Paul VanderKlay

I abbreviated the process in my description. Another key piece to this was a synodical study committee that proposed "alternate paths to ministry" that tried to employ some of the thinking you just articulated. What came out of that was the Candidacy Committee that oversees the process by which people enter ministry through Articles 6, 7 and 8. What came as a result of all of these conversations was ironically (in my opinion) a more restrictive approach to the office of Minister of the Word. It's easy to imagine people's motivations in that but unhelpful generally. The result I think has been more focus on Article 23 (ministry associates) and how and whether they should be able to lead congregations without a supervising local Minister of the Word. I know of at least one overture that will come perhaps to Synod 2012 working from that angle. 

I believe that all parties involved want the CRC to have the best equipped and gifted leadership it can have. Given the bubble of retiring ministers and the need to plant new congregations there is a shortage of ordained leadership. It will take all of our best efforts and wisdom to address these challenges. I hope we are not fearful but rather creative and dilligent in pursuing these goals. pvk

My guess is that not all declared to be "social justice" is alike. Early 20th century forced sterilization motivated by social Darwinism in the name of improving the race would likely have been labeled "social justice". The temperance movement flush on the moral victory of abolition surely considered themselves the vanguard of social justice as it was all about stopping violence against women and children by prohibiting alcohol. Prohibition was repealed and alcohol is still a primary factor in campus rape and domestic violence but no one wants to talk about it. I see (not in this article) a lot of pulling selective texts from OT prophets without much larger discussion of popular idolatry and covenant forgetfulness that the prophets majored in in the rest of their ignored writings. If we are go make an association between "social justice" and church growth we might look at the PCUSA getting rapidly older and whiter (https://juicyecumenism.com/2018/06/05/presbyterians-face-steep-decline-general-assembly-approaches/) and say "you're not doing it right". 

Part of the difficulty is the recent colonization and cultural polarization of the term "social justice". I've got it on my bulletin head and I won't surrender it to the ideological civil war happening now in the North American church.

Consider the evangelical movement in Latin America that has gone one over the last 40 years. It's commonly known that when Latin American men convert to be "evangelicos" there is a marked improvement in the lives of women and children over the pre-conversion situation of nominal Catholicism. The men stop drinking, gambling and fooling around with other women. What this means is that they hold down day jobs and their income goes into the home to support their wife and children. Their children get a better education and do better with this support and you get the John Wesley effect that the next generation achieves an appreciable uptick in socio-economic performance.

There are downsides to this often from a tradition like ours. There are legalisms that develop along the lines of "women can't wear lipstick or slacks and men can't wear shorts or consume alcohol" but if we're talking "social justice" and thinking along improvements in violence in the home, treatment of women and children, basic income, nutrition, healthcare and the lift out of generational poverty the "evangelicos" are clear winners even if they also at the same time tend to cement other non-progressive visions such as traditional gender roles and some facile but selectively productive legalisms. 

It is true that we don't own Jesus, he owns us. 

One of my central texts is the beginning of the book of Acts. The disciples imagine that now post-cross and post-resurrection the real show is about to begin. "Now will you restore the kingdom to Israel?" and the answer is Ascension and Pentecost. "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses..." This is the thesis statement of the book of Acts. Paul is pretty set upon a clear verbal witness, and the book is pretty honest when in chapter 26 Agrippa basically says to Paul 1. "you're mad" and 2. "Do you really think you can convert me with your little sermon." 

This is bracing honesty in a book which is in many ways a book filled with sermons which are supposed to do just that for the readers. Paul it seems knows what he's doing and is under no illusions (neither is Luke) about how it will be received. What then to make of this enormous Christian tradition of outright conversionism? 

It can't be mere tribalism either given the fracturing of the church and the constant divisions. 

I've also never really gone along with either the evangelical version of "What God is up to" by Blackaby's Experiencing God or the rather progressivist version that tends to see God in alignment with the agenda of Western post-Christendom. I'm rather taken by Tolstoy's observations of the elites of his time and place. 

 

Life in Europe and my acquaintance with leading and learned Europeans [Footnote:  Russians generally make a distinction between Europeans and Russians. -- A.M.] confirmed me yet more in the faith of striving after perfection in which I believed, for I found the same faith among them.  That faith took with me the common form it assumes with the majority of educated people of our day.  It was expressed by the word "progress".  It then appeared to me that this word meant something.  I did not as yet understand that, being tormented (like every vital man) by the question how it is best for me to live, in my answer, "Live in conformity with progress", I was like a man in a boat who when carried along by wind and waves should reply to what for him is the chief and only question. "whither to steer", by saying, "We are being carried somewhere".

Tolstoy, Leo. A Confession (Kindle Locations 175-181). Unknown. Kindle Edition. 

I don't own Jesus, and he need not be faithful to me in the way I must be faithful to him. What he does with others is his business. I need to figure out what being publicly owned by him looks like. 

Perhaps for the sake of clarity we should put two streams together. Both the "what is the purpose of a denomination (focusing on agencies, services and the like) and the Same sex marriage debate as seen in the recent decisions of Synod 2016 http://www.thebanner.org/news/2016/09/clarifying-synod-2016-s-decisions-on-pastoral-advice-regarding-same-sex-marriage 

The attempt to re-organize the Sy-board (Synodical board model turned half organism half modern business-style institution) usually gets all excited about the word "leadership" but when it comes to dealing with the hot social issue of the day, one that will likely split the church or at least irritate it with many leaders from both sides seeing it as an existential threat, on this issue Sy-board leadership must keep mum. We will not hear an ED, or agency director or anyone with an office at 2850 say much on this issue besides dutifully carry the water of Synod. Part of that is of course their job, but it illuminates the contradictions within the system. 

In a sense this model of Sy-board says "it doesn't really matter what you believe (on this issue) we want to be a service agency, responding to market forces and delivering 'solution' to help your local (consumer) church grow according to the metrics that are important to you."

In other words the "hope of the world" has little to do with the outcome of the LGBTQ culture war. 

I recommend considering Jerry Muller's book "The Mind and the Market". Voltaire in his hatred of "religious enthusiasm" was tremendously impressed with emerging capitalism. Here the Roman Catholic, the Lutheran, the Quaker, the Calvinist, the Jew and the Muslim could find peace and unity together in the market place while Europe was tearing itself apart over sectarian conflicts. 

"Voltaire’s defense of the market in the Letters and later in his Philosophical Dictionary was political rather than economic. Market activity was valued not because it made society wealthier, but because the pursuit of economic self-interest was less dangerous than the pursuit of other goals, above all religious zealotry."

Muller, Jerry Z.. The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Western Thought (p. 23). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

The irony here is that one side says "God won't bless a church that sanctions sin" while the other says "Unless the church gets with the times by calling traditional Christian sexual ethics bigotry people won't give it a second look" while in a sense the church management people come in with Voltaire and say "it doesn't matter what you believe, with better services and resources you will grow..."

Are we all living in the same world? Yet the last thing we'll do is put these conversations together even though they do reside in the same world in every Synod, Classis and local church. 

Will "benchmarks" be theology blind? 

This gets into both Lambert's point and Bill Harris' point. 

Bill Harris is right. Here is 3000 words that say I agree with him. https://paulvanderklay.me/2016/08/31/the-crc-cant-answer-the-identity-question-until-it-addresses-the-discipleship-question/ 

Sounds wonderful. Happy to hear some reporting in different ways to do classis! Keep it up! pvk

You raise a good point. I have long thought classes need more staff support, but I'm not sure we quite know what form that support should take. pvk