Nancy Sugikawa

Early Formation: A Heritage of Faith

Rev. Nancy Sugikawa was born in Hilo, Hawaii, to a Japanese American father and a Taiwanese mother. As a military child, her early years were a sojourning, multicultural, international experience, with stays in Hawaii, Japan, Taiwan, and the mainland United States, including Texas and Missouri. 

What could have felt like a rootless childhood was instead anchored by the liturgical rhythms and discipleship of her mother, who converted to Christianity while the family was stationed in Okinawa, through the influence of missionary friends on the Army base. Nancy identifies her mother as her primary discipler; she taught her children to hear God’s voice and obey his commands. She says, “We would have family devotionals. We would literally get on our knees together when we would need God’s direction... and we would ask God for guidance. My mom would say, ‘Okay, who heard from Jesus?’ And we’d be amazed. We learned early on that Jesus speaks…and guides us.” While her father was initially an observer who “read the paper” during services, he eventually converted and was baptized through the influence of another missionary friend. The hardship the family endured during her father’s five-year battle with cancer and eventual death, when Nancy was only eleven, cemented her reliance on and trust in God.

The incubator for Nancy’s early faith was the Little White Chapel in Waikiki, a small fellowship that later became Waikiki Baptist Church, under the evangelistic leadership of Dr. Herman S. Ray. It was here, at the age of six, that Nancy expressed a desire for baptism and where she first noted the restricted roles of women in ministry. On one occasion, she questioned how a female missionary could baptize converts in rural China if only men were permitted such authority. Her mother’s protective response was, “Shhh...never mind.” 
In her college years, Nancy was trained as a student leader in Campus Crusade for Christ (now Cru). She learned to share her faith with other students, to disciple them, and to gather and lead a small group. 

The Engineering of a Calling: From Aerospace to Ordination

Prior to her transition to full-time pastoral ministry, Nancy established herself in the secular world as a mechanical engineer in the aerospace industry. She was the only woman in a department of seventy engineers—no doubt invaluable preparation world of pastoral ministry, which at that time was even more heavily male than today. 

The pivotal moment of Nancy’s calling occurred during her season as a layperson at a United Methodist church. She had recognized that there was no ministry serving young adults and began what became a vibrant young adult ministry, for which she led worship and recruited speakers. One month, she struggled to find a speaker and prayed desperately for God to provide someone to feed the hungry congregation. In that moment, she heard a voice clearly saying, “You give them something to eat,” a direct reference to the feeding of the five thousand. When she protested her lack of training, the Lord’s reply was definitive: “Well, go and get trained.” 

Nancy’s path to pastoral ministry required navigating multiple barriers—theological, cultural, and personal. Theologically, she needed to become convinced that the Bible allowed women to minister as pastors—something she had not seen growing up in the Southern Baptist Church. At seminary, her analytical, engineering mind led her to study Greek, so that she could exegete the critical passages and better understand them. Culturally, she had to overcome her own internal reluctance as well as the skepticism of her family and community. For example, her sister initially dismissed the calling as a “nonsense idea”—though in time she left her own church of ten years to join Nancy’s, admitting, “You’re a good preacher.” Financially, it meant making her peace with leaving a lucrative engineering salary, while bearing the responsibility of supporting her sick mother.

Nancy sought the counsel of three pastoral mentors to discern this path. Wayne Ogimachi challenged her biblically, resourced her with books, and pointedly asked: “Why do you think you can’t be a pastor?” Keith Zaphren, a pastor in a more conservative setting, refused to rule out the idea, admitting that while he didn’t believe women could serve as pastors, he was not confident in the biblical basis for that restriction. But the most surprising response came from Dan Shinoda. As a retired pastor in a conservative Baptist church, Nancy expected him to provide a scriptural “no;” instead, he paused, thought deeply, and said, “Nancy, find your niche. Whatever the Lord asks you to do, you must do it.” This green light propelled her through her MDiv at Fuller Seminary and an internship at NewSong Church during its period of explosive growth, culminating in her ordination to Word and Sacrament in the Evangelical Covenant Church in 2008. 

Ministry Accomplishments: Global Missions, Justice, and Discipleship

Since becoming a pastor, Nancy has been a perennially fruitful minister in multiple areas. Many of them were accomplished during her nineteen-year tenure at Lighthouse Christian Church, where she held responsibility at different times for outreach, leadership development, missions, and discipleship. During these years, she helped start the 29:11 young adult ministry and identified and mentored pastoral intern Royce Yuen, who went on to plant a church with Lighthouse. She developed the church’s mission team focus on the countries of Japan, China, Kenya, and Cambodia and helped raise about $1 million for underserved communities in those countries. A cornerstone of this effort was the “Advent Conspiracy” initiative. In its first year, Lighthouse raised $140,000—dramatically exceeding the $40,000 goal—to benefit global charities and Phantom Lake Elementary School, where the church was then meeting. Closer to home, Nancy developed a community engagement ministry in the Bellevue School District with Jubilee REACH and was instrumental in helping form Impact, a social justice group within the church. She encouraged the church to partner with Puentes, leading congregants to visit the Northwest Immigration Detention Center in Tacoma. 

But Nancy was not just starting programs; she was casting a bigger vision of the gospel for Lighthouse, a spiritually vibrant Asian American church, but one that had little community involvement and little concern for justice issues. Her impact went beyond the programs to helping form the organizational culture. Her advocacy was rooted in a clear biblical mandate: “We must not forget that the Bible tells us to protect the foreigners, the powerless in our midst, as we were once foreigners ourselves” (cf. Exodus 22:21).

Her ECC endeavors include:

• Pacific Northwest Conference Discipleship Coach: Helping regional churches develop healthy discipleship pathways.
• Discipleship Pastor at Encounter Church: Mentoring younger staff and overseeing discipleship.
• “Exploring Call” Annual Retreat: Leading the committee for women exploring ministry for four years.
• Pacific Northwest Conference Committee on Ministerial Standing: Serving for four years on the committee that approves candidates for ordination.

Reflections on Her Clergy Experience

For nearly all her pastoral career, Nancy navigated the experience of being a single woman in the church, not marrying until her fifties. She looks back at this period of singleness as a source of freedom that allowed her to dedicate herself fully to her “spiritual children” and pave the way for those following her. Her status as a “double minority”—as a woman and an Asian American—unexpectedly resulted in access to influential platforms. At a Willow Creek speakers’ luncheon, she was the only woman among seventy male leaders, a position she accepted to model faithfulness for others. Nationally, she spent seventeen years with Catalyst, mentoring young Asian American pastors navigating the tensions between cultural values and biblical ministry.

Her current discipleship philosophy draws from insights drawn from Peter Scazzero’s Emotionally Healthy Discipleship, distilled into a framework she calls the “Three I’s:” Identity (knowing one is loved and fearfully made so that “I don’t have to control other people”); Intimacy (developing vulnerable, authentic relationships with both God and the community); and Invitation (remaining open to God’s call to go deeper, even into places of “pain or loss for the sake of others”). Nancy remains a vocal advocate for one-on-one discipleship, believing that individual attention is the only way people truly learn to integrate their faith with the challenges of the world.

Nancy is grateful for the Evangelical Covenant Church, especially for the many mentors and influential colleagues she has worked alongside, notably Evelyn Johnson, the first female superintendent in the denomination. She credits the annual Midwinter conferences for providing a “global perspective of the gospel.”

In reflecting on her years in pastoral ministry, Nancy describes herself as a “Frodo” of the Christian world—an unlikely character who lacked a commanding presence and great power but relied entirely on a Greater Power and plan. From the unexpected financial gifts that paid her seminary tuition to the advocacy of those who upheld her, she remains a witness to the fact that when God calls, he provides. She hopes that her legacy will be one of enduring, humble commitment: to remain “faithful to the end” and to find her greatest joy in the success of the next generation of leaders. 

Selected Ministry Roles

• Discipleship Pastor, Encounter Church (Mercer Island, WA), 2025–present
• Discipleship Coach, PacNW Conference, 2023–present
• Associate Pastor (first focusing on Outreach and Leadership Development, then Discipleship, then Global and Local Missions, then both Disciples and Missions), Lighthouse Christian Church (Bellevue, WA), 2004–2023
• Advisory Board Member, Asian American Ministry Program of Seattle Pacific University
• Catalyst (supporting Asian American Ministries and developing young Asian American pastors)
• Associate Pastor, NewSong Church (Santa Ana, CA), 1997–2003