Synod 2025 - Overture 7
Written by Tyler Wagenmaker
This article was written before Synod 2025 convened on May 28th.
There is a temptation to believe that most of the work of charting our beloved denomination forward in an orthodox direction is largely finished in the CRC, now that Synods 2022, 2023, and 2024 have deliberated and made their solid decisions regarding matters of human sexuality. Robust standards were laid out of what we expect of our officebearers when it comes to upholding the doctrinal teachings of the CRC, and ‘exceptions’ to those biblical standards were not permitted.
But it would be a mistake to think the work is finished.
Synod 2025 has before it an opportunity through Overture 7 (from Classis Zeeland) to continue the important work of shepherding the various ministry and institutional boards forward in a healthy Reformed biblical direction. The CRC has a long history through our agencies and institutions of living into our Reformed identity where ‘every square inch’ of this world belongs to Christ the King. Because of this Reformed understanding, 150 years ago our denomination established Calvin College & Seminary, to train up teachers and preachers to help God’s people better know God’s Word and God’s world. Because of this Reformed understanding we engaged in robust missions both in our home lands of the United States and Canada as well as lands beyond our two nations’ borders. Because of this Reformed understanding we engaged in ministries that helped us to more faithfully love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Because of this Reformed understanding we created discipleship ministries to help train us up into maturity.
Through our agencies and institutions we came together as individual churches and as classes to do broader ministry, to live out our calling as Reformed Christians. And in setting up those agencies and institutions Synod created boards to oversee that work and carry out the mission of the church in those agencies and institutions. It was a way for us as the church to faithfully live out our Christian faith, being good stewards of the resources entrusted to us by our God.
But it’s for that reason that the work of Synods 2022, 2023, and 2024 is not finished. The desire of those synodical delegates to see our Christian Reformed Church once again more robustly and lovingly grow into our Reformed and evangelistic identity needs to continue forward, reaching into the work of our shared ministries and institutions. The challenges of our post-Christian Western world are growing more acute, not less, and therefore the need for our shared ministries and educational institutions to rise to those challenges also grows.
For that reason Synod 2025 will be given an opportunity to more actively participate in what was previously a more perfunctory matter at every Synod, that of approving (or not) board members that oversee and govern our shared institutions and ministries, such as Calvin University, Calvin Seminary, and the Council of Delegates. In the past (if you’ve ever served as a delegate to a Synod you know that) near the end of Synod delegates were given a list of names with a brief bio, provided by the respective institutional and agency boards, for an “up/down” vote.
But often delegates felt that they were largely voting ‘blind,’ not being able to more personally invest themselves in the interviewing process, even on a committee level. We as delegates were essentially ‘rubber stamping’ names of nominees provided to us that most delegates didn’t know and had no way of getting to know in the space of our brief window of time in that week. And so these votes were cast based largely on ‘trust.’ Trust the institution. Trust the agency. Trust that they have put forward the best nominees for the positions needed to be filled.
This trust perhaps worked better when the CRC was a more culturally monolithic church body where most people knew most everyone else, either directly or indirectly through family ties, friendships, or having gone to seminary or college together. However, those earlier days have changed as our denomination has now become more wonderfully diverse. That diversity brings new blessings, but it also brings new challenges…the challenges of not knowing each other very well.
Overture 7 seeks to help change this by creating a new Synodical Advisory Committee, to join the other existing Advisory Committees that meet to do the committee work of Synod. Those committees then forward their reports (unified or else majority/minority reports) to the full body of Synod for adjudicating and voting. This newly-proposed advisory committee would be tasked with doing these individual interviews (the overture helps to spell out how that could happen in a practical way using today’s technologies), to help the delegates get a fuller sense of where these board nominees are at theologically, biblically, and ethically. For instance, do they know the gospel? What is it? Are they able to articulate it? What is the Reformed faith? How might they apply the Reformed faith to the particular board they are being asked to serve on? What is their view on human sexuality? On marriage? On the sanctity of human life? What is their view on baptism? Questions such as these.
Now the various boards that presently govern our agencies and institutions have many different concerns to keep in mind as they go about selecting possible board members (diversity, expertise, etc.). But for Synod, that governing church body concerned primarily about the gospel and doctrine, there is a vested interest in ensuring that prospective (or re-nominated) board members are confessionally Reformed and rooted well where the CRC wishes to see its agencies and institutions live out our shared gospel-ministry work.
The work of continuing to bring greater vitality and commitment in our agencies and institutions to our shared confessional Reformed heritage and life isn’t yet finished. And Synod 2025 will give us a very important and vital opportunity to continue on in the necessary work we have all begun.
(Rev. Wagenmaker has been serving as the pastor at Beaverdam CRC in Hudsonville, Michigan since graduating from Calvin Seminary and being ordained in 2000. He has served on numerous classical committees over the years, as well as recently a six year stint on the Council of Delegates. He presently is serving as a board member on the Calvin University Board of Trustees. He has been a delegate to Synod numerous times over the past 25 years and will be attending Synod 2025 as a delegate from Classis Zeeland.)
Every Tongue Confess | Philippians 2:11
As mentioned last month, the Abide Project Convention planning is well underway. We are excited to be hosted in Ontario at Redeemer University! The theme for this year is Every Tongue Confess from Philippians 2:11.
As a former member of successive CRC congregations, we continued to pray for CRCs restoration to Biblical orthodoxy. As such we are rejoicing about the path you are on and agree with the author of this article that there is (much, much) more work to be done to achieve that goal. There will be significant obstacles on the way to overcome but with the Lord none are too great. The same hermeneutic that confused many in the CRC on the sexuality controversy has plagued the CRC on other issues too. Those ought to be addressed as well to return to Biblical orthodoxy. There is something else that had become rare when we withdrew from the CRC, the neglect of covenant theology that upholds the promises of God, the obligations of its members and the threat to those who follow their own willful path. Is God holy? Is man righteous? When is there actually a need for repentance? Is the need for Christ still at the centre?
How sad - that such a narrowing, tunnel-visioned, and basically 'cutting out' approach should be boasted in this way. Please be aware of how easily narrow-mindedness can be mistook for righteousness.