Likkels: Serving Unreached Places

Allen Likkel and his wife, Lynn, have worked in communities all over North America for many years planting churches, nurturing these churches along and developing new church leaders.

Although Allen Likkel has worked formally for Christian Reformed Home Missions during this period, his wife has always been at his side, helping build leaders and new congregations.

At the end of this month, Allen Likkel is retiring and he and his wife plan to move to Washington State.

"We've been a team," says Allen Likkel. "We're both humbled by the gifts we have seen in the people around us."

"It has been such a privilege to see the lives of people transformed," said Lynn Likkel.

They have four children, all involved in some form of ministry. One of his sons started what is now a successful CRC congregation in Seattle, Wash.

In his career, Likkel has seen the Christian Reformed Church in North America substantially change its vision and approach from supporting mostly mainstream congregations to reaching out to create new churches, often in hard-to-reach, ethnically diverse communities.

A church planter himself on Vancouver Island in British Columbia for 11 years, Likkel has had a passion for bringing the gospel to people in settings in which the CRC has had little presence. Christ Community, the church he and his wife started, in the town of Nanaimo, B.C., today has about 430 members.

Given his success in British Columbia, CRHM offered him a position in 1991.

"Home Missions was ramping up church planting at that time. There was a growing vision for North America as a harvest field," he says.

His new job was to recruit, train and coach new church planters and see them through the conception and birth of a new church.

"All along my driving passion was to build capacity for missions and to help contextualize leaders so that they could be prepared to work in the area in which they went to start a church," said Allen Likkel. "It was important that they knew that mission opportunities are so uniquely different from one place to another."

He and his wife also ran a program that they took all over North America, spending four days assessing couples to see if they had what it takes to be church planters.

Even though there were couples they turned down to be church planters, many of these couples became friends with the Likkels. Couples who did go on to start new church became friends as well, and the Likkels loved watching those new churches thrive.

Over time, the Likkels essentially worked themselves out of a job. The church planters started churches and then, as they grew, trained new church planters to start a church.

"Home Missions did it as an agency. We oversaw the church planting process, but then church planting became owned by the churches. The idea is that churches plant churches."

From there, Allen Likkel took over as director of ministry teams for CRHM, supervising, training and connecting leaders in various areas. He served as a resource person, helping the regional teams learn how to best encourage and support the churches in their areas.

Once again, he more or less worked himself out of a job, since the regional leaders have started to develop mission clusters of churches that gather for support and to exchange ideas. Basically, the clusters work together to have an impact on a city.

"The clusters are a mostly spontaneous, spirit-inspired support system. We been able to walk alongside them and help them in the process of spiritual discernment," he said.

Three years ago, Likkel met with a few fellow pastors and mentors to sort through if he should retire and then how he ought to go about it. As a result, it has been a smooth, transparent process that, he said, allows him to leave feeling good and believing, at the age of 66, that it is the right time.

"We've both turned a corner," said Lynn Likkel, who was one of the first women ordained in the CRC and currently works as a pastor/chaplain and will be seeking a new position when they move West. "We're suddenly seeing the next chapter of our lives as a new vision."

They are open to God’s calling for opportunities that, both say, they suspect will be in the areas of church planting and church leadership training.

"God really honors sincere commitment and effort and rewards in a way that you know it is God," said Allen Likkel. "I’ve poured my heart and soul into this job, but at the end of the day I realize how much God has done. I leave this job truly feeling humbled."

He and his wife have known each other since grade school in Lyndon, Wash. As the son of an agricultural implements business owner, Likkel recalls driving with his dad through Seattle and looking out the window at the teeming mass of people. This is when he got his first inkling about his future vocation.

"I had this feeling in my soul and I wondered who is telling all of these people about Christ," he said. "Looking back, I see that a missionary heart was awakened in me. I thought of God’s love for the world and of God’s people."

The problem was, he said, he could not see himself serving as a pastor for a mainstream CRC congregation. The mass of people on the streets that day sparked the idea that, if he was to enter the ministry, it would be in a non-traditional way.

As it turned out, he found what he was looking for while attending Calvin Theological Seminary. He was able to land a summer internship working as a minister among campers and others in the Mount Rainer National Park.

"I found myself working among college students in camp grounds. I was able to communicate the gospel to people from many backgrounds," he said.

He also had to drive a garbage truck and fight forest fires as part of the job. After all, he was working in a program connected to the National Park Service. "When they needed help, I got a call,"he said.

After graduation from seminary, he did work at traditional churches, but soon felt the deep hankering to start a church in a place where there were no other CRC congregations. Hence, they went to British Columbia.

"We got what we asked for. It was a marvelous experience," says Lynn Likkel. "We retire, leaving behind no regrets and having wonderful hope for our future."