This article was originally published by The Mennonite

Seven questions with…Gary Jewell

In an effort to highlight the many Anabaptists engaged in important work and ministry across the country and around the world, we’re starting a new series. Most Thursdays, we’ll publish a seven question interview with a different Anabaptist talking about their life, work, spiritual journey, etc. You can view past interviews here

Name: Gary Jewell
Occupation: District pastor for Pacific Northwest Mennonite Conference
Home congregation: Shalom Church, Spokane, Washington

1. Tell me about the role the church played in your life as you were growing up.

I grew up in a small town of 3,500 in southern Idaho, near Boise. It was a very stable middle class life. My dad was a doctor in a small town and my parents were members in the Presbyterian Church. That’s where I got my “Christian schooling 101” and was invited into membership at age 12, as is the custom in Presbyterian churches.

It was a few years later, in my early adolescence, where I felt the Spirit was really speaking to me and I was soaking up reading the Gospels. I had some more evangelical friends at the time. I was told that I needed to make a decision and say the right prayer, and I really didn’t want to get “left behind”.

I went off to college and was involved in campus fellowships. My last two years at Whitworth College took it to another level in terms of learning a lot more about social justice and how that interfaces with the Gospel and discipleship.

Toward the end of that time in college I got involved in a little house fellowship that’s now Shalom Church, where we attend. At the time it was Spokane Mennonite Fellowship. I really resonated with the Anabaptist vision and I met my wife in this fellowship. She had the last name of Yoder and was exploring her roots. Her parents had more or less left the Anabaptist fold and gone to the Presbyterian world, too. We both rediscovered the Anabaptist vision and got married.

2. When did you first sense a call to pastoral ministry?

I didn’t go to seminary because I necessarily felt that call to pastoral ministry. I felt a call to deepen my faith and explore the Anabaptist vision, particularly related to peace and justice concerns and how that connects to the Gospel. In one sense, I didn’t feel called to be a pastor until basically the third year in seminary when I did an internship at First Mennonite in Kitchener [Ontario].

I felt like it was one step at a time. I finished the next year at seminary and got my MDiv [Master of Divinity]. All that time, you’re a part of a group at the seminary where you are exploring the questions of call in a small group with supervision.

I would not say I was a pastor by default. I would say the beginning of the ministry for me would go back to when I accepted Christ or, for lack of a better term, when I made the personal commitment to Christ, but a definitive call moment has never been my experience. It’s always been looking backward and seeing God guiding and moving in my life.

3. What’s special or distinctive about Pacific Northwest Mennonite Conference?

You know, in pockets of the Midwest you’ve got 35 churches within a 30 mile radius. Here we are so spread out. I think that’s one of the distinctives. And the thing that ties these churches and keeps them together really is the sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves.

In PNMC, you’ve got rural Mennonites churches like Menno Mennonite [in Washington] and then you have Seattle Mennonite that’s very urban. Without that tie to PNMC and Mennonite Church USA, they might not have a lot in common. But we participate in common projects like camps or MCC sales, and those are really important around here. That’s the kind of stuff that ties the conference together as much as the stronger Mennonite identity that you would have in other places.

4. Who were the mentors who have walked alongside you in this work?

There’s a number, but I’m going to pull out two. I have a good friend, Steve Koffman. He showed so much belief in me and grace, particularly in a time when I was trying to find my way after college.

You know that bumper sticker that says, “My boss is a Jewish carpenter?” Well, Steve literally was a Jewish carpenter. He had a spiritual openness and a love that has followed me into how I do ministry.

The other mentor probably would be Brice Balmer. I’ve never told him this and I should. Brice Balmer is American, but he’s also Canadian and living in Kitchener-Waterloo. He was my immediate supervisor in my pastoral internship. Brice was just a gracious person and very—I don’t know how to describe it—just a pastoral person to me, as well as to his congregation and in the work he did out in the community.

5. You’ve spent some time as a bi-vocational pastor, pastoring and holding another job simultaneously. This is a trend in ministry right now. What were some of the gifts and challenges of this particular form of ministry?

The more diversified you are economically—the more skills you have that don’t strictly limit you to paying bills through ministry–that’s a really good thing.

As you can imagine, you can’t help but think about some of those financial questions when you are doing things or saying things to a congregation that might be challenging to them. How do you separate the fact that the church is your sole income from the fact that the church is also the place where I, as a pastor, need to challenge people when necessary? In that sense, bi-vocational ministry can be a great strength.

It can also allow one mobility to go places. Right now there is a half-time position offered at Prince of Peace Church up in Alaska. It would be an awesome job for someone who is bi-vocational or wants a half-time position, perhaps with a spouse that can pull the other half together. A lot of churches can only afford part-time anymore, so you have a lot more options.

I guess the downside might be that you can’t be as focused. If that’s all you do, you can make a bigger impact and use some of your time to reach out. You’re not as scattered. Clearly that would be a great gift, to be able to go out and do more stuff out in the community.

A lot of times in smaller churches there is a sense that they are dying on some level in terms of numbers, and that can be kind of depressing and weigh on the spirit. That’s a downside to small, sometimes struggling, churches. I came to Shalom Church as a pastor with the idea of growing it. We were pretty hopeful and proactive for a long time, but there’s no formula that says it’s going to happen or not. That can be discouraging. It takes a lot of energy.

With small churches, sometimes it challenges you to become more self-accepting. To really say, “This is who we are. We don’t need to apologize. There are good things happening here”.

6. You mentioned that you have a keen interest in thinking about cycles of poverty and education. Can you talk a little bit about how your interest in this developed?

I live in an area of the country that has more than its share of poverty – rural and urban. I’ve served in churches that exist in the midst of rural poverty. My wife works as a public health nurse with at risk first time mothers. Furthermore, nationally and worldwide, the gulf between rich and poor is obscene and only seems to be getting worse.

I believe there is a correlation between ignorance and poverty. Education plays an important part in reducing poverty. There are many aspects to education but one place in particular where poverty may be reduced through education is in understanding own bodies and the procreative powers they possess. It has been discouraging to me to see a number of times, both in and outside of the church, young folks becoming parents when they were by no means equipped or ready.

On a personal level this interest in sexuality education came from having two daughters. As they started to get to a certain age, like all parents, we were anxious about sexuality and how we should approach that. We had a number of friends who had a very good, comprehensive sexuality curriculum that was developed by the United Church of Christ and Unitarians together. It’s called OWL or Our Whole Lives.

At the junior high level, the parents sign their kids up for a 26 session course. It meets two hours every Sunday or whenever it’s scheduled over the course of nine months. It includes comprehensive information from the whole gamut about your bodies, how they work, dating, boundaries, sexual identity, power issues, lovemaking, contraception, STD’s, everything—it left no stone unturned. It provides a healthy view of sexuality, which actually, statistically, is the best prophylactic against unwanted pregnancies and disease. Abstinence is certainly talked about as an option.

We had our daughters participate in OWL when they got to be around 14. Afterwards, some leaders came and asked if Jan and I would be teachers. So we went to the training in Vancouver, Washington, and we did it for a couple of years.

The only thing I have done in the Mennonite church around this topic was a presentation on teaching sexuality in this fashion at a PNMC conference and it was generally well-received. But as most of us in the Mennonite Church know, to actually deal with this topic head on is a bit risky. On the other hand I don’t think we’re serving our young people well by not looking at all the information. I don’t think schools do it well and I don’t think families are always equipped to do it well. The faith community is a great place to do that well if we will take it on. How can we teach what it means to be happy with yourself and to have a sex positive and self-responsible attitude about sex as it relates to being a creature of God?

7. You recently had a near-death experience. Can you talk a bit about that? How has this changed, if at all, your perspective on life?

A year ago at this time I was still laid out in the hospital. I went in on the 18th of December a year ago for an open heart problem that was diagnosed a couple years earlier. After tracking with tests every six months or so, the cardiologist sent me to the surgeon. They said, “What you have is a developing aneurysm problem in the aortic artery and if you don’t get it taken care of, it will very possibly rupture and then your chances of survival are pretty slim. You’re young, and we can do this surgery.”

As it turns out, I didn’t revive after the surgery. The surgeon was scratching his head. They went back in the next day and opened me up and there was a suture that had come open. I was bleeding, causing tamponade. They fixed that, but I went into a coma for six or seven days. My kidneys were failing, liver failing, and my lungs collapsed.

About Christmastime I started to revive. I consider this to be in a miracle attributable to God by the power of prayer and medicine. I’m physically 100 percent better, but I lost my leg. Circulation was restricted to the core of my body, and the left leg took the worst of it.

I was staying in a Catholic hospital, and I remember looking at the image of the cross and the resurrected Jesus on the wall. That symbol had been the centerpiece of my faith and what it meant to live. But that image was just flat in the hospital. Everything felt flat. I was not interested in reading, or eating, or anything.

But the resurrection was manifest in the prayers and the care and the love and everything I received in the hospital, and that just blew me away. Katherine [Jameson-Pitts, PNMC executive conference minister] said I was beloved by many friends in the Conference and larger church. To hear that and to experience that is truly humbling.

I have a rather existential view of spirituality. What is our momentary, blink-of-an-eye existence in this world compared to the millions of years the planet has been here? What does that mean? In my favorite Scripture, Paul in 2 Corinthians 4 gives a list of afflictions and sufferings he’s going through and then he says, “But I consider none of these things. It’s nothing in relation to the eternal glory that awaits us in Christ Jesus.” That’s the spiritual backdrop that we all live in. This short period on this planet is nothing (yet everything) in terms of the eternal reality.

Now I’m as immersed in this world’s cares and worries as ever, but at the time, had I died, I would have been OK. If we live or if we die, in the big picture faith should tell us it’s going to be OK. By what mystery I don’t know, but God has, if you will, “renewed my contract” for a little while longer. I’m still pondering what all that means.

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