If Our Church Were NASCAR . .

Have you ever noticed all the stickers on a NASCAR? Even the drivers are covered in patches and stickers. They tell you who is on the team, who the sponsors are and who contributes to making the car successful. Our church is like that. Though we don't ever talk about them at the same time we have relationships with a number of organizations that contribute to our success and who we are pleased to be on the same team with. Here are a few of the stickers that would be on the New Life Church car:

• Western Seminary: Pastor Scott is the chairman of the board at Western Seminary. Matt Vorhees and Aaron Orendorff are finishing their degrees this Spring. Pastor Nathan has been their poster boy for a number of years. If you look at the seminary's website you'll run into Nathan's picture before long. Milliken Hall at the Seminary is named after George Milliken's grandfather. You might say we go way back with Western Seminary. Our church is located in a town where half the adults have college degrees -- almost twice the national average -- and we value our relationship with this school
  
• CB Northwest: CB Northwest is the Northwest Association of Conservative Baptist Churches. Our church goes back to the very beginning with CB Northwest. Dale Austen, Bob Spidal and now Pastor Scott, have served as trustees for our local association. Taylor Reavely led worship for their Growth Getaway in October. Pastor Scott will be speaking at the Annual Enrichment Conference in March.
• WorldVenture: Worldventure used to be CBInternational. We were friends even before that, back in the day when they were the Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society. Former Pastors Jerry Hamilton and Ross Laidlaw served on their board back in those days. We support a number of Worldventure missionaries. Our many of our short-term mission trips have leveraged our relationship with them.
  
• Food For The Hungry: For the past several years we have a sent a team to Guatamala with Food for the Hungry. Dr. Brad Titus has served on their boards and has brokered our connection with them. The next team is going in a couple months! Child Sponsorship is one of their chief tools.
  
• PRC: Pregnancy Resource Centers of Portland serve women in crisis pregnancies to help them carry their babies to term. One of the chief ways we value life is supporting PRC. We use their bulletin inserts on Sanctity of Human Life Sunday and raise money for them annually through the Baby Bottle drive and the Steps For Life walk-a-thon.
  
• West Linn High School: Right across the street, West Linn High School has long been a friend of our church. They have let us use their parking lots on Sundays, for which we are grateful. Coffee Cart will begin again in January serving students hot chocolate, coffee and pastries before school as we have done for the past decade and a half!
  
• Samaritan's Purse: For several years, thanks to Judy Cochran, we have filled shoe boxes and sent them to children we'll never meet around the world through Operation Christmas Child. This year we filled a record number, 121, shoe boxes and raised money for shipping them.
  
• Project Angel Tree: Project Angel Tree provides gifts for children of incarcerated parents through the ministry of Prison Fellowship. We are grateful to the Philpots for their leadership in helping us serve in this way. We are also excited about the growing relationship we are developing with the Prison Fellowship aftercare program. More on that later.
  
• Cadence: We have supported the Metkos for years. Paul and Beryl are now part of the senior leadership for Cadence, formerly Overseas Christian Servicemen's Centers. Pastor Bill has had a long relationship with Cadence, too. We have sent teams to work on Hospitality houses near Fort Lewis and Fort Leonard Wood.
  
• H2O: Hope 2 Others began as a result of a WorldVenture missions camp. Leslie and Lauren Reavely began making bags with meals and, well, hope for panhandlers alongside the road. They received a big boost from the book Do Hard Things which devotes part of a chapter to them. Their idea is being reproduced in many places throughout the country and has had interest internationally.
  
• CCLI: We utilized CCLI to help us with complex copyright issues for several years before I realized they were based in Portland, OR. Now one of our worship leaders, Ronn Pricer, works at CCLI.
  

I think I could probably find other stickers that belong on the church. We are happy with the company we keep. All these organizations, and others, help us help people make God their treasure!