In Like A Lamb

While the big spat over “All One Body” got all the drama at #crcsynod 2015 the big news was really the consolidation of Home Missions and World Missions (“don’t say the m-word”) and then the consolidation of almost everything else with it.

During the Home Missions/World Missions “debate” the most important thing to notice was that lots of people wanted to give speeches and they were all in favor of the motion.

Love is Love

Part of the reason for the lack of dissent for merging-oops-um-consolidating the two agencies was that both board directors and both agency directors spoke in favor of the decision. Saying “no, you two can’t work together” didn’t really make any sense. Most of the speech making promised in glowing terms how this new union would unleash great new energy by now disregarding lines on the map but few concrete examples of exactly how this would happen were offered.

“Is there a Bill Hybels Disciple in the House?” 

Synod by nature (despite us being a dour bunch) can easily become a self-congratulatory love-fest and Synod 2015 had plenty of that. We kept telling ourselves how “historic” our decisions were, and they quite likely were, but what is probably more important to watch was how easy it was for us to be historic. This was not the 30 years of trench warfare of women in office, this was more like the collapse of the Soviet Union. All of a sudden there no longer seemed to be a reason for what we used to care about so deeply.

If there was something that nearly went missing this Synod it was the once powerful coalition of what used to be called “Home Missions” disciples. From the 1960s into the 2000s this group spearheaded

• Racial reconciliation churches in New Jersey, Chicago, Grand Rapids and other places mostly in the US
• Drank deeply of the church growth movement usually punctuated by pilgrimages to the holy sites of the Crystal Cathedral, Willow Creek, Saddleback Church and Fuller Seminary.
• The denominational priority for church planting
• The Kingdom Enterprise Zone collaborative effort with the RCA
• Coffee Break and CRC Small Group Ministries
• CRC Campus Ministries
• CRC Ministries in Classis Red Mesa
• The Dunamis or charismatic elements of the CRC

Home Missions was not just the agency where much of the institutional support for these efforts came from but “Home Missions” became a label that identified individuals and groups of pastors within the CRC. There was an esprit de corps within this faction. People knew who was who, trusted them with “the mission” and could be called upon at Classis or Synod to show up, speak and vote for budgets and ministries that were dear to their hearts and felt central to their efforts.

What was shocking at Synod was that this group didn’t even get a proper burial. It was as if they never were.

“I’m not dead yet…”

As conspicuous as the historic “Home Missions” factional absence at Synod was so also any talk about church planting. It would be wrong to say that Home Missions is no longer involved in church planting. A lot of church planting is now mostly found in the Church Multiplication Initiative, the institutional structure leading the Kingdom Enterprise Zone project in partnership with the RCA. The Implementation Team made up of CRC and RCA leaders do a lot of work trying to catalyze movements around mostly the US (because the RCA isn’t in Canada like the CRC is.)

Home Missions continues to fund church planting, and often through CMI work on assessment, coaching, etc. Church planting as a function of Synodical funding and control is what has changed dramatically over the last 15 years. Home Missions grant funding used to make up a significant portion of a church plant’s seed money. 20 years ago Home Missions very well might put over a quarter million dollars or more into a single church plant. Those days are gone and not necessarily for the worse. Without being able to scale up that level of funding those practices put limitations on the numbers of church plants that could be fielded. Sometimes that level of funding could be unhelpful for the eventual self-sufficiency of the plant. The main thing to note is that Synod (through the Home Missions board) no longer plants churches, classes, local churches, and entrepreneurial church planters do.

My focus here isn’t really on the changes in how the CRCNA plants churches (that would be worthy of its own post) but in how these changes have impacted the political/theological/social ecology of the CRCNA. Home Missions as an agency no longer functions culturally in the CRCNA as it used to, as the clubhouse, the rallying point, the institutional embodiment of that faction. This transition happened before the union of CRHM and CRWM and made it possible, possibly inevitable.

Figuring Out Where It Fits

Both World Missions and Home Missions face similar challenges. World Missions was birthed in the heyday of the colonial missions movement. Home Missions’ last episode of clear institutional identity and factional strength aligned with the rise of the church growth movement. The CRC put its own spin on these broader movements and sought to embody thing in its own distinctive way. As those broader movements pass into history the CRC expressions of them also lose energy and focus.

I am not saying that these agencies aren’t doing good, important and even exciting work. The strength of all CRC denominational efforts that I’ve been privileged to be a part of are the man and women all over the world who are doing all sorts of amazing things. Even though Synod can be self-congratulatory many things done by CRC agencies are not sufficiently known or praised. The little I know of World Missions today leads me to believe that it may be doing some of the best work it’s ever done. What we don’t have is a kind of clear, distinct, simple and widely know mental image of its role in the vast and complicated reality of the church in the world today. World Renew has a lot of that. BTGMI has some of it. CRHM and CRWM struggle with it more than the others I suspect.

Home Missions likely has even a greater challenge than World Missions on this score. It is no longer a funding agency recognized as being a significant financial partner at the local level. Some of its “high touch” exposure has been delegated to CMI branded stuff leaving none of us exactly sure what we want or need “Home Missions” for anymore. All of this during a period where that old cadre of “Regional Team Leaders” formerly “Regional Directors” or “Regional Home Missionaries” are retiring.

A Few Suspicions

• Church planting recruitment, training, coaching, funding and deployment will continue to be classical and local more than denominational. The denomination will no longer imagine itself as owning a centralized denominational effort in this area. Vision, energy and expertise in this area will have to be sustained from the broader church environment (as well as the RCA partnership) if it will be sustained at all. If it is not sustained this could become a long term strategic problem for the CRC because in a high change, diverse culture new churches will continually have to be planted to embody the plurality of subgroups and subcultures. If something doesn’t have an institutional champion it is hard to imagine sustained vision and resourcing.
• The Denominational Offices and Services will increasingly take over vision for local church and classical revitalization while the new “Global Missions Agency” spends most of it time and energy on “on behalf of” ministries outside the US and Canada. It will make too much sense not to gather together the ministries directed towards revitalizing the CRCNA for those to stay in “Global Missions” long term. There may be some joint targeting of people groups in the US who come here from abroad but the bulk of stuff directed towards churches in the US and Canada will come from the denomination through most of the 5 streams, not from whatever is left of the “agencies” 10 years from now. I could be wrong, but this is my guess.
• Vision for adapting churches to the changing North American culture will not find its genesis in the CRCNA at all. Between movements and celebrity pastors CRCNA leaders will continue to ride waves that didn’t originate among us and increasingly find institutional support in broader partnerships. This was long true of the old Home Missions faction (racial reconciliation, church growth, small groups, church planting, etc.) In that sense the CMI/Kingdom Enterprise Zone effort is probably the shape of things to come. Partnerships embodied in institutions may increasingly replace solo denominational efforts. If that effort gets broadened to address more of the “streams” this trend will pick up speed. We will likely continue to move closer to the RCA but also possibly other Reformed groups looking for partners.

 The End of the Home Missions Era

I know this thought won’t land well on some but I can’t help but see this as the end of the “Home Missions” era and the community that claimed it. In the short term the staff at Home Missions will continue to do what they’ve been doing, but bit by bit things will likely be relocated either as denominational functions or partnerships along side of the CRCNA. We will have to see how this impacts traditional Home Missions pillars like church planting and campus ministry. My guess is they will become trans-denominational, classical and local rather than denominational.

This also means that the old “Home Missions” faction will no longer function in the larger CRCNA ecosystem anymore either. Is that good or bad? I can’t say. I just think it is.

If you think I’m wrong, feel free to tell me on Facebook or in the comments.