Synod Hears About New Faith Formation, Worship Ministries

Almost 100 delegates and visitors to Synod 2015, the annual leadership meeting of the Christian Reformed Church, attended a workshop on Sunday evening to learn how their churches can participate in a pilot program on faith formation.

Syd Hielema, the team leader of the CRC’s new Faith Formation ministry, is testing a model for understanding how people come to faith.

The “Building Blocks of Faith” model includes four blocks: belonging, knowing, hoping, and calling/equipping. The team is looking for 20 churches to join its pilot program “to aid in a congregation’s self-reflection and ministry planning . . . while still leaving room for the messiness and unpredictability [of following] the Holy Spirit.”

“This is our way of ‘trial and erroring’ into developing tools to walk alongside congregations,” said Hielema.

Synod 2015 also received a presentation from the CRC’s new Worship Ministries team. Leaders of that team reported to synod on progress toward their goal of “networking, strengthening, and resourcing.”

Delegates heard that Worship Ministries invited 12 churches to a networking event where they discussed the joys and struggles of worship.

Later, the team hosted a training session on sound and visual technology for 10 churches. The team is providing the recordings of the training sessions online so other congregations can benefit from these sessions.

Congregations interested in the Building Blocks pilot program should contact Hielema at [email protected]. The team’s website is crcna.org/faithformation.

For continuous coverage of Synod 2015 including the live webcast, news, video recordings, photos, liveblog, social media links, and more visit www.crcna.org/synod.