Our need to belong
God is with all of us, wherever current fractures in the Church leave us.
Several years ago, my father gave me a copy of our family tree going back seven generations. It was quite grounding to see where I came from and how I fit in.
Interestingly, our family genealogist (a distant relative in the Netherlands) chose to include two important pieces of information alongside many of the names – the person’s vocation (baker, baker, baker, blacksmith. . . ) and the church office that they held (deacon, deacon, deacon, elder. . . ).
Clearly, I was born into a family that placed great importance on church membership. As a minister in the Christian Reformed Church (CRC), I felt a deep gratitude for the faithfulness of my forebears.
Which is why the decision I am now facing feels so weighty.
Even though I am not officially pastoring a church right now (I’m retired), I find myself out of sync with the recent changes of the Christian Reformed church and am wondering what to do with my ordination. Given its current doctrinal rigidity, I can no longer be a faith leader in my denomination. If I was asked to sign on today, I couldn’t.
So does this mean I need to cut ties?
The possibility seems unthinkable to me. It breaks my heart. Where would I go? What do I do with all of the good memories? How will I find my place again?
This is where I’ve always belonged.
Evolved to belong
It’s hard to describe, but there is something about this decision that seems bigger than my cognitive capacity to process it. It’s not about simply weighing the facts and choosing. It feels more like a dismantling of who I really am. Being a part of the CRC is intrinsically tied to my identity.
Jan Van Sloten, in front of the family bakery in
Wezep. (Photo credt: John Van Sloten).
This is how belonging works – we connect to something and that something shapes us. This connection is so important that our bodies have developed early warning systems to alert us to its absence.
And according to Duke University researcher Dr. Mark Leary, “The fact that human beings evolved an arsenal of mechanisms that respond to real, potential and imagined losses of acceptance and belonging supports the notion that being valued and accepted was exceptionally important throughout human evolution.”
Human beings have always needed to belong. God built that capacity in all of us.
God knew that to be fully ourselves, we need to be seen, found worthy and respected. When we feel anxious, lonely or depressed – capacities that can be genetically passed on from our forebears – we give evidence to the fact that we’re not meant to be alone. Negative experiences like these are relational alarms that warn us that things are not as they should be.
Maybe this is why I’ve felt so much stress recently. Not only have I retired from a job where I was deeply connected and always belonged, but I’m also about to potentially disconnect from generations of forebears who called the Christian Reformed church home.
A funeral
Earlier this fall I attended my aunt’s funeral via zoom. It was held in a traditional Christian Reformed church. When I saw the photos of my aunt and uncle, cousins and grandparents on the memorial slideshow, I felt a deep nostalgia well up in me. As I watched my family walk into the sanctuary and fill the front pews, and as I listened to the old hymns, with their theologically rich and Reformed lyrics, playing on an organ, I felt a bit homesick.
This is the church that formed me.
I couldn’t help but smile when the pastor announced that his sermon would be based on Psalm 46. This was my grandfather’s (a deacon and a baker) favourite psalm.
And I found comfort as my cousin read the psalm and recited these words of belonging; “The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress” (vs 7 and 11).
Psalm 46 makes the point that no matter what happens in life – if the earth gives way or the mountains fall into the heart of the sea – God is with us.
Even if the church rejects you, and you feel lost and alone and maybe a bit fearful that you may be the one who is not seeing things right, God is still with you.
God is with all of us in the Christian Reformed Church – wherever this current church fracture leaves us.
John Van Sloten).
I have a sense of comfort when I remember that the Christian Reformed church itself was the product of a series of church schisms going all the way back to the Reformation period.
We belong to God regardless of the fracturing that results from our theological certainty.
It took a family funeral to remind me of these truths.
What made my aunt’s service so meaningful for me was seeing how many church pews were filled with her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. So much fruitfulness and faithfulness born out of one life.
God is always faithful – even when the church sometimes acts the way it does, and we sometimes act the way we do.
We belong to God no matter what.
And belonging was the final word at my aunt’s funeral. Before singing the closing hymn, the pastor asked everyone to stand and say out loud the words of question and answer one of the Heidelberg catechism: “Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death? A. That I am not my own, but belong – body and soul, in life and in death – to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.”
We belong to Jesus, no matter what happens.
Thanks for the reflections, John. I experience much of the same thoughts and feelings as you, although I am not a pastor. I feel like I’ve been pushed out of the church of my birth, baptism, confession of faith, service as elder and deacon, attendance for 69 years, living out of the creeds and confessions, fully take up the call in my life that “our world belongs to God,” and now, so sorry, you’re out.
This comment speaks to me, in particular: “It’s hard to describe, but there is something about this decision that seems bigger than my cognitive capacity to process it. It’s not about simply weighing the facts and choosing. It feels more like a dismantling of who I really am. Being a part of the CRC is intrinsically tied to my identity.”
John Hiemstra
Thanks John.
Hi John – Thank you for this thoughtful reflection. Although my roots in the CRC are not so deep as yours — my ancestors were Mennonite and God brought me to the CRC as an adult — I am feeling the same sense of loss. Paradoxically, it feels like it is recent synods that have left the CRC, not the churches or their members. I pray that God, whose church it is, will bring restoration.
Thank you so much for your article. I have been struggling with a sense of belonging with the CRC since I was a teen. In hindsight I attributed my behavior as rebellion.
But these days I think it was much more complicated.
Since my parents have passed away I have lost that sense of heritage that was very strongly connected to the early CRC. Immigrant family from Holland, church and Christian school builders, and expected Profession of Faith.
Now with this recent “fracture” i need to look again at my sense of belonging with the CRC which is almost negligent due to recent years of attempts to connect.
It is almost a blessing that Synods decision has happened as it has forced me out of hiding and encouraged me to try to connect with the CRC again.
Thank you for this article which has helped me recognize a loose thread that needs to be mended.
Thank you for your words John. As a retired, now former, pastor in the CRC your words resonate with my own journey. As I reflect on a career of striving to include the gifts of women, of divorced individuals, single parent families, and others; I felt our synod was silencing my calling and my efforts. I will always be Christian Reformed, but the church of my memories is not the church of 2025.
It’s a hostile take over, plain and simple. The long term impact of community destruction should be held against those who are responsible, it’s really unconscionable. Our sense of community is an essential human right, not to be tampered with lightly. And frankly, it supersedes small changes to creeds.