Why the Mid-Level Structural Conversation We’re Not Able to Sustain is More Important for Local Fruitfulness than the Bi-National One

Viewing Structure From the Center

When we come to the structure conversation I think there is an implicit bias that asks the question “how can the distributed elements of the denomination help the center?” That isn’t to say that the center of the doesn’t care about the rim, it’s just an organizing bias.

The human body has a wonderful thing called “the circulatory system”. It is amazing to think of the fact that when I eat something the nutrients of what I consume are distributed to my body’s 37 TRILLION cells! These 37 trillion cells in the Apostle Paul’s illustration of “members” all contribute to my ability to act as one person uniting those cells in mission and purpose towards focused outcomes.

The CRC structure conversation needs to pursue three purposes of “structure”

1. How can the diverse members of the united organism pursue mission together?
2. How does the skeleton give strength and form for mission together?
3. How does the circulatory system move nutrients and process information and signals throughout the system.

Hub and Distribution

Part of the challenge the CRC faces is the diversity of the communities it attempts not only to engage by to be informed by.

1. Geographic Regional Culture: The US West is not like the US East or the US Midwest or the US South nor like the Canadian provinces.
2. Ethnic Community: Majority Culture, Dutch-immigrant culture, Hispanic cultures, Asian cultures, African-American cultures, African-immigrant cultures, Eastern European cultures, etc.
3. Age-based demographic cultures: Millenials, Xers, Boomers, Builders
4. Christian tribal cultures: Old school Reformed, young and Reformed, Evangelical, Roman Catholic, African-American church culture,
5. Wealth-status cultures: wealthy, poor, dependent, independent
6. Red state, blue state, Canadian liberal and conservative
7. Gender conversations
8. Theological diversity

CRC systems have to be informed by, engaged with, sensitive to, in dialogue with many if not all of these different cultural systems.

The CRC and the RCA have a variety of current structures and mechanism for engaging this diversity.

Regional Ministry Teams

In the mid 2000s Christian Reformed Home Missions (CRHM) launched Regional Ministry Teams. These teams were to be made up of staff and lay volunteers to promote and support the work of CRHM in their region.

Soon after they were launched murmuring arose. The CRC whisper network was saying that other agencies were intrigued by this CRHM idea. Regional Team Leaders (formerly entitled Regional Directors) quietly expressed concern that they might be asked to not only promote the work of CRHM but might also have to do something for CRWM, BTGH, and other agencies or they might have to create teams with other agency representatives on board. They team leaders thought this would dilute their effectiveness. Their concerns were carried up the chain of command and the idea was dropped. CRHM regional teams would be strictly CRHM shops.

Regional teams have varied and in some places been through a few iterations. In some places CRHM is experimenting with some other things, but in any case there is a body of learning out there on forming and working this kind of structure.

Regional Synods

When I started working with the Northern California Kingdom Enterprise Zone I was invited to attend the RCA Far West Regional Synod. They have a yearly meeting and do some part time employing of people to specialize in certain areas on behalf of the region. I noted that in some ways the Far West Regional Synod functioned in some ways similar to CRHM Regional Teams.

I’m told by my RCA friends that RCA Regional Synods also function in diverse ways. Some are more mission oriented than others. They are free to structure and pursue their work in different ways.

Classis

The Classis is of course the official regional structure built into CRC ecclesiology. I have long thought that classis is the least developed, most poorly funded and least resourced level of our three level system. I have also thought that it probably is the area of CRC polity with the most bang-for-the-buck potential.

There are challenges and possibilities with our classical tradition

• Most Classes have little or no paid staff so most of their work is borrowed or levied from local churches. The result of this is often that classical work is a low priority for the people doing most of it. In some cases our classes are a depressed structure. Experience has taught pastors and leaders to have low expectations from classis and to tolerate it as a necessary evil.
• In our classis I think the most potent tool our classis had was the Classical Interim Pastor. This specialist in time knew most of the churches in classis very well, helped stabilized established churches when they faced transitional crises, helped mentor new clergy as he handed offer churches to them as they ended their period of clergy vacancy, reassured local congregations that classis had their back and would be there for them. Our failure to maintain this position in classis I think puts our entire classical program in jeopardy by not adequately protecting one of our most important assets, the large, ministry share paying established congregations.
• For many local churches the classis is the most immediate structure for emergency assistance. Church visitors are assigned by classis. Classis helps process credentials and helps with pulpit supply if they have a clergy vacancy. Classis sometimes offers start-up funding for a new program. Classis offers a team of people who can help answer practical questions.
• Classes are a self-funding structure. They can raise funds sustainably from their local churches. Classes have ecclesiastical status in our system. They have identity and power to act. Classes have rules and a tradition to guide them. Local churches have voice and authority in classis. Every church has a classis.
• Classes are intended to be deliberative bodies. How well are classes functioning in this way? Are their meetings consumed either by celebration without deliberation or perfunctory maintenance of church order and synodical requests? Classis should be a place where a lot of the conversation and process that the CRC needs to do on a variety of levels (theological, practical, pastoral, missional) takes place and then gets pushed towards the center through the overture system. How well is this system functioning?
• Classis can represent both levels of cultural expression and have within accessible levels of cultural diversity. If in the USA the states are laboratories of democracy, in the CRC system classes can be laboratories of ecclesiology.
• City Classis: The RCA has established a non-geographical city classis that is differentiated in that it specializes in supporting the common culture of large urban areas. This experiment sacrifices geographic proximity for cultural expression. It will be important to see how this develops. As the Kingdom Enterprise Zone project continues to develop, this might be an area where CRC and RCA can collaborate.
• Ethnic Classes: The CRC has three ethnic classes: 2 Korean language and culture classes and Classis Red Mesa. These classes pursue flourishing by allowing ethnic ownership by a minority culture. There are upsides and downsides to these experiments. Might we also experiment by allowing some churches to participate in 2 classes at once? Might we experiment by considering other ethnic minority classes to give classical focus and ownership to other minorities in our midst?

LEAD Teams and Clusters

A new development in the CRC has been the establishment of LEAD teams and clusters. LEAD teams on the West Coast stand for Leadership, Encouragement, Accountability, Dreaming. These are groups, often mostly of clergy who meet monthly for ongoing support, training, encouragement, accountability, planning, fellowship, and whatever else they wish to pursue. In my case our Sacramento cluster began informally before the West Coast Regional Team launched the LEAD team program and our group has continued to morph and change over the 15 years we’ve been meeting together.

In my classis that has a Kingdom Enterprise Zone we’ve also now sought to integrate RCA clergy in our LEAD team structures. Increasingly these LEAD teams are an indispensable part of our strategy for keeping clergy healthy and happy. They become part of the classical fabric of establishing community support for one another. They become a support system for church planters and spouses.

Denominationally Connected Classical Functionaries

• Almost half of our classes don’t have Safe Church Teams. There is no realistic way that Synod can make this happen with its old methods of nagging and threatening. The system of Synod simply mandating things from the classes doesn’t work.
• The downsizing of agency boards reduced classical involvement, communication and support for denominational agencies. I touched on this in the Rise of the Sy-Board piece.
• Pastor-Church Relations tries to maintain a network of Regional Pastors. Regional pastors are first responders for pastoral care for clergy and their families. The current network is fragile and full of gaps. Pastor-Church relations continue to try to strengthen the network but in many ways they face similar challenges as the Safe Church Office.

It’s clear to me that we don’t yet have an adequate structure for accomplishing these important tasks. We’re going to have to get creative, and probably commit more resources to figuring out how to have regional structures that express denominational partnership while also giving regional expression.

Diversity and Specialization

You’ll notice in these distributed structures the tension between establishing structures where there are diverse communities and voices and those that are more segregated or specialized. Both have value and are important.

Diversity helps us know ourselves by getting to know another who is different from ourselves. This helps us know the world more broadly and to know our own blind sides.

Specialization helps us to focus on the needs of a specific community. It also helps to develop and elevate leadership within those communities which might not happen if those individuals stay as minorities within a majority community with its own biases that tend to favor emerging majority culture leaders.

Emerging leaders from a minority community usually have experience of diversity because they are always having to engage a power structure from below. Members of a minority community almost always know themselves and the majority community because they had to learn that community well because of their power disadvantage.

The CRC needs to have both structures of diversity and specialization within its distributed systems.

Structural Priorities Moving Forward

Looking at the structural question from a center-periphery and systemic perspective suggests a few priorities or goals we might keep in mind as we have this conversation.

1. Encourage the Bias to Distribute Assets Broadly

The CRC has a geographical center of gravity in Western Michigan. It has sub-centers in Burlington and Chicago. As we saw with the Collaborative Working Groups piece a lot of the implicit community knowledge and biases used for generating ministry ideas will emerge mostly from those communities.

To the degree that the CRC can distribute those assets and be informed by people from other places it can expand its range of implicit community knowledge and biases. This should help the CRC reach more people from a broader background.

2. Consider Establishing or Strengthening More Regional Hubs

“Hubs” can be offices, positional leaders, committees, teams, and communities. The CRC has always had natural hubs in immigrant colony areas like Lynden WA, Ripon CA, Paterson NJ, etc. David Snapper’s study of the history of CRC church planting interestingly noted that proximity to these hubs greatly impacted church planting numerical success. Figuring out how to either take advantage of these hubs (or at times resist them) might help us diversity our missional posture to North America.

If Tim Keller and the RCA City Classis are correct that North American world cities are key for missional engagement then perhaps we should consider how trying to create hubs in these cities in partnership with other organizations can work for us. The Kingdom Enterprise Zone project might be an interesting place to start with this.

3. Broaden the Use of Job Sharing with Embedded Veteran Distributed Leaders

As leaders develop their need and responsibility for broader leadership grows. Classes and agencies would be wise to consider buying part of the time of these leaders from their local churches while keeping them in their local churches. This has been done before. It can be a tricky relationship to manage but it is fruitful. Why?

• Keeping veteran leaders in local church leadership while they exercise broader leadership keeps them fresh and up to day with on the ground ministry.
• Currently most “celebrity” church leadership are senior pastors in flagship churches. This is no coincidence. The discipline of local leadership is vital for informing local leaders more broadly.
• Buying time from local churches allows them to reinvest that money in younger leaders who will naturally be mentored by these veteran leaders.
• Having a part of veteran fruitful leaders is sometimes cheaper than buying Full Time Employed denominational leaders, furnishing them with office space, etc. Full time leaders are still needed. The organizations need that kind of focus that a part time leader can’t really commit to. Even if a job is 50/50 the split is never even. The key is finding the right balance of full time leaders, leaders committed part time to an organization and lay volunteers.

4. Continue the Proven Practice of Incentivizing Through Start-up Funding

As I said earlier probably one of the best things Classis Central California ever did was start the Classical Interim Pastor position. Classis would never have done this if it hadn’t had CRHM offer 10k for the first few years to support CRHM goals in classis. That 10k was a relatively small investment compared to the investment that the classis and local churches put into the position. CRHM has seen similar return on investment with church planting.

Local and regional groups are often afraid to start new things and some strategic investment at the right times can push them over the edge. These kinds of investments can pay for themselves by strengthening the large established ministries that shoulder the bulk of classical and denominational support and increase the felt value of classical and denominational ministry.

5. Do Whatever It Takes to Strengthen and Re-Invigorate Classis

My favorite Haitian proverb is “The village goat dies tied to the post.” Classis is too often that village goat in our ecclesiastical system or perhaps the neighborhood dog that catches rats and cleans up the garbage for the village. He is the servant of many but loved by none. If you’ve lived in the third world you know how dogs are in villages.

Classis is the hub where bi-national and even global ministry connects with local ministry. This is especially true in the CRC where we have very few true mega-churches. Mega-churches on the North American scene have sufficient resources to function sometimes as classis and even denomination. In our system we need to make up for that lack of local body weight with collaborative regional body weight.

Because classes can raise their own funding it is difficult to point the finger at lack of resources as being to blame for poor classical performance. It is finally a vision question. We can naturally get more excited about both big things and local things and classis is too often not enough of either and we are suffering for it.

There are so many areas where classis could best address our challenges:

• Increasing CRC ethnic diversity
• Developing leadership in a scalable environment
• Relating with the RCA and other denominations
• Encouraging and rehabilitating pastors
• Training lay leadership
• Christian education and community development
• Face to face deliberative bodies that can work through tough cultural and theological issues
• Conducting city level missions
• Housing ministries that impact local congregations with contextual savvy
• Establishing and developing diverse and even competing visions for ministry and theology within a confessional conversation

These are just some off the top of my head. Classical or regional bodies of the right size and location can do these things but we have little vision for sustaining these efforts.

• Anything denominational is in danger of being too distant or disconnected to do much local good.
• Anything local is in danger of being too isolated to do much scalable good.
• Classical and regional structures can do this in-between work.

While the CRC has done some good work in the past at Classical revitalization sustaining this work has been a low priority. The culture of this work can not and should not be coercive. It is leadership development work where the classical incentives grow as the fruitfulness and potential becomes locally and regionally apparent. This is one of the highest priorities with the leakiest motivational leadership buckets.

This is especially true because we are a denomination of small and midsized congregations with a high percentage of rural churches. We don’t have a stable of A list and B list celebrity pastors to carry the vision and leadership weight for us. We have to learn collaboration, partnership and structure better than the PCA or the ECC.

Which Structure Needs The Most Attention?

The CRC has been talking denominational structure almost non-stop for more than a generation. It is obviously an important conversation but I suspect it is of secondary importance to the middle-level structure conversation we should be working. Whether we go with options A, B or C in the 2014 Task Force report will probably have less ministry and numerical impact than how we manage the middle-level structure conversation because THAT level impacts local churches more than the bi-national level.

The reasons we don’t sustain the mid-level structural conversation more vigorously is because it is the village goat or the neighborhood dog. When the denominational level with its dozens of leaders feels the chafing of the mismatch of vision and structure they have the resources to launch and sustain the conversation. They have the position and resources to hire consultants, run study committees, put reports in the Agenda for Synod, have Synod take an hour to discuss these matters.

I don’t begrudge this, it needs to happen. What is apparent is that Synod is ALSO the level that MUST help the mid-level judiciaries do this but it doesn’t have the same kind of felt-need motivation to do so. The costs tend to be less obvious and more diffuse.

Where do we see the crisis in mid-level leadership?

• Only half of classes can sustain a “safe church” team and I don’t know how many of those are fully functional
• The numbers of Article 17s (clergy separations from their local church) and depositions continue to rise
• reduced interest and support for “on behalf of” agency ministry
• Many classes are struggling to do even their basic work of supporting local ministries through church visitation and regional pastoring.

I would also suggest that the continued decline of the local church (aging, lack of evangelism, lack of leadership development) can be far better address at the classical and regional level than it can at the bi-national level. We just don’t feel it because we are looking for one solution (like a celebrity pastor or a large famous church) or a local solution (like some wished for new young pastor who will solve all our problems) but in most cases both of these are pipe dreams.

Ministry is most often about sustained, sacrificial, day to day, face to face work. The local level is vital but it is at the regional level where local institutional momentum is sustained and broader second-level leadership expressed in a face to face way.

Can we as a denomination engage and sustain this challenge in something more enduring and vigorous than the episodic attempts we have made in the past?