Terry Woodnorth

Chapter 3 (Built for Transformation - Creating a Benevolence Philosophy and Policies) of Corbett and Fikkert's book Helping Without Hurting in Church Benevolence will give you great guidance in developing appropriate policies.

I really appreciate these suggestions. Might a corollary to "refusing to compete" be to "partner or cooperate with other churches when appropriate" (which probably wouldn't apply to the grocery store)?

How about having a session where everyone gathers in small groups of churches (a half-dozen or so) to tell stories, share ministry ideas, and pray for one another?

The most obvious benchmark of effectiveness may be annual professions of faith and baptisms within local congregations, but I would challenge whether those are the right benchmarks to use. The leadership team of my church has been studying the book Shrink: Faithful Ministry in a Church-Growth Culture by Tim Suttle. The author's thesis is that the church's job is to be faithful, not be successful (i.e., numeric growth). Faithfulness is demonstrated by growing in the leadership virtues of vulnerability, cooperation, brokenness, patience, and fidelity. I agree with the need to adopt benchmarks to determine effectiveness, but we need to be careful not to adopt simple numeric metrics to measure effectiveness.

Here are a couple quotes from the book to consider:

The gospel isn't about reaching numbers; the gospel is about participating in God's redemption of the cosmos.

We only have the duty to be faithful in all the small things and leave the results in the hands of the loving God who holds our future.

Beginning a community garden on the church grounds this spring. Inviting members of the community to garden a plot.

I'll be a deacon delegate to Synod 2016. I've attended parts of three other Synods since 2008 as an observer and task force chair.

My journey to this synod actually began in 2008. In June of that year, my oldest granddaughter was born in Grand Rapids, so my wife and I traveled to Grand Rapids to see her and her parents. On Friday morning when she was sleeping, I decided to head over to Calvin College to catch the opening session of synod. Before the opening session began, I was excited to talk with some of the women who were attending synod as first-time delegates. When I mentioned that I had never been to synod before, the person I was talking to was surprised that I had never been a delegate to synod. I explained that I had only ever served as a deacon, so I was ineligible to be delegated to synod.

That encounter prompted me to work with my church council to overture classis (and subsequently synod) to take a first step to delegate deacons to synod, by first having deacon advisors. That overture was rejected by Synod 2009. In 2010, Classis Grandville overtured synod to delegate deacons to synod and review other related church order changes. Over the next five years I chaired two task forces, whose work resulted in Synod 2015 approving, among many other church order changes, the delegation of deacons to synod.

2016 now brings this journey to a conclusion. As a deacon, I'll now be joining elders and ministers of the Word as a delegate to synod. But it really begins a new journey for myself, the other deacon delegates, and each future synod. What contributions deacons make and how synods respond to their presence and change because of their participation is a story yet to be told.

The Center for Public Justice is also part of the Faith for Just Lending coalition. See my post at http://network.crcna.org/social-justice/predatory-lending-survey for a survey they are conducting through July 31.

What other Church Order changes do you forsee being needed if Synod permits deacons be seated at classical and synodical meetings? The task force already has proposed a significant number of related Church Order changes, but those changes don't directly depend on the changes to Articles 40 and 45.

I'll try to address your various points from my perspective as a deacon, a deacon who recently attended a classis meeting (and spoke at the meeting), and a member of both task forces that wrote the subject reports.

Your opening and concluding observation about not being sure about ever hearing a deacon speak at classis might be more indicative of the agenda and culture atmosphere of what classis meetings are like to deacons. Have the deacons been encouraged and mentored by pastors and elders to actively participate in the meetings and committees? Are the topics and discussions relevant to deacons? Do the deacons have a voice in shaping the meeting agenda? In my experience, certain pastors/elders may dominate the discussions. At the last meeting of Classis Atlantic Northeast, the delegates broke into small groups of four to pray for one another and also discuss a topic. Deacons participated equally with the elders and pastors in these small groups. This is one small example of how deacons can be encouraged to have a voice at a classis meeting. I've been told that almost every deacon from one of the churches who has attended a classis meeting in recent years has returned with renewed energy and excitement about ministry.

A couple points regarding the church order changes:

1. The proposed changes are the result of four years of work over two task forces. The churches have had ample opportunity to comment on the changes and suggest revisions. (One specific revision suggested via overture in 2013 has been incorporated into the 2015 report.) I am sure that future synods will have additional changes based on experience working with these proposed changes.
2. I hope that at this synod an advisory committee is assigned the sole task of working on this report. The advisory committee in 2013 was assigned additional work that didn't allow it to fully focus on the report it was given.
3. Changes viewed individually rather than in the context of all the other changes may be questioned, but we looked at every church order article with a big picture view of the offices to ensure that the articles communicated the vision of the offices of elder and deacon that we, and hopefully the church, wants to see.
4. We have no expectation that these church order changes, in themselves, will be the primary means of revitalization of the offices of deacon and elder. That's why there are other recommendations in the report that are just as important as the church order changes. In my opinion, this report should be viewed as the beginning of a journey of revitalization and not the final word on what needs to be done.

Finally, addressing your concern about imposing a model on the entire denomination, well, isn't that what being a denomination with a church order is all about? Isn't requiring elders and pastors to be delegated to classis meetings already an imposed model? I encourage classes to be creative and share their experiences with incorporating deacons into the structure of classis.

The proposed change to Church Order Article 12-a is much more nuanced than simply adding "diaconal outreach" to the job description of the minister. Please interpret the change in the context of the ground that was provided. Though not mentioned in the ground, a valid interpretation of the change would be that promoting the work of diaconal outreach would be more applicable than engaging in that activity.

Ground: According to Article 30 of the Belgic Confession, ministers of the Word are called to common tasks with elders and deacons in equipping the church. Likewise, the second half of Church Order Article 12-a is intended to give an illustrative list of those tasks that the minister is called to do with other  officebearers. Making reference in the article to elders alone is confusing, since some of the tasks belong to other officebearers as well, such as supervising fellow officebearers (see Church Order Art. 82-84 and Supplement, Art. 82-84) and exercising pastoral care (see Art. 65). The proposed language removes this confusion by making a generic reference to other officebearers and including diaconal outreach in the tasks that the minister does in common with other officebearers.