Executive Director Addresses Minority Concerns

Rev. Jerry Dykstra, executive director of the Christian Reformed Church in North America, pledged on Saturday night that he would stand with ethnic minority members of the CRC as they struggle for a greater voice in the affairs of the church.

Speaking to the biennual Multi-ethnic Conference of the CRC, Dykstra said he is passionate about helping create a more multi-ethnic denomination and to find ways to put members of ethnic and racial minorities into positions of authority.

The CRC has about 200,000 members in 1,100 churches from coast to coast in the United States and Canada.

“We can’t lose sight of the vision that there are no longer any tribes and that we are all one in Christ. We’ve been washed by the blood of the Lamb,” Dykstra said to those attending the conference that met through Sunday on the campus of Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, Ill., where Synod 2009 also is meeting this week.

Dykstra was invited to speak at the conference in part because of concerns over administrative changes he made earlier this year that some say have left minority voices out of the decision-making process at the higher levels of the church.

“Where the tension arises is how do we get to this goal of creating a multi-cultural church,” said Dykstra. “Our sin (of racism) is with us today in this church. It has been so easy to judge people by the color of their skin, how they speak, what culture they are from.”

He said it is a sign of progress that Rev. Sheila Holmes, pastor of a CRC congregation in Paterson, N.J., was elected on Saturday as vice president of Synod 2009, making her the first African American woman to hold that position. She sat in the audience as Dykstra spoke. Afterward, she and Dykstra hugged and prayed together.

“I wanted to jump and shout when she was elected,” Dykstra said.

“Sometimes I have to make some nasty decisions that make people unhappy,” he said. “So I stand with you, but allow me to be myself. I stand with my wife, Linda, although we don’t always agree.”

Dykstra says that when he made the changes earlier year, abolishing the Ministry Council that had included the director of Race Relations and replacing it with two other groups that do not include a person of color, it was like shining a light on the inner workings of the church and finding that it remains lacking in bringing ethnic minorities into high-level, leadership positions.

“I have a suspicion that shining this light will bring about change,” he said. “The CRC of today can’t be the CRC of the ‘70s, ‘80s or ‘90s.”

As a way of addressing issues of racial diversity, Dykstra described his own upbringing in which he had little contact with people of color. He was shaped by a culture in which many of the people around him were culturally similar, he said.

Only through experience, dialogue and especially listening to other people’s stories, has he begun to see how much bigger the world is, compared with the one he grew up in.

In a question-and-answer session, several people said they appreciated Dykstra’s willingness to address them and especially his vulnerability in telling his own story.

But he also heard from a Native American pastor who said he is “passionately dying for reconciliation.” The pastor went on to say that much damage has been done to his people by “well-intentioned, smiling, kind-hearted Christians” who do not really understand the needs of his people.

Dykstra said that, “We are taking a new approach to how we do business in the denomination and there will be places for other voices.” He said perhaps abolishing the Ministry Council, a group of CRC agency directors that met regularly to discuss ministry issues facing the church, stirred the pot and got people angry – and maybe that is a good thing.

“Nothing had changed for many years. We need to make it happen, but it won’t happen, I know, until we bring new people and new faces into the denomination,” said Dykstra.

A Hispanic pastor from Grand Rapids, Mich., said that the church has made progress. “We are all guilty to some degree,” he said, urging people to “work together and recognize that our differences can enrich this church.”