Some time has passed since June’s Christian Reformed Church Synod 2024. The Reformed Journal reached out to several people from across the CRC asking them to respond to three questions.
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- How are you feeling about Synod and its decisions?
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- Have you begun taking any steps or actions in response to Synod? If not, are there steps, actions or processes that you are considering?
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- If you had to guess, where do you think you’ll be one year from now — denomination-wise, vis-a-vis the CRCNA?
We are grateful for those who responded. It should be noted that several people declined to participate. Some feared reprisal: the loss of a job or church discipline. A few said that their home congregation was in a state of uncertainty or anxiety and they were concerned that sharing their thoughts might be unhelpful at this time.
Heidi De Jonge resides in Kingston, Ontario.
I am feeling the dullness of unsurprise, the throb of sadness, and the sharpness of disgust. I am thankful to have a spiritual director and a therapist with whom I can get curious about these emotions and invite God to forgive, to heal, to comfort, and to surprise me with grace.
I have about six weeks left before the clock runs out on the two-year window of eligibility for call that I received after I separated from my congregation via an Article 17 in September of 2022. I am requesting a release from my ordination via Article 14b so that I may “enter ministry outside the denomination.” I will be seeking ordination in a Reformed Church in America “classis of refuge” in the U.S. (Classes of refuge have agreed to make themselves available to CRC pastors like myself. Though the RCA has a presence in Canada, the only classes of refuge are in the States.)
Though in a year I hope to be ordained through the RCA (either “without charge” or with a calling to my current part-time chaplaincy positions), the RCA is likely not a permanent landing place for me. As a pastor in Canada, it will be best to find a denominational home here. I continue to have hope that there will be a remnant of the CRC in Canada that will exist in a new and resurrected form.
Duane Kelderman resides in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
I have all the feelings that go with grief and loss – shock, anger, guilt, and emerging acceptance. I also feel relief. Synod’s decisions may be reckless, arbitrary, and unimaginable in any other age; but they are crystal clear: neither my church nor I belong in this new Christian Reformed Church. I’m grateful for the clarity.
My home church, Neland Avenue CRC, is taking steps to disaffiliate from the CRC. Along with many other Classis Grand Rapids East churches we are distinguishing between leaving the CRC immediately, and joining another denomination or forming a new network of some kind in the future. The leaving will happen fairly quickly; the joining will be a longer process.
In one year I believe that Neland Avenue CRC will be disaffiliated from the CRC, joyfully doing the same Reformed ministry it’s been doing for over a century, and non-anxiously investigating its future ecclesial connections. As an emeritus minister, I will go with Neland on this journey, thereby losing my emeritus status when Neland no longer belongs to the CRC. If another denomination or network eventually recognizes my emeritus status thereby authorizing me to do official acts of ministry (baptism, communion, weddings), fine. If not, that’s fine too. It is well with my soul.
Suzanne McDonald resides in Holland, Michigan.
In my view, the CRC has abused its confessions and confessional processes by instrumentalizing them and weaponizing them in order to drive conformity on this single issue.
In light of this, I am not willing to continue to submit to the CRC’s confessional authority, so I have initiated the process of seeking release from my ordination. I am very aware, though, that this doesn’t greatly impact how I exercise my calling, and that the decision I have taken may not be an appropriate way forward for others.
I am not planning to transfer my ordination, but I will become a member of the RCA church that has been my worshiping home for the past five years.
Robert Schoone-Jongen resides in Grand Rapids, Michigan
It’s been almost two months since my spiritual mother, the Christian Reformed Church, said people like me no longer belong under her roof. I am a doubter who asked questions and expected solid explanations. That is no longer permitted in the denomination regarding the Human Sexuality Report. The deep disappointment I felt at Synod’s summary rejection of any dissent has given way to a sense of relief. I no longer live under the dark cloud of wondering what deeply ill-advised decision the next Synod will agree to about another issue. The denomination has lost its moorings and walked away from Article 2 of the Belgic Confession—the belief that God speaks to us in both scripture and the creation.
My home congregation’s council has begun the process of disaffiliating from the denomination CRCNA. As both a member and a former council officer, I heartily support the council’s actions. Our congregation strove to be a denominational team player, that’s how we will leave.
In a year’s time, I suspect we will be far down the road of charting an independent course that will allow us to be true to the Reformed tradition with a new family of like-minded believers.
Barbara Schaap resides in Alton, Iowa
I remain disappointed with Synod 2022, 2023, and 2024, particularly their decision to make this issue a confessional matter. I need to continue reading, researching, discussing, and questioning instead of feeling like the door has been forever slammed shut.
No, I have not taken any actions. I want to see how this all plays out within my classis. I want to see how CRC churches and members like myself will be treated as fellow believers in Christ. I would like the opportunity to listen to others and at the same time have them listen to me.
I honestly don’t know where I might be one year from now.
James Vanden Bosch resides in Grand Rapids, Michigan
The Christian Reformed synodical sessions of 2022, 2023, and 2024 made it very clear what the majority votes regarding human sexuality have now raised to the status of a confessional matter—that non-heterosexual marriages, and the support of such marriages, are not only sinful but are also in violation of the official confessional stance of the denomination. Those of us in the denomination who disagree with this newly minted confessional matter must either change our minds or leave the denomination. The elevation of this synodical interpretation of Scripture to confessional status is one of the most egregious errors made by the denomination in its 167-year history. This set of decisions has now made it officially impossible for anyone in the denomination to disagree with this interpretation of Scripture without being disciplined and removed from the denomination.
As a member of Calvin Christian Reformed Church, in Grand Rapids (Classis East Grand Rapids), I am serving on a congregational committee to assist in the process of disaffiliation from the Christian Reformed Church. “Disaffiliation” is the polite name given to the process by which a congregation can leave the CRC—from the point of view of those synodical decisions, we are no longer brothers and sisters in Christ and must leave the denomination unless we repent and change our minds.
If the process of disaffiliation works as described by the Church Order, our congregation should be out of the Christian Reformed Church within a year, still Christians but no longer Christian Reformed.
Noreen Vander Wal resides in Pella, Iowa
I am deeply disappointed in the CRC elevating their stance on human sexuality to confessional status. I think about where the CRC would be today if 40 years ago the same would have happened in the “women in office” debate. Closing the door to continued dialogue and thought is a prideful step. But that was two years ago.
This year, Synod imposed the thought police on every CRC congregation. Council members must sign the Covenant for Office Bearers annually, indicating full agreement with everything in the confessions. Who even knows what that means?? I’ve never read the Canons of Dort. How can I sign on to agree with something I’ve never read? The expectations for Council members are totally unrealistic. Conform or abstain or lie, which is exactly what they’ve told the gay community, I guess. My thought yesterday was, “Synod has made liars of us all,” for those of us who want to serve in the CRC, but continue to question or disagree with Synod’s decisions. Just sign the form, serve your church, and keep your mouth shut.
I recently finished my term as a Deacon. As things stand now, it will be my last term on Council in the CRC. I attend a small, struggling, elderly congregation whose founding was outreach- oriented. We continue to profess to welcome everyone, but honestly have dodged the LGBTQ question. We haven’t had the opportunity to encounter it, so we are ignoring it.
Right now we are just struggling to survive. We have difficulty seating a Council. I know this is true in other CRC congregations as well. For a small, struggling CRC like mine, I can’t help but wonder if it is just one more nail in our coffin. I feel our only real option, honestly, is to ignore Synod’s mandate and just carry on with our focus of welcoming everyone. If we at some point have the opportunity to welcome a member of the LGBTQ community, we’ll deal with it then.
I guess just one more personal note I’d add. My husband and I are on opposite sides of this issue. We are still married. We still love each other. We eat at the same table. We talk about it occasionally. Sometimes he gets pretty mad about it. Sometimes I get pretty mad about it. But we listen to each other and continue to live life together. I wish the same could be true of the CRC.
Nicholas Wolterstorff resides in Grand Rapids, Michigan
The congregation of which I am a founding member, Church of the Servant in Grand Rapids, is on the path to disaffiliating from the Christian Reformed denomination. We have been told that we must either repent of our interpretation of Scripture or leave.
I was reared in the Christian Reformed Church and have been a loyal life-long member. I treasured the fact that the denomination represented a distinct and valuable voice on the American religious scene, the voice of the tradition of neo-Calvinism. That tradition has oriented my life for all my days. I likewise treasured the fact that, in its assemblies, the denomination engaged in serious theological discussion of contentious issues. Representatives of different positions listened respectfully to each other; they did not resort to maneuvering to out-vote the other party. Witness the decade-long discussions on the ordination of women. Some time back, an observer of synod from another denomination remarked to me that he found the discussions remarkable; in his own denomination he had never witnessed anything like it.
If someone had told me, 20 years ago, that I and my congregation would find ourselves compelled to leave the denomination, I would have been in grief at the prospect.
Around 10 or 12 years ago, it became clear to me that the CRC was no longer the denomination in which I had been reared. As I listened to what was said in debates at recent Synods and took note of its decisions on such matters as social justice, it became clear to me that not only does the CRC no longer prize open and respectful theological and biblical discussion of differing views, the tradition of neo-Calvinism is no longer alive in the denomination. In its positions and practices, the denomination is now just a small insignificant segment of white American evangelicalism.
When Synod appointed a committee to compose a report on the biblical understanding of human sexuality, it resolved that a condition for membership on the committee was that members agree in advance that same-sex relations are always and everywhere sinful. So much for an open and respectful discussion of the issue!
The committee did as they were told. Their report was an unrelenting defense of the conservative position, declaring it to be clear that Scripture forbids all same-sex relations. The implication was that those who disagreed were either obtuse or perverse – obtuse, if they did not see that it was clear; perverse, if they did see that it was clear but refused to acknowledge that it was.
The Synods that have dealt with the report have followed in the path set by the committee. The view that scripture, properly interpreted, does not forbid all same-sex relations was never considered. Further: Synod declared the matter to be a “confessional” issue: the Heidelberg Catechism implicitly teaches, it said, that all same-sex relations are sinful. The implication, apparently, is that those of us who hold the contrary position are heretics – not just mistaken, but heretics.
I grieve – not because I and my congregation are being told to repent or leave but because the CRC is no longer the denomination in which I was reared and which I have loyally served. It no longer speaks with a distinctive voice on the American religious scene and it no longer prizes open and respectful theological discussion of controversial issues.
Well done good and faithful servants!
Though I left the CRCNA two years ago and joined the UCC, this caused me to weep. The grief is still there!
Although I have left the CRC and am now worshiping in a wonderfulUnited Methodist congregation , this article causes so much grief. So many wise, good Jesus followers being forced to leave the denomination they love. My prayer is that these folks are finding new spiritual home where they can worship
This makes me weap as we see the loss of those who ponder deeply and discuss openly what constitutes Biblical truth. Those of us who stay, perhaps in a congregation that has not tackled the question or aren’t that concerned because they don’t understand these very real consequences, play a waiting game to see what will happen when this “segment of white American evangelicalism” decides that the Bible does not allow women ordained or in office. In my vibrant church, even though I can no longer serve on council, my love for the place, people, and pastor will cause me to stay. But religating all my sisters in Christ to a pew in the back will be the break point. Then my beloved denomination will have truly become one with the political culture of white male dominance that exists in our nation.
Staying or leaving right now is a personal choice. I share your concern for ordained women in the CRC – it is in jeopardy. Synod (and I believe CTS) has become a difficult place for women, in no small part to the attitude of the new leadership toward them – there is a pride in being ‘complimentarian’. The number of women delegates is dwindling, and they are treated with little respect – the synod body was referred to as ‘brothers’ or ‘brethren’ from both the officers and the floor this year. You could see the lack of need for women in the selection of officers. Added to that, many of our ordained female pastors are in affirming or inclusive churches and will be gone. You said this would be your breaking point. I have also heard pastors say, ‘When they come for the women – if that happens – I’m out’. Well, I tell them, it IS happening. I believe those who are staying need to rise up and do something – because if they don’t, this will be the second wave of churches leaving.
I’m grateful for these few voices that capture the heartfelt lament of so many more. Having been born and raised in the CRC, having served it for 46 years pastoring in Canada and the US, I feel abandoned by my mother. I am still trying to get my head and heart around the realization that, after all these years as a trusted servant in this denomination, I am now suspect. Not only suspect. Unwelcome.
Your paragraph that begins with being grateful for those who responded, and the reasons listed for those who did not speaks volumes.
Thanks for these thoughtful and vulnerable responses. They reflect many of my own pondering.
Thank you for these impassioned and insightful offerings. Each one is a gift filled with wisdom. This is a schism that didn’t need to happen, and one that is causing great harm and will cause additional harm. Furthermore, it truncates the great good that would have continued to emerge from this denomination if it had maintained space for differing interpretations on this issue. Retreat into echo chambers hardly connotes courage, humility, or a willingness to grow.
This article contains thoughts of people on recent synods. Every person cited is opposed to what has taken place. There are also people who fully support these decisions. Why doesn’t the RJ contain any of those thoughts? Doesn’t presenting only thoughts from one side contribute to polarity? Wouldn’t it be more balanced to present both sides?
I believe that all these forum comments represent the opportunity to present another side of the issue(s). Your comment above is published here in the RJ forum; your call for balance is welcomed. Is there more information, or are there other thoughts that you, or others, would like to present? I think one will receive a respectful space here if one chooses to use the space respectfully. This is an opportunity denied to many during recent Synodical meetings.
Hi Herb, thanks for your observation. It’s been a long time since I looked at your posts and page, but I don’t recall seeing any essays from Matthew Vines, James Allison, or sourced from Room for All. Many times we have discussed here that RJ is not a “neutral” site. We have agendas and biases, just like everyone else. We try to be fair, but it is not our task or aim to share “both sides.”
Perhaps more pertinent to this collection of writers, we reached out to those who are concerned, confused, distraught, angered, or worse about the CRCNA’s recent Synod actions. They are the ones asking “What next?” For those who “prevailed” at Synod there is really no need to ask “What next?” — presumably more of the same.
And so it begins…..the (forced) exodus of courageous, gifted, visionary leaders and congregations from the CRCNA. My heart is heavy over this inevitable consequence of Synod 2024’s heavy-handed pronouncement and action re the HSR report. The loss of these congregations, our brothers and sisters, will have incalculable after-effects in years to come. A sad, sad time in our denomination’s history.
Seriously! I morn the intellectual, Neo-Calvinist, Kuyperian leaders this decision is forcing out of the CRC. When a giant like Wolterstorff is grieving the CRC’s decisions, you know those in charge have entirely lost the plot. (No matter how many carpetbagging denominational leaders claim to be “more CRC than Al Plantinga.”)
What does “carpetbagging” mean?
I’m assuming you’re not asking for the dictionary definition or historic background here, right?
In this case, I mean outsiders to the CRC who come in to the CRC (nothing wrong with that, by the way; also not a Dutch-centric thing either) without fully understanding our spiritual culture, context, intellectual emphases, etc. and then pushed our denomination into their own culture wars without realizing where the CRC came from or how it did/does things. Perhaps they were more “Young, Restless, and Reformed” than CRC. Perhaps they were more New Calvinism than Kuyperian Neo-Calvinist. Perhaps more Calvinist than Reformed. (More “The Gospel Coalition” than “Engaging God’s World”? More Westminster than Belhar?!?)
A wise person said (after the 2023 CRC Synod): “2023 is when the CRCNA ceased to the the Neo-Calvinist denomination of Plantinga, Bratt, Wolterstorff, Jellema, Mouw, Smedes, Eerdman, Marsden, and Skillen…Trading our birthright for a mess of New Calvinism, re-aligning with New Calvinists like: Piper, Grudem, JMac, Patterson, Mohler, Driscoll, Dabney, and DeYoung.”
Perhaps. Or is it more a return to Louis Berkhof, RB Kuiper, Geerhardus Vos etc. ?
Balanced journalism at its best!
Thank you to all those who’ve responded and risk telling such personal stories and testimony. I’m a retired RCA minister, now a member in a UCC church, grateful to be in a large welcoming congregation. But we all have much to learn, confess and work toward.
Meanwhile, my own home church, like many others in the CRCNA, remains in denial. “It really can’t be all that bad, can it??”
These letters are a sad testimonial to the fact that, yes, it really is that bad.
Thank you,
Steve
Thank you for gathering the reflections of these respondents. This is valuable to me personally as I sort through my options for leaving the CRC.
While I join these responders in their grief and disappointment and anger, I cannot agree in their demonizing of the entire CRC and their conflating the denomination with the unholy work of the Abide Project, who orchestrated this whole thing from the HSR and on through two Synods.
Sheryl,
The HSR was begun in 2016. As far as I am aware, the Abide Project didn’t even exist until 2018.
It existed with the same key people behind it as “The Returning Church”. A simple name change and new social media platform does not mean this group was anything new. The same key names of people who have been part of it since the women in office decision are now Abide.
Well.
All One Body existed already in 2011.
Maybe, just maybe Abide was a reaction to an action?
Perhaps that was a reaction to All One Body. But All One Body was not founded to make everyone in the CRC agree with it. It was to open up the discussions on the place and treatment of LGBTQ+ Christians in the CRC. Of course All One Body endorsed full inclusion and allowed for same sex marriage and non-traditional gender identity to be something that is considered un-Biblical. But it was never meant to force those of our members who disagreed with its platform to be expunged from the CRC or labeled heretics. To me, that was the critical difference. Splitting over an issue that is not “salvific” should never happen.
CORRECTION TO MY REPLY: All One Body believes that issues of same sex marriage and gender diversity are NOT unBiblical and that Scripture may have something different to say that what the CRC has traditionally thought.
Agreed
Fall of 2020 were the first Zoom meetings (which eventually became the Abide Project), gathering to talk through the completed HSR report.
Synod,
I don’t even go to church. I simply know, I mean I knew, friends who took their lives because of the living you condemned. You ARE the cause. But you’ll wiggle out of that by hiding behind your three letter weapon. It’s getting harder to love, face it, my enemies.
Thanks to everyone for sharing your struggles here. This is hard stuff. I pray that amidst the grieving and heartache you all are filled with holy rest and deep peace in knowing that God is so much bigger than the smallness of one group of strategic minds contained in tiny human skulls, who perhaps in their desire to be faithful to one particular interpretation have missed the larger gospel plot.
The Creator of the universe cannot be controlled on a tight leash of limited understanding and is certainly more vast than any one denomination can ever fully account for. If Jesus has anything to say about it, the Divine embrace reaches beyond what this new CRC — or any of us — can likely even begin to imagine.
Praying God’s peace upon you in the struggle. The struggle is real. The struggle is good. The struggle reveals that your faith is not asleep, but alive in your hearts, alive in your minds, alive in the world.
I’m so grateful for your presence in the world.
So sad that so many old friends are grieving. I left too, years ago, and it still breaks my heart. But I’ve also found a new home that works for me. I hope that can happen for all of you, as well.
Where are you now, John?
The irony is overwhelming. The church, tasked with living out God’s love and grace, is instead the source of deep pain and rejection.
It’s tragic to be forced to choose amongst the limited options. In Canada, I hope we can make better options for congregations before it’s too late. The exodus has already begun – many congregations stand to lose their entire leadership. One wonders what the remnant of the CRC will look like in years to come.
The most interesting (to me) comment from the various aggrieved CRC members who lost the battle against Big Orthodoxy (or, more caustically, the TheoBros™️) is the one at the very end by Nicholas Wolterstorff:
“It (the CRC) no longer speaks with a distinctive voice on the American religious scene and it no longer prizes open and respectful theological discussion of controversial issues.”
Actually, I think the opposite is true. And, from the sidelines, but as someone who grew up in the CRC, it has been fascinating and a joy to watch.
With recent Synodical decisions, the CRC will now speak with quite the distinctive voice among American denominations. It will be almost unique among old, established denominations in that it hasn’t chosen to slavishly follow the cultural zeitgeist and the Dominant Cultural Narrative.
The Returning Church group (or Abide Project) people seemed, quite honestly, like a ragtag group of small, mostly rural, church pastors who, in times and controversies past, eventually knuckeled under to Grand Rapids cognoscenti. There are reports, albeit unconfirmed, that some of these pastors are not of Dutch lineage, not even on their mother’s side.
But they won, against all odds, so to speak.
My prayer is that the Lord continues to fill these people with courage from the Spirit to hold fast to Truth. They’re going to need it.
My impression is that Nicholas Wolterstorff is considered as a highly regarded and esteemed thought-leader in the CRC, particularly among many of the senior bureaucracy and staff employees in the denomination, university, and seminary. A senior statesman?
Many of those same people, because of conscience and conviction, will be leaving the CRC. This will result in profound changes to the direction of the denomination. A new regime?
Or was it just a spelling error?
Marty Wondaal, I can’t help sense that underlying your comments is an anger at those in the CRC who were urban or in academia. I don’t know if your background is rural or what your level of education is, but if anyone has looked down on the parts of our denomination that are rural or with less education, it should be called out. I am not sure and perhaps you could say where you felt this academic part of the CRC “won.” For the women in office issue, there was no decision to require every single member of congregation or Classis to have women serve in offices in their own churches. The profound difference appears to be that for those who support the ABIDE project, winning means eliminating those that do not agree with it on LGBTQ+ issues. You have left no room for a member or congregation to disagree.
FWIW, I grew up in the South Suburbs of Chicago. My job, today for instance, took me to Bucktown and Rogers Park in the city. So, I guess I’m urban. But I also grow corn and soybeans, so maybe I’m rural. I have been engaged in Continuous Education for quite some time, with an emphasis on Wisdom Studies. It’s more or less a self-directed curriculum.
It is quite magnanimous of you to call out those urban academics who may look down on our rural, uneducated brothers and sisters. It is also quite unnecessary.
An early 19th Century plowboy was better educated in Biblical and classical literature than today’s post- graduate Gender Studies major. Likewise, I suspect (though I don’t know) that a typical Returning Church rural pastor (I don’t know any of them, except for their work and writings) is more highly educated than many many of the bureaucrats, college employees, and staff people of the denomination, college, Banner, OSJ (is that still around?), etc.
So it’s not anger or resentment on our part (the rural people) towards highly educated urban sophisticates (HEUS) It’s more accurate to say we have contempt for their ideas.
But here’s the 50 year old problem: while the Returning Church folks were busy tending to their flocks, HEUS, firmly entrenched in their various sinecures in (mostly) GR, were pushing a derivative progressive worldview. And, for the most part, they were successful. The denomination drifted leftward with little resistance.
Until these last few years. The RC folks started winning, because the average CRC member isn’t crazy, and it became apparent that the HEUS might be.
Hey folks. Leaving the CRC is not so bad. I did so 43 years ago over a variety is issues both practical and theological. It was an overwhelming experience of freedom and joy. The communities of belief I have found along the was have been those of curiosity, openness, welcoming, and justice focused. There is definitely life beyond the CRC – more wholesome, gratifying, and enriching.
I am not a member of the CRC or the RCA, but I attended schools sponsored by each of them for a total of 10 years. It sounds as if the 2024 Synod was heavy on truth but light on grace. I’m very sorry to hear of the pain that causes.
There are a couple of things missed here. First is that had the decision been “affirming” there would have been grief by other members and congregations of the CRCNA and we wlould see them leaving or disaffiliating. Witness what took and is taking place within the RCA. Second, what Synod did was essentially to affirm what the church believed for hundreds of years. It has only been within the past few decades that it and society at large has changed its viewpoint. And last up, I am saddened to hear accusatory and condemning comments. I would like to believe that we all are earnestly trying to discern the will of the Lord per Jesus’ teaching. Can either side of the argument claim that they have, without a shadow of a doubt, discerned it? I think not.