General Synod 2020. He reflected upon a “difficult season of ministry,” saying, “I was clinging tenaciously to this verse in Jeremiah: when you seek me, you shall find me with your whole heart. … I discovered later that the ‘you’ in the verse is plural: If you all will seek me with all your heart, you all will find me. I invite you with me to remember that we are a you-plural people; we are not a you-singular people.”

Assink is strategic interim pastor of East Valley Reformed Church in Yakima, Washington, and will serve alongside president EJ de Waard.


Also on Tuesday:

  • High school students led synod in worship before the final plenary session. The students are participants in Awakening, a weeklong camp for students interested in worship leadership. Awakening is held annually at Hope College.
  • General Synod president James Nakakihara presented president-elect EJ de Waard with an honorary bell, used for calling synod to order. “This Canadian friend of mine has been eyeing my bell,” said Nakakihara, with a twinkle in his eye. “I think that’s a sin: thou shalt not covet thy bell. So I now have the great honor of presenting his own bell with his own name that you all can covet.”

  • “Humbly serving one another in love is radical. It is countercultural. The love that Jesus demonstrates toward us wasn’t niceness. It was humility to the point of humiliation,” said Trisha Taylor, one of the consultants working with the Vision 2020 Team, who delivered the sermon during closing worship.

 

Tuesday, June 11, photo slideshow