Steve Van Zanen
I am a CRC "lifer" who has made a deliberate effort to connect to the broader evangelical and Christian community in order to bring back the richnes of other traditions into our own. I grew up in Bethany CRC, Bellflower California, and attended Calvin College. In between I had a profound experience of grace and professed my faith in Christ. While there I not only loved the teaching on Christian worldview, but also was deeply involved in the InterVarsity group which was characterized by a strong commitment to mission.
After study at Calvin Seminary, Gordon-Conwell (M.Div.), Calvin Seminary again (Th.M.) and New College Edinburgh, we spent six years in pastoral ministry in Raymond, Minnesota. The next six years we were missionaries in Romania and Lithuania. Since our return from Eastern Europe I have served World Missions from the denominational building. I helped new missionaries to communicate their ministry to potential partner churches and individuals, as well as overseeing church relations and missionary home service for the agency. The best part of that job and my focus now is providing information and inspiration to churches on the cause of missions and the work that we are privileged to do. I preach and teach on missions 25 or more times per year. This work has brought me to every U.S. classis as well as most of the Canadian ones. I am now a candidate for the D.Min. in missiology at Trinity International University.
My wife, Chris, works at Calvin College, where our oldest is an alumnus. Our other two children are Calvin students, so we are experiencing an empty nest.
Posted in: Right Here and to the Ends of the Earth
Abby, Thanks for your work this summer. You did a marvelous job for the Global Mission Network page. Steve
Posted in: World Renew's Approach to Funding Missions
Hi Donna,
As Wendy mentioned, the finances of World Missions and World Renew are very different. World Renew does not receive Ministry Shares, so the 50% decline in their purchasing power has not affected World Renew. Also, personnel costs represent a much greater percentage of World Missions' budget. World Missions also does not receive government grants. All of these factors make gaining support for missionaries a much more important issue for World Missions.
Posted in: Synod World Missions: Missionaries to Raise 90% of Their Salaries
Hi Harry,
Yes, I was one of them. It wasn't that my proposed work didn't fit with the CRWM mandate. When I was preparing to serve in Eastern Europe in 1996 CRWM didn't have the funding to put such a position in the budget. I was referred to another agency where I had to raise 115% of my actual costs. In my case I was able to shift to a career position later, but that is a rare thing. For 20 years CRWM has had few open positions and many who felt called to missions went with other organizations. This year, for the first time in my ten years in the office, we have six open positions. I expect more next year. Praise God.
Posted in: Concept of a Global Missions' Agency
Hi Lou,
Just a quick response to your comment that I "guess that some are reading it." Actually, in this modern era, the stats are all compiled electronically. 647 views of the page have happened since it was first posted, exactly. Steve
Posted in: Synod World Missions: Missionaries to Raise 90% of Their Salaries
Hi Keith,
While the CRC has not had a required support raising expectation in the past, missionaries have always had a role in gathering the financial support needed for the work to be accomplished. At our Michigan 125th anniversary celebration one of our former directors commented that when he began mission service in 1957, a single congregation provided 100% of his support. Currently, the largest church-missionary relationship is about 10%. CRWM's Ministry Share income, which made it possible to not have a required support level, this year has about half the purchasing power it did in 1990.
While I definitely understand and deeply appreciate your concern for our missionaries, something has to change if we are going to have a growing ministry. There are several ways that this burden can be lightened for those missionaries. One is to ask missionaries how their support level is, so they don't have to bring up the topic, and get others to join you in responding to the need. As you mention some people have a hard time with this part of the missionary task. The new Veenstra Missionary Support Fund is there to assist people who lack the kind of connections that enable the building of a strong support network. And, of course, Ministry Share will continue to cover the full cost of children's education, children's travel, outfitting allowances and several other categories so that these are not counted in the goal calculation.
Most younger missionaries expect that support raising is going to be part of the missionary task. After all, that is how the overwhelming majority of missionaries gain 100% of all the cost categories plus a significant administrative charge. CRWM and the CRC are well equipped to lighten the burden through the means already mentioned, and have a growinng ministry into the future.
Posted in: Concept of a Global Missions' Agency
Hi Dan,
You mentioned Partners Worldwide very briefly with the comment that it was being run by development people. But the point if PWW is to engage Christian business people here in North America. All the people that I know working with Majority world partners are business people. I'm forwarding the conversation to Greg Elzinga who was in the business world for a number of years before going to world for Partners. Steve
Posted in: Synod World Missions: Missionaries to Raise 90% of Their Salaries
Hi Bill,
I'll give a quick response which others might want to add to. Budgets, not just salaries, are set through a very careful process. The salary is set by a formula used by all denominational gencies. No one can decide for him/herself what their salary ought to be. World Missions provides the needed expertise to assist in the fundraising effort. The taxable portion is determined by what the IRS deems as salary. Sometimes missionaries also pay certain taxes in the country of service as well. All World Missions accounts are overseen by a CRCNA finance office person who is designated as CRWM finance manager. She in turn is audited by an outisde firm and there is potential for an IRS audit as well. The IRS makes it relatively easy to become a tax exempt organization and if you did, you could put your wife on the payroll, but that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the question of how CRWM funds and oversees its missionaries.
Missionaries in a number of our other categories have raised 90% for years. Only the career category had a lower threshold. However, you must remember that most of the missionary support funding is given by CRC churches and individuals who trust their denominational agency to serve them by providing proper oversight to the work. We are blessed with strong relationships off trust which we will work hard to maintain. I am confident that the concerns you raise will not derail the purpose of the mission: to gather and build the Church of Jesus Christ and advance His Kingdom.
I don't mean to "whine" about ministry shares, but many suppose that, as in the past, they carry the bulk of our budget. They remain very important, but without new sources of revenue, we can grow our ministry. That is just factual information.
Thanks for the conversation Bill
Posted in: Concept of a Global Missions' Agency
I emailed the conversation to Greg Elizinga of Partners Worldwide. He is currently in India, but said he would get in on this conversation ASAP. Steve
Posted in: Synod World Missions: Missionaries to Raise 90% of Their Salaries
Hi Harry, Thanks for this contribution. Christian Reformed World Missions recently revised its protocol for dealing with estate gifts. As long as our "ready reserve" is funded, additional estate income is split between our Johanna Veenstra Missionary Support Fund and our New Initiative Fund. The first fund is designed to assist those missionaries who have difficulty reaching their new (and higher) missionary support goals. A few years ago we sent a young woman as a missionary who had become a Christian as an adult so she had no Christian family and was only really known in one congregation. This makes it pretty difficult to raise support. She is the kind of person who could benefit from this fund. The New Initiative Fund will enable us to seize opportunities that come up after our long planning process is under way, but which are compelling. This year we are doing a conference on Muslim ministry for CRC and RCA practitioners and leaders. If we develop balances in these funds we will need further refinement of our protocols for their use.
Posted in: Concept of a Global Missions' Agency
Hi Dan,
I remember you visiting in the World Missions offices a few years ago. It would be good to talk again, especially given the very significant changes in CRWM in the intervening years. Some of these can't be trumpeted due to security concerns, but lots of them can be seen on our website.
I'm thinking of one of our West Africa missionaries, whose work in a Muslim context can't be posted on our website. He had many of the concerns you have expressed about Land Cruisers, so he adopted a trekking strategy in which he walks to villages, meets with village elders to ask permission to share about Issa and has opportunity then to do pre-evangelism with people who have had no previous exposure to the Gospel. Like many of our missionaries in Muslim contexts, he avoids the word Christian since it is associated with all the evils of Western culture. They talk about being a Jesus' follower, instead.
Many people suppose that our agency is primarily involved in church planting in places where there are already lots of Christians, but very little of that is going on. In addition to those doing pioneer evangelism among unreached peoples, the great majority of our missionaries in the "reached" world are involved in leadership training and resourcing national churches who have asked us for assistance. One of the great new tools for this is Timothy Leadership Training. It was developed by Harold Kallemeyn and others to bring just-in-time training to pastors in Africa where extensive in-residence training would be ineffective even if it were possible. It focuses on an inductive approach and action planning which the participants hold each other accountable for.
We do also provide grants to partner churches to try to jump start new ministries. At times we have provided as much as 80% of the funding at the beginning. Going forward, with many mature partners that we work with, we would look for even more local initiative in most cases. It has been a long and difficult process to shift from "mission driven ministry" to "coming alongside" ministry. We are not there yet. However, the focus in areas of the world where there are substantial numbers of Christians is more and more on the local vision. As Fronse pointed out, that must be central to the conversation.
Now this may sound self-protective to you, and perhaps it is in part. But the changes are significant, and one of our great challenges is helping the churches understand what is going on and how we are responding to the changing environment. There are lots of models for how to engage. I don't think we would want to say that ours is the best, and it certainly isn't the only way. Mission India, headed by one of our alumni, has a different approach, Gospel for Asia a third. So, let's keep up the dialogue. Steve
Posted in: Affirm the Belhar? Yes, but Not as a Doctrinal Standard
I think John's approach to our relationship to the Belhar Confession make a great deal of sense. I think it is important that we embrace it and best that we do so as a testimony subsidiary to the existing confessions rather than as a fourth document of the same kind.
The issue of comprehensiveness does seem to weigh against not only the Belhar, but also the Canons. Actually, Our World Belongs to God is the comprehensive statement of Christian faith that speaks to our environment and issues. I have sometimes wondered whether we ought to have as our "Three Forms of Unity" the Heidelberg Catechism, The Belgic Confession and Our World Belongs to God. We could then have issue specific statements on a subsidiary level like The Canons (election) and the Belhar (racial justice). It seems to me that Our World is more useful, attractive and clearly Biblical than the Canons, which are more theological treatise than statement of faith.
Posted in: Affirm the Belhar? Yes, but Not as a Doctrinal Standard
I'm not hung up on the term testimony. John Cooper offered the term declaration. I used testimony because that is what we call Our World Belongs to God and it is simpler if we don't multiply terms. I also don't see the word testimony as requiring the personal character that is mentioned just above. If you spend some time with people who have been on the receiving end of racism, the idea that the Belhar's issues are "political" is pretty hard to swallow. Watch the PBS special on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission sometime. The systematic torture and murder used by the old regime in South Africa in order to maintain white privilege is truly incredible. The fact that many of the perpetrators were attending Reformed churches at the time, should give us all pause.
Discriminating against people on the basis of race, which is definitely not limited to South Africa, is a denial of the Gospel. That is why I believe it is vital to adopt the Belhar at some level and with some terminology. To just receive it as information will be perceived by many around the world as fudging on the issue of racism.