Ordination, Installation Shows Joint CRC/RCA Effort

Rev. Carlinda Peoples was ordained in late June as a Reformed Church in America minister and then moments later installed as the pastor of community outreach at Bethany Christian Reformed Church in Muskegon, Mich.

Given that it involved the same person being ordained into the ministry and then installed into a position at the same church, it was an unusual venture between the denominations. But it went off without a hitch.

“This ordination was a remarkable demonstration of the RCA and the CRC working together to advance God's kingdom in very needed areas … where we need to work and show the world oneness in Christ,” says Rev. Rich Rienstra, pastor of prison re-entry and restorative ministries at Church of the Servant Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Mich.

The service took place, says Rienstra, at an auspicious time, just after the CRC’s Synod 2014 and the RCA’s General Synod 2014 which met on the campus of Central College in Pella, Iowa.

Looking to set a new tone for the future, the denominations gathered and unanimously passed a historic agreement to work jointly in whatever ways possible.

They also spent part of a morning focusing on how the denominations are working through what is called the Reformed Collaborative. They learned about union churches, which are CRC/RCA churches doing ministry together.

They also discussed various church-planting-initiatives, as well as efforts with a characteristically local flavor such as the one Carlinda Peoples is undertaking at Bethany CRC in Muskegon.

“My job involves being an arm of Bethany Church that reaches out to those Christ has instructed his followers to be attentive to,” she says.

“Much of my interaction is with the unchurched, the homeless, the dechurched, the locked out and with those who are  incarcerated in correctional facilities as well as personal prisons.”

As she looks back on the late-June service in which she was ordained and installed, Peoples says, she is pleased to consider all that went into it and how it reflects ways in which the CRC and RCA are “working together, targeting and addressing ministerial needs as well as areas, planning and setting missionary goals, moving us closer to unity and to the oneness Christ spoke of.”

Being able to take on the new position at Bethany, with its links to both denominations at a time when the CRC and RCA are entering new areas of ministry together, is an honor, she says.

But in the context of her ministry, she says, the people know little about the CRC or RCA as denominations and care more about the richness of God’s spirit being alive.

They are drawn to God through prayer, personal relationships, worship and especially the types of mission they see occurring.

“We need to remember that, in any of the joint activities of the RCA and CRC, mission is the measure,” she said.

At the same time, not to be ignored, are the many the resources and types of support that denominations can bring to a ministry and ultimately to mission, she said.

“People may not think about these being there, but they are,” she says.

In the case of the CRC and RCA, she adds, “We consistently utilize denominational resources, such as our creeds, statements of faith, educational, academic and missional tools.”

Beyond resources is Christian theology and how it draws people and the mission of the church to the cross, she says.

“I do believe that regardless of one’s affiliation, whether it be the RCA or CRC; the call to worship, the call to serve, the call to build up the body, and the mandate to bear the image of Christ Jesus are the priority of worshippers, of servants and of believers.”

Peoples is no stranger to the CRC. She worked with Rich Rienstra in his CRC prison ministry in Ionia, Mich. as she attended Western Theological Seminary in Holland.

Of her call to ministry to Bethany, she says, “I needed to wait on the Lord as he restored those places that needed to be restored.  He moved quietly  and opened up the call for me to serve.”

In the end, she was brought forward, she says, to serve in two denominations at a time when various cross-denominational efforts are taking place.

“It is very affirming to be able to do this,” she said. “I have the opportunity to be faithful to both the RCA and the CRC and to continue to serve God who gets the honor and the glory.”