Reflections on the Leadership Landscape of the CRCNA, Part 3: The Problem of Less Mobility

The Problem of Less Mobility

Let’s talk about the problem of candidates being less willing to relocate than they used to be. 

We often hear these two things from churches: “Our leaders don’t want to uproot to go to Grand Rapids” and “No candidates want to come our way”. It does seem to be the case right now that people don’t want to uproot from their communities and move around like perhaps they once did in our history. And some actually have good reasons for that. For some dual-income households, moving becomes harder because there are more anchor points keeping the family in place. Others are bi-vocational and their second jobs tie them to a specific location. And many are now commissioned pastors whose church is supporting them towards becoming a minister of the Word, and when they achieve that educational goal, they stay in place to serve the church that has supported them. 

So what do we do? 

If the leaders aren’t coming to you from elsewhere, you have to raise up leaders in your own context! 

Let me tell you the inspiring story of how Classis Red Mesa addressed their lack of Native leadership. For many decades, Navajo and Zuni leaders didn’t want to uproot and leave their families and their culture. They struggled with the culture of our seminary. Since the salaries tended to be low and the terrain unfamiliar to the majority culture, they struggled to find Ministers of the Word to serve their churches to the point where most of their churches did not have an ordained pastor. They survived at first by asking for “exceptions” to the usual training process in church order. But eventually they put their heads together to develop a rigorous training program that was contextualized for Native leaders: 3 years of formation, Bible training and skill development lead to an examination for licensure to exhort, which is followed by a great classis celebration each year! Some have gone on to do two additional years of mentoring and studying to become a commissioned pastor and fill one of the empty pulpits in their classis. Classis Red Mesa now has most of their pulpits filled and they have more people trained and licensed to exhort than any other classis. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Classis Red Mesa doesn’t ask for exceptions anymore. Instead they’ve become exceptional! They don’t ask us to lower any bars for them. Instead, they’ve raised the bar for us.

Consider this and also the educational pathways being forged by our Latino and Korean brothers and sisters, and see that God is using our leaders of ethnic minority to renew our passion for theological education. Thanks be to God! The fact is that the challenge of uprooting no longer exists. All Calvin Seminary and EPMC training is offered at a distance now, in fact a huge majority of our candidates have done their work from a distance. So you can support them in pursuing their MDiv while they stay rooted right there in your community