A Deeper Look: Praying for Yamhill County

 

Yamhill County

Therefore with joy will you draw water from the wells of salvation. Isaiah 12:3

We are taking a little detour from our review of the North Coast counties to visit one of the oldest counties in the state: Yamhill. It isn’t that much of a detour since Yamhill, when originally established in 1843, extended from the Willamette River to the Pacific Ocean and from the Columbia River to California. As other counties were created it grew smaller but remained a coast county until Tillamook County took a piece of it around 1887.

The county seat originally was Lafayette, but later was moved to McMinnville, which is the largest city in the county. Second in size is Newberg, also the home of George Fox University, a school established by and for Quakers (The Religious Society of Friends) in 1891. It has over 4,000 students and is the largest private university in the state, and highly regarded. I was once accepted into a graduate program at George Fox but had to drop that. Also, I appreciate the fact that George Fox library carries a rare out-of-print biography of my sixth great-grandmother, Charity Wright Cook, a Quaker minister who lived from 1745 -1822.

Newberg and Yamhill County have been in the news lately, with an attempted recall of Newberg School Board members. That move failed, but now there is an attempt to remove the chair of the county commissioners, Lindsey Berschauer, who was elected on May 19, 2020. A previous recall attempt in the fall of 2021 failed, but this week the needed number of signatures was submitted to the County Clerk and certified. A date for the recall election has yet to be set but will be soon.

The issues for this battle are along the conservative/liberal divide with the two board members subject to the recall election being conservative. The commissioner is also a conservative. Political and social issues have also driven wedges in the religious community of Newberg resulting in a congregation of Quakers splitting.

Yamhill County is close to the Metro area but has remained largely rural and agricultural with politically conservative values. That is being challenged.

Yamhill is such an old county in the state with the first white settlers establishing homesteads in 1835. We have written about “redigging the old wells,” from the story of Isaac having to reopen the wells his father, Abraham, had dug that had been stopped up with trash by the Philistines. (Genesis 26:18) Lou Engle, in his book “Digging the Wells of Revival,” speaks of seeking out those locations in your community where the Holy Spirit has been poured out in past times and pray for those springs to be refreshed and renewed.

In 1876, William Hobson, a Quaker from Iowa, came west to find a location for more of his church members to settle. He picked the area around Newberg. A Friends community grew there, and in 1885 they established an academy that eventually became George Fox University. The Quaker influence has been strong in Newberg, with the Quaker Jesse Edwards having platted the town and sometimes being credited as its founder.

How to we pray for Yamhill County and for Newberg?

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places. Ephesians 6:12

Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Matthew 18:18

In praying for Yamhill County this is a good place to remember than our battle is not against flesh and blood, and that we have the authority to bind any forces of darkness that are at work, and to loose the Holy Spirit into those places where turmoil is taking place. Bind the agenda of the enemy and declare the opposite into its place: peace for strife, unity for division, love for hate.

The Newberg School Board members are: Dave Brown, Brian Shannon, Trevor DeHart, Renee Powell, Rebecca Piros, Brandy Penner, and Ines Pena who recently announced her resignation.

The County Commissioners are: Lindsey Bershauer, Casey Kulla, Mary Starrett

Pray for wisdom and discernment for all involved. Pray for the upcoming recall election, that voters will be able to discern the truth and vote accordingly. Pray for the “old wells” of faith and righteousness established early in the county by the Quakers and other groups, including Methodist circuit riders, to be renewed and deepened.