Sea change, vibe shift… Whatever you want to call it. It’s done. It’s time to start building the next CRCNA. If we don’t then it’s done. 

I still think the CRCNA has a lot to offer the North American church. It’s time to start putting it together. 

We need: 

1. A new kind of network.

2. A new circulatory system. 

The CRC “network” was a hub and spoke network. You can find the diagram in an old Yearbook with Grand Rapids at the center and then spokes or rays going out in every direction in the US and Canada. That made sense for the 20th century. Institution required concentrated buildings, offices, staff, publishing houses, schools, seminaries, etc. Lots of brick and mortar. 

After THE war the CRC had a diaspora where CRC churches were planted as satellites and those made up the nodes of the circulatory system. It helped the CRC indigenize a bit in North American soil. The Canadian experience was also a refugee effort where refugees from war torn Europe got a chance to thrive, build, heal. 

Synods 2022-2025 severed the “head” of the denomination and the hub and spoke system. The HUGE denominational brick office building was sold. “Offices” consolidated into “Thrive”, pre-war collective ministries (CRWM, CRHM, BTGH) have been reshaped, consolidated and in some respects retooled, spun off, or resolved in one way or another.  This is a hard process, but it is the way of institution. Institutions are there to facilitate what the ministry needs and the culture affords but disruption happens to institutions and they must adapt. 

The hub and spoke model was key to the circulatory system. Children of the diaspora were enculturated at Calvin, Dordt, Redeemer, Trinity or Kuiper and then sent out again. Christian Day schools had their part. These institutions survived the CRC baby bust by attracting like minded evangelicals and others from the surrounding localities. They may in some cases feed all the way back into the churches but that flow has been insufficient to help the churches adjust to the baby bust. 

Focus

Church growth, revitalization, and planting is all dependent on discipleship and leadership development. The amount of growth the CRC will receive will be directly related to the number and quality of Christian leaders it grows. Leaders are grown not in schools but churches. Schools will have their roles but churches must be the primary focus of this growth. 

Ideas

I think we need leadership incubators. I think they need to be decentralized but connected. Initially I’m thinking to start at least Sacramento, Tucson and Florida because these three areas all have some momentum in different aspects and a lot of church planting experience. Other clusters around the US and Canada can certain step up and try to build one. 

These won’t be centrally planned or built from Grand Rapids. Grand Rapids itself might have one develop from its churches, but they will tend to be either Classically based or something created by a cluster or smaller network of churches. 

1. Classes and local clusters will initiate their own leadership incubators. 

2. They will develop their own profiles, create their own plans, raise their own funds, collaborate and partner with and through denominational networks and institutions. 

3. Participants are not drawn only from the denomination but also from other surrounding churches. Denominational entities that collaborate with these incubators will help re-circulate new leaders throughout existing networks in the denomination. While some portion of the new leadership will be ready to plant new CRCs in the US and Canada around and beyond the incubators other leaders that perhaps aren’t church planters will go into other CRC churches and bring what they learned to those churches helping them do better with evangelism, discipleship and leadership development. 

4. These new leaders will impact the existing institutional infrastructure of the denomination over time and the cumulative impact should be to revitalize the CRC for the current context and help it to keep updating itself as conditions change. Most of these incubators are likely to be in areas of early cultural change which will help the entire denomination prepare as changes filter through the cultural matrices. 

As the number of “incubators” grow, and other clusters and classes begin to implement even some of what is learned in other places we should see in 20 years a marked change in the vitality of the denomination. 

Interested to hear your thoughts. pvk