quest church
Click here to see the 5 year anniversary video of Quest Church.
On Sundays here at Quest Church in Seattle, a fast growing number of people–believers, skeptics, and even cynics–gather together for worship. There are college students, single adults, married couples, older members, and a growing population of children. People in the congregation come from a variety of different nations and cultures. The congregation is a mix of those that are churched, unchurched, dischurched, and overchurched. One of them is “Jane”, who had never stepped foot into a church before coming to Quest. She was raised as a Buddhist, and visited Quest through an invitation of a friend. She has been with us ever since, and continues to wrestle and rejoice about the possibility that a man named Christ was indeed the Son of God who came to die for our sins and reconcile us unto God. “John”, who was living what others perceived a “successful” life, woke up one morning wondering to himself if there was more to life. His questions led him to Quest, and through many conversations (and many more questions), John understood and believed that truth was indeed personal in Christ. He was baptized into the body of believers last year. (UPDATE: “Jane” was baptized on Sunday, January 9, 2005 after attending Quest for the past three years.)
Quest Church is often referred to by outsiders as a postmodern church. Although we’re mindful of the postmodern thought process, if there’s a word that best describes who we are, it would be “emerging.” During the Reformation, the Christian Church examined itself and its culture and, most importantly, held itself accountable to the Scriptures. It began to deconstruct (or rethink) the purpose and movement of the church, in hopes of becoming a movement that remained faithful to God, the Scriptures, to history and tradition, and to its present context and culture. Quest is a church in that spirit. It hopes to never arrive but to continually emerge and to remind others that the Reformation never ended but is an ongoing process.
In 2001, a handful of people began to meet with my wife, Minhee, and me with a simple desire to do and be church. We wanted to be a church with a passion for diversity, worship, community, transformation, and justice. For the first several months, we studied and meditated on Acts 2:42-47–a description of the first churches. From the beginning, we have challenged people to relinquish the consumer mentality that affects all of us. We offered no promises of free gifts, tasty coffee, extravagant productions, marketing gimmicks, or the answers to all one’s questions or issues. Instead, we simply extended an opportunity to experience community and Christ.
At Quest, we’re more concerned about the process rather than the product. The most humbling lesson for me in my recent years was asking God to change the way I define success and how others defined me or our church. We want to be a church not of programs, but of people who are compelled by God to use their gifts and ideas to interpret and convey the grace of Christ. In doing so, we have come to the simple realization that “there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9).We are often visited by others who are trying to do “new stuff” in order to bring new people into their churches. They want to copy what we do, but there is absolutely nothing new here at Quest. Granted, it may look different from the typical Christian church. It may sound different, smell different, and feel different, but ultimately, our mission and vision is just the same. We’re learning that instead of the need to provide answers, products, and methodology of how to do church, it’s more important to ask the right question. For so long, the church, enamored by tradition and methodology, accentuated the need to inform people “how we worship.” But the more powerful question to answer is “why we worship.” Experiencing that paradigm-shift liberates us to understand that everything can be redemptive by the power of God.
And so, after months of Bible study, and few months of regularly worshipping together, we launched our church on October 14, 2001. When we first started meeting, we were not a Covenant church–we were just a local group of believers. But as we journeyed forward, we knew the value and need to be part of a larger Christian body. We had months of conversation with other pastors and denominations, but we were very moved by the Covenant’s passion and commitment for mission, justice, and church planting. We saw an opportunity not simply to be encouraged by the Covenant in what we are doing, but an opportunity where our community church could impact and serve the denomination. Simply, we saw an opportunity for a relationship. As we were looking for a place to hold our weekly services, we were introduced to Interbay Covenant Church in Seattle. Interbay had purchased a warehouse next to their church building about twenty years earlier, and had used it for ministry in the past. But at the time we started talking with them, it was vacant and no longer being used. The 4,500-square-foot building (a combination of office spaces in the back and a larger open warehouse space in the front) drew our attention as a space for a nonprofit café and community center we wanted to start. Both congregations began to pray to seek wisdom, and with much support from the conference, we received permits from the city of Seattle to work on the building. After three months, the work was completed. Although Quest and Interbay’s worship spaces are side by side, both churches have experienced significant growth. It has indeed been a very fruitful partnership.Having the warehouse allowed us to start a non-profit organization called QCD (Quest Community Development).
As a church, we didn’t want to simply talk about our faith–we wanted to do something significant for our community. The warehouse includes the Quest café, a coffeehouse that doubles as our worship space; a community center with a computer lab; a tutoring/mentoring center, and conference rooms. Profits from the coffeehouse will be used to the outreach ministries. The café opened in late October, and we met more new people in the first month of business than the one previous year that we’ve been in the same location as a church.Our purpose through the café and center isn’t to convert people. We often joke with people that nothing suspicious has been doped into their coffee. We simply want to build relationships, serve, and meet people where they are. Customers include local neighbors and business people, students, the homeless, and others who simply want to see what we’re doing. Through our commitment to building relationships and serving people, numerous people who have never gone to church have expressed interest in our church. Different forms of art by local artists hang on our walls. The Q Café also hosts a live music on Friday nights and an open mic night on Tuesday evenings for poetry slams, singers, and songwriters. The intensity of planting a church, going through a building/renovation project, the stress of finances, along with other things have weighed heavily on us. But realizing that this has been a “God thing” has been so liberating– it’s O.K. to relinquish and simply trust God.
Recently I was reminded of how God’s power can work in our ministry at Quest. As I walked out of my office, I noticed three people sitting at one of the tables in the coffeehouse. There was Leah, a member at Quest who took a significant paycut to leave her previous job to become our full-time “café manager and minister.” There was another customer, and then there was a homeless woman who have been trying to get off the streets. Together they sat there, sipping coffee, playing cards, and sharing stories. There was something to that image. We need to spend some more time in our busyness to sit, drink, and eat together, and share our stories with one another and more importantly, share the greatest story of God’s amazing love –both in word and in deed.
For more info: www.seattlequest.org
