Synod 2017 Elects Officers
From left: Ed Visser, Rudy Gonzalez, Thea Leunk, and Cornelius Pool
Karen Huttenga
As Synod 2017, the annual general assembly of the Christian Reformed Church, convened on June 9, one of the first orders of business was to elect officers to lead the process over the next week.
Through an electronic voting system, Synod elected Rev. Cornelius Pool as president, Rev. Thea Leunk as vice president, elder delegate Rudy Gonzalez as first clerk, and Rev. Ed Visser as second clerk. Altogether, the executive officers have 17 years of combined synod experience, but only one has served previously as an officer.
Rev. Thea Leunk represents Classis Grand Rapids East. This is her third synod. She also served as vice president in 2008, the first woman to fill that role.
Elder delegate, Rudy Gonzalez, from California South, is attending his second synod. Ed Visser is from Classis Hamilton and this is his seventh synod. Representing Classis California South, this is Pool’s ninth synod. Like Gonzalez and Visser, this is Pool’s first time serving as an officer of synod.
Pool said that he thought that last year would be his last synod. He recently retired from ministry and his classis has a policy about not sending retired pastors to synod. However, with many vacant pulpits in his classis, Pool put his name forward as being willing to attend and was selected by his classis.
“Now look where that got me,” he joked.
Pool said that he is honored to serve synod as its president. He predicts the top three items on the agenda will be the status of the Belhar Confession, the changes being recommended for Article 23 regarding commissioned pastors, and the massive change in administrative structure from a Board of Trustees to a much larger Council of Delegates.
“I hope that delegates will keep their eyes on Jesus,” he said. “As Rev. Drew Brown reminded us in worship this morning, this is about God’s kingdom, mission, and glory. It is not about building our own little kingdoms. Sometimes in the midst of all the details and minutiae of committee work, we can lose our focus.”
For continuous coverage of Synod 2017 including the live webcast, news, video recordings, photos, liveblog, social media links, and more visit www.crcna.org/synod.
