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Ministry in the Acute Angles

June 16, 2019
Paul DeVries, chair of the Council of Delegates, presented a COD report to Synod 2019

Paul DeVries, chair of the Council of Delegates, presented a COD report to Synod 2019.

Gayla Postma

The Christian Reformed Church in North America’s logo contains a triangle. It is no wonder then that Paul DeVries, chairperson of the CRCNA’s Council of Delegates, used a triangle as a symbol for the COD’s work when he gave his COD report to Synod 2019.

“Many of us who are here today grew up in a context in which the church had a lot of obtuse angles in it,” said DeVries, referring to the fact that, similar to an angle larger than ninety degrees, the denomination used to be dealing with many large things. 

In 1985, for example, he pointed out that the denomination had 22 standing committees that reported directly synod. 

“They were big. They were obtuse. They covered everything,” said DeVries. Most of the committees had representatives from every classis in the denomination and met several times a year.

In addition, the denomination had several large ministries that each had a large board. 

“We had huge organizations that involved all sorts of people. There was a board of home missions, a board of foreign missions, a board of Calvin College, a board for the seminary and they all had members from every classis and they all reported to synod,” he recalled, adding that it was no wonder that synod used to meet for two weeks instead of one. 

DeVries added that in Euclidean geometry, “You cannot have more than one obtuse angle in a triangle.” 

In the same way, having so many large entities in the CRCNA all active at the same time was not conducive to keeping the denomination strong and united. 

“Synod used to spend a lot of time talking about how we are going to hold all of this together,” he said. The creation of the COD was intended to address this.

“When you have things that are smaller in scope, you have the opportunity to come together in a way that you never could before.”

That is what the Council of Delegates was designed to do. The Council of Delegates began two years ago. Made up of one representative from each CRCNA classis and a few at-large members, the COD replaced several previous denominational boards.

“What the COD attempts to do is bring us together. To take all these wonderful obtuse angles that we used to have -- these huge big boards with great broad representation -- and bring it together in some way,” said DeVries. 

Just as the CRCNA logo is made up of three acute angles, so the COD strives to do its work by fulfilling three tasks, DeVries said. 

First, they do board governance. Similar to synod, they have several committees that do the lion's share of the work and then come together to pass along recommendations to synod. 

Secondly, they carry out tasks on behalf of synod. This can include clarifying expectations around curriculum, exploring processes for enfolding immigrant churches, appointing a small team to develop recommendations around the abuse of power, and much more. 

 “We do what you folks tell us to do. We become a body that is connected to you by this acute angle,” he said.

Thirdly, DeVries said, the COD attempts to deal with everything that synod can’t deal with because synod is only in session one week each year.

“For the  other 51 weeks of the year, when things come up and our staff and various functionaries need support, we try to provide that,” he said. 

In fact, as a show of hands by synodical delegates indicated, the COD’s work touches almost every aspect of denomination and synod’s work.

“If things go well with the COD,” he told the synod delegates, “you should feel set up to do your job.”

The difficulty when you try to do all those things, DeVries added, is that it is entirely possible to overreach.  He acknowledged that occasionally the COD gets it wrong but it tries not to step in when it does not have to. 

“What I want you to remember tonight is that [the COD’s] goal is to be broadly representative, but we don’t want to be obtuse,” he concluded. “We want to bring the church together as a body.”

For continuous coverage of Synod 2019 including the live webcast, news, video recordings, photos, liveblog, social media links, and more visit www.crcna.org/synod.