Paul VanderKlay

Or rather Karl. Karl has been writing at least half the posts lately. Thanks Karl for the great posts! :) pvk

Credentials are tools we use to communicate and confer trust in systems that are beyond our face to face networks. It's easy to see why educational degrees (diplomas) fit naturally in that system, that is essentiall what diplomas do. Someone that has a credential (accredited school) says "this person has passed the requirements". 

At the same time we all know that in church work trust is established by track record. When new people come into my church there is always an implicit vetting process. In time that person may become a leader, but the members of the church need first to learn to trust that person and then they will confer status (office) upon that person and trust them enough to follow them. 

There is no reason our credential system can't recognize capacity, giftedness and skill in persons who have not had formal theological education. Formal theological education is a great thing, but it is not the only thing. I've read far more books since I've been in seminary than I read in seminary.

My grandmother (Grace VanderKlay) never had more than an 8th grade education but she eventually went on to write Bible Puzzle books and had a regular column in the Banner (Women's World) where she wrote about all sorts of issues of the day. She was a life long learner with a sharp, inquisitive mind. She'd also regularly whip her children and grandchildren at word games. It's not always where you spent your time, it's how you spend it. 

What we need are robust, trusted systems that prove their worth in time. When I evaluate colleagues in ministry their level of formal education is not usually the great determiner of effectiveness in ministry. The world is more complex than that. 

I think that if you've been able to plant and lead a church, have a proven track record in ministry, this better informs your capacity for future ministry than a seminary degree. 

I regularly work with graduates fresh out of CTS and other schools. They are wonderful, gifted, enthusiastic, bright, and will I pray do great things as many have already done. They are also, often green. That's not their fault, it's just their situation.

I find others who have learned from the church, who are self-taught or availed themselves of education available to them. There are often areas that need addressing in their preparation, and this can usually be done locally, but in the end they will serve the church well. 

We need a system that:

1. Encourages and supports life long learning
2. Can evaluate and document ministry experience and learning in the church
3. Can communicate levels of giftedness, competency and passion through credentials so that the pool of useful servants in the kingdom is expanding. 

Our largest bottleneck in expanding the kingdom in North America is leadership. We can plant churches without money, but not without leaders. The CP is a useful tool in expanding our leadership base. We should invest in systems that help more people from varied backgrounds train for ministry and deploy them where they are needed. pvk

Got any statistics on the first paragraph? Not that I'm doubting, I just want to feel validated. :) pvk

Great post Karl, thanks. 

I (obviously) agree that Classis could be the ideal level to work a church revitilization movement. It's a wonderful tool. We just really haven't really committed to it nor really explored how it can be used. 

Thanks Dawn for commenting. 

I understand your argument and I feel the force of your analogy. I would far rather the CRCNA had never inserted "male" into article 3 in 1965 rather than going through all we've gone through. It would certainly have been better if the church had simply allowed women to be office bearers at the places and times they were locally selected and then proceeded into the other assemblies as it happened. I'm glad the CRCNA never put an ethnic modifier into Article 3. 

I believe based on what we find in the Bible women have in the Old Testament, in Jesus' ministry and in the New Testament played a prominent role in the movement of God's kingdom. It seems clear to me that from the women who supported Jesus in his ministry, to Lydia and Junia and others women were not in God's eyes any less important than men. I cannot explain why the twelve apostles were all Jews and all men apart from the mission and the context of that time and place. The rest of the New Testament is insufficient in my opinion to adequately sex the ancient church leadership. Lynn Cohick's book on Women in the World of the Earliest Christians is enlightening in terms of revealing a world no less complex than our own.

I've worked in contexts where there were only male pastors (and all with dark skin) and in my present church we haven't had a male elder (just female, some white some black) for a number of years. In each context I believe I've been working in the church, always flawed, but also loved by Jesus. 

I want to be slow to find fault with my brothers and SISTERS who see the Bible as espousing a complementarian picture of gender roles in the church. I might not agree with their Biblical interpretation, but I'm not ready to denounce their effort. As with many things we disagree on in the church (and outside of it too), part of justice is not only the demand for just outcome, but also allowing just and therapeutic process. Whatever position these groups come to, I want them to come to it freely. It's out of that same position that I won't impinge on your process of promoting your perspective with them. This was part of why I wrote this post, to give you the opportunity to speak your mind on this issue. 

I cannot say that if I were in your position that I would not do what you are doing. You are feeling the force of this prohibition in a way that I have never. You desire to use your gifts in the broader assembly of the church and you are blocked. I can understand your anger and I won't ask you to not be angry or to not speak your mind. 

I do also have empathy for my brothers and sisters who see things differently. 

Part of the role of a classis is to afford a fair process where we can either live with conflict we cannot settle or process conflict in a fair and healthy way. Conflict is one of the most important and difficult areas of life. All conflict requires humility, patience and prayer. 

I won't be surprised if someone comments that the classical structure has failed because it allows women elders and that allowing them to be delegates violates the Word of God. I pray that our disagreements and the processes that we employ to deal with them creates strong communities of love and justice and that through our conflicts we grow in obedience and compassion. pvk

I'd also like to note that the person who led Classical Renewal, a process that I believe greatly helped the CRC rework many classes was Thea Leunk. Her leadership helped many classes around the US and Canada (whether they seated women or not) to re-vision their classis, restructure and revive. I think her efforts in the story of the CRC and classis should not be overlooked. 

I've appreciated the discussion and although frank and conflictive, I think I've benefited from it. 

On conflict and convincing. We all have our points of view and one of the things we desire from language and deliberation is the possibility of influence and shared perspective. Even in this comment stream we've seen that (and we knew it already of course) that words are often insufficient to change someone's perspective no matter how much we try. Part of this amazing gift of agency we've been given is the decision to remain where we will.

So often we imagine "If I can only help them to SEE the world as I know it THEN they will agree with me and we will be together. We SO long for this, and sometimes it never happens. For me this is the greatest experiential proof we have of the existence of hell. Sometimes there is no talking us in or out of something. Sometimes we either can't see or won't see, which means we are left to ourselves. 

I often remind my congregation that the LORD can make this vast universe with his word, and Jesus can calm the sea with a word, but look how even God gets frustrated, and speaks and speaks and speaks and how we resist him. In one short chapter God makes the world, but spends the rest of the long book of the Bible trying to talk us into seeing ourselves from His perspective. 

Al Hoksbergen called me with his comment when he was trying in vain to get it posted. I thought it was an interesting perspective. To me his insight highlights some of the reality of what a church community really is. We've got a church order, rules and regulations about proceedure, but we're also a community with a mixture of oral tradition and selective application the combination of which creates culture. 

Part of what we have unfortunately learned from our broader culture is manipulative tactic of playing the victim. This tactic I think is an ironic perversion of one of the most important gospel additions to our culture which is respect for the weak out of their inherent value by virtue of the image of God. When we internalize a victim mentality and appropriate it as an element of our identity we devolve further from our inheritance of created goodness. We recognize that the use of power to advantage oneself at the expense of another image bearer is a violation of the rights of the other by virtue of what the creator has bestowed upon them, in playing the victim we rob from our own status in order to injure the other through manipulation. Out of vengeance we try to pervert weakness and the power of the powerless. It is a parody of the Gospel power of weakness. 

Run this thought experiment with me. You are a woman elder in a classis that won't seat women elders at classis. What happens if the church delegates you to classis anyway? Will they bar you at the door? Will they call the police?

What is the worst that will likely happen? They may not accept the church credential or refuse to afford the woman elder the floor or accept her vote if that is possible. Is any of this the reason why churches don't do this? No. 

Why are churches and women hesitant to go and act according to their convictions? For a number of good reasons. They don't want conflict. They don't want things to get ugly. They don't want to get a name as a trouble maker. They don't want to alienate friends and family. They don't want to be seen as a jerk. They want to honor the church and the church order and the implicit fabric that creates our community. We all understand these things. We don't like people who like conflict for conflict's sake because we know the cost of conflict is real and painful and sometimes breaches are long lasting and costly. 

The civil rights movement has been repeatedly brough up in this conversation. I too have mixed feelings about the applicability of that conflict to this one. In reading Ross Douthat's new book "Bad Religion" he noted that many have attempted to leverage the success of that movement in other movements and most have for the most part failed. I think there are some deep reasons for that, one of which being that a generation of African Americans accepted poverty, physical brutality, economic injustice, blood and even death itself to purchase their freedom. Most other movements try to win the victory on the cheap and it just won't come. 

Part of why the CRC is where it is today are because of these implicit bonds of community. In conflict these bonds are tested, and sometimes they are severed. My father's generation knew the painful PRC split. The URC split was painful for others in our generation. We don't like conflict because it can be costly and the reason often we don't push things is because we our relationships with other are complex and there are broad economies of connections between us, Women in Office being one of those items on the list. 

I really appreciated Brian's input from Classis Yellowstone. I thought it filled out the picture nicely. This is a broad stage upon which we play and the issues involved are serious and are played out in this complex matrix of relational bonds. 

A while ago I saw the movie "The Help". On some levels it was a thoroughly enjoyable movie and I saw it with some friends, some of whom were African Americans who experienced the Jim Crow south first hand. Part of what the movie tried to do, but I think failed to do, was to show the complexity of the dilemma of sin in community.

Whether you believe the sin is the failure to embrace an egalitarian ethos or the failure to embrace a complementarian ethos one thing I hope we can agree upon is that we are all captives to sin in our world and the costs of it are enormous. Not all those who embraced a Jim Crow world were monsters. Not all who rebelled against it were heroes. LIfe is more complex than that. I've known my safe of people who could say the most racially prejudiced things in one minute and then turn around and treat someone across a racial boundary with sacrificial love the next. This is what we are like. 

We play our parts in these conflicts and we ought not to pretend that either they can be denied through living in denial or stopping our ears, nor by complaining and playing the victim. 

The longer I ponder the miracle of the gospel, the more I see that love of enemy is not some optional merit badge in advanced, exceptional Christian practice, but rather the very basis itself. We made no greater enemy and no other enemy than God himself and it required the Son of God himself at no lesser expense than the cost of his life to get us back into the family. Why we imagine that we can finesse, negotiate or fudge our way through the inevitable conflicts of life in order to avoid loving our enemy is only attributable to the ever present blinding nature of sin. 

Love hard, play hard, work hard, let the Christian life flow out of joy, not duty. pvk