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”). Continue reading
