Discussing the State of the Church

Rev. Bomsu Kim was pleased that Christian Reformed Church leaders came to Seattle, Wash. last weekend to share a report detailing social and cultural changes confronting the denomination.

“This is something that I’ve been looking for for a long time,” said Kim, pastor of Seattle Dream Church.

“The denomination must listen to its churches, especially to the minority churches.”

Kim was among about 25 people, representing about a dozen churches, who attended the meeting at Bellevue CRC near Seattle.

The meeting was held to discuss and get feedback on a report titled “Discerning God's Mission Together: Join the Conversation” (view the summary) prepared by the CRC’s Strategic Planning and Adaptive Change Team (SPACT).

It began with a PowerPoint presentation of the 33-page report that is filled with graphs, tables, maps and statistics painting a picture of the CRC’s past, its current strengths and difficulties, and posing questions about the future.

The report also looks at challenges facing the Christian church in general in North America.

"This is the first time in many years that the denomination has gone out to talk with members across North America, trying to determine what God is doing in our culture, and how do we want to respond as we move ahead together," said Rev. Darren Roorda, pastor at Community CRC in Kitchener, Ontario.

A member of the CRC's Board of Trustees, Roorda is one of the team members who have spread out across North America in recent weeks to present and discuss the report. Rev. Gary Bekker, director of Christian Reformed World Missions, accompanied Roorda to Seattle.

For those people unable to attend a SPACT meeting in person, CRC Communications is sponsoring a two-part webinar from noon-1 p.m. EST.

Creating a New Ministry Plan

SPACT first presented the report at a meeting in Grand Rapids, Mich., in early October. Meetings were also held in Denver/Red Mesa, Chicago, Philadelphia and in Iowa.

The strategic planning process aims to help the CRC create a new, not simply updated, ministry plan, Roorda said.

“The BOT is saying we have to turn things upside down so that what is healthy remains and then we can develop a healthy biblical way of doing ministry.”

Once the team has completed its meetings across North America, the information will be compiled and presented to the Board of Trustees, which will use it to craft a new ministry plan incorporating ideas, recommendations and priorities gathered from congregations.

After visiting Seattle, Roorda and Bekker met with church groups in the Vancouver, British Columbia, area.

At Bellevue, SPACT held a morning session with church members and an afternoon, focus-group meeting with Seattle-area church planters.

Speaking in the morning session, Kim said: “This paper acknowledges the Asian church, but doesn't really address its concerns. We need to remember that everyone fails if we let the others fall where they may.”

The report says that the CRC has compiled strong theological statements on the importance of multi-culturalism. But that emphasis has not always translated into significant initiatives, Kim said.

The Struggle of Young People

One aspect of the report that elicited quite a bit of conversation in Bellevue and again in the Vancouver area had to do with the issue of young people either leaving or not joining the church. Numbers of young people attending church have plummeted in recent years, mirroring a trend across nearly every denomination, the report says.

Dena Nicolai, 29, a Master's degree student in theology at Regent College in Vancouver, said a recent controversy involving The Banner, the CRC's monthly magazine, over the publication of articles dealing with evolution and sexuality highlights the issue.

Nicolai said that while neither she nor many of her friends agreed with the point of view put forward in the articles, they were disturbed that the Board of Trustees had acquiesced to requests from churches and classes to reprimand to the editor.

“Young people … are frustrated in trying to stay committed,” she said. “They think in this case that the CRC was telling us what to believe.

“This whole issue seems to bring up the topic of the denomination's unwillingness to engage young adults without being so defensive.”

Nicolai spoke at a focus group for young people held at Willoughby CRC in Langley, British Columbia.

“I don’t like some of what is happening, but I plan to stick it out,” she said. “If we are not here, we can’t carry the torch of leadership.”

Commenting on a portion of the report that discussed the growing lack of church affiliation, especially among young people, Eric Likkel said he runs into people all the time who fit into that category.

He said that just the previous day he had spoken with a young man who said his parents had attended church but he no longer goes, finding little use for it in his otherwise satisfying and busy life.

“He is one of a significant group of people,” said Likkel, pastor of Emmaus Road CRC in Seattle. “They simply aren't interested in church any longer."

The report says that those who report “no religious affiliation” in the U.S. have risen from two percent in 1950 to nearly 20 percent in 2010.

Truth is ‘Relative’

Playing into this, the report says, is the growth of a culture in which more and more people believe truth to be relative.

Even in the church, beliefs vary. Some say the historic confessions of the church should be paramount, just behind the Bible, while others say the confessions should take a back seat to a more “evangelical” approach.

Regardless of  where people fall on that issue, they tend to agree that the focus of the denomination should be on fostering and forming faith and evangelism in the local church.

“We need to lead with Christ’s love and not doctrine,” said Mari Olsen, a member of Bellevue CRC. “We must be willing to go out from here to spread God’s word and don’t be worrying about the harvest.”

Signs of the Shifting Culture

The report also touches on such demographic trends as the decline in the number of people getting married, the rise in single-parent households and the increasing poverty rate in the U. S.

It notes as well that the percentage of giving to the CRC is declining and that denominational loyalty is on the wane.

It found that the number of churches offering Sunday evening services continues to drop and overall membership in the CRC has gone down.

CRC classes reported a great deal of dissatisfaction, saying that they feel isolated and under-resourced.

“This part of the report expresses one of my frustrations with where the church is right now,” said Rev. Doug Fakkema, pastor of a CRC congregation in the city of Anacortis, which is located on Fidalgo Island about 80 miles north of Seattle.

“There is very little discussion from the top level of the denomination about the state of classes,”

If the church is going to set a new direction, he said, “the middle needs to be part of it."

Rev. Greg Selmon spoke to the part of the report that discussed the demographic trend showing how older, once-established CRC congregations have continued to lose members and some have even closed their doors.

His church, First CRC of Seattle, has seen a steady decline in members, he said, and he is working to reverse that trend, but making wholesale changes is not easy.

Former BOT member Pat Storteboom was serving on the board when it decided to undertake this process and had the job of contacting classes to inform them that it was taking place. She also did in-depth interviews of people for the SPACT report.

Storteboom said that from the start, the board was committed to a process that would include consulting with congregations so that “we as a church at the local and classis levels can do whatever ministry we need to do together.”

SPACT meetings will take place through early December and then team members sift through reactions and comments, looking to present their findings to the BOT next year.

In the past, the BOT has sent out reports to churches and done some listening, but it hasn’t come up with a solid plan charting how the denomination can move forward and what everyone needs to do to make that happen, said Gary Bekker.

This time seems to be different.

“There is a real commitment on the part of the BOT to do something really well and to figure out what the Lord would have us do,” he said.