One of my best teachers at Calvin College was Harry Faber. He was my boss, the Director of Campus Safety. I was a part-time security guard who toured the bowels of the buildings. Late at night and during the day I wrote parking tickets.
I wrote them righteously. I was strict. I was the enforcer. I was indignant at the violators. Did they think they could get away with it? There are reasons for those No Parking signs. How dare they ignore them? One particular faculty spouse was a repeat offender. Did he expect to just get off?
I liked Harry Faber very much. He was genial, thoughtful, and had a deep and quiet sense of humor. But gradually I got the impression that he excused some of the tickets I had written — more than I liked.
One day he shocked me. He told me that next week there was going to be a big event on campus that would draw many visitors, so I should write a lot of tickets to start clearing the roads.
What shocked me was the realization that he saw function where I saw righteousness. Parking tickets were for management, not for correcting offenses. It threw me for a bit, but it opened my eyes. He was a retired cop, and I supposed that his long experience gave him wisdom on enforcing laws.
This came to mind recently as I was watching a podcast produced by a Christian Reformed minister whom I respect. I always learn from his unique take on things. (Plus, he grew up next door to my grandmother.) He was replaying parts of a Zoom consultation from 2024 in which I had been a participant, and offering his commentary. The consultation was to introduce Christian Reformed pastors to my own denomination, the Reformed Church in America (RCA).
An RCA colleague and I were discussing potential changes to the RCA church order, and she said, “which we submit to, but there are no police.” The podcaster snickered and paused the playback. He repeated her words with a smirk, “Which we submit to, but there are no police.” As if what she meant was that in the RCA you can get away with stuff. . . hint hint.
The podcaster, being Christian Reformed, would not have recognized the RCA maxim that my colleague was quoting. Since 1993 RCA seminarians have been reading “the church has no police” in a textbook on Church Order which I wrote. It’s not so much a principle as a motto, a shortcut to deep convictions on how the RCA orders discipline, authority, and power.
Those convictions go back at least to the Synod of Dort, and you can learn about them here in a Reformed Journal post from 2013. The convictions express, first, a Christocentric theology of power, and, second, the belief that church discipline must always be done as locally as possible.
What to CRC eyes might look like leniency or an avoidance of responsibility is actually an issue of who does discipline, and when, and how. CRC synods have long assumed the authority to exercise discipline top down, recently even to limiting permitted public discussion by office-bearers on the interpretation of the Doctrinal Standards.
In the RCA, synods are not authorized for discipline. They are only ever final courts of appeal for disciplinary cases that had to have begun at the most local level, and were initiated by the persons directly involved. Only boards of elders are authorized to discipline members, deacons, and elders, and only classes are authorized to discipline pastors. And no synodical agent or process is mandated to monitor their compliance.
The church has no security guards.
Furthermore, church discipline is exercised only for those matters that are sinful. It is not a sin to disagree with the Standards, and certainly not a sin to disagree with a synodical regulation or interpretation. In the case of pastors, discipline is not only for sin but also for misconduct and for violating their Declaration (formerly the “Subscription”).
The RCA does not believe that the Doctrinal Standards have to be enforced. We trust pastors when they sign the Declaration, and then we leave them to their consciences, and to supervise them we leave our classes to their collective consciences and local judgments. The attendant risks are worth it. It is important to let people try things, and to let them make mistakes. The church does not write parking tickets.
The RCA does not defend the Doctrinal Standards. But it keeps them Constitutional, requiring each new generation to come to terms with them and make themselves accountable to them. It has to be an exercise of love. And, ultimately, a denomination has to be genial, thoughtful, and have a deep and quiet sense of humor, especially about itself.
7 Responses
Again, Daniel, you’ve accurately and clearly articulated how underlying tendencies differ between CRC and RCA folks. Those of us immersed at one time or another in our lives in both traditions often detect those. This was a fun read for me. Thanks.
Oh Daniel if only our denomination understood this article we would have never split,
There is a big difference between not enforcing parking tickets at Calvin and not enforcing doctrinal standards. Not enforcing parking tickets at Calvin affects traffic flow on the Calvin campus and perhaps loses Calvin a bit of revenue. Not enforcing doctrinal standards is a heaven and hell issue and has eternal implications. That is a serious enough implication to give a synod oversight and a voice.
Good grief, of course there’s a big difference.
Thanks for this, Abuna. I wonder how much easier it is to is to write parking tickets rather than to trust people, let them make mistakes, and then respond holding accountability and grace in tension with each other.
As a CRC refugee wounded by its absolutist addiction to perfection (doctrinal purity), to have top-down authority regarding doctrinal interpretation is spiritually disempowering. It ignores the lived experiences of its members and dismissed the vitality of dialogue based on conscience. Those at the top in the CRC appear to be in the sway of today’s culture wars. Hardly a basis for sound theology.
For many years I felt the CRCNA, as represented by its synods, to be “genial, thoughtful, and have a deep and quiet sense of humor.” I don’t feel that any more. I miss it and wonder where it’s gone.