How to watch Synod 2026

If I’m honest, I’d rather look away from Synod this year. But I haven’t always felt that way. In years past, I’ve been a keen watcher of the Christian Reformed Church (CRC)’s annual denominational meetings that are usually held at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

There’s one evening of Synod watching that I remember particularly well: Monday, June 17, 2024. I had arrived early for a paint night at a studio in town. I was about to go in and leisurely pick my project before my friends arrived. But I hesitated. Maybe I should just check what Synod is up to first.

The agenda for that night indicated that the 187 delegates from across Canada and the U.S. would be debating how to ensure that officebearers of the church would, going forward, be in full agreement with the previous synod’s decisions on human sexuality. I had watched Synod 2023 just as closely as I was watching it in 2024. In 2023, I was working part-time for my church and part-time for Christian Courier and had written a couple of Synod-adjacent stories. I had a vested interest. Really, it would be prudent to check, I thought. My friends could wait.

At the mic

There was no voting that night, just speeches from various delegates. Pastor Maria Leys-Bowater spoke with passion about the “baiting and switching” she feared if the denomination became less patient with officebearers who don’t agree with everything in the confessions. “No church can be assured that their officebearers wholeheartedly believe what they do not know.”

Recent seminary grad Josh Dykstra expressed concern: “Can I trust my fellow officebearers when they sign a covenant for officebearers saying they will believe the same things I believe without reservation?”

My friend and former pastor when I lived in Victoria, David Salverda, gently reminded everyone that reasonable exemptions for officebearers who couldn’t fully agree to the confessions might still be possible. A sliver of hope. But as synod watchers would find out the next day, those exemptions were never approved.

Campus minister Paul Verhoef also spoke that night. He wanted to remind Synod that the CRC’s treasured confessions, the topic under discussion, do not dictate who is in or out of the body of Christ. They only help locate the CRC within the much larger body of Christian beliefs.

“I am fully within the circle and I’m on the edge on one [topic]. It would be really helpful and, I think, healthy for us to remember that those who are on the edge or maybe even outside of that circle aren’t outside of the body of true faith.”

What does it mean?

Synod 2023 spent hours deciding who is in or out, who is CRC and who is not. It must have been exhausting for all those present. And more than 4,000 kilometres away, I was wondering what it meant for me.

At the end of the summer, my church called for a special council meeting to talk about Synod and how it might impact our congregation. As a member of the church staff at the time, I attended and each person was given a chance to speak. I will always remember the words of one deacon.

“Okay, they made some decisions in Grand Rapids. That’s another planet.”

I knew what he meant. If Grand Rapids is Rome, Terrace feels like the edge of the empire.

And yet we’re not so different. We confess our sins before our sermons. Pop peppermints during the congregational prayer. Give to World Renew at Christmas. Teach Sunday School from the same Faith Alive curriculum. We know what our only comfort is, in life and in death. We can’t just ignore what happens in Grand Rapids because it feels far away. We’re bound together by something stronger than geography or politics. Something that’s hard to describe to people on the outside. Oh, there it is again. The boundaries of “us and them.” Is it unavoidable? Do denominations have to have walls around them?

Paying attention

During Synod 2024, my kids were three and five years old. When I look back, I wonder if I paid too much attention to Synod. I remember reading overtures when I could have been picking fat strawberries in the backyard with my five-year-old. I spent too many afternoons refreshing the committee reports page on my phone when I should have been watching my three-year-old chase bubbles in the moments between Terrace summer rain showers.

But maybe I didn’t pay enough attention to the most important things. Synod this year will spend a good chunk of time talking about church planting, and that’s worth paying attention to. Synod is not a “them.” Synod is an “us.” It’s meant to be a gathering of representatives of our churches, people who know the same rivers and parks, streets and hospitals as we do. So when Synod meets, it’s a gathering of us. It’s right for us to look in that mirror and ask what to make of the reflection.

Synod will be made up of mostly men this year. What does that mean about the way our churches function? What’s broken when the people gathered to make decisions for the church don’t really reflect the people in the pews?

Our congregations are a kaleidoscope. A kaleidoscope of ages, cultures, genders and life experiences. As we come together, drift apart and come together again, we may not always like the picture we see. It may not always look like the “us” that we know. But these are the pieces. The pieces God gave us, and he’s still creating something beautiful with the whole lot of us.