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General Synod delegates elected Phil Assink as vice president of General Synod 2020. He will serve alongside president EJ de Waard.

Assink is strategic interim pastor of East Valley Reformed Church in Yakima, Washington. He has previously served as pastor of Faith Community Church in Edmonds, Washington; associate pastor of New Life Community Church in Artesia, California, and also of New Hope Community Church in Canoga Park, California. He is a graduate of Seattle Pacific College in Seattle, Washington, and earned his M.Div. from Western Theological Seminary.

Assink has also served as a representative to the National Council of Churches, as president and classis strategist for Cascades Classis, as co-director of Congregational Vitality Pathway, and on the executive team of the Regional Synod of the Far West. He values proportional giving, hospitality, relationships that lead to kingdom impact, and preaching and living the good news of God’s grace.

During his address to delegates following his election, Assink shared about the privilege of receiving a Lilly grant in 2006.

“God gave me a word then, which I think may be more prophetic and profound now than it was then: the word is listen. I make a commitment to you now as your synod vice president to listen—to listen to new friends and build bridges.

During a “difficult season of ministry … I was clinging tenaciously to the verse out of Jeremiah: If you seek me, you will find me, if you seek me with all your heart,” he said. “I discovered that the ‘you’ is plural. And so I invite you with me to remember that we are a you-plural people; we are not a you-singular people. If you all will seek me with all your heart, you all will find me.

“I don’t have a clue how we’ll get there,” he concluded. “But I offer to you my hope and prayer that if we seek him with all our heart, he will speak and he will transform us.”

He and his wife, Melissa, have two sons and three grandchildren.