December 11, 2008
As our meeting began we reflected on the fact that we have now completed a 12 month cycle of meetings, since our first meeting was held on December 19-20, 2007. We are pleased with the progress we have made, at how much clearer our mandate and the necessary course of action is to us, and for the positive encouragement we have received from the churches. Yet, we have no illusions about the remainder of the journey being an easy one! We find our relationships as a group to be rich, firm and with an openness and trust of one another that enables us to wrestle with big issues in a healthy way.
Our commitment to engage in conversations with many throughout the denomination holds firm. We are grateful for 56 Pastoral Correspondents from 44 classes who serve as our eyes and ears and give us helpful feedback. We’ve met with some minority groups and hope to meet with more. Open discussion sessions at Synod are highly important to us.
We are currently working on several key documents that we believe will be strategic for the church to study and discuss. Each of these is in draft form now with progress expected in the coming year. The largest is entitled “Affirming Baptism and Forming Faith” and will treat the understanding of our baptismal identity, reaffirming our baptisms, profession of faith, and coming to the Lord’s Supper. “Reflections on the Interpretation of I Corinthians 11” will hopefully lead the church to take a fresh look at Paul’s instructions concerning the Lord’s Supper.” “The Practice of Christian Unity” will be a six part series of Bible Studies primarily on I Corinthians 11. We aim to join efforts with Faith Alive Christian Resource to update materials from “Welcome Children to the Lord’s Supper” so parents have current tools for conversations with their children.
Next summer, Synod 2009 will be the second synod to receive our reports, review our work and give us feedback. We valued the open table-talk discussions of Synod 2008 and look forward to more of the same this year. It is our hope that synod will be willing to discuss some of our major materials in plenary session (see the above paragraph), but we do not plan to present anything for adoption. Hopefully, freedom from the need to vote will create a more open atmosphere for good discussion. However, we believe it is important that synod ask the churches to review the advice of Synod 1995 about children and the Lord’s Supper. (You may want to see Acts of Synod 1995, pages 714-717). Our plans are that the Synods of 2010 and 2011 will be the sessions to receive our major proposals. Since ours is a five-year mandate, that will still provide Synod 2012 for presenting materials for study, forms for liturgical use, and other materials for continued growth.
We’ll be meeting again on April 17in Grand Rapids. On June 15-16 during the sessions of synod we hope to meet at Trinity Christian College in Chicago. We ask your continued prayers for wisdom and pastoral compassion as we shepherd the church in this process.
Howard Vanderwell, Secretary
