I’ve heard a lot of comments about “stealing”. I’m old enough to know
about Dutch-immigrant flight.

The CRC begged for decades to have the non-Dutch, and the non-white
join the CRC FOR its “Reformed Distinctives”. Well, mission
accomplished, sort of.

I know (and others here do as well) Patrick Anthony who pastors
Immanuel Ripon who now made the famous “I’m more CRC than Alvin
Plantinga” quote in response to Ryan’s argument about Alvin’s
gravamen.

pic.twitter.com/VVgqfBEUoO

— Reformed Theology (@urfavecalvinist) June 21, 2024

For many of us it felt like something sacred had been violated because
for the CRC, a particular CRC that I was raised in Alvin certainly was
our hero. He is living at Beacon Hill in well-deserved rest, but of
course he was part of that stories 4 of Plantinga, Wolterstorff, Mouw
and Marsden who were “the brightest and the best” who “put the CRC on
the map.

Patrick came into the CRC from outside the denomination. Was a youth
pastor at another central valley church and a few years ago was called
to Immanual Ripon, not an unimportant pulpit in our classis. Case
Admiral, of that distinguished family of Admiral pastors, and saint in
our classis served there for many years.

For many of us, myself and others who remember the great philosophy
department of Calvin College this was the height of what the CRC hoped
to do in the post-war years.

Patrick, and that crop of millennials not raised CRC know little of
what it felt like for this little denomination to make a contribution
in certain ways. Those ways, however, were always mostly seen and
shared by a certain class and cadre of our church, usually those that
circulated around Calvin.

I remember in the 70s hearing people lament the loss of the
neighborhood. People, often of a different color moved in while CRC
families moved out to more distance, newer, nicer suburbs. It got ugly
sometimes.

The “burnt-wooden-shoe millennials” are the new residents after so
many of the millennials reared out of the pews and pulpits of their
more famous boomer parents. No one drove them out of these pews and
pulpits, they often had other interests than what their parents and
grandparents had built. The pews were getting emptier and emptier.
Jobs came up because even the half empty churches needed staffing.
Seminary rolls wanted to be filled, and of course the people who came
in came in FOR what was on the books, the physical books with written
confessions.

This coincided, to the good fortune of the empty pews, pulpits and
seminary slots with a surge of young men for whom the seeker movement
seemed compromising. They couldn’t go for the happy/clappy or the
boomer vibes of Hybels and Saddleback. They wanted sterner stuff and
the beards and books and masculine energy of the young restless and
Reformed was enticing. There were churches that needed leaders, there
were seminary slots that longed to be filled. EPMC and alternate
routes for ministry had been created because of the looming clergy
shortage.

When the Dutch built house in Ada or Kentwood or Wyckoff or Glen Rock
or Grandville or North Haledon spaces in Prospect Park and Franklin
Ave and Paterson came up for rent and the people buying the new homes
wanted income from where they used to live in those cramped immigrant
neighborhoods. African Americans came up to fill the spaces. Some
Dutch built new suburban churches while others decided to stay and
worship with the black folk. They learned new songs, styles of
worship, many things from former Baptists and AME. It was hard but
they sort of made it work.

Now a group of migrants isn’t filling the houses they vacated but the
pews and pulpits their children vacated. Their kids went on from
Calvin or U of M or Harvard to high status places in the culture and
unlike their boomer parents they didn’t plant new CRC churches where
they went or join diaspora CRC churches where they migrated. Many
didn’t go to church at all. Some went to other big box churches or
mainline churches. But again, those old buildings, pulpits and pews
were empty and those who remained tried hard to fill them.

No one stole Hall and Kalamazoo or the Franklin campus. The Dutch moved on. No one stole
Prospect Park and gave it to the “Arabs”. The “Arabs” didn’t steal the
old Jr. High on N. 8th street in Prospect Park that I went to. Eastern
Christian moved on and Prospect Park was left.

To those claiming “theft” should answer the question of how many of
their children, nieces, nephews and former students actually are
committed to local CRC churches where they live. I hope they can say
most of them. I suspect it isn’t true, especially in places far from
Grand Rapids.

No one stole the CRC, it was abandoned by many of our children. Many
of the Calvin grads that make it out to Sacramento that I find are not
committed to a CRC church. Churches are dying and those managing not
to die are trying to attract people, often Christians, and if they’re
really lucky someone who is excited about those strange books in the
back of the Psalter Hymnal.

The CRC, despite Christian education has failed to catechize much of
its youth. No one stole anything. It was left abandoned and those who
were left trying to man the post were happy to have these young men
and women help keep something alive.

Alvin Plantinga didn’t deserve the quip. It stung, but blaming these
new young men coming in with commitment and enthusiasm of “stealing”
is about as bad as blaming black folk for “stealing” the old
neighborhoods. It isn’t fair and it isn’t helpful.

It really hurts to be the left behind but how many of us know that we
have been left behind. How many of my classmates from Calvin or
Eastern Christian are still CRC? Even more dramatically how many of
our children.

I understand that friends of mine are in pain and people in pain lash
out and say hurtful things. Synod 2024 was the death of a certain
vision of the CRC, but that CRC has been dying for a couple of decades
already.

Synods 2022 to 2024 were the turning of the page. It was the death of
something old, dear, and beautiful and the birth of something. We
don’t know what yet. We will see, but nobody stole anything. pvk