Make sure you catch part 1 and Larry’s response in the comments.

Structuring the Local Church

When I read Larry’s tweets I was imagining he was primarily commenting on the CRC structure and culture above the local church. He first focused, I think correctly on the local church structure. I’ll try to bullet some of his points, which I think are dead-on.

• A local congregation’s structure must fit its size.
• Mission requires freedom
• Mission requires trust
• the CRC’s tradition of local church structure majors on control rather than freedom and trust
• The CRC’s tradition of local church structure slows down decision and movement
• Churches should structure themselves for the next size up
• Does our tradition in structure reflect the immigrant roots?
• The CRC assumes (implicitly in church order and culture as default practice) one size fits all.

As I said think all of Larry’s thoughts here hit the mark. I’ll add a few comments, observations and questions of my own.

Most CRC Church Plants (in my experience) aren’t hobbled by CRC rules but perhaps sometimes by tradition.

• In most cases (but surely not all) if a church (not necessarily a CRC and some CRCs are “late bloomers”) is going to grow large (and probably plateau) it will do so in the church plant phase before it officially organizes.
• In my experience most church plants in the CRC “organize” (take on official CRC polity and assume some connection with CRC structural tradition) late, usually after their growth phase. Its also my experience (maybe because I live in California) that these church plants have pretty good flexibility in working out their own local structure without too much official CRC meddling.
• None of this is to say that I think we do well in helping church planters structure well. I think we leave them mostly to their own devices for better or worse and probably as Larry said when we do wade in we probably do more harm than good. So thoughts on this.
• 1. our culture and tradition are probably subtly hampering efforts of church planters in structuring their plant for growth
• 2. we are certainly not resourcing and helping them in this area which probably means we need better wisdom and a better resourcing strategy for church planters to offset cultural and traditional drag
• 3. While this may be a negative drag on our church plants I suspect it is not a determinative one but more of a contributing one. I suspect we have other elements that are contributing to smallish church plants within our culture and tradition that are probably more of a drag than this one.

Are Large CRC Church Pastors Not Valued By the Denomination?

Larry brings up this point and I think it’s an important one.

I assume that CRC pastors who have grown their congregations, especially a church plant, above 200 are a resource that the denomination should value. That is not to say that those who have not are somehow “less than” the others. It is to say that it might be that these pastors have learned some things that could be shared. Again, that isn’t to say that small church pastors, like myself, don’t have something to offer, it’s just recognizing different gifts and abilities. It may be at this point that we might find some of that bias against large CRC churches that Larry pointed out.

There are multiple directions to this question:

• Do CRC denominational leaders sufficiently value the gifts and skills that CRC pastors who have grown their church large possess? Do they reach out to them, give them access, even priority? Do they help give them a voice or a platform?
• Do large CRC church pastors have any interest in denominational matters? I’d imagine some do and some don’t. It has been my experience that many large church pastors are so focused on growing their own congregation, or a network of congregations with a similar mission method that they tend to ignore or even avoid the denomination either binational or classical?
• A complaint is that large CRC congregations, especially those less than 30 years old are more heavily taxed by ministry share and pension obligations. Are these pastors eager to participate in classis? Are they eager to go to Synod? If they are making an outside financial contribution to the denomination are they eager to also offer an outsized contribution in voiced leadership? Again, I think some (like Larry and Jul Medenblik) have, while I think others have not.
• Do large CRC congregations planted in the last 30 years avoid denominational participation seeing it as a distraction, or worse and encumbrance to their mission? I know that it takes real work to have a congregation that isn’t from a deep colony pocket have much denominational awareness or allegiance when it comes to the membership with little or no denominational identity or participation in other denominational institutions like day schools, colleges, health care facilities, retirement homes, etc. Are these churches CRC in name only or in staff only or in credentials only?

Purpose of a Denomination

John Suk wrote a very worth while blog post about denominations recently. He raised numerous difficult and important questions about the mission, purpose and role of denominations in church life. None of this is new but I’m not sure the CRC knows how to engage many of these questions.

The large church phenomenon as seen in the post WWII baby boom I think is deeply tied to the withering of the mission of denominations. These churches and the networks they have spun off in some ways have replaced denominations. Now as the Seeker movement continues to ebb and identity and networks grow both more global and my cyber we’re not sure what the next twist will be.

We do know that the kinds of disruptions that these cyber changes bring don’t tend to bring extinction to past institutions or modes but tend to change them in unpredictable ways. I don’t expect denominations to cease, they still serve some functions that we need that the other institutions don’t really replace. At the same time what we’ll see is churches participation in denominations, networks, associations, conversations and communities via the web.

How will this impact the CRC? Will the CRC, churches, classes and binational entity impact this emerging world?