Rob Braun

I find your discussion ironic concerning Article 7 candidates yet all the while we as a denomination are attempting to lower our standards for officers of the church in general by not requiring them to sign and endorse our church confessions. I agree that we went too far when it came to Article 7 but sadly in the dozen or so seminary graduate examinations I’ve witnessed here in my Classis over the last twenty years very few of them have shown their theological competency equal to the many brothers and sisters I’ve seen examined as Licensed Exhorters. In fact I’ve often raised my deep concern over the seeming lack of basic theological knowledge of many of these Calvin Seminary graduates. They rarely did very good when asked basic doctrinal and biblical questions and yet Classis would simply rubber stamp them through because, well, they are our Seminary graduates.

Again, perhaps I’m going off track here on the discussion concerning Article 7 but I believe our requirements of theological education for all officers of the church generally has fallen on hard times. It does concern me very deeply and makes me wonder about the nature of sermon writing going on in our denomination with our doctrinal and biblical standards seemingly being lowered in general.

It is food for thought, Sunday worship weddings. Your idea is to make the wedding ceremony much like the practice of baptism, that is Covenant, and what could be most biblically identified with the idea of covenant than a wedding. I both like it and endorse it, particularly where, as with baptism, we exhort the congregation to do their part to see this marriage spiritually prosper and succeed. It is a question the church needs to ask itself especially when the divorce rate among professing Christians hardly differs from the divorce rate among non-Christians. It is probably fair to day the church has lost the cultural war on marriage because the covenantal view of marriage has been lost to the church.

"let‟s recall the genre distinction made above between the historic Confessions that are doctrinal standards and recent declarations about social-political issues. BC clearly fits the latter, not the former, whatever it was named."

For me this is the heart of the issue, is the Belhar truely a Confessional statement on par with the Three Forms of unity or is it a social-politial statement that sounds really good? I don't think it rates on the level of the Three Forms of Unity and am a bit distressed that we as a denomination would so quickly and willingly make it equal to them. I agree with Coop that it should be received as a statement that we indorse but not on the level of our Confessions and Creeds. Coop also makes a good point that one reason we may be so willing to allow them equal status with our other Confessions and Creeds is because an appretiation of those Confessions and Creeds have fallen on hard times in our denomination.

Hey Steve;

My concern with adopting the BC  is: Will it force us somewhere down the road into a situation where we wil either have to accept same sex marriages or be deemed as practicing injustice and prejudice against homosexuals according to the BC? I say this because as John Cooper pointed out the BC language has been used to do just that in other denominations. We live in a world where "Tolerance" is the cultural religion of the day and can easily be used against us as it has in the church affiliated schools in Canada. It is something to seriously think about. The wording of the BC is so open to interpretation that I have some serious concerns how it could be used, or more to the point, how it already has been used. It isn't a theological treaties by any stretch of the imagination. It is clearly a religious-social-political statement. I'm not sure I'd even want to see it used even as a testimonial.

I want to thank you for your thoughts here. First off, there’s nothing that you wrote that I wouldn’t agree with. I agree with it all. Also, like you, I feel the Genesis story is also based on real events and not a fable or some kind of parabolic poetry. The problem with English speakers is they don’t appreciate the depth of meaning found in the original Hebrew words of Genesis. There is so much more written in these texts than I have found in any English translation that I have ever read. All translations fall short of the original language.  My advice to reading Genesis is to get a good Hebrew-English concordance of the Old Testament and with a little effort you can see what it is I’m talking about. And, as for all those articles pointing to a single woman’s Mitochondrial DNA as the origin of all of humanity I’ve also have read and agree, would seem to be evidence for the existence of a Hava or Eve, or Noah’s wife at the least. Also I’m not at all opposed to the idea that Eve may have been born miraculously from Adam. The problem is the text itself says there were other people at the time of Adam and Eve. Genesis chapters 4 and 6 speak to this. For example, in chapter 6 you have several curious texts that say the daughters of Adam were either married or taken by the Sons of Eloyim (which can mean a whole variety of things) and were also taken by the Nephalim or the fallen/ tyrannical ones. These two sets of people are not identified as sons of Adam, in fact both texts seem to imply it wasn’t a good thing that the daughters of Adam were married or taken by these people. There is such a wonderful bountiful depth here in Hebrew Bible that I wish more people could come to appreciate.

So, any thoughts on how to go about this? Spiritual discernment as part of the work of Classis? I say this as a former Charismatic Minister, now a Ministry Associate in the CRC. Elaborate-please!

I am an elder, well; I’m a “Commissioned Pastor”, but still an elder. I’ve tried to get to as many Classis meetings as I can. (At my last count over 25 in the past 20 years.) I’ve been an Elder representative at Synod. And, I can tell you first hand that yes, there is a definite prejudice in the treatment of elders at both the Classis level as well as at Synod in our church. Over and over again, I’ve witnessed Ministers of the Word stand up at these church assemblies and babble on over territory already discussed many, many times before and yet the chairs of those assemblies allow them their say. But, consistently, if an elder tried to do the same thing, the chairs of those church assemblies will try to cut them off. At Synod I was seated at a table were several ministers of the word voiced out loud that an elder who was expressing his view on a pertinent issue of the church that was being discussed on the floor of Synod should sit down and be quiet. I kid you not. It flabbergasted me. No one corrected them. On the other hand, I’ve been accused of being “disrespectful” of Ministers of the Word when I disagree with them on the floor of Classis or Synod. So yes, there is a definite intimidation factor at our church assemblies for the Elders who come and this needs to change.

Of course as Reformed believers we believe that “He who wants to be first should be last and he who wants to be master should be servant of all.” We believe this “De jur” but “De Facto” or in practice, it is another thing altogether. There is still a very strong “Domini” attitude in our church that prevents our Elders from airing their opinions in our church assemblies. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that this “Domini” attitude is a two way street. Nevertheless, this is the first thing that needs to change if we expect our Elders to be more of a real participant in these assemblies of our church. But, more importantly, I say this is the first thing to be changed because it is not a Reformed attitude. Our church order states in Article 85; “No church shall in any way lord it over another church, and no officebearer shall lord it over another officebearer.”

As some have said before in this discussion, most Elders may go to Classis or Synod two, three or four times in their lifetimes. This, probably more than anything else, compounds the intimidation problem as well and this too needs to change. We need to plug our Elders into the process of our church government in a more pro-active way. We need to hear them out. We need to include them as part of the process, yes, even to chair the church assembly, if need be. The present process now only disenfranchises them from feeling as if they are real participants. I’ve actually have heard it said that most of our church assemblies are simply union meetings for the pastors.

To begin with, the old Psalter, before 1936, was just that, only the Geneva Psalters. The CRC didn't sing hymns before that, or at least weren't supposed to. It was somewhere in this time period of the mid thirties that hymns were offically allowed in our churches. Also, because George Bennard was a Methodist preacher with a Salvation Army background this alone would automatically have raised all sorts of alarms in our Reformed movement no matter how great a hymn writer he may have been.

Jim, I am deeply disappointed that this whole issue even had to go to Synod at all. As you know, I joined the CRC because of its confessions. I wanted to be in a confessional church because I, for over 20 years, was part of a church movement that didn't have any confessions or creeds at all. Sadly, it seems obvious to me that I now exist in a minority in our church as a lover of our confessions, (Canons especially), and I am concern over the direction this new covenant is leading our church. Why are we not preaching confessionally and educating our people in what we stand for as a denomination from the pulpit? Who's fault is it that the confessions have fallen on hard times and our people are ignorant of what it is we believe? Why aren't we discussing our issues of faith in bible studies based on our confessions? Please give me a handle on this because, frankly, I don't get it. Why do we need this covenant at all? What happened to us anyway that we are taking this direction as a church-confessionally and theologically dumbing ourselves down? I have a lot more respect for the average person in the pew than this. I'm absolutely convinced that they can handle what it is that defines us as denomination. After all, our parents, grandparents and great grandparents did!

How do we teach the simple meaning of Scripture? The Apostle's Creed, the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer by using the Heidelberg Catechism to make it plain. I guess I don't understand what hold's people back from explaining the Scriptures by using the Confessions. The whole idea of creating them in the first place was to make the Scriptures make sense to the common church member. I suspect that for those who find them out of step or out of reach for the average church member's theological grasp are those who, themselves, haven't been trained in them. I'm a bit concern by remarks like, "The Confession's language doesn't speak to me". Again, why is that? Where has our confessionally based church failed to make what is supposed to define us make sense and be relevant to the average person in the pew as well as the person in the street?