In praise of the CRC

Within the Christian Reformed Church (CRC), the last two years of bickering about the Human Sexuality Report (HSR) have been exhausting and disillusioning. For all the discussion, all the words that have been written, and all the time and energy invested by hopefully well-intentioned people on all sides of the conversation, we have accomplished very little beyond another major schism and a crisis in church polity.

My wife is a social worker and often talks to her clients about the power of mind over mood. Our patterns of mind tend to determine the way we feel, and by recognizing this we can shape our perspectives by choosing what to focus on and which thoughts to nurture. This isn’t easy work, but it can be vital for people struggling to find hope. In this spirit, then, and as a rather personal exercise in trying to find hope for this beleaguered denomination, I offer the following non-exhaustive list of things that make the CRC worth preserving (in no particular order):

1. Integration of faith and learning

We’ve historically recognized that faith is enriched and refined by the pursuit of knowledge, and have built many of our institutions around this principle. This empowers us to engage with culture, to test everything and hold onto the good. When we’re at our best, this disposition helps us to accept ambiguity, recognize the limits of our own understanding, and to conduct ourselves with humility.

2. Every square inch

Kuyper’s catchphrase has become a cliché, but it offers an instructive framing of the sovereignty of God and the purview of redemptive work.

3. SERVE projects

The CRC has a longstanding relationship with ThereforeGo Ministries (an independent organization formerly known as Youth Unlimited and Young Calvinist Federation). Many young people have been blessed by this great vehicle for faith formation! In my teenage years I went on three SERVE projects, and I hope my kids have similar opportunities. We should generally recognize that short term mission experiences are set up more for the people going on them than the people being served (i.e., there are more cost-and effort-effective ways to accomplish the service components of such trips), but getting young people to think about discipleship as being wound up in service is a very useful exercise.

4. Alvin Plantinga

This could be said about any number of our luminaries, but for brevity I’ve chosen one of the heaviest-hitters. Any denomination that could produce Alvin Plantinga must be doing something right.

5. Alcohol

Most Christian Reformed people I know seem to have healthy attitudes about this particular one of God’s good gifts, and – unlike some Christians – can enjoy a cold beer on a hot summer’s day in a relatively uncomplicated way.

6. Liturgy

This varies from church to church, but as far as I can tell the CRC mostly hasn’t gone along with the evangelical revolt against liturgy. In fact, we operate a liturgical think-tank in the form of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship (cf. integration of faith and learning). Following patterns and structures adds depth and richness to communal worship, and connects us to each other as a denomination and to some extent the larger church across ages and locations

7. Engagement with culture

I remember reading the Focus on the Family insert in our church’s bulletin one Sunday when I was a teenager, and coming to the conclusion that the writer was mostly wrong about Sir Mix-A-Lot. The particulars aren’t important, but I was encountering a strain of Christian thought that seemed terrified of secular culture and counselled separation from the world at all costs. Contra this “head in the sand” or “head for the hills” position, the more thoughtful strands of the Christian Reformed tradition have cultivated tools for discernment and invested heavily in the idea of common grace (cf. integration of faith and learning).

8. World Renew

Our denomination’s development organization punches way above its weight in terms of food security, peace, justice, community-building, and disaster relief programs, and has flawless accountability scores from third party charity assessors. In my early 20s I taught for a year in Haiti with World Renew, and the long-term staff that I met there were phenomenal people: deeply compassionate, unendingly selfless, unfailingly practical, and unassumingly faithful. They loved Jesus deeply and made it their life’s work to care for the least of his people.

9. Covenant

In an age of disposable everything, the idea of covenantal theology is unique and counter-cultural. We trust that God’s commitments to us aren’t just personal, but for the community of believers across generations and cultural circumstances. And we make commitments to each other on this basis too, which form the bonds of our communities. As we wrestle with deeply divisive issues (which we have many times before throughout our denomination’s fairly brief history), we must not lose sight of our covenantal love and commitments.

There has been some speculation that the morass of confusion, disagreement, and hurt surrounding the Human Sexuality Report and the last two Synods’ responses to it will be the schism that ultimately brings down the CRC. If this were to happen, there are enough other inflections of the Reformed tradition on both sides that breakaway conservatives and progressives (or whatever we want to call these factions) could probably forge new denominational partnerships and covenants rather than go it alone. And, indeed, maybe it’s time to rearrange the deck chairs of Reformed Christianity in North America, although it would be a messy divorce. (Who gets custody of Calvin University? Etc.). But I really hope that, to borrow Phillip Yancey’s description, this “tiny ‘transforming’ denomination” which “has had an enormous influence on science, philosophy, and the arts” can find a road back to some form of unity and a way to nurture and preserve the strengths that have made it so impactful in the first place.