Harry Boessenkool

Where is the end point? Uncertainty is generally unhealthy. The story given to justify "holy uncertainty" is strange because the end point is acceptance of homosexual marriage. And then to have no comment on the mother's conclusion is taking a stand on the issue.

Seems to me you are writing with a forked pen.

 

I thought that in Scripture the deacons were supposed to lessen the work load of the Apostles (Elders).  Let's have a look at how the CRCNA is governed: Starting at the bottom (some people would invert this list):

1 Full Consistory (1,000x8 all office holders)

2 Council (some of 1 above and some non-office holders)

3 Classis (48x4 all included in 1 above)

4 BOT (30 members including non-office holders)

5 WR Board (16 members: here we recognize deacons correctly)

6 BTGMI Board (16 members including non-office holders)

7 Calvin Board (16 members including non-office holders

8 Seminary Board (16 members including non-office holders

9 Directors of Agencies (8-10 including non-office holders

10 ED/EDA (2 including non-office holders)

11 Synod (48x4 all included in 1 above)

12 The Lord (3 in one)

Roughly speaking there are about 8 thousand people involved in governance. Once local Consistories (no. 1 above) have 50/50 split women/men the rest of the leadership roles will follow. Once the Consistories get there the CRCNA can start refining corporate structure by color, ethnics, ages and whatever else may be in vogue.

The one important change I would make to this structure is the elimination of 4. With Classis' meeting twice a year the CRCNA does not need another layer between Classis and Synod. The Leaders (Directors and ED&EDA) put in place by Synod should be able to maintain the operation for 12 months.

There is a famous phrase "let the water seek it own level". We have too many people (in the church) building dikes and channels.

I could not provide feed back on the following article because computer gave some message that it could not be done here is the top paragraph of the article:

""""""""""""October 26, 2016

The Christian Reformed Church in North America has launched a search for a person to serve as the director for the new agency being formed by the unification of Christian Reformed Home Missions and Christian Reformed World Missions.

In opening the search for the director, the CRCNA’s Board of Trustees (BOT) in late September approved a job description and asked that an announcement be posted about the position. In addition, a website detailing qualifications for the job is available at crcna.org/NMAdirector.""""""""""""""""""

When clicked on the line below, which was the last line in the article, it would not allow feedback... something was incompatible?

Send us your feedback on this story.

 

What I was trying to find in the Network subject matter is a section where we could discuss the major reorganization that is happening in HM and WM and also the whole structure of the CRCNA.

Thanks to the authors for putting this frame work together. It is hard work. Would like to make the following observations:

The use of undefined terms like: a) catalyzing 2) contextual missions 3) incarnational missions. Having just visited a couple of Buddhist countries, the last term is very interesting.

Your vision and mission statements are presumptuous as the CRCNA still has BTGMI very involved in “International” (meaning both home and world missions).

The list of “shifts” is interesting. f) to me this is only made worse by what you are trying to do; g) I have seen a lot of evidence in my extensive world travels of this, so nothing new.

Be careful using Addington’s “Sandbox Strategy”.  It sounds childish to me.  When I first got wind of the possible amalgamation I suggested in this space that CRCNA hire McKinsey. The church needs a real good look at what it is all about. These folks, while very expensive, would give it an effective outside view. Besides, they have probably never been asked to do a church!

The framework is too wordy. With no organization charts it lacks clarity. None of the words you have used will work without people in place. The word “teams” look ominous to me.

Harry Boessenkool

Prayer, absolutely. But to pray for unity suggests up front there is disunity. Let's make sure we are all clear on what we believe. To Doug's point we also need to understand what we are faithful to! The first two lines of the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles Creed would be a good start.  James  R Payton wrote an interesting article in the December 2015 /January 2016 Convivium magazine. The key phrase in the lead of the article "..the Orthodox Church offers Western Christians the treasure of celebrating mystery rather than explaining God".  I am not enough of a theologian to grasp all the details but it has to do with what we believe. " At beginning of the 21st century Western Christians had more than 26,000 denominations"  he explains further. Praying for unity appears in that light to have had little success. .

My sense is to be very careful to craft (more) actions/motions/departments/appointments in support of study reports. The CRCNA is famous for that with its 1,000 pages of Acts of Synod.

 

If the 2015 Denominational structure overhaul is carried to it completion the input of Canadians will have effectively been reduced to 3 to 1! The position of Director of Canadian Ministries, always a position of questionable authority or input, will now be relegated to a token position. This despite assurances about the position last year. Based on the Ministry Report 2013 the CRCNA had some 12 ministries and their respective Directors excluding CC, BTGMI, WM, HM, WR.  In addition CRCNA has an ED, a Director of Ministries and Administration (the position that was at the root of the problems in 2013/14) and a Director of Canadian Ministries with a few Directors reporting to him. This is an organization tree with only crowns. 

Will the Home Missionaries and anyone not directly attached to a church be given the same challenges as Wold Missionaries and asked to raise 90% of their own funds for their salaries?

The three years it is estimated take to get the new structure running properly will cause the CRCNA to lose focus and turn in on itself. The Leadership will achieve even greater powers and  Classis' and Synods will become the rubber stamp. 

Oops, time to stop, the delegates to Synod have run for the exits, and leave the workers to clean up and run the show.

I do not believe the CRCNA has any business showing up at a climate change meeting in Paris. This is a job for organizations like A Roche, David Suzuki Foundation and all the other highly politicized organizations.

These ideas seem to come from within the Bureaucracy of the CRCNA in GR and Burlington. The pronouncements at Synod should be a signal for members to do something via existing organizations rather than have the CRCNA HO folks do their thing.

Climate change has been with us since creation. The politicians, and liberals, are using it as a platform to extract higher taxes and involve themselves in everything.

I often wonder what happened to sphere sovereignty. Certainly the CRCNA seems to get involved in way too many issues that should be done by other who would be more knowledgeable.

The other broader issue is that climate change (and especially its total attribution to human activity) is controversial. So rather than bring the issue inside the walls of the church, let’s leave to NCOs (non-church organizations).

The news media will only be interested in one thing and we all know what that is.

I am interested in how the CRC churches can attain healthy status and what is the definition of that? Two items on the agenda for synod will give a bit of a glimpse into this.

1) The task force report on sustainability and

2) Iakota overture to restructure Ministry Shares.

I have just completed a review of the 2015 year book of the CRCNA stats. There are interesting trends.

The church has about 250 thousand members of which 175 thousand are eligible to pay ministry shares.

The CRCNA has 1089 churches (there is probably some error in this because the way emerging congregations are counted).

Of these 715 or 66% have less than 100 families. The trend in the decline of families has been showing up for some years.

A church of a 100 families costs about $150,000 per year to just pay operating expenses. 100% ministry and classis shares add about $50,000 to that.  That means each family has to donate about $2,000 per year.

If we assume a healthy (financial) congregation is one that pays, say, 75% of Ministry shares I look forward to the finance gurus of the church to provide a list of congregation who exceeded that amount.  The famous "paredo" rule will suggest that 20% of the churches contribute 80% of the ministry shares. I would like to see how close the church comes to that rule. If it achieves 40/60, financial health would be above the "paredo" norm. If it achieves 50/50 we could indeed have healthy congregations.