CRC loses landmark church

When the motion for Edmonton’s Fellowship Church’s disaffiliation from the Christian Reformed Church of North America (CRCNA) was approved at the March 8 Classis Alberta North meeting, members of Fellowship met the news with murmurs, joined hands, smiles and tears. The motion didn’t take long: a unanimous vote, a farewell letter, a blessing and a prayer, and Fellowship officially separated from the denomination that nurtured it.

But the journey up to this point was a far longer one. As Fellowship attendants filed out of the meeting, their linked arms and flowing tears spoke of a denominational commitment spanning 46 years.

Roy Berkenbosch’s letter on behalf of the congregation expressed both sadness at the situation and confidence in Fellowship’s future, while ending with a note that they are leaving not in anger but on their own terms.

Fellowship has always been an anomaly within the denomination, Berkenbosch said, referring to its traditions of lay-led leadership, a lack of paid staff positions, and weekly, open-table communion. While unique to the CRC, these characteristics are indicative of the original mission planted by Fellowship’s founding members in 1979.

Jim Visser fondly remembers those early days, when he attended household meetings to dream of an inclusive space of worship. “Eventually I said, ‘It’s time to start a church,’” Visser recalls with a smile. “A church that would be lay-led and inclusive.”

And so began the congregation whose sanctuary is nestled in The King’s University. While its disaffiliation occurs in the midst of the CRCNA’s Human Sexuality Report (HSR), issues around sexuality are only the tipping point of what has been four and a half decades of advocating for inclusion within the denomination.

Bearing witness

Jonathan Nicolai-deKoning, King’s faculty and active member of Fellowship, recalls the aftermath of the CRCNA’s 2022 synodical stance on human sexuality. Fellowship had been discussing gender and sexuality for years before the HSR, and had already developed an inclusion statement. He says that it quickly became clear that there would be no “gray area in terms of participation for a church like Fellowship.”

“Disaffiliation became apparent quite early in this whole process,” Visser says, echoing Nicolai-deKoning, “but we felt that we had to do it as a witness, and a challenge.”

In the 1990s, this same desire to be a witness is what fueled Fellowship to lead the charge on women in ministry.

Dolores Huizinga, Edith Sinnema and Jenny Visser played key roles in this piece of Fellowship’s history. Huizinga was the first woman to sit as an elder at Classis Alberta North, while Visser was the first to represent as a deacon. Sinnema, developing her passion for pottery at the time, crafted a clay bird with a broken wing to serve as a metaphor for the absence of women in ministry. On its broken wings, the bird flew to the Grand Rapids Synod, where advocates for women in ministry took turns holding it during the meeting.

“Without the women,” Sinnema explains, “it’s like a bird with a broken wing – the church cannot fly and cannot work as we are meant to.”

Now, 35 years later, as the CRCNA grapples with a different aspect of inclusion, she and Huizinga believe the metaphor applies to the LGBTQ+ community; without their presence, the church is not whole.

But Fellowship does not only want Classis to think about the LGBTQ+ community; in his farewell address, Berkenbosch asked Classis to think of the children.

“Did you weigh the kids?” he asked. “The ones you have baptized . . . and upon whom you have declared the promises of God’s unshakeable love. The children are watching.”

From representations of flightless birds to exhortations to remember the children, Fellowship is what one member, Alice Joosse, calls a “conscientious objector” to the CRCNA’s synodical decisions over the years.

An anomaly, a conscientious objector, or maybe the right phrase is “safe place.”

When Jamie Hurlburt first attended Fellowship, a pride flag on the welcome table extended a welcome invitation. “It told me I was safe to show up as myself,” they say. And when they came out as trans to their Anglican church a few years ago, the general response was “Blessings on your journey.” Hurlburt echoes this affirmation with a sentiment of their own: “I believe that I’m following God’s path for my life by embracing my trans identity.”

Blessings on your journey. What could the CRC learn from these four simple yet encouraging words?

Bob and Louisa Bruinsma, longtime members of Fellowship, believe there’s a general need to rethink the relationship between local churches and the broader denomination. For Louisa, the CRC has aligned itself with a business of “structuring our denomination top down and tightening the screws” so that it is a rigid hierarchy.

“I think denominationalism has sometimes been a kind of an idolatry,” Bob says, “where people define the church of Christ almost entirely within the scope of their own denomination.”

As Fellowship looks ahead, some members think it might become a church that welcomes people leaving other churches. Although alliance with another denomination or with a Canadian CRC are both possibilities on the table, Fellowship seems to prefer the idea of focusing inward for the near future, to spend time on healing.