The Power of a Neighbor

What was the strategy of Jesus to change the world? We can see a clear dissection of the direction Jesus wants us to move toward in the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19:1-10.

Jesus recognized an unseen fabric holding all human beings together. He died on the cross for everyone. He rose from the dead for everyone, and he loved everyone. Jesus treated people with amazing love and dignity.

This short tax collector named Zacchaeus was despised by most people. He was Jewish but he had sold out to the oppressive Roman government. He robbed defenseless people for a living. And Jesus spotted him climbing a sycamore tree so that he could get a better look at Jesus. Jesus invited himself to Zacchaeus’ home to a party in his honor. And Zacchaeus became a follower of Jesus after this kind gesture. Furthermore, Zacchaeus was a disciple of Jesus for the rest of his life.

One of the fundamental teachings of Jesus was that we must love our neighbors as ourselves and to remember that everyone is our neighbor. This one idea can change the world.

Won’t you join me this Sunday morning at 10:30am, as we take a deep dive into this beautiful idea.

Your friend for the rest of my life,

Pastor Tim White

The Evening Prayer

O Lord I call to you; come quickly to me.  Hear my voice when I call to you.  May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting of my hands be like the evening sacrifice.

Psalm 141:1-2 NIV

I love the evening time, as you get home from a hard day at work you come home.  The sounds of kids playing, dogs barking in the distance, coyotes howling, birds singing. An evening meal with your family. The prospect of a family game or playing a few holes in golf as you try to complete 18 holes before the sun sets completely.  The sunset which is often spectacular in the puget sound. Fish jumping, frogs croaking their peaceful sounds, even the music of a human conversation as it has a restful tone in the evening.  The sound of a fire in the fireplace or the taste of soup for dinner.

Throughout the scriptures there is the romance of evening vespers and the great souls who persisted with prayers at this holy moment.  I love to pray in the evening from the back deck seeing deer come up to eat grass from our yard and rabbits joining in the time of fellowship.  Maybe holding hands with my best friend Jackie as we talk and pray while remembering we are human.

It is evening in my ministry as I prepare to turn over leadership of my beloved Washington Cathedral to pastor Mark Nsimbi in the dawn of his youth.  It’s just a beautiful thing.  When I pray these prayers I thank God for the adventure he has allowed me to fully participate in at Washington Cathedral. Oh I’m staying on as a part of Marks team for a year and a half. But how I pray for you at this time in my life. Here is what I pray.

1. Thanksgiving for allowing me to be your friend during the mighty adventure of our lives.
2. That all of you have fully committed your live to Jesus Christ and have a confidence that you will be going to heaven someday.
3. That you have discovered you personal spiritual gifts and are happily using them at Washington Cathedral.
4. That God has forged you a wonderful family to be a launching pad of world changing dreams.

My evening prayers are beautiful and precious. I can feel the love of Jesus as I share this moment with him.

Your friend for the rest of my life,

Pastor Tim White

P.S. Join me for inspirational worship at 10 am either online or in-person. 

The Blessing of Community

I have loved the passage proverbs 3:5-6 since I was a boy. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” One of my Sunday school teachers, Ken Sanders, told me that this should be my life verse, and it has been one of mine since the fifth grade. A few others have also had ideas for my life verse, and each of those are kind of my life verses too.  

 Ken Sanders was an amazing Christian man. He was a veteran of WW2 in Europe. He raised 3 fine boys, and his wife Dorothy taught me to love hot dogs at a birthday party for Mike in their super cool underground house. Ken loved fishing and was one of the best fishermen I have ever known.  But more than that, he was one of the best Christians I have known. One time, Ken bought his dream fishing pole and took the boys of his Sunday school class fishing to celebrate his new pole. On the way back, I put the fishing poles in the trunk of his car and as I closed it, I broke his new pole.  I was probably 11 at the time and I was so devastated that I had broken Mr. Sanders’ new fishing pole. When I apologized to him, offering to buy him a new pole with my savings from my lawn mowing business, he refused to let me do that as he explained, “Timmy you are more important to me than a new fishing pole.” I have never forgotten that moment. 

 We are pushing hard to build our Sunday school because I think that every child needs a “Ken Sanders” in their life. We can get pretty distracted these days and parents periodically teaching or helping in Sunday school is not considered as important as it was when I was a child. In those days our Sunday school teachers prized the “grace moments” that they could influence our lives in a Godly way. Ken Sanders taught Sunday School because he loved his three boys (Ken Jr., Larry, and Michael) and because his dad had asked him to follow Christ on his death bed. Ken honored that by being a faithful leader to his church.  

 Do you want to change the world? How about making sure your kids grow up in a church family full of people willing to pour out their lives as a sacrifice to Jesus by helping to shepherd your kids? I love the kids of our church and I am patient with them because of what my teachers did for me. Dorothy Hamlin, Jessie Morris, Barbara Ingersoll, Ken Sanders, Tom Sanders, Dan Sanders, Terry Preszler, David Ingersoll Sr., Warren Hamlin, Phil Boucher, and Dick Sanders. We are in the business of building a safe and healthy community to support as many kids as we can. When I see children with the leadership skills that our church kids have, I am an optimist about the future. I am dedicated for the rest of my life to helping build the Sunday School of Washington Cathedral.

 Your friend for the rest of my life,

 Pastor Tim White

Ask and you will receive

If I could give you one gift that would lift your life to a higher adventure it would be to learn how to pray better. God does answer prayer -I am quite certain about this fact and yet I still have so much to learn about prayer. When we first started the church, our kids were young, and they taught us about prayer. We were always losing things like keys, wallets, purses etc. and when we gave up looking for the items our daughter Elise would ask: “Dad/Mom have you prayed yet?” I would start to lecture her that God had more to do than find our keys for us. But she would beg me to pray and after we did, we always found what we were looking for, much to my embarrassment.

One Sunday our family left church to race to get to a Mariner game. I had a technique to find parking at Mariner or Seahawk games. My son and I would park 3 miles away at our secret spot and then run to the stadium. The girls in our family all protested saying they did not want to run three miles. I explained that we were late for the game, and we didn’t have time to search for 30 minutes only to be forced to park three miles away anyway. I don’t know if you knew this, but my wife Jackie and I don’t always agree. So, Jackie took exception to my plan and insisted that we drive right up to the stadium and look for a parking spot at the entrance. I explained, from my advanced theological information, the game has been going for over 30 minutes and I absolutely knew for a fact that they were not going to leave a spot at the entrance. Jackie pointed out that I had just preached on prayer and why didn’t I practice what I preached. Then she started to quote my sermons back to me. “God answers prayer.” “A day without prayer is a day without blessing.” "It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without heart." As she preached to me (not going to lie, I was a bit angry) but I turned to drive right by the entrance as the girls all prayed for a parking spot. Just as we were closing in on the entrance, we heard a very loud whistle. I rolled down my window and heard it again as a man and his son waved me into what was the best parking place I had ever seen. I started to explain that we couldn’t afford this spot. He explained that the person who owned this lot was an usher in our services. I looked up to find Vern Berg and his son Loren. They said, just give me your keys and you can walk across the street to the game. I was so amazed, but I did have to hear Jackie and my daughters say: “I told you so, oh ye of little faith!”

Come this Sunday at 10:30 am either online or in person and let's discover together how prayer works.

Your friend for the rest of my life,

Pastor Tim White

God's Plan is Best!

An open door in 2024. “See, I have set before you an open door, and no one can shut it; for you have a little strength, have kept My word, and have not denied My name.” - Revelation 3:7-8 (NKJV)

This week’s sermon title is: Let’s Go! - How Jesus calls His disciples. I love the story of Jesus calling his disciples because something in each of those stories brings back to me how we are each called. When I think of my calling it makes me very emotional and inspired. I just want to shout at the top of my lungs…” Let’s go, Jesus!” I feel the same way when I think of the calling of my friends and family. It all feels like “high drama” and excitement.

 Last week when I shared the children’s story, they asked something like this: “What if we sin after we are called does that delete the importance of that call?” What an insightful and practical question, Aren’t our children so smart? This week we will be answering this important question as we discover that God’s plan is the best plan! The music will be great, and the fellowship will be encouraging. I hope you will join us Sunday at 10:30 in-person or online. It is a time of worship that you will not want to miss.

 Your friend for the rest of my life,

 Pastor Tim White

Pastor Mark and family heading to Kenya for a sabbatical. Wishing them safe travels!

Jesus Brought Love on the First Christmas

Merry Christmas! I just love to say Merry Christmas during the Christmas season, don’t you?  Of course, I would say Merry Christmas all year long, but I think they might take me away in a strait jacket. Whoever “they” are. This Sunday December 24th at 10:30am is going to be a very special Christmas service.

Our big Christmas event is Christmas Lights the Night on Saturday, the 23rd. That is where we will have the Christmas train that takes the kids on a fun train ride. There will be s’mores while people wait. And then a live manger scene, with actors and animals playing their roles while being backed by beautiful music from our worship band. I don’t know if you know it, but the amazing worship band means that Eliot’s dad, a professional guitarist back in the day is there with their family friends to just lift the bar from a great worship band to a sensational worship band! The church and campus will be decorated to the hilt and our animals include a new camel named Hank the Tank.  We have a professional jazz trio opening the service to put a touch of class to our service. The choir will be there, and you will be able to hear a dynamic Christmas message from Pastor Mark Nsimbi. And then there is the “Oh Holy Night” moment when two Ballet dancers lead the tiny cherubs in an explosion of joy and beauty toward the end of the service, followed by singing “Silent Night” with our lights.

There is a hot chocolate bar like you’ve never seen before and Christmas cookie paradise to enjoy after the service. This may be the greatest Christmas spectacular that our church has ever put on in 40 years. You can get free tickets for the 4:00PM and 6:30PM at wacathedral.org or christmaslightsthenight.com.

The next day at our Sunday Christmas Eve morning worship service we will have our beloved Vanessa here for a mini-Christmas concert. The kids will have an old-fashioned Christmas story and I have the opportunity to share a special message/story on The Gift of Christmas Love. 

It’s going to be a very Merry Christmas weekend so please join us.

Your friend for the rest of my life,

Pastor Tim White

Live every moment with joy

Imagine all the joy spreading through the whole world during Christmas 2023! According to PEW research it was estimated that there are 3.8 billion Christians worldwide in the year 2020. Wow, think about it, 3.8 billion people filled with Joy from Christmas. Imagine 3.8 billion people all determined to enjoy helping less fortunate people.

According to The Charitable Roundtable Christians’ charitable gifts make up the largest charitable gifts of any group in the world. And 30% of Christian giving is in the month of December. It is as if Christianity wakes up and flexes its muscles during the Christmas season. I feel that you can see the twinkle in the eyes of most human beings when they give to help others regardless of their religious background. The angels knew what they were talking about when they celebrated Christmas by proclaiming: “Joy to the World” at the first Christmas.

I just returned from meeting a jolly man named Heinz. Heinz is originally from Austria where the Christmas tradition is for families who wait for Christmas Eve to cut down their trees and bring them into their homes to decorate them on Christmas Eve. They fill their homes with the Evergreen fragrance of Christmas. Then the families go to church carrying candles and lanterns to take the flame from the Christmas Mass to light the candles of their homes. We met at the Tacoma Home Depot to receive a flame from the Eternal Peace Flame in Bethlehem that was passed hand to hand by Austrian Christians around the world to bless churches at Christmas time. The whole project began in 1987 and is spreading more and more throughout the world. Every year before Christmas, the flame originates at the Grotto of the Nativity in Bethlehem and goes to Austria. From there it is distributed throughout the country by the Scout movement. The eternal light signifies peace to as many people as possible.

I also had the joy of meeting, RJ Ryder who leads a men’s Bible Study for St. Patrick’s Catholic church in Tacoma who met Heinz and his wife K.J. Lange (both Austrians who now live in Poulsbo but grew up in Austria) and now that they are retired, they have joined the Peace Light of Bethlehem project throughout the world. The head of Austrian airlines allowed them to fly to New York to pass the peace flame. A company from Austria funds the costs to spread this flame around the world. I can’t tell you how inspiring these kind Christians were as they shared with me how our world is being touched by churches passing the peace flame around the world. These enthusiastic people told me wonderful stories of how we need this Christmas peace flame more than ever. They are sharing hand to hand more than just a peace flame but also Christmas joy!

This week we are going to discuss the importance of Joy in our Christmas experience. Because Christmas is like opening a window opening to a refreshing breeze freeing us from all the stale stench of the world’s continuing predicament. WHO and WHAT are the angels that open the windows to relieve the rancid monotony we often find ourselves being suffocated by. And how can we open our lives to more of this Christmas joy being spread by angels.

Join me this Sunday as we learn about angels and joy from the Christmas story and see our advent candles being lit from the international Christmas Peace Flame from Bethlehem.

 Your friend for the rest of my life,

 Pastor Tim White

God has good news for all of us!

One of the big goals of Christmas is peace. Often there are Christmas “cease fires” declared in the middle of terrible wars. Christians look forward to helping someone wrestling with trouble and agony in their lives as we celebrate Christmas. We work hard to get ready for a moment of peace to celebrate Christmas. At Washington Cathedral families from Hope Link, The Youth Justice Center, and family to family have their needs placed on a giving tree. Those requests have just flown off the tree as Christians want to help others experience some peace at Christmas. People travel through chaos so they can be together for a moment of Christmas peace. The shepherds heard a message from the stars of: “peace on earth good will towards everyone”. After hearing this good news, the shepherds ran to Bethlehem to see the baby messiah in a manger.

This Sunday Pastor Mark will be sharing the story of the shepherds and a message about the good news of Christmas and the peace that it brings. I think we will all be blessed by this message during this hectic time on our planet. I hope to see you there!

Your friend for the rest of my life,

Pastor Tim White

Dare to follow your star!

Christmas means hope for everyone! And do we ever need hope this Christmas! This Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent. The candle that will be lit by a family from the church represents the hope of Christmas. Our story time for kids will be the story of the three wise men of Christmas. These stories have been so much fun, and this Sunday will be no different.

Three famous Kurdish (descendants of the great Persian empire) traveled from what is now modern-day Iraq or Iran to Israel to investigate the coming of the Messiah. Today people often forget how scholarly the Persians were. Persia, known for its rich history, made significant contributions in various fields. They excelled in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and philosophy. Algebra was greatly advanced by Persian mathematicians like Al-Khwarizmi, who laid the groundwork for the subject. Persian astronomers made strides in understanding celestial movements and developed instruments for observation. Additionally, Persian scholars like Avicenna made significant contributions to medicine and philosophy, shaping the foundations of these fields for centuries to come.

About the time of the Birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the whole world was fascinated by their knowledge, but it wasn't until much later did we truly understand the advanced nature of their knowledge. The Persian ziggurats, which are ancient stepped pyramids, served multiple purposes, including astronomical observations. Some believe these structures were used for tracking celestial movements, marking solstices, and understanding the stars' positions, aiding agricultural calendars and religious rituals. While not solely dedicated to astronomy, these ziggurats likely played a role in early observations and the study of celestial bodies by providing vantage points for observing the skies.

The Persian worship of Ahura Mazda is called Zoroastrianism and there is a long history of their mutual respect with Jewish - Christian theology. These Harvard-like scholars followed prophecy and astrological observations to travel over 1,000 miles to observe the Messiah. The collision of the two cultures was both insightful and exciting. Don't miss this week’s worship online or in person as we learn something together about hope and why great dreamers must follow their star.

Your friend for the rest of my life,

Pastor Tim White

God is Compassionate!

God is Compassionate! That is the inspiring big idea that Pastor Mark will be sharing this Sunday at 10:30am online and in person. Our world needs this simple, powerful idea. The story he will be telling this week is from Jonah. I’m so excited because I love that story. When I hear Pastor Mark tell the stories, I’m a six-year-old kid again remembering the Bible stories my dad, or my grandpa used to tell in church. I’m filled with wonder as I listen, my faith is stirred, and my dreams are tickled as I delight in Pastor Mark’s presentation of the good news.

Last week, I received a newspaper article from a member of our church who now lives in Skagit County. It spoke to all the divisions in our world and country today. And then it told the familiar story of Rabbi Levine who was the leading Rabbi of Mercer Island’s reformed Jewish Congregation. In the 1960s Rabbi Lavine started a national television program aimed at having open discussions about divisive topics. His partner was Father William Tracy. There was huge division and conflict between Jews and Catholics. They invited other religious leaders to discuss these hot topics in front of the television audience. Over the years Rabbi Lavine and Catholic Father Tracy became the best of friends. As did other religious leaders in our area. They literally impacted the whole world, and we survived the tumultuous 1960s. Later Rabbi Levine was killed in a car accident by a car going the wrong way on Interstate 90.

I often watched the program and was greatly inspired by it. Later when Jackie and I moved here to start Washington Cathedral we were greatly impacted by this good news approach to resolving the conflict in the world. Our congregation was under 100 when I dared to share one of my dreams that someday we would build a sanctuary with a beautiful waterfall view. Nature inspires peace and I wanted that natural aid to touch people’s lives. I announced my dream, and everybody laughed. Even my closest friends and family laughed thinking I was joking. I was so discouraged by the cold response to my dream. After the service when I greeted people at the back an older lady came up to me and shook my hand saying, I believe in your dream, and I dropped a large check in the offering to start the funding of your waterfall. I was blown away and became quite emotional. I asked why she would do that didn’t she hear everyone laughing at me. She spoke, still holding my hand saying, you remind me of a clergy member of the Jewish community, and he was a bridge for a lot of people in our area. I asked who she was talking about. She said his name was Rabbi Raphael Levine and she asked me if I had heard of him. I said yes, he was a national religious leader, he was like the Norman Vincent Peale for Judaism and then I asked if she knew him. When I said that she began to cry. I waited for her to speak again and she said with a beautiful smile and a sparkling tear running down her cheek, Yes, I knew him, I was his wife.

Pastor Mark is on the right track when he says God is a compassionate God. Our world desperately needs to hear that message today. So don’t miss this Sunday’s message that will touch your heart and bring enemies together as friends.

Your friend for the rest of my life,

Pastor Tim White