[Sermon] Voices of the Spirit

Pastor Hector Garfias-Toledo & LNC/TLCS Engagment Team

June 8, 2025 - Pentecost

On Pentecost Sunday, the “Conversations on the Road” series continues with Pastor Hector and the Lynnwood Neighborhood Center-TLCS Engagement Team sharing a conversation about the Spirit’s work in and through community. This dialogue highlights the importance of listening, mutual respect, and collaboration as expressions of Pentecost’s gift of unity and understanding. Their stories and reflections offer insight into how Trinity’s ministry is enriched by engaging with neighbors and responding to real needs together. The Spirit’s presence is celebrated not just as a distant event but as a living reality inviting all to participate in God’s mission. This sermon challenges listeners to open hearts and hands to the ongoing movement of the Spirit in their everyday neighborhood life.

Sermon Transcript

From automatically generated captions, lightly edited by AI for readability.

Pastor Hector:

I would like to invite the crowd that is going to join me up here today as we continue walking on the road and having conversations about this word, this mystery, this power, this presence.

Thank you. Thank you.

Grace to you and peace from Abba—Father, Mother, and Creator—and the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, and the Holy Spirit. She knows what she is doing through all these centuries of the life of the church. And we say:

All:

Amen. Amen.

Pastor Hector:

We feel it. Do we sense it?

Do we feel the presence of this Spirit that has gathered us here today? Yes—the breath of God filling our lives, filling our lungs, filling every single space in who we are as individuals, but also as a community of faith.

What is Pentecost?

Have you ever experienced a Pentecost in your life?

How does it look?

How does it feel?

To be honest, I don't know how to explain it—fire, a miracle, a wind, strong winds, a multi-linguistic experience, or an experience where everybody speaks a language that everybody understands?

Maybe it's not an event. Maybe it's an ongoing transformation.

For years, this congregation began to reflect on how this powerful Spirit was leading Trinity Lutheran Church and Schools to be—and to become—what God needed at this corner, in this location, in this city, in this town.

For many years, I believe members of the congregation were experiencing that Pentecost—that call, that propelling force of the Spirit that led them years ago to see, to talk, to pray. And yes, there was a time when some were wondering, Are we crazy doing this thing? Have you been drinking too much lately? Yes.

But then they noticed that there were elements that were already present. The Spirit was already at work. And with discernment, with stewardship of the resources that God had placed in the hands of this congregation, with partnerships with organizations and leaders in the community, with the collaboration of many other people—this congregation came to the realization of what the Spirit was already starting to do in this place.

And one day, it started: a dream, the power of the Spirit.

You may remember that a few months ago, the council—and especially if you were at the last congregational meeting in March—we had the presentation of this theme: the Trinity Lutheran Church and Schools and Lynnwood Neighborhood Center Engagement Team, who were charged by this congregation to lead us in discerning how the Holy Spirit is leading us into living into this relationship, this connection, this partnership, with what is happening just across the parking lot.

And for the past few months, they have been discerning. They have been feeling the rush of the wind, the fires of the Spirit. And we realize that this is not something that started three months ago, but something that was started years ago—a Pentecost moment that now we see happening and becoming real in front of our eyes.

So, what lives. Can you share with us how this Pentecost moment has been going through the years in the life of this congregation?

Mary Denny:

Well, first of all, we want to say: Happy Birthday, Church! And that means all of us here, okay?

So we hope that you are greeting the day with enthusiasm, and we want to reflect with you, as the church does today, on that story in Acts 2—when the power of Christ’s Spirit came through walls and locked doors and inspired a gathered community of Jesus’ disciples for mission.

They were together for prayer and discernment about next steps, meeting in an upper room in Jerusalem. Then the Spirit filled the moment with wind and fire, compelling the apostles to their first public proclamation of the gospel—to a crowd of pilgrims from all over the world. The pilgrims had come to Jerusalem for Shavuot, the harvest festival, the celebration of the first fruits of the wheat harvest, fifty days after Passover.

Peter began his proclamation, as we heard earlier this morning, to these devout pilgrims by quoting the prophet Joel:

In the last days, God declares, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young shall see visions, and your old shall dream dreams. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

The Church—that’s all of us—has celebrated the outpouring of the Spirit and its continuing harvest season ever since. Over two millennia, Trinity has celebrated many such harvest moments in its history.

Today, as we watch the Lynnwood Neighborhood Center materialize before our eyes, we are witnessing the first fruits of a harvest that began with shared visions and dreams—fourteen years ago or more.

We would like to share the story of this 2011 Pentecost moment at Trinity, when the Spirit led the original story of the new center to life in our community.

At Trinity, we have here today three witnesses of the original story to tell the beginning vision and dream—and subsequent developments: Mike Schultz, Larry Pennings, and David Greenlee.

They are here to share their remembrance of what began with Trinity’s 2011 revisioning process. So Larry, would you like to begin with your impressions of that year?

Larry Pennings:

Sure, yes. It is definitely worth recalling that Pentecost moment when the idea for the neighborhood center came to be. It was a process about this group coming together to be open to the leading of the Spirit in a really collective discernment process—way back in 2011.

At that time, Pastors Hansen and Sundberg initiated what was called a “revisioning” process to solicit very broad input regarding the path forward after Pastor Ray Tan’s retirement.

What happened was a number of facilitators were trained to conduct input sessions from all the different ministry groups that were active at that time. It began with one plenary session, where all the groups met together, and each ministry group identified the specific way in which they contributed to the vision—which was, at that time, stated as:

Manifesting God’s dream as a community that makes space for people to recognize what God is doing to meet the deep needs of the world, and to discover and assume their unique roles in partnership with God.

After each group defined how they contributed to that, we met with them individually as ministry groups. They told stories of success—how they had been successful in achieving their purpose. They identified what was working, potential improvements, and also imagined new possibilities to pursue from that point.

A number of specific ministries—such as Neighbors in Need, Cold Weather Shelter, Pastoral Care, and Stephen Ministry—were, at that time, beginning to be very community-focused.

And separately, each group and others came up with a common dream: having additional space where the needs of the people in the community could be met more effectively than we were currently doing.

All those conversations concluded with an all-congregational potluck that pretty much filled the multipurpose room. Table groups discussed all the various opportunity ideas that had been surfaced by those ministry groups. In the end, the idea that was most frequently identified as most exciting to everybody in the room was the idea of a community ministry center in addition to the church building—where comprehensive pastoral care, youth, senior, homeless, and all kinds of other ministries could be housed.

Another idea near the top of the list was expanding ministries further into our community—beyond our traditional boundaries.

So, the idea of what became the Lynnwood Neighborhood Center was affirmed by this broadly participative congregational visioning process.

Now, personally, I have to confess that at the time I had some doubt about the practicality of that dream. No existing resources—except the land that was sitting out there. Not enough staff. Not enough volunteers to take on that kind of work.

But looking back from where we sit now, I can see that was a moment when we let ourselves really be in harmony with the words of a Pentecost hymn that says:

You call from tomorrow, you break ancient schemes,

From the bondage of sorrow, all the captives dream dreams.

Our women see visions, our men clear their eyes,

With bold new decisions, your people arise.

Mary Denny:

Thank you. Anything either of you would add—David or Mike—to that original moment in the process?

Mike Schultz:

Yes, as Larry called it, the year leading up to the 2011 revisioning process was formative.

Pastor Eileen had gathered a few of us together to explore our neighborhood’s needs at that time. A prior project had been under development for the same location—a senior living facility. But unfortunately, during the 2007–2009 real estate and housing crisis and recession, funding for that went away, and we had to discontinue the process.

So out of that, we came together in a group with Pastor Eileen that we titled “Third Place.” Trinity already had significant ministries coming out of our building here, which was fully utilized—we had overseas ministries in place, St. Francis being a strong example of that. So we were looking for a third location to expand our current ministries and dream about new ministries that might be possible to really impact the needs of our changing community across South Snohomish County.

Several years before moving my church membership here in 2007, I had been invited to join the Shoreline YMCA Board of Directors, which later became the Dale Turner Family YMCA Board. We developed the facility now at Highway 99 in Shoreline. That branch of the YMCA serves both Shoreline and Edmonds School District boundaries.

So as an Edmonds resident working on that committee, I saw firsthand the significant needs expanding across the Edmonds School District—including South Snohomish County, where we are today.

That was very helpful as I participated in the Third Place group. And then shortly after the 2011 revisioning process, we started meeting in David’s office. We brought in some additional church members who had expertise in city planning, project development, legal backgrounds, and senior services.

David, I’d love for you to talk a bit about what you experienced in those meetings in your office.

David Greenlee:

Sure. Coming from that review process in the Third Place team meeting, we had this vision of a community center. Some of us traveled to other centers to tour—as far away as Missoula and Spokane, and then locally here in Seattle. What we did with this vision was realize we needed something tangible to share with other people as we started to look for partners. We knew we were not doing this alone. The Spirit was not leading us to create another large facility for ourselves, but rather for the community.

We needed community partners. With a very generous donation from one of the church members, we were able to hire an architectural firm and do some basic drawings to get the vision out that we had been wrestling with. The street that ran through the property—should we have two buildings and keep that street? Should we have one big building and lose that driveway? All these different questions came up. But working with Environmental Works, we were able to create some tangible concepts to share with others, both in the congregation and in the community.

Mary Denny:

As we read in Acts 2, the first Pentecost story was a moment of inspiration and aspiration. But the mission story in Acts goes on through chapter 21, when the gospel is preached to the whole world by going to Rome. So we have the excitement and the joy of that initial vision in 2011, and then we’re beginning to hear about the hard work and the nuts and bolts that happened next.

What can you say—any of you—about the group who picked up the challenge and furthered the mission? There’s a way in there, and I daresay it wasn’t everybody in the multipurpose room back there in 2011. So what about that group? What kept them going, and what kind of people were they?

David Greenlee:

Well, it was not a large group, but a very knowledgeable group. We had Denny Derrickson, who was a city planner, involved with it. We had Dave Berg, a lawyer who helped with the initial documents and property leases. Mike and I were part of that committee. Then we had different folks—again, as Mike mentioned—coming in with expertise, people who were interested in helping us form the vision. Ruth Lee was a part of that. Sandy Schneider definitely gave input from Council.

We started looking for that partner, and that was exciting. I’ve got to say, it was fun going out and meeting with these different agencies. We talked to the YWCA of Snohomish County and King County. We started with Verdant, because they were looking for a facility.

Mary Denny:

Who’s Verdant?

David Greenlee:

Verdant is the former Stevens Hospital District. They renamed themselves Verdant. They have all the money from the rental of Stevens by Swedish, and they invest that into the community. Verdant was maybe looking to be on our property, but eventually decided to go a different way. These conversations with Edmonds Community College were also exciting—looking for that partnership, looking for who the Spirit would lead us to.

Then, kind of out of the blue—Volunteers of America Western Washington. We set a meeting. I had no background on who they were, but they had their top people at the meeting. We took the drawings, and we found this Spirit-led moment. They had just finished a long process of redesigning how they were going to operate and manage their properties and programs. They were looking for the thing that would move them ahead. When we talked about the center, they got so excited because it fit their vision. That partnership began at that point, with years of conversation leading us to where we are now. It was an exciting time.

Mary Denny:

And I read that that introduction happened in 2012?

David Greenlee:

Yes.

Mary Denny:

So this has been a long-term partnership and sharing of values and vision?

David Greenlee:

Yes, yes.

Mary Denny:

Okay. And Larry, I know you have some reflections on how things get from vision to actuality. Do you want to share those?

Larry Pennings:

Yes. I just want to highlight how common it is when groups go through visioning processes to have that response of, “Here we go again. We’re always doing this, and nothing ever happens.” I just want to observe that the Neighborhood Center is an example of what it actually takes to move from vision to reality—and often why nothing much happens—because it takes a group of faithful people who get actively involved and committed over the long haul to bring the seemingly impossible dream to life.

I think it’s important for us to honor those folks who have worked for a really long time—for their work—and also to learn from their example: that vision only becomes reality when real people invest their time and energy to actually make it happen.

Mary Denny:

Thank you. Is there anything about the last 14 years that was significant that we haven’t pointed to at this point?

Larry Pennings:

I don’t think so. I think we’ve got time and time sense.

Mary Denny:

What I have noticed, in listening to these stories in recent weeks, is the real affection and respect for the people who managed the long haul and got us to this point. And the joy of this activity—it’s been hard, hard work, but it has been full of joy from the very beginning. It’s just a great moment.

So that brings us to our current reality. What does this community need to become over the next month to further this vision and this dream that was Spirit-led? Pastor Hector, would you like to share with us some of your sense of the call of the congregation at this point?

Pastor Hector:

When I was invited to consider the call—when you invited me to be part of this ministry, to join God’s mission through the ministry of this congregation—one of the first things that was mentioned to me was, “In that piece of land, one day there is going to be a center.” And the only thing I saw were trees and the yellow house—what we now call the Trinity House.

Today, we can see what Larry was talking about—what the whole team has been talking about. A few days ago, a pastor I met said these words: “The church happens where the Spirit is working.”

And when we read verse 37 of chapter 2 of the Book of Acts, we see that when the people heard Peter preaching and reminding them what the Pentecost event was about, their first reaction was, “What should we do?” I think that’s always our initial reaction—we want to do something.

But if we listen to what Larry was saying, I think it’s not so much about what we do, but the posture we need to take for the Spirit to continue to work. It’s not about doing—it’s about being. Peter’s response wasn’t, “Here are ten things to do.” He didn’t give them a list. The response Peter gave to the church—guided by the Spirit—was, “Repent.”

And not just “feel bad for your sins,” but “take a posture that will allow you to see what the Spirit is doing in you and through you.” And because of that posture, which I believe all the people involved through these years of history have taken, we are able to see the fruits of the Spirit’s work through the ministry of this congregation.

I want to thank God for giving me the opportunity to join this ministry. And I pray that each one of us right now will take the posture to be open to the work of the Spirit, so that in everything we do, in everything we say, and in everything that happens in this congregation, you and I will be an extension—as I said in the beginning—of the welcome, the healing, and the transformation in the midst of this community. That is the Pentecost people.

Are we ready to continue to be the fire in this place? Are we ready to continue to be postured to receive the power of the Spirit? How are we going to take this story and continue it for generations—so that this place continues to bring life and hope to this community?

Mary Denny:

Amen.

Pastor Hector:

With that, we say: Amen, Amen, Amen.

Mary Denny:

I just want to mention—on July 27th, we will have the head of Volunteers of America with us that Sunday. He will do a Generosity Moment and a forum for us. So, out of this sense of welcome and attentiveness that we’re invited to, we’d ask you to put that date on your calendar and keep your ears perked. Brian Smith, I think, is...

Pastor Hector:

Brian Smith.

Mary Denny:

...is going to be with us that day.

In closing, we are celebrating the first fruits of our own harvest season in the months ahead. And so we want to quote what Larry started—Peter and Joel’s prophecy—as this center materializes among us.

Way back in 2011, a very frequently sung Pentecostal hymn was Spirit of Gentleness, and the final verse was what Larry quoted earlier: 

You call from tomorrow, You break ancient schemes. From the bondage of sorrow, All captives dream dreams. Our women see visions, Our men clear their eyes. With bold new decisions, Your people arise.

Thank you.

Pastor Hector:

Thanks be to God. We say Amen. Amen.

All:

Thank you, thank you.