First, Paul speaks in the article about the possibility of Synod forcing classes to seat women delegates. He rejects that as a viable plan. I concur, because it would not force classes to seat women. It would force them to leave the CRCNA - and they would. In effect, it puts them in the position of doing what they believe they may not do or leaving, and the fact that they have maintained the position they hold over 20 years of argument and invective is a pretty clear indicator of which option they'd take.
Second, at one point in the discussion, Dawn explicitly refers to those who do not believe they are permitted by Scripture to seat women delegates at classis or ordain women into one or more of the offices of the church as "anti-women". This sentiment is further implied in equating that belief to racism, slavery, etc., etc. This sentiment is, at least in part, an expression of the hurt Dawn evidently feels in regards to this matter - a very understandable pain. But it is also not true, and the fact of its falsity creates a barrier between Dawn and the people she wishes to persuade.
Permit me to explain. Besides the fact that many of those who believe the Bible does not allow them to see women as elders or ministers are themselves women, the vast majority of the men who hold such a view are not in the least misogynist. They love their mothers, wives, daughters, sisters; they work with women in various contexts both within and outside of the church; they are polite, respectful, protective, and compassionate. They are not anti- anybody, nor do they believe women should remain barefoot and pregnant. Characterizing them as such simply says to them that they are not understood. When they explain the biblical reasons for their belief, and those reasons are swept away amid renewed accusations of misogyny, they eventually come to believe communication is impossible. Once this happens, the walls go up, communication is ended, persuasion is impossible.
There are times when I'm willing to have those walls go up, when I'm not really interested in persuading so much as venting. That's fine, and there's a place for it. I may be nearing 50, but there's still a bit of 7th grader in me that enjoys a good, clean, fun exchange of witty insults and venting barbs. No harm, no foul.
But if your desire is to persuade and change, then I think, Dawn, you would do well to pay more careful attention to what Doug has been saying here.
That's the kind of sharp, inciteful, biblical reasoning that's going to persuade 'em the ol' so-and-so's!
The issue for those who do not believe women should be ordained to one or more of the offices of the church is not one of believing them incapable of completing the tasks. It is a matter of believing they are not permitted to ordain women to these offices - not because some colluding group of archaic males thinks poorly of women, but because they believe Scripture does not allow themto do so. Many women also believe Scripture does not permit it. They may be mistaken in that belief (wouldn't be the first time), but that is what they believe. The arguments to the contrary have not persuaded them, at least, not yet. Deriding them as mere archaisms, describing them as, if not racists and bigots, at least akin to them in their intent and actions, or anything else that does not address their actual beliefs about the will of God will not suffice to move them.
Furthermore, the idea that simply because an idea is old it is to be discarded as an "archaic mentality" is both naive and foolish.
If I may quote...
"With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in..." -A. Lincoln, 4 March 1865
Let's also, then, apply the "neither Jew nor Greek" bit and get rid of the "diversity" quotas, ethnic advisors, and all the rest of the race/ethnic tracking system we use.
It's a silly debate to you because the answer seems so patently obvious to you. Well, the answer seems patently obvious to those who think they are not permitted to ordain women as well - and I assure you that they also will at times call it a silly debate. "Why doesn't everybody see the obvious, self-evident logic of agreeing with me?"
It may be that we need to agree to disagree, which is what Synod decided in 1992-95. The difficulty is in answering the question, "How do we then live together and continue to work together in the assemblies of the Church when we disagree on such a question?"
Synod and the various classes have been trying to thread that needle in the near 20 years since. I don't think we've found a very effictive method. Personally, I don't think there is one.
While it's fair to ask why youth are leaving the church, and it's certainly appropriate to minister to them in focused ways, I cannot agree that they are "the most important or even critical members in most of our congregations". They aren't. Nor should we continue to encourage the overweening narcissism to which our young people are so frequently tempted.
When we spend so much energy telling 15 year olds they're so much more important than the parents and grandparents who pay the bills, sacrifice for the Church and for them, and pray so diligently for them, we also encourage contempt for age and the hard-won wisdom of years lived, and thus consign them to learn through their own pain what they could have learned through the pain of their elders.
We are told not to exasperate our children or provoke them, but to bring them up in the discipline of the Lord. We are not told to idolize them or grant to them a status they have not yet earned. The Church, American society in general, and our youth would be better off if we honored age and tradition a bit more and youth and novelty a bit less.
I only know what you wrote - "the most important or even critical members in most of our congregations". I'm glad that is not what you meant.
Or is it? "You can make honoring age and tradition the focal point in your church, and I suspect you'll be doing so in a shrinking congregation with fewer and fewer youth..." In other words, we should surrender to the youth culture, the American fascination with novelty and inexperience or we will be that most dreaded of all things [portentous music here] - irrelevant.
Mind you, I've nothing against reaching out to young people, both in and out of the church (though you said "members...of our congregations", not simply "youth"). I've nothing against accommodating, at least to some extent, the different tastes in music or style. Far from it. Nor would I say I'd make age and tradition the focal points of the church, though I think we could do far more to honor it than we do. I am no hide-bound traditionalist.
But what are we reaching out to youth with? It is an ancient truth, a gospel now over 2,000 years old, and the experience of the Church over those centuries as it has faced persecution, hardship, sacrifice, prosperity, temptation, and all the other vicissitudes of life. And one of the key lessons the Church has learned is that humility is appropriate, even necessary.
Telling teenagers they're the most critical, most important members (and you said "members", not objects of our ministry) is not going to teach humility. It is also a mindset that begins to think that the gospel must be alterred for this present age. You might not, yourself, have gotten to that point yet but the Church as a whole has long since trod down that path in its adulation of youth culture - and the further we go down that path, the more irrelevant and pointless we will be.
If you want a better notion of what I'm getting at, see this Craig Ferguson clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKUZ42T9diU
Granted - the youth are not less important. They are human beings in need of the Gospel, and we should welcome and incorporate all God's children for the promise is to you and your children, to all who are afar off, to as many as the Lord our God shall call.
First thing is to stand for something. Try to be everything to everybody and you end up being nothing to anybody. Some people won't like what you stand for, but that's OK. I have no problem with referring folks to other churches (a church is better than no church).
Second thing, emphasize integration. The purpose of children and youth ministry is to integrate them fully into the body of believers (same thing with evangelism, couples' clubs, etc.). The "niche" has it's uses in that, which is fine, but if the sub-group, whatever it might be and however it is defined, is kept isolated from the rest of the congregation then what you end up with is two congregations instead of one - congregations too often defined along social science strata and thus far too uniform to be effective.
And avoid instant fixes - problems developed over decades are not fixed in minutes.
Or, as said in the overture submitted to Classis Iakota, the Belhar is unnecessary as...
"Neither the Christian Reformed Church, nor any sub-set of the Christian Reformed Church, nor any other Christian denomination of note in the U.S. or Canada currently advocates for disunity, injustice, racial segregation, racial superiority, apartheid, or any other such thing. Indeed, over the last 40 years or more, the CRC has consistently spoken out for justice, racial harmony, and reconciliation (for example in “God’s Diverse and Unified Family” 1996). There is, therefore, no need for a confessional document that refutes such errors or differentiates the CRC from other denominations on these matters."
Dr. Bolt's experience at GR East is ample testimony to that.
Blaming Wall Street for the failures of our government - and it is government policies and demands that created the housing bubble - is misplaced.
And government made those policies and demands because citizens wanted something for nothing, which is essentially the complaint of the Occupy Wall Street protesters - somebody else should pay back my student loans, somebody else should pay me for doing this puppet show regardless of whether anyone wants to see it, somebody else should make my life easy and carefree, somebody else should buy my computers and electronics, somebody else should sleep with me without making any demands, somebody else....
The problem, in other words, isn't Wall Street. The problem is Occupy Wall Street and a mentality that seems to believe there really IS such a thing as a free lunch.
The economic collapse of 2008 and the struggles we've had since then are, however, a lesson in the fact that there isn't. Whether you want the 3-martini, 4-course lunch of Wall Street or the bologna sandwich lunch of Elm Street, Podunksville, USA might be an interesting discussion, but either way, it ain't free.
Many of these statistics are dubious, and depend greatly on the meaning of certain words. Take, for instance, the first one. What is the actual range of IQ scores? According to the IQ and the WEALTH OF NATIONS study by Lynn & Vanhanen, China rates 12th at 100 and the US comes in at 98. But, as this site points out (http://www.vdare.com/sailer/wealth_of_nations.htm) there are significant problems with comparing cross-cultural, cross-language IQ scores. The reality of change has been with us now for nearly 150 years. In some ways it has accelerated. In others, it has remained flat. Human nature, for all this, has not changed much at all.
What all these statistics really boil down to is highlighting the change in the way information is accessed and transferred. With more information generally accessible, strategies for identifying the SIGNIFICANT information becomes more important. The best way to hide a needle is not in a haystack, but in a large pile of other needles. Skill at identifying the specific needle one is after quickly and accurately becomes particularly valuable, and people begin to develop this skill.
One of the things that means is that teachers and preachers need to become adept at presenting information that will be flagged by "browsers", enticing people to stop and dig a little deeper because they'll see that this "needle" is an important one. Effective headlines and titles, for instance, become much more important. Even with that, one has to hook people early on or they've already gone to the next page/link/site.
First, I think the agencies are an aberration on the core concilliar structure of the presbyterian form of church government. They grew out of committees that eventually became more-or-less permanent, standing committees, but have never really fit well. In part, this is because the Synod supposed to oversee them is different every year while the people being overseen become quasi-permanent. One finds this same thing in a government setting where the civil service is essentially permanent while the supposed overseers are switched out every couple years or so. The permanent bureaucrat can easily undermine, slow-walk, or just wait out the overseer.
These permanent committees/agencies/bureaucracies also tend to develop an internal culture that begins to divide them from those they supposedly serve. Sure, the bureaucrat might use the 1st person pronoun to include the whole when speaking in public, but in private, the bulk of the community is in the 3rd person. In the CRC structure, the move to regional representation on boards has served to further sever the connection between the bureaucrat/agency official and the community as a whole. Several agencies in the denomination have a representative from my region whom I've never seen and/or who has never been to our classis meetings, much less e-mailed or otherwise corresponded with the congregation. I have no idea who they are, not even a name detached from a face. Other than the "CR" in the agency's titular acronym, there is no connection.
Second, it is vital that the denomination be able to act collectively if the word "church" is to apply to an institution larger than a specific congregation in any meaningful way. These kinds of agencies/standing committees, with the funding sources that support them, are a most efficient way of doing so. If we had a better way, we'd use it, but we don't.
So, how do we reconnect the ministry of the denomination with the members in a substantive way that reduces the "us-them" dynamic and restores the authority of the church's councils (local, regional, and national)?
I would suggest that the strife among the agencies is not a bad thing in this. If, for instance, CRWRC and CRWM and CRHM are squabbling in a way that forces them to go to an external authority - Synod - for resolution, the authority of Synod vis-a-vis the agencies is enhanced. I would, therefore, eliminate the Board of Trustees. The drama will be there regardless, but we can manipulate the drama so it serves rather than dominates.
I would then relocate these agencies away from a single, central location. Put one of them in NW Iowa, another in Wisconsin or somewhere around the base of Lake Michigan (Illinois or Indiana), another in New Jersey, and another in either Washington (around Lynden or Vancouver) or California. Leave only the smaller groups - Disability, Pastor-Church, etc., in Grand Rapids. In Canada, take the counterparts and split them between Ontario and Alberta. The availability of web conferencing at low cost means they would still be able to collaborate. In this way, although there would still be a certain amount of "us-them", the "us" would be a region of people who have a personal connection with a given agency rather than merely that specific agency.
Granted, this is a mitigation rather than a solution to the problems you mention. Oversight will still be a problem, for in this more diffused set-up, people will have greater latitude for ignoring decisions they find distasteful, but then, that's not much different from the current set up.
Posted in: Classes that Won't Seat Women
Aaron V. - For what it's worth, Back to God Ministries are not at 2850 K-zoo in G.Rapids. They're in Palos Heights, IL.
Wonder if there's a connection between that fact and their relative effectiveness......
Posted in: Classes that Won't Seat Women
There are two things I want to point out.
First, Paul speaks in the article about the possibility of Synod forcing classes to seat women delegates. He rejects that as a viable plan. I concur, because it would not force classes to seat women. It would force them to leave the CRCNA - and they would. In effect, it puts them in the position of doing what they believe they may not do or leaving, and the fact that they have maintained the position they hold over 20 years of argument and invective is a pretty clear indicator of which option they'd take.
Second, at one point in the discussion, Dawn explicitly refers to those who do not believe they are permitted by Scripture to seat women delegates at classis or ordain women into one or more of the offices of the church as "anti-women". This sentiment is further implied in equating that belief to racism, slavery, etc., etc. This sentiment is, at least in part, an expression of the hurt Dawn evidently feels in regards to this matter - a very understandable pain. But it is also not true, and the fact of its falsity creates a barrier between Dawn and the people she wishes to persuade.
Permit me to explain. Besides the fact that many of those who believe the Bible does not allow them to see women as elders or ministers are themselves women, the vast majority of the men who hold such a view are not in the least misogynist. They love their mothers, wives, daughters, sisters; they work with women in various contexts both within and outside of the church; they are polite, respectful, protective, and compassionate. They are not anti- anybody, nor do they believe women should remain barefoot and pregnant. Characterizing them as such simply says to them that they are not understood. When they explain the biblical reasons for their belief, and those reasons are swept away amid renewed accusations of misogyny, they eventually come to believe communication is impossible. Once this happens, the walls go up, communication is ended, persuasion is impossible.
There are times when I'm willing to have those walls go up, when I'm not really interested in persuading so much as venting. That's fine, and there's a place for it. I may be nearing 50, but there's still a bit of 7th grader in me that enjoys a good, clean, fun exchange of witty insults and venting barbs. No harm, no foul.
But if your desire is to persuade and change, then I think, Dawn, you would do well to pay more careful attention to what Doug has been saying here.
Posted in: Classes that Won't Seat Women
That's the kind of sharp, inciteful, biblical reasoning that's going to persuade 'em the ol' so-and-so's!
The issue for those who do not believe women should be ordained to one or more of the offices of the church is not one of believing them incapable of completing the tasks. It is a matter of believing they are not permitted to ordain women to these offices - not because some colluding group of archaic males thinks poorly of women, but because they believe Scripture does not allow themto do so. Many women also believe Scripture does not permit it. They may be mistaken in that belief (wouldn't be the first time), but that is what they believe. The arguments to the contrary have not persuaded them, at least, not yet. Deriding them as mere archaisms, describing them as, if not racists and bigots, at least akin to them in their intent and actions, or anything else that does not address their actual beliefs about the will of God will not suffice to move them.
Furthermore, the idea that simply because an idea is old it is to be discarded as an "archaic mentality" is both naive and foolish.
If I may quote...
"With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in..." -A. Lincoln, 4 March 1865
Posted in: Classes that Won't Seat Women
Let's also, then, apply the "neither Jew nor Greek" bit and get rid of the "diversity" quotas, ethnic advisors, and all the rest of the race/ethnic tracking system we use.
It's a silly debate to you because the answer seems so patently obvious to you. Well, the answer seems patently obvious to those who think they are not permitted to ordain women as well - and I assure you that they also will at times call it a silly debate. "Why doesn't everybody see the obvious, self-evident logic of agreeing with me?"
It may be that we need to agree to disagree, which is what Synod decided in 1992-95. The difficulty is in answering the question, "How do we then live together and continue to work together in the assemblies of the Church when we disagree on such a question?"
Synod and the various classes have been trying to thread that needle in the near 20 years since. I don't think we've found a very effictive method. Personally, I don't think there is one.
Posted in: The Most Important Members of Our Congregation
While it's fair to ask why youth are leaving the church, and it's certainly appropriate to minister to them in focused ways, I cannot agree that they are "the most important or even critical members in most of our congregations". They aren't. Nor should we continue to encourage the overweening narcissism to which our young people are so frequently tempted.
When we spend so much energy telling 15 year olds they're so much more important than the parents and grandparents who pay the bills, sacrifice for the Church and for them, and pray so diligently for them, we also encourage contempt for age and the hard-won wisdom of years lived, and thus consign them to learn through their own pain what they could have learned through the pain of their elders.
We are told not to exasperate our children or provoke them, but to bring them up in the discipline of the Lord. We are not told to idolize them or grant to them a status they have not yet earned. The Church, American society in general, and our youth would be better off if we honored age and tradition a bit more and youth and novelty a bit less.
Posted in: The Most Important Members of Our Congregation
I only know what you wrote - "the most important or even critical members in most of our congregations". I'm glad that is not what you meant.
Or is it? "You can make honoring age and tradition the focal point in your church, and I suspect you'll be doing so in a shrinking congregation with fewer and fewer youth..." In other words, we should surrender to the youth culture, the American fascination with novelty and inexperience or we will be that most dreaded of all things [portentous music here] - irrelevant.
Mind you, I've nothing against reaching out to young people, both in and out of the church (though you said "members...of our congregations", not simply "youth"). I've nothing against accommodating, at least to some extent, the different tastes in music or style. Far from it. Nor would I say I'd make age and tradition the focal points of the church, though I think we could do far more to honor it than we do. I am no hide-bound traditionalist.
But what are we reaching out to youth with? It is an ancient truth, a gospel now over 2,000 years old, and the experience of the Church over those centuries as it has faced persecution, hardship, sacrifice, prosperity, temptation, and all the other vicissitudes of life. And one of the key lessons the Church has learned is that humility is appropriate, even necessary.
Telling teenagers they're the most critical, most important members (and you said "members", not objects of our ministry) is not going to teach humility. It is also a mindset that begins to think that the gospel must be alterred for this present age. You might not, yourself, have gotten to that point yet but the Church as a whole has long since trod down that path in its adulation of youth culture - and the further we go down that path, the more irrelevant and pointless we will be.
If you want a better notion of what I'm getting at, see this Craig Ferguson clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKUZ42T9diU
Posted in: The Most Important Members of Our Congregation
Granted - the youth are not less important. They are human beings in need of the Gospel, and we should welcome and incorporate all God's children for the promise is to you and your children, to all who are afar off, to as many as the Lord our God shall call.
Posted in: Young Adults in the CRC
Amen.
First thing is to stand for something. Try to be everything to everybody and you end up being nothing to anybody. Some people won't like what you stand for, but that's OK. I have no problem with referring folks to other churches (a church is better than no church).
Second thing, emphasize integration. The purpose of children and youth ministry is to integrate them fully into the body of believers (same thing with evangelism, couples' clubs, etc.). The "niche" has it's uses in that, which is fine, but if the sub-group, whatever it might be and however it is defined, is kept isolated from the rest of the congregation then what you end up with is two congregations instead of one - congregations too often defined along social science strata and thus far too uniform to be effective.
And avoid instant fixes - problems developed over decades are not fixed in minutes.
Posted in: A Classis Embodies What the Belhar Points To
Or, as said in the overture submitted to Classis Iakota, the Belhar is unnecessary as...
"Neither the Christian Reformed Church, nor any sub-set of the Christian Reformed Church, nor any other Christian denomination of note in the U.S. or Canada currently advocates for disunity, injustice, racial segregation, racial superiority, apartheid, or any other such thing. Indeed, over the last 40 years or more, the CRC has consistently spoken out for justice, racial harmony, and reconciliation (for example in “God’s Diverse and Unified Family” 1996). There is, therefore, no need for a confessional document that refutes such errors or differentiates the CRC from other denominations on these matters."
Dr. Bolt's experience at GR East is ample testimony to that.
Posted in: Christmas, Occupy Wall Street, and Christian Formation
Blaming Wall Street for the failures of our government - and it is government policies and demands that created the housing bubble - is misplaced.
And government made those policies and demands because citizens wanted something for nothing, which is essentially the complaint of the Occupy Wall Street protesters - somebody else should pay back my student loans, somebody else should pay me for doing this puppet show regardless of whether anyone wants to see it, somebody else should make my life easy and carefree, somebody else should buy my computers and electronics, somebody else should sleep with me without making any demands, somebody else....
The problem, in other words, isn't Wall Street. The problem is Occupy Wall Street and a mentality that seems to believe there really IS such a thing as a free lunch.
The economic collapse of 2008 and the struggles we've had since then are, however, a lesson in the fact that there isn't. Whether you want the 3-martini, 4-course lunch of Wall Street or the bologna sandwich lunch of Elm Street, Podunksville, USA might be an interesting discussion, but either way, it ain't free.
Posted in: What Does All This Mean for Ministry?
Many of these statistics are dubious, and depend greatly on the meaning of certain words. Take, for instance, the first one. What is the actual range of IQ scores? According to the IQ and the WEALTH OF NATIONS study by Lynn & Vanhanen, China rates 12th at 100 and the US comes in at 98. But, as this site points out (http://www.vdare.com/sailer/wealth_of_nations.htm) there are significant problems with comparing cross-cultural, cross-language IQ scores. The reality of change has been with us now for nearly 150 years. In some ways it has accelerated. In others, it has remained flat. Human nature, for all this, has not changed much at all.
What all these statistics really boil down to is highlighting the change in the way information is accessed and transferred. With more information generally accessible, strategies for identifying the SIGNIFICANT information becomes more important. The best way to hide a needle is not in a haystack, but in a large pile of other needles. Skill at identifying the specific needle one is after quickly and accurately becomes particularly valuable, and people begin to develop this skill.
One of the things that means is that teachers and preachers need to become adept at presenting information that will be flagged by "browsers", enticing people to stop and dig a little deeper because they'll see that this "needle" is an important one. Effective headlines and titles, for instance, become much more important. Even with that, one has to hook people early on or they've already gone to the next page/link/site.
Posted in: Drama Queen
I've mixed feelings.
First, I think the agencies are an aberration on the core concilliar structure of the presbyterian form of church government. They grew out of committees that eventually became more-or-less permanent, standing committees, but have never really fit well. In part, this is because the Synod supposed to oversee them is different every year while the people being overseen become quasi-permanent. One finds this same thing in a government setting where the civil service is essentially permanent while the supposed overseers are switched out every couple years or so. The permanent bureaucrat can easily undermine, slow-walk, or just wait out the overseer.
These permanent committees/agencies/bureaucracies also tend to develop an internal culture that begins to divide them from those they supposedly serve. Sure, the bureaucrat might use the 1st person pronoun to include the whole when speaking in public, but in private, the bulk of the community is in the 3rd person. In the CRC structure, the move to regional representation on boards has served to further sever the connection between the bureaucrat/agency official and the community as a whole. Several agencies in the denomination have a representative from my region whom I've never seen and/or who has never been to our classis meetings, much less e-mailed or otherwise corresponded with the congregation. I have no idea who they are, not even a name detached from a face. Other than the "CR" in the agency's titular acronym, there is no connection.
Second, it is vital that the denomination be able to act collectively if the word "church" is to apply to an institution larger than a specific congregation in any meaningful way. These kinds of agencies/standing committees, with the funding sources that support them, are a most efficient way of doing so. If we had a better way, we'd use it, but we don't.
So, how do we reconnect the ministry of the denomination with the members in a substantive way that reduces the "us-them" dynamic and restores the authority of the church's councils (local, regional, and national)?
I would suggest that the strife among the agencies is not a bad thing in this. If, for instance, CRWRC and CRWM and CRHM are squabbling in a way that forces them to go to an external authority - Synod - for resolution, the authority of Synod vis-a-vis the agencies is enhanced. I would, therefore, eliminate the Board of Trustees. The drama will be there regardless, but we can manipulate the drama so it serves rather than dominates.
I would then relocate these agencies away from a single, central location. Put one of them in NW Iowa, another in Wisconsin or somewhere around the base of Lake Michigan (Illinois or Indiana), another in New Jersey, and another in either Washington (around Lynden or Vancouver) or California. Leave only the smaller groups - Disability, Pastor-Church, etc., in Grand Rapids. In Canada, take the counterparts and split them between Ontario and Alberta. The availability of web conferencing at low cost means they would still be able to collaborate. In this way, although there would still be a certain amount of "us-them", the "us" would be a region of people who have a personal connection with a given agency rather than merely that specific agency.
Granted, this is a mitigation rather than a solution to the problems you mention. Oversight will still be a problem, for in this more diffused set-up, people will have greater latitude for ignoring decisions they find distasteful, but then, that's not much different from the current set up.