Paul VanderKlay
For me the CRC has always been a place of diversity. I grew up in an urban church plant while attending Eastern Christian in New Jersey. I got my BA in History at Calvin College and an M.Div from Calvin Seminary. After Calvin I worked with Christian Reformed World Missions in the Dominican Republic.
After the DR I took a call to the Living Stones CRC in Sacramento CA and have been busy with my buddy Kevin Adams and others helping to plant churches, do a Leadership Development Network and wreak as much havoc as I can in Classis Central CA. I've was a member of the Board of Home Missions for almost ten years.
Posted in: Angst
Trying to tease out sin from culture is like trying to tease out sin from me. The weeds are sown among the wheat.
Culture is like folding a map. You can't fold the paper map without folding the paper in specific places. Once it is folded it will always be pre-conditioned to fold it there again. Having been folded there will impact whose spot on the map is under the fold.
God made us to be culture making. In our rebellion all or culture making will be tainted.
God cannot communicate much to us (general revelation) apart from culture. Once he decides to employ language we're into it. We can understand almost nothing apart from culture. We cannot understand God's perceptions or intent apart from culture. Fighting culture would be like fighting movement. Once you intend to start you're already there.
Posted in: The Article 17 Flag
Many of the comments have asserted that often Article 17 is used for reasons other than a conflict between a church and the pastor. I have no doubt that this is the case. In my experience most of the times I've either seen the Article engaged or avoided it was because there was a conflict. My sample might be skewed and I don't think anyone is taking a survey.
In my next post I'll get more into the mechanics of the article, especially with respect to the prescribed roles of the regional pastor and the classical committee responsible for allowing the congregation to call another pastor. Both of these mechanisms were obviously created to address a situation of conflict, not necessarily a situation where there is formal discipline.
Another wrinkle impacts the church's reticence to use discipline for cases of something other than sexual or financial impropriety. That's a large topic that I probalby won't go into, but it too lurks behind the numbers.
Anyway, thanks for the comments. Keep them coming. pvk
Posted in: Angst
I wrote a response to the conversation from which this posting grew. http://paulvanderklay.wordpress.com/2013/11/14/addressing-our-angst/
Posted in: The Article 17 Flag
Thanks for all the good comments. I hope to write one or two more posts on Article 17 as I've been watching it employed at classis.
On the question of the stigma, a good deal of this arises from the disclosure requested by the Ministerial Information service. Both ministers and churches are asked to disclose if they've ever been separated from a congregation by way of Article 17. For me this is what constitutes "the flag" and what contributes to the stigma.
Are you in favor of removing this area of disclosure or keeping it? Perhaps you have a recommendation to have it adjusted? Why or why not? I'd be very interested to hear it. pvk
Posted in: Angst
I've got enough contact with "the current leadership" (or a piece of it anyway) to know that there is plenty of angst about. The listening tour going on is of course part of that.
I find it vital in this conversation to differentiate between the Denomination (community of congregations) and the denomination (institution housed at 1700 28th St.) The Denomination is more important, of greater concern, and at the same time more durable than the denomination.
As I said in my blog piece we are in a long term cultural transition that deeply impacts the church because it deeply impacts how the church, the gospel and the Bible are understood. There are million blog posts and thousands of books written about it. We are not lacking "answers", we are awash in them. Some are of course better than others, we just don't know which ones. Historians will argue about it hundreds of years from now.
This is not the first time the church has faced this, in fact it faces it every time it goes into a new place, or the culture around its places changes. The Bible is a record of many such changes and how they were navigated.
We know from many such changes that there will be loss. We will lose a lot and it will hurt.
As Americans our minds turn to "what should we do?"
We should do what Christians have always done. We should do what Paul had to do. We should do what leaders in the Reformation did. We should do what missionaries do. We work on all levels at once. We engage the context, the questions, the answers, each other with boldness and love. That work is being done in many places and by many people.
Will it be enough?
Enough for what? To save our institutions, our traditions, our jobs, our reputation, our fame? We live in the age of decay. The age of decay eats everything which is why Jesus says to place our treasure in the age to come where it isn't eaten. Most of what we can lay our hands and eyes upon will be eaten, the only question is "how soon".
In the short term some good general answers aren't that hard to come by.
1. Every church needs to keep doing mission in its place according to their place. Our polity is really quite good at this. Between councils and classes we are distributed and can engage diversity. Synod needs to work hard on figuring out what to try to hold onto and what to be loose with. That is always the challenge of the broadest nexus. This isn't new.
2. We need to keep planting new churches (they are our R&D labs for complex engagements that no one is smart enough to figure out) and establised churches need to keep working their diversity as well. Change always involves embracing the new while figuring out what of the old needs protecting. Again, our structure and tradition aren't illequipped to deal with that. If we all went seeker in the 90s we might be in trouble now in some places. We never know all that is going on.
3. We need to keep writing, talking, praying, trying, forgiving, challenging, encouraging, discerning. Again, nothing new.
Unfortunately all eyes turn to the small d denomination and look to it for help.
Because it is connected to Synod, which is the broadest assembly, and is given power, it is very difficult for it to know how to be helpful. An anxious person can be dangerous, an anxious person with a gun is MORE dangerous. We don't want the denomination to be anxious, to ready-fire-aim with the bullets we give her. We want her to be patient, careful, wise while also being assertive and willing to take risks. This is very challenging. Let's have a bit of grace towards our leaders even when we're frustrated because we don't think they're being very helpful or working too fast or working to slow or doing the wrong thing. It's hard.
It's also important to realize that despite the power they seem to have, they really aren't in a position to be terribly helpful often. The real work is happening in the thousand churches around North America and the world.
The small d denomination will pass information, pass resources, afford gatherings, afford discussion, help people connect so that we can all learn about this movement that is too large for any of us to understand.
Most local churches have long turned to other leaders in the broader church community for wisdom. The unique thing our Denomination affords is a communal, historical context to work together within. We can read books by Tim Keller or John Piper or Jim Wallis or NT Wright but we live face to face with each other. We make decisions together. We share resources together. We hold each other accountable. This is what Amazon and blogs can't offer us, community.
One of the primary jobs of the small d denomination (and the small c classis, the meeting) is to facilitate the community of the big D Denomination and the big C Classis (the community). It manages the sharing of money, arranging space and hospitality for gatherings, facilitating communication (like this Network), helping us realize that the church is the BODY of Christ as we its members are together talking, sharing, arguing, forgiving, trusting, challenging, loving, praying.
Posted in: The Article 17 Flag
I hear a few different streams in this comment thread:
1. How to administratively differentiate conflict and non-conflict Article 17s.
2. How do we talk about, think about, experience "calling". Where is it located? How is it recognized? How can we process it as a community in a credible, clear and intelligible way?
3. How do we process conflict? How do we heal from conflict? Do we learn productively as a result of conflict? Are we experiencing more conflict (Art. 17 stats)?
Posted in: Twice (a Month) - the New Normal?
Nice post Phil. Glad to see you haven't left us as orphans. I certainly want to keep you in the loop. :) pvk
Posted in: Reflections on the Retirement Journey
Well George, I hope you find more time to write in your retirement. :)
In the Article 17 conversation in the Classis section we got into the question of calling and Al Mulder (also retired) made some good observations.
We have this employment layer to our existence right now in this particular cultural/political/economic context that most of the church in the world and throughout the centuries hasn't really had. It's appropriate to explore it, especially as it intersects with the question of calling.
A necessary element of the call is always the relationship one has with a particular community. Calling is fundamentally a relational kind of thing. It is created by the relationship between us and our author, and expressed in the relationship between us and this multitude called "Christ" by the apostle Paul that he declares we are "in".
Most of the pastors I've known and respected, including my father of course, like you have to do some theological reflection on this employment context in which we live. There is a shifting that has to be done, a transition that has to take place. How is your relationship with the church, or a congregation now different? Those are hard questions.
In many ways you can't send a pastor out to pasture because that is of course the location of the flock. :)
Thanks for your pondering George. Bundle up while you're out east! :) pvk
Posted in: Christ’s Face in a Street Person
Ah yes. Stories like these. This is one of the glories of ministry in urban areas and other areas of poverty and neglect. For even more stories like these (shameless plug for my father's book) check out http://www.amazon.com/Chains-of-Grace-ebook/dp/B0051AUE3M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325788813&sr=8-1 :) pvk
Posted in: Getting Rid of a Minister
I think it's also important to raise the issue of Article 17 here. The chair of our classical ministry team has what he calls his "PIT" list, "Pastors In Transition". When a church and/or a pastor want a separation, and it can't be done soon enough or quietly enough, or the pastor won't or can't take a call away, a lot of things start to happen, few of them positive.
Both churches and pastors try to avoid the stigma of Article 17, which is too bad, because it was developed to address the stigma. I don't know what can be done about that, unless we all decide simply to use it more.
Good advice I heard once was "don't wait too long to call church visitors" when you see a conflict develop between council and pastor. Wise church visitors and a good regional pastor make up a team that can care for both the pastor and the church in conflict.
Also don't wait to long to engage Article 17 if differences appear irreconcilable. Having a pastor dismissed quietly and then lingering often doesn't help a lot either.
Posted in: The Ministry of Healing and the Work of Elder
Thanks for the great post and good comments. I appreciate the approach that avoids the reductions of assuming we live in this secular box or trying to figure out tricks to make God move. pvk
Posted in: Do Pastors Need Professional Supervision?
It's a great vision. The CRC dipped its toe in with the mandate to name a "mentor" to newly installed pastors. I think we all recognize that this falls far short of the better vision you present here.
While we're giving advice I'd recommend that we don't hand out lifetime credentials but instead have a system that holds us accountable for ongoing education and development. I see this in the teaching profession. If you want to maintain your credential, you continue to accumulate credits. That system too rewards teachers for continuing education with salary incentives.
Now we face the question of practical application. Normally this kind of thing gets rolled out by a central authority, Synod in our case sends down a mandate. It follows the mandate the mandate for a CTS M.Div. All of this while churches are wrestling with filling leadership ranks and recognizing other avenues of preparation via Article 23.
Synod can hand down an "unfunded mandate" but will it increase the burden and put more pressure on precisely the kinds of churches where your admonitions are most needed. Sometimes its the wobbly candidates that get the wobbly calls to the wobbly churches where the kind of self-awareness of our limitations and vulnerabilties that this seeks to address is most limited.
We have in our system an implicit accountability system through common censure. It's broken too. Church visiting is another avenue, in some cases getting fresh attention.
For many of us a level of mutual censure via colleagues in committed teams and groups offers some help, but again not enough.
I'd love to see you follow up this excellent article with some real next steps towards a better system, a system that can fit a church context that is increasingly cash poor.