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: 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
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 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
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: 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: The Pope as Evangelist
For more thoughts on the new Pope from retired missionary Adrian Helleman click here.
Posted in: The Pope as Evangelist
Here is something from Christianity Today on what can what cannot be expected from the new Pope.
Posted in: The Pope as Evangelist
Just to clarify the Roman Catholic Church's position on this matter, the doctrine of papal infallibility only applies in very specific circumstances, and is rarely invoked. Also, it is an innovation proclaimed by the First Vatican Council in 1870. For a church that claims tradition as its authority, this is a big problem! This is another important issue that remains between Catholics and everyone else, including the Eastern Orthodox, but this Pope is talking a lot about Jesus.
Posted in: How to Start a Movement
This video is excellent. I'll be the first follower and say the Brian has given us a gem.
Posted in: The Pope as Evangelist
Mariology remains a big issue. We shouldn't dodge that reality. So, I'm not saying that all is well. I'm just observing that the amount of change in the last half century has been remarkable.
Posted in: How Is It?
I've just been having an exchange with Mike Bruinooge about this topic. It isn't that I or others involved in the global mission network think this is unimportant. I'm part of an inner city church that is very deliberately focused on its neighborhood. Neland is growing into a "mission with" rather than "mission to" mentality. Mike wondered if the global mission site could embrace local mission too. I'm not sure, though, that people will look for the resources they need for that purpose on a site called global mission. It seems that it would be better to establish an additional network, with lots of links of course. The boundaries between these two are weakening, but they aren't yet gone. We need to do ministry locally and globally, but the dynamics and issues are somewhat different. What do you think?
Posted in: How Is It?
Lots of interesting comments about the relation of global and local here. I'll be processing them with others on Monday. Meanwhile, I'd love to see some response to the resources and ideas about global mission we've placed here. What is missing? How are congregations informing and inspiring their members to be part of what God is doing around the world? Do the many materials here on short term missions scratch where churches itch? We look forward to your feedback.