Church Planters Grateful for a Voice

Rev. Randy Rowland was pleased when he and three other church planters had the chance to give their opinions on a new report detailing challenges facing the Christian Reformed Church.

At first, he wasn't sure what to think when he got the invitation to attend a meeting to discuss the report by the CRC's Strategic Planning and Adaptive Change Team (SPACT), titled "Discerning God's Mission Together: Join the Conversation."

Rowland, a church planter and pastor of Sanctuary CRC in North Seattle, Wash., wondered if the meeting would be a one-way discussion, with denominational staff presenting the report and allowing little chance for people to react to what they heard.

But he was pleasantly surprised.

Soon after the meeting got underway at Bellevue CRC in Bellevue, Wash., it became clear his expectation was wrong.

“We’re here as much to tell you about the report as we are to hear what you have to tell us,” said Rev. Darren Roorda, pastor of Community CRC in Kitchner, Ontario, and one of two SPACT members who came to Bellevue.

The other was Rev. Gary Bekker, director of Christian Reformed World Missions.

Members of SPACT have met with CRC members across North America since early October, sharing the report and, just as importantly, taking voluminous notes on what they have heard.

They will compile what they have gathered and then give it to the CRC’s Board of Trustees which is in the process of crafting a new denominational ministry plan.

At Bellevue, SPACT representatives met with members of CRC congregations in the morning and with Rowland and other church planters for three hours in the afternoon.

The morning meeting included a range of churches, representing different types of congregations in the Pacific Northwest.

The afternoon meeting with church planters was more informal, with more give and take.

Church planters and SPACT members sat around a table, comparing notes, discussing where the church is and speculating where it could go in the future.

About halfway through the afternoon meeting,  Rowland said he found few surprises in the SPACT report. As a church planter, he relies heavily on understanding and working with demographic trends, he explained.

But, he told Roorda and Bekker, he really appreciated the fact that he had a chance to respond to the report.

“Often, the churches out here don't think that the denomination is listening to us,” said Rowland.

“Sometimes we believe there is this attitude coming from the denominational level of ‘What can (the churches) do for the CRC?’ and not ‘What can the CRC do for us?’.”

Also at the meeting were Rev. Eric Likkel of Emmaus Road CRC in Seattle; Rev. Greg Selman, pastor of First CRC in Seattle; Rev. Bomsu Kim of Seattle Dream Church, and Rev. Geoff Van Dragt, a campus chaplain at the University of Washington.

They were especially interested in the information SPACT had gathered about young people not joining or leaving the church. This is an issue they live with every day, they said, and statistics cannot really tell the story of the complex cultural issues facing young people.

Youth are caught between the demands of a high-consumption, social-media culture and a hunger to know a God who loves and makes sense to them in the 21st century, they said.

Complicating things is the cultural gap between older Christians and young people for whom personal independence is key.

Selman said he was brought to First CRC, which was organized in 1939, to help revive it, given that the membership is aging and young people are not joining.

Average age of CRC members is up from 44 in 1987 to 54 in 2012, according to the SPACT report.

“I’m finding that this is difficult. We need to change, but change is hard for people when they are used to doing things a certain way,” said Selman.

Likkel said he came to start Emmaus Road several years ago and it has been hard work, building a church from the ground up, especially since many of the young people with whom he works are leery of joining a church.

Kim spoke of the challenges facing a Korean church in a predominantly white denomination. He also finds, he says, he has to be pastor of what occasionally seem like “warring tribes” in his congregation, with older members at odds with younger ones over worship style and different issues.

Van Dragt says that in the work he and his wife, Ashley, do at the university they seek to engage graduate students in matters of faith. They work with a range of Christian believers and non-believers in a secular setting.

Central to many students, whatever their religious affiliation, is a desire for the freedom to make up their own minds about matters that are important to them, he said.