In a powerful call to unity, Pastor Nate Hettinga reminds us that the mission of Converge—to start and strengthen churches and send workers around the world—is too important to be derailed by division. Through personal stories, biblical truth, and raw vulnerability, he casts a compelling vision: In a world marked by offense, comparison, and suspicion, we choose compassion, forgiveness, and love. We protect the peace—because the gospel is bigger than our differences.
This message was shared during the S2 East Conference in Indianapolis, IN, where Converge pastors gathered at Heartland Church to be equipped, encouraged, and united in mission.
Transcript
Nate Hettinga: Good morning, S2. Day two. You guys glad to be here? Man. Where are the church planters at? How many of you are planting churches, already have? Yeah? Let’s give it up for those guys. Way to go. Just wanna give a shout out to Pastor Darryn Scheske, his wife, Lori, for hosting us here, for loving on us, for pulling out all the stops. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you for your friendship. As well, we want to give honor and pay respect to Pastor John Jenkins. Thank you for your leadership. You didn’t need to complicate your life by adding, being the president of Converge. And I’m grateful for your vision, for your leadership, and I gladly follow you. Yeah, thank you.
I never wanted to be a church planter, and in fact, my wife and I said no when we were asked. I was about to go back and was applying for a position as an associate gag, gonna do small groups at our home church. And my wife was very shy, very quiet at the time. Now, not so much. But then she was, and we were meeting with the elders that we had grown up under. So, kind of feel that moment. We’re 22 years old, new married, one baby. And we’re sitting with the elders that have, we’ve looked up to all of our lives and they’re saying to us, okay, we’re willing to bring you on as a small group guy, but we really want you to plant a church. And my wife stood up in the meeting and she said, she leans over to all of her elders and she says, “If you’re gonna hire my husband based on the possibility of us planting a church, the answer’s no.” In fact, my testimony can be summed up in a series of three nos. I had said as a teenager, I feel called to ministry, but it’s not gonna be a pastor. No, I will not be a pastor. In fact, I’d grown up in a glass house, did not want that for myself or my own children someday. And so I went off to Bible college to become a linguist. I was gonna go sit in a tribe in the Amazon and translate the Bible. That’s what I was gonna do. The second, no, I already told you, I won’t be a church planter. The third, no, up until 2020, I was being asked and I was telling God, and I was saying to everybody else, I will not do regional ministry or be involved in national ministry.
Be careful what you say no about. Two years after saying no to church planting, Amy and I had two daughters, little girls, and we were working on our core team development. Our prayer card looks a little bit like this. That was the early days. I know, one of the hidden things, I was 29 in that picture. One of the hidden things about church flaunting, nobody tells you, but this is the dirty little truth. Your hair’s gonna turn colors or fall out. Or in my case, both. That’s just what happened. We ended up planting a church in 1997, February 9th was our start day, and was able to pastor that church for 23 years and planted a bunch of other churches, daughter and granddaughter churches, out of that as well.
God has been very, very gracious. Two weeks ago, and this happens every once in a while, where I’ll run into somebody at the airport. Two weeks ago, I was waiting on the jet way, you know, they’ve cleared you, you’re waiting to get on the plane. And I recognized this dude in front of me. I didn’t know where I knew him from. You guys know what that’s like. You’ve been in different contexts. But I knew I recognized him and then the name popped into my head just as he turned from his friends that he was talking to. And he said, “Nate?” And I said, “Jason?” Jason’s about 6’6″, 6’7″, something like that. Big old guy, and I hadn’t seen him in over 20 years. He ended up sitting right behind me in the exit row. I was in row 16, he was in row 17. And as we were chatting a little bit, I said, I think I have a picture of you on my phone, which he didn’t think was creepy at all. But it was of our first baptisms that we did as a young church. And he had been apart with his wife and two little girls at the time, been a part of the church. And I asked him, what are you doing now? Because we’d lost touch. They’d moved away and then moved back and they were in the Seattle area, we were clear out in a little town called Monroe. And he said, I’m now an elder. And he listed the church, told me the pastor’s name, one of the fastest growing, most influential churches in the Seattle area. And he’s one of the elders on that team. The picture that I sent him while we were in the flight is of him being baptized in a cattle tank. In those early days, we didn’t have any money. We couldn’t afford a baptismal, so I went to the Monroe Farm and feed and said, “Can I borrow a tank just for Sunday night? I’m gonna baptize people.” They said, “We have one tank. It’s covered with manure.” So, I told Jason this on the flight. I said, By the way, I spent all Sunday afternoon wiping manure off of that thing, so I’m glad you didn’t know that before.” And he said to me, “Me too.” actually had to get reinforcements. Had another pastor help with his baptism, as you can see there, he was just too big.
Here’s my takeaway from that moment. You never know where God is gonna take your faithfulness. You never know where God is gonna take a life that you choose to invest in. And I was reminded as I was flying to Orlando, Jason’s right behind me, that it’s worth it. It’s worth it. It’s worth the late nights. It’s worth the criticism. It’s worth the Monday emails. It’s worth the sacrifice. Stay in the game. Stay in the game. My family, today we have six kids, and as of last Wednesday, eight grandkids, a little Samuel John was born. First thing my eldest daughter said as I came into the room last Wednesday at the hospital is, I said, “I’m so proud of you.” And I was giving her a hug and she whispers in my ear, “He’s named after you dad, Samuel John.” My middle name is John as well. And I said, “He gets a pony.” Amy and I have been raising kids together for almost 35 years. And we echo in our home over these years something that I heard in my home growing up, we would have family meetings, we would have moments where people were about to come over to the house and my parents would sit us down and one of the things that we would hear over and over, was this mantra that we protect the peace. Protect the peace of the house. And what my parents meant was no chaos, no running around, no throwing things at the guests. That’s kind of what they meant. But we also meant spiritual peace. ‘Cause you know, right? Amy and I are still raising two teenage sons. One is 18 on Saturday, we have a graduation for him and a big celebration and we have a 16-year-old who’s coming up and he’s pretty sure he’s ready for adulthood and could take my role at any moment. But we talk about this, protect the peace. ‘Cause it only takes one crappy attitude at the dinner table to derail everything.
Peace is hard to obtain. It is hard to maintain, and it can disappear just like that. Think about your context, your church, just over the last few years. Going back to 2020 and the COVID policies. I know we hate to think about it. In fact, I’m so bad right now, if a show comes on or a commercial comes on and somebody has a mask, I have this visceral, turn it off. But all of us know what it’s like to take critique and to get stabbed in the back from people that we’ve loved and influenced and given our lives for. Racial issues in the last number of years have created mistrust and have often pit us against each other. There are theological hot buttons that sometimes can turn into major issues that create rifts between us. And politics? Politics have us at each other’s throats.
On social media I have friends, maybe you do as well, that are on both extremes of the spectrum politically. And the things that they say about the other positions are ugly and vicious. Talking to a room full of pastors and ministry leaders, most of us are leading complex organizations, but all of us have had to learn how to respond to varied constituents who have a wide spectrum of perspectives. And so we know how to promote unity. We know what scripture says in John 15 where Jesus says, “May they be one, Father, as we are one so that the world may know.” And all of us know what it’s like to have to walk the fine line between our personal convictions, what we hold near and dear, and what other good people believe and practice all in our local church.
In the Northwest, as in many of our districts across the United States, we’ve had a lot of affiliation conversations in the last number of years, churches that are kind of kicking the tires on joining our movement. And I ask often, what is it that’s drawing you? Because usually the conversation starts with, what can you do for us? And I usually flip that around at some point and say, what is it that’s drawing you to Converge? And I hear the same things over and over again. They say something like this, Converge is on mission. Converge is multiplying. Not just adding by taking from somebody else. We’re multiplying, we’re reaching lost people. We have a strong core doctrine and practice under a very wide tent and we have trusted proven leadership. Those are the things that I hear.
Two key distinctives that have been passed down over the last 168, almost 169 years of our movement that we know today as Converge, two old timey kind of convictions that were touted and preached and we’re sort of a mantra in the early days and sometimes we lose track of it. But one of those things, one of those things, is that we say that we have a pietistic heart in Converge, which speaks of personal holiness, of our desire to walk with Jesus individually, to know him personally, a pietistic heart. But at the same time, we say, and here’s an old timey word, we have an irenic spirit. I know you’re gonna have to Google that one. We have an irenic spirit, meaning that we choose love, we choose to argue about the things that we must argue about. But at the end of the day, we have a big tent and we choose to move forward in mission together. Amen.
Another way that this has been described as first page, second page, and third page issues. First page issues would be things that are on your doctrinal statement. If we went to your website, we would know these are the things that you deeply hold. These are the things that you will fight about. This might be the stuff that you would divide over. The second page issues are things that perhaps they’d be fun to discuss, maybe even get a little bit heated about. But we’re not gonna divide over those second page things. And then the third page issues. Those are things that are just fun to talk about. Lemme say this, if everything for you is a first page issue, then you’re probably a legalist and you’re okay with about three people. And the older you get, the fewer people you’re okay with. If everything for you is a third page issue, you’re more likely a universalist and you’re at the wrong conference.
Too many organizations, denominations, associations are dividing, they’re splitting, they’re going separate ways. And the question that I wonder about a lot is how do we maintain our core convictions? How do we maintain our core convictions while allowing for variation? When is a leader, when is a church no longer under the big tent? We’re talking about unity versus universalism. How do we protect the core principles of piety while also choosing an irenic spirit? And I picture in my mind a catamaran. You guys know what those are? Those sailboats that are up on two pontoons. And and we need both. We need a pietistic heart and we need an irenic spirit to carry out the vision that God has given us to stay afloat.
Last 18 months have been incredibly polemic in our culture, haven’t they? We had an election, we’ve got all kinds of change going on, lots of politics, lots of division. In fact, everything seems political right now. Everything. And that brings tensions within our church. And the heightened sensitivity brings tensions between our churches and our regions and sometimes even national. We are a unique experiment. Autonomous churches working with autonomous regions, serving alongside an occasionally autonomous, historically, President Jenkins, national office. Our unity is fragile. It’s like a whisper. And I believe it must be fiercely protected.
What threatens our unity? I believe it’s less theological differences and more relational differences. If you think about how many different baptistic organizations exist within our country, I believe there’s more than 50. It’s not because there’s 50 baptistic theological doctrinal differences. It’s because people don’t get along and they paper over those differences with theological stuff. Our real issues are issues that are much more practical, like competition, mistrust, past failures, past tensions. I was talking with a pastor that has been distant in Converge Northwest for over 35 years. And I was sitting down with him and I said, is there any way that you would be willing to move back towards partnership? And this is one of our historic churches. And he said, you don’t understand. You’re just the next guy. 35 years ago, the guy that was in your role did this. And I listened to him and I said, “I’m sorry that that happened. Look me in the eye. Would you give me the opportunity to lead? ’cause I know for sure I will fail you, but I am a professional at failing forward.” And then I added this, “By the way, have you spoken on forgiveness in the last 35 years?” And then I left.
Colossians 3. Would you open your Bible, Colossians 3. I wanna circle around a principle of unity. I wanna circle around this idea of protecting the peace. We’re talking about pursuing unity in an age of outrage. Pastor Paul is writing to a group of small churches, little church plants in Colossi, in verses one through eight, you know this, you’ve preached it. He gives a summary of the new life that we find in Jesus Christ. And he’s gonna contrast the old life with this new life. And in verses one through three, he says it this way, since then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above. Not on earthly things, for you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. Amen. The old is gone, Paul is saying, so set your heart, verse one, set your mind verse two, on things above. Because you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. Fast forward down through the old life list and that list in verses down to verse eight, talk about the old life being divisions and made up of ugly character traits, divisions over culture and creed. And let’s just read it, verse nine through 11, Colossians 3. Paul says, “Don’t lie to each other since you’ve taken off your old self with its practices and you’ve put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge, in the image of its Creator.” And here’s the result. The old life being exchanged for the new life. Here’s the result. There is here, no Gentile or Jew in the new life. No gentile or Jew, no circumcised or uncircumcised, no barbarian, Scythians, slave or free. But Christ is all and is in all. The old life. It’s characterized by divisions over culture, class, creed, color. The new life those old divisions are now gone through Jesus Christ.
Last November, Amy and I were given the invitation to go and to speak to a group of pastors in Kyrgyzstan. I didn’t know where it was either. About half were Russian pastors that had to travel, some of them for four or five days to get there because of the Ukraine war. There were five stands represented, church planters and pastors, and they’d all come together. Historically, those pastors were all from various nomadic tribes that hated each other. We went through a museum in the capital city of Bishkek, and it was the history of warfare between all of these tribes. And now we’re with a group of pastors representing all those tribes, but serving Christ together, planting churches together, encouraging one another’s hearts. They’re known today for who they are now in Christ, not for who they were in their old life.
Paul says, your differences don’t define you. Christ defines you. And there is unity in this new life in Christ. And of course, you and I would say, well, what does that look like? And it’s nice to say, there is no barbarian or free or Jew or Gentile. What’s that look like? And so Paul immediately jumps into the practical and he starts to give us some relational guideposts, qualities that are necessary to protect the peace. There’s this contrast between the old life in verse five through eight and then the new life in verses 12 through 14. Verses five through eight it sounds like this, put to death therefore whatever belongs to your earthly nature. Sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desire, greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways in the life that you once lived, but now you must rid yourself of all such things as these anger, rage, malice, slander, filthy language from your lips. That’s the old self without Jesus. He says, put that to death. And then he transitions here in verse 12, and he says this, “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, with kindness, with humility, gentleness, and patience. And then he goes on and he says, bear with each other and forgive one another. If any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues, Paul instructs, put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. That’s new self living. Paul is exhorting us. These relational guideposts will protect the peace that will guard our unity. And so I just wanna lay out a few of them very quickly this morning.
First relational guidepost. We choose compassion over aggression. We choose compassion over aggression. We’re called by Jesus to leave behind our old self, that aggressive ugly list of sin and anger and sexual immorality and all of that stuff. And instead, Paul says, I want you to embrace a constellation of compassion that looks like kindness and humility and patience. I don’t know about you, but I wanna be around the new life kind of person. I’ve been striving for almost 35 years now to build a family with those qualities, to personally be a man with those qualities. That’s what encountering Jesus ought to lead to compassion over aggression. We speak the truth. We’re not afraid of that, but we will do it in love. Second relational guidepost. Verse 13, bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you have against one another. Forgive as the Lord has forgiven you.
Second relational guideposts, we choose forgiveness over offense. We choose forgiveness over offense. To love means we’re gonna need to forgive because we’re gonna hurt and we’re gonna get hurt. In the early days of Cascade, about second, third year, we went from a advisory team to an elder board. And I was so excited about one particular elder, his name is Leo. I was pumped about him because he came with more leadership experience than I could have ever dreamed of. He had just retired from leading the Boeing Interiors plant in Everett, Washington, which at the time was the largest square foot building in the United States. And I thought I got this Boeing exec on my elder board. This is gonna be fantastic. Until Leo decided that he needed to protect the church from me. I didn’t wanna have a big church. We had left a big church, we were hoping to start a small to midsize church and reach our favorite lost people and grow old together. And God had a different plan. We grew very, very quickly. And so we just decided we’re gonna multiply every time we hit a certain bench mark where we’re gonna look to send a pastor and a core team of people, and we’re gonna multiply. And Leo saw me doing that and he’s like, this is insane. This is not a good business practice. You’re sending the best leaders, you’re sending the best lay leaders. You’re sending people that already tithe. The one that he got the most upset about and left the church over was the church plant where the switch in tithe from the core team, from the mother church to the daughter church was around $4,000 a week. And at the time, those were big dollars and we needed them. He left. It was angry, it was ugly. The only time I ever went from the elder room to the liquor store was that big fight. Last thing Leo said is, I’m gonna go to your father’s church and I’m gonna sit under his leadership. Two years later, I’m doing a funeral, big, big funeral for a young man who had been shot during a hunting accident. About 5,000 people met at the fairgrounds. I had done the service, afterwards, Leo approached me, tears streaming down his face. And he said, “Nate, I am so, so sorry, but I’ve been sitting under your dad’s leadership and he’s just as crazy as you are. I see where you get it.” And then he said this, “Can we have your permission to come back to Cascade?” And I said, “As long as you don’t seek leadership. But yes.” A couple months later, they’d been back at Cascade for a little while. I was speaking to about 250 men at a men’s barbecue. I was speaking on servant leadership and telling the story of Jesus, washing his disciples’ feet and I just felt the spirit nudge in that moment and I called for stuff to be brought and I called Leo up and I told the story of our fracture and we did not like each other. I told how we had come back together, how we’d reconciled and how we’d laid down our offense. And as I washed his feet, he balled and I balled. And we chose together forgiveness over offense. The leaders here at Converge are leading with that same spirit.
I’m in the regional president room, I’m in the board of Overseer room. And I’ve seen over and over again moments where we’ve crossed each other up. And good leaders who don’t have to apologize if they don’t want to, they have the authority and the position to just keep rolling. But I’ve seen over and over again, the leaders here in Converge say sorry and ask for forgiveness and to choose that over offense. Thank you for protecting the peace of Converge. Listen, we’ve had some huge issues over the last number of years. Yeah, yeah. We’ve had big issues over the last few years. We’ve had major financial issues, major leadership changes that have occurred, but we face them with God’s grace and being quick to forgive rather than to take onto offense. We wanna do the same, protect the peace.
Last relational guidepost, number three, we choose love overall. We choose love over all. Verse 14 says, and over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Two and a half years ago, there was a meeting here at Heartland Church. It was just down the hall. It was a Board of Overseers meeting. There were big, big issues on the table. And I was annoyed. I was annoyed by what was happening. I was annoyed by what decisions were being made and where they were being made, how they were being communicated. And I was planning on the flight, I’m annoyed, and so I’m gonna share that love. I’m gonna be as annoying as I possibly can. And the Holy Spirit, I believe, led our friend, Pastor Darren, to open that national board meeting with a devotion. And he started at the beginning of our movement, the Swedish Baptist from the mid 1800s. And he started telling stories of early European disciples and then early church planting waves that have swept through our conference, our family, our association. And he got to Team America and he talked about the ’90s and I remember being a part of that, I remember Paul Johnson praying over my wife and I in 1995 at a church planter assessment in Florida. And as he went on and on and talking about the sacrifice and the faith and the church plants and the courage and the grace, that annoyance that I walked in the room with just sort of leeched out of my body. And I was reminded how much I love this team, how much I’m committed to this tribe. Not because we’re better than anybody else, but because this tribe gets it. We’re on the move together. In the name of Jesus Christ. Protect the peace.
As a former our president Scott Rideout often says, in the gaps between us, I choose trust rather than suspicion. We hear things about each other, don’t we? What if we were to choose to protect the peace and to believe the best about one another? What if we were to carry water for one another and if we hear grumbling and griping and gossip and slander, we were to pour a little water on it rather than dumping a little bit of gas. We choose love overall. And then Paul ends verse 15, “Let the peace of Christ rule in your heart since as members of one body, you were called to peace.” And then he adds this like it’s an afterthought. Oh yeah. “And be thankful.” Why? Why? Because I think it’s really hard to be grateful and grumpy at the same time. Protect the peace. Why does this matter? Last fall, the Seahawks were playing the Buffalo Bills and they forgot why they were on the field. The Seahawks were mad at each other. They were frustrated by each other’s play and so on the sidelines, the Seahawks started to fight each other and it was embarrassing and it was ineffective, and they lost badly. And my encouragement to us is to stay focused and remember why we are on the field. We’re on mission to start churches, to strengthen churches, and to send workers around the world. And here’s the reality. We have a huge job ahead of us. In a lot of sectors, I mean, I heard the brother come out a second ago, I was talking about East Valley of Phoenix, where it’s only 12% that attend church. I heard 12% and I thought, we’d love to see that. We’re in a 1% zone. Some of you are as well. Across the evangelical spectrum, Christian churches are closing far faster than they’re being planted. Let’s throw up that first schematic. This data is actually old, it’s from 2019. The new COVID era data is gonna be coming out soon. And it doesn’t promise to be better, it promises to be worse. But church planting is slowing down right at the time that it needs to surge again. Last slide. We have a big task ahead of us to plant churches and to strengthen churches. We’ve had a five year goal here at Converge of planting 312 churches by the end of this year, 2025. And by God’s grace, I think we’re gonna hit that 312 or exceed it. And we celebrate that. But at the same time, we can’t afford to hit the brakes or to slip into neutral. There is more yet to be done in God’s strength. And just to stay even with population growth we need to net 2100 churches a year over, or excuse me, across all networks and associations. And so I’m pleading with you. I’m pleading with you to protect the peace, to stay on mission.
Before I left Kyrgyzstan, I had lunch with two Russian pastors who are different networks, but they’re planting along the Black Sea. They said, yeah, every day we have armed Ukrainian drones overhead over our houses, over our churches. And I was asking them questions about how do they, how are you able to work together? The complications that they’re experiencing are very, very significant, more than just our divisions. These are pastors and church planters who are on both sides of the Ukrainian Russian war. They’re burying each other’s children. I said, how are you doing this in this season? And they kind of smiled and then through the translator they said, “We know who our enemies are, and it’s not each other. The gospel is bigger than our differences.” Man, I want to hang on to that. I want to hang on to that. Protect the peace. Protect the peace.
My little sister, Holly, is in intensive care in Seattle. She was found without a heartbeat Saturday night. Her husband, who’s also a Converge pastor, performed CPR till the paramedics arrived. But she went too long without a heartbeat. Her body’s stable. I left her side yesterday. But her brain, not so much. Tonight, when I get off the plane in Seattle, I’ll go straight to the hospital and the whole family will be gathering together. We’re gonna say goodbye. We’re gonna worship. I’m gonna say thank you to Jesus for 56 years and we’re gonna release Holly to our Heavenly Father. Life is short. Stakes are high. Mission matters. Protect the peace. Father, may we be one as you are one. That the world may know that you are the Christ, the Son of God. Amen.
Linn Winters: I don’t know if you realize this, but you just heard two sermons. You heard a really good sermon from Nate’s lips. You heard an even more incredible sermon from his life. He just told you his sister is laying in a hospital room about to die, and he’s here with us. He’s here with us because he loves us and because he’s committed to us. And I’m just telling you, if every one of us in Converge felt that way, we’d have unity. We would be fighting for one another. Let me just pray for Nate real quick. Hey, dearest Heavenly Father, thank you for my brother. Thank you that it’s not just words, he puts his life on the line to live what he says. And thank you for this incredible example, this incredible modeling of being on mission together and saying, I’ll even in the midst of my grief, stand with my brothers and my sisters for unity.
Nate: That’s right.
Linn: Thank you, dear Lord Jesus. In your precious name, amen.
Nate: Amen. Thanks.