Video overtures?!
Part three of "Four Fresh Approaches to Synod."
When Angela raised this idea, I had many questions at first. How can we ensure that people will even watch? How will people refer to the videos on the floor of synod and in advisory committees? Will there be a strict template? Would videos enrich the work or synod, or restrict it?
One thing that felt difficult about Synod 2023 for me was the removal of real people from the words we were reading in our agendas and the numbers we heard about. In such a large meeting, relationships and stories can start to feel like distractions from the work of truth based on Scripture – or truth based on statistics. Should we let one person’s story affect our vote?
Local churches are built on relationships, and these relationships affect our actions and beliefs. Videos have the potential to put faces, names and voices to the words we read. Videos could remind us of the relationships that form our local congregations as we debate policy and procedure from a removed space. Video overtures may provide a more accessible way into synod’s conversation for churches whose first language is not English, for younger generations, or for those who find it easier to watch a video than read a book.
FOUR FRESH APPROACHES TO SYNOD
“Instead of writing a regular news piece about the Christian Reformed Church’s (CRC) recent Synod, I decided to engage with it creatively through four questions: What was Synod 2023’s watershed moment? Why did Synod run out of time? Could Overtures be submitted any other way – in video format, perhaps? And what would Abraham
Kuyper say about it all, if we had a robot with his personality who could imagine being in Grand Rapids? (We do!)”
– Angela Reitsma Bick, Editor
Read the other parts to this series:
– Answering Rita’s question
– Synod, interrupted
– Even robots grow weary
