So the overture that I posted a couple of days ago naturally received a lot of attention and created a lot of traffic and comments to the blog. It also started discussion in the CRC Pastors Facebook Page (Open only to current and retired CRC pastors) and to CRC Voices (Open to anyone who wishes to subscribe).

After reading a good bit of discussion I’ve got some additional comments/observations to make on the overture. I wrote this originally for Voices.

1. This overture isn’t primarily about saving money. It is about trust in a system. There are a lot of churches that are loyal to the CRC but have questions about this system whose cost is not small. RCA church multiplication a few years ago had an office with a director and an AA with an office budget of about 400k. The CRC had CRHM with a 6 million dollar budget and 30 or so full time equivalents. The RCA was planting more new churches every year. Now it was planting some different kinds of churches, and planting them in different ways, etc., but if you looked at the numbers one might imagine that the RCA was doing way more with less. Those thoughts raise questions, not because you are against CRHM or the CRC but because you wonder if we’re doing as well as we might.

These churches are responding, slowly, to the conversation that the restructuring effort that ended in 2015 raised. The TFRSC got everything they wanted from Synod and will over the next 3 years construct the Council of delegates that will have classical representation, but what lies beneath the process still rumbles. Many who live far from GR feel like they send a lot of money and they’re not exactly clear how where it all goes (despite pretty meticulous reporting to be fair to 1700) and not always convinced it gets the “bang” they want out of it.

This proposal in many ways wants to turn back the clock on the agencies and give everything but CTS a haircut. It wants in some ways to make it once again their baby and to bring it home.

2. Will this be received as a friendly effort in 1700 Kalamazoo (formerly 2850)? I doubt it but that is to be seen. There might be some at 1700 who are well differentiated and can look at this overture as “data”, but I think there are probably others who see this as an existential threat to their employment and a vote of no confidence in the ministry efforts they’ve worked hard at. Many will simply read this as hostile. I understand that too. (Remember… “data”).

The CRC has a communication problem for which 1700 is not responsible. They try to communicate but the narrow window available to “the person in the pew” is so small that most folks can’t possibly imagine or appreciate all that goes on at 1700, both the good and the bad. This means that other things begin to color their perceptions.

Remember when the Banner changed the paper to one more glossy? People implicitly thought “glossy” equalled “expensive” and protested the change. The change was actually to cheaper paper but how would people know?

Every time a pastor climbs on a plane to GR for something hard to imagine it’s easy to think “boy they are sure free with spending those donations…”

So right from the start 1700 has a tough mission. It is natural to be suspicious.

Many who are giving this a look are not necessarily suspicious, but they’ve got questions, and now they care enough to participate, which is what 1700 keeps telling them they should do. Well, it’s like putting a suggestion box in the narthex. Oh, I’m so happy we have suggestions until I get to read them, then things get complicated.

3. There is simplicity and naivety in this overture. It is like how many US Republican candidates plan to trim down the US Federal government. This overture makes sweeping recommendations. If you actually get into the knitting of making cuts things start to get more complicated. You might be all for getting rid of the IRS until you realize that everyone else is cheating, you want them caught, so you re-invent… the IRS. This is why I liken it (fairly or unfairly) to the US Republican “Tea Party”. That isn’t to make a statement about the source or motivation of the overture. In fact I’ve been surprise how many churches on the “liberal” wing of the CRC (if we can call it that) really like the proposal. It clearly also has a millennial aspect to it.

As you get into the details of some of the recommendations, like Classes supervising foreign missionaries and home missionaries some of us with long institutional memories remember the day when that was the case. In CRWM there were missionaries doing all sorts of things that the missionaries, and their supporters thought were good but other missionaries and people with a bit more experience and knowledge had questions about. These missionaries became rather independent agents keeping supporters satisfied at home while others in the host country had questions. Some of the changes that have happened in CRWM addressed those. Same thing with some CRHM efforts. Some of the changes and bureaucracy at 1700 grew to address problems in ministries and some of that oversight and accountability costs money. It doesn’t mean that in some places changes can’t be made or things are no longer problems requiring that administration, but it means that there are sometimes good reasons for things having developed as they have. It’s hard to know these things from a distance and coming in new. That’s just the nature of large, complicated enterprises trying to do difficult yet good things.

There is a generational changing of the guard in this. Those kinds of transitions often require tearing down some good things only to find later that they weren’t so bad. We see this in local ministry all the time.

4. I’d like to encourage people to consider all of this to be “data” in the pastoral care sense. To me this overture and the desire to reform and remake our systems is a statement of interest and commitment. If/when the CRC dies it will be because people don’t care enough to engage, give or participate. This is a sign that people care, they want to give, they want to see the CRC be the best it can be.

This effort will also revitalize and shake off some barnacles from classes and maybe Synod. It will force a new generation to learn how classis works, how procedures work, how to write an overture, how to try to move something through this 400 year old machinery in order to build ministry and community.

People cry about millennials leaving the church. Well they have showed up with their skills, their desire, their ideas and they want a hand in re-shaping this old denomination. I think this is a reason to praise God. 🙂