Keith Knight

As a member of various church councils over the years, and as one who has been a witness to sending off pastors for various forms of study leaves and sabbaticals, it just recently occurred to me that every congregation could also benefit from a sabbatical.

While pastors are away on study leaves or sabbaticals, the congregations continue to sit in their same pews, have the same daily routines in business or the professions, but live in the expectation that their pastor will return to the pulpit as a newly transformed, excellent preacher ... filled with energy and enthusiasm and the gifts of the Apostle Paul.

What would a congregation's sabbatical look like?  Well, it could take place upon the return of the sabbaticalled pastor where he/she would lead a four-week Sunday instructional/lecture series on what was just learned.  That would certainly bring congregation and pastor onto the same proverbial page.

Or it could consist of three or four consecutive weekend retreats ... not at all connected to the pastor's study leave ... where the congregation could look in depth at specific topic or need.

There is an assumption that pastors are the only ones who need regular exposure to continuing education. Meanwhile the congregation gets left further and further behind.

And to your point: if a pastor has a plan for his continuing education or sabbatical studies, then most certainly the congregation needs to have a similar or simultaneous plan.

While I like Elizabeth's definition of a leader, it is a rather generic definition. It could apply equally to a leader at Amway, a football coach or a school principal.

But what sets a Christian leader apart? Like Paul's mentoring role in Timothy's life, Christian leaders need to consistently point emerging leaders to Christ. We need to consistently remind others of the importance to depend on God ... for wisdom, for direction, for the right things to say and do in a specific situation.

Want to be a strong Christian leader? Pray. A lot. Consistently.

I spoke a while back to a conference of senior pastors of mega-churches. They invariably referred to themselves as their church's "CEO". I spoke on "Whose Kingdom Are You Building: Yours or God's?"

Christian leaders are doing God's work ... whether that's in the church, in business, in education, in the home, in retirement. This isn't about us.

Several years ago I inherited a position as chair of church council. I discovered that it seemed that several leaders of various ministries weren't that qualified to lead those ministries or committees.

Since it's virtually impossible to fire a volunteer, I called together those various leaders for a meeting. Before doing that, I spoke to a lot of people about the qualifications of those who lead.  In Canada, we have $1 and $2 coins called Loonies and Toonies. I gave each person a Toonie (a $2 coin) and declared: "You are now considered staff." I then proceeded to move those folks around to head up ministries that better suited their gifts.

And every summer, before the new church season begins, the group meets where they go through the "Toonie exercise", recognizing that they are in essence re-applying for their position as ministry/committee leader. If nothing else, it gives them a sense of accountability, and a deeper sense that they can't count on doing that work until they feel that they've done it long enough.

So, even when you appoint individuals to various voluntary tasks within a church, it's important to point out that their appointment is just for one year. They will need to be accountable for the way they lead, and the way they connect with others on their team.  Going through an annual Toonie (or $1.00) exercise reinforces that sense of accountability.

I've grown up in the CRC; gone through catechism and youth group, attended Christian schools at various levels, served several terms as elder, delegated to the Synod of the CRC a couple of time.

As I reflect on the CRC and especially on our focus these days on programs, activities and initiatives, I can't help but look at the lives of John the Baptist and Jesus. What was the focus of their ministry and would it be different today?

John the Baptist preached: "Repent. For the Kingdom of God is at hand." Jesus, after he was baptized by John, preached the same message: "Repent. For the Kingdom of God is at hand."

What would that message look like in 2018 Canada? What do we need to repent of ... individually and corporately? Do we devote enough time and energy on the significance of worship and preaching, or is it incidental as we offer our menu of weekly church activities?

The first booklet that I created in 2006 for the 1,000 congregations of The Presbyterian Church in Canada was called Fish and Chips (the church symbol and technology). It focused on fundamental elements of a website. Presumably every congregation in North America has a website by now.

The most important feature, I insisted, was Contact Us ... with a bonafide name and email address. I am chagrined to see how many churches insist on having visitors fill in a form to be submitted. Talk about being user UNfriendly.

And a church website doesn't have just one audience but at least two. While its public face focuses on outreach and the broader community, there needs to be a Membership tab that is password protected and that takes church membership into inhouse documents, a photo directory, copies of financial statements, minutes of various meetings, etc.  In fact, a log of church ministries/committees tend to have their own password-protected pages.

Darren, thanks for your faithful leadership within the Canadian CRC context. I was among the attendees at that 2003 event in Edmonton. While I recall very little of the discussions that took place then, the social gatherings were invaluable.

There is one question that I would love to have asked at the 2019 event: "If we had to create a CRC in Canada from scratch today, what would it look like?" What would its focus be? Biblical preaching? Social justice? A vibrant indigenous ministry? Evangelizing? Church planting?

That question is sparked, in part, by a recent visit to a CRC that was undergoing a major renovation. I asked, matter-of-factly, if they were making the sanctuary bigger to allow for evangelization and church growth. The response: "We don't evangelize. We don't want 'Canadians' (ie heathens) in our church because it changes the church's culture. No, our focus is on internal growth (kids having kids)."  The great commission, it seems, applies to overseas missionary efforts.

There is, I suppose, a prior question that could be asked in 2019: "If we had to create a CRC in Canada from scratch today, should we? Or are others doing a better job than we are?"

It's been three months since that initial posting and much has happened since then. There has been a growing endorsement of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee. Hillory Clinton is almost assured to receive the Democratic Party nomination.

While I agree that synod should not get into a partisan debate, there is considerable merit in having synod talk about the 'state of the union'; that is, the state of American society. What is sparking the anger?

As Mercatornet editor Michael Cook recently wrote, "about 40 per cent of American children are born out of wedlock ... 55 per cent of teenagers live in families where their biological parents have rejected each other. Broken homes are associated with poverty, personal instability, and poor employment prospects. In this year's election campaign, this might encourage people to vote for an anti-establishment figure like Mr. Trump."

American society seems broken. The notion of 'the family' is disintegrating. If ever there was a time for the church -- in our case, Synod -- to discuss the issue, it is now. And it shouldn't be a discussion on which candidate or which party to support -- though it may come to that; it should be a discussion on how the church should respond to the desperate cry for help from millions of American families who seem hopeless and disenfranchised.

While it may be wise for the church to stay out of the partisan debates, the church does have a significant message of hope to bring to a broken society ... and it indeed is broken.

A few years ago, I moved to a new town and church, and was elected to council. One of the first acts of business of this group of elders and deacons was to begin a season of confession for how they had treated their past pastors. Over the next few months, they wrote individual letters of confession to their former pastors, confessing their sins of pride and unChristian behavior.

That took a lot of humility and reflected the integrity of those elders and deacons. So, as an incredible show of support for our pastors -- especially former pastors -- consider how they were treated by the church's leadership and by members of the congregation. Repent.  Then proceed to treat your current pastor with the love and honor that they deserve. 

The problem, it seems to me, isn't The Banner's mandate. It indeed should “stimulate critical thinking about issues related to the Christian faith and the culture of which we are a part.”

The problem arises when The Banner lives up to its mandate and actually publishes articles deemed to be controversial and designed to lead pew-sitting CRC folks to do some serious thinking. Those types are articles are the exception; not the norm.

As an avid and long-time Banner reader, I have grown accustomed to the USA Today style: church snippets and pictures of winning sports teams at local Christian schools. The Banner by its very design and content treats its readers as theological and ecclesiastical neophytes. The very fact that the editorial staff consistently needs to define what a synod or a classis are, reinforces that notion. I can't imagine any sports magazine worth its salt painstakingly explaining what a touchdown is, or a quarterback, hat trick or hole in one.

The Banner is mandated to stimulate critical thinking. Give us something to chew on. Challenge our long-held beliefs. But also give us some very basic information about our denomination. I, and probably thousands of others, bemoan the fact that our denominational publication no longer publishes information on ministers in transition from one church to another.

The blame for the apparent outrage over the publication of those two notorious articles falls squarely on the minds of ordinary Christian Reformed folk who have been spoon-fed light articles of church news for so long that they can't recognize a good potential debate when they see one. We can't handle controversy. We don't know what critical thinking really is.

We don't need a denominational publication to give us warm fuzzies about the state of our church. We need to be challenged to become more culturally relevant as a denomination. We need to look at the tension within the denomination between piety and Kuyperianism, the theology of our church plants, how we engage in mission, the demise (or is it a celebration?) of the second service.

I don't envy the new Banner editor. While he or she will be mandated to 'stimulate critical thinking about issues related to the Christian faith', the truth of the matter is that we who sit in the pew aren't prepared to hear it or to engage in it. The new editor will need to develop thick skin -- even thicker than Bob DeMoor's -- who will need to be backed by a strong board and a stronger synod.

The Banner is the only place where grassroots Reformed people (I hate that term) can wrestle with pertinent issues of the day as they relate to the church and our own spiritual journeys. Our pastors and elders have the annual gathering of synod where they can engage in that kind of discussion. We have and need The Banner.

We will hopefully experience a transition in the kinds of articles that will appear in future Banners. Here's the point: The Banner's editorial staff needs to expect more from its readers. They need to trust that CR folks can engage in a meaningful and thoughtful discussion on matters of faith. The Banner needs to push and prod and lead the CR constituency down a path of critical thinking.

We, the audience, need to open our minds and hearts as we hear our own preconceived notions challenged in our beloved denominational publication. After all, The Banner is mandated to engage us in that kind of critical thinking.