Clay Libolt wrote this piece for the Banner
This is hard to discuss until we see the report, or easy. So now we get the disclosure of the COD option. OK. A few more weeks and we’ll get the whole thing but I don’t know if it will add more than what Clay lays out here.
There is an irony here, and I think Clay points to it, that on one hand the centralized increasingly self-imagined “church” visible in the denominational exoskeleton attempts to increase its sense of control while in reality its ability to control actually diminishes.
The Deeper Issue
Clay and I agree that there are deeper issues. I think the implicit hope from the restructure is not simply better management or efficiency, but new energy, enthusiasm and most of all identity for the CRCNA. The idea is that this corporate model can establish a vision and identity (brand) that local churches will embrace, model, and fly the flag for. If Willow could do it why not a larger organization with more resources? Hasn’t Pope Francis revived enthusiasm in the Roman Catholic church? Can’t we look for the same lift from Grand Rapids?
We are hoping for someone or some vision that will transcend the deep divisions that are in the broader North American church which are present in factions in the CRCNA. The hope is that a unified vision will arise so that the factions and the conflicts between them will no longer take up the limited relational bandwidth that the denomination has.
At this point it is hard to imagine a centralized management structure developing this. CRC people may take pride that its “on behalf of” ministries are well run, but there is also the truth that the factions are present in the agencies themselves. Agencies too will have factional conflicts within them.
CRC Factions Continue reading →
