Reflections on CRC Synod 2023 and our Cultural Divide

The painful journey of a Church family irreconcilably divided

I am not a CRC member, but I have been following CRC Pastor Paul VanderKlay's YouTube channel for over 3 years now. I will refer to him as PVK as he is affectionately referred to amongst my friends who have met him through his YouTube channel. He has done a great job of showing the best of his local CRC congregation (shout out to Freddie, Fancy Nancy, and Rik) and the heart of how much the CRC, Calvin College, its deeply familial culture, and, more importantly, the people have impacted he and his family. It has been a joy to watch, and Paul has a gift of telling stories with heart, humor, and candor about his life in the CRC. Paul has painted a beautiful picture of this small denomination founded by Dutch immigrants.

I have also been following along with Paul as he has commented on the current struggle that the CRC has been facing with respect to all the secular issues of the day. The same issues that have impacted every Church denomination in America, including the Methodist Church of my youth that has been embroiled in a messy divorce for years over these same issues. But the CRC fight is different than most mainline denominations given their unique distinctives of cultural and familial history. I have watched a number of these proceedings across multiple denominations over the past decade.

As a Church nerd, and someone who has been behind the scenes of Church leadership as these issues have roiled, I took a particular interest into CRC Synod 2023. Synod23 is a microcosm of everything we are facing in this moment of history in the United States. Not just in the Church, but as a culture at large. I have also followed closely the statistics and the massive decline of the mainline Church in the United States as we find ourselves in an increasingly post Christian culture. In particular, how the decisions made by denominations regarding the issues being decided upon by the CRC Synod and how those decisions have impacted those denominations.

With that said, I committed myself to following along and watching the entirety of Synod23. It was quite a commitment (thank the Lord for 2x speed) but I found it fascinating, boring, funny, painful, inspirational, and in the end, sad and infuriating.

It is important to note that this is not my denomination. So, while I am going to share my observations below, I have great compassion for the people going through this ordeal, particularly PVK, and recognize it is theirs alone to determine the path forward through this mess. But as I noted above, this was a fascinating microcosm into the secular issues of the day and their impact on every Christian living in the United States.

Some Background Information on me

I also think it is important to state my position. I would have voted to uphold the traditional stance on marriage. In many ways I have a more nuanced view than those who disagree with me on the issue would attribute to me. For example, I co-pastored a small collection of house Churches in a rural community of Kansas, and we had a lesbian couple with children who attended our Church. We were clear we would preach and teach the always held Christian view on traditional marriage, including to our children, and they would not be able to hold a leadership position in our Church. But we welcomed them to attend and be a part of our community. They took no issues with that position and participated fully and lovingly in our community.

I would also point out I am an attorney. I have been tasked at times throughout my career of running board meetings, including public boards, that required planning for situations and debate where highly controversial questions were being considered and voted upon. It takes leadership and a plan to navigate those difficult political waters. Given this aspect of my experience, some of my observations may seem a bit harsh, but I am merely stating the technical and functional realities at play when analyzing Synods and governance.

Other than President DeVries, I have not used the names of delegates in this reflection. They did not ask to be included here.

With that said, I have so many observations and thoughts after watching Synod23 and processing this cultural moment we find ourselves in. I started with a Twitter thread but then realized I had much more I wanted to process than could be contained appropriately in a thread. So, I decided to do what I do and write my thoughts out.

The Job of Synod

Let’s state up front what a Synod is. Synod is the place where the business of the Church gets done. Most of what Synod’s deal with are the mundane necessities of running a large organization and will have a couple of challenging topics to consider and act upon. Every now and then, they are faced with Big Hairy Questions that will have a generational impact on the denomination and will invoke passionate responses by the members of the Church, sometimes leading to a Church split. CRC Synods 2022 and 2023 were faced with the Big Hairy Question of our moment in time, which focuses on LGBTQ+ issues, but also includes all the secular divisions and mindsets in our current culture.

It is also important to understand what Synod is not. Synod is not the place for pastoral care, dealing with your emotions on issues, and needing to ensure every story is heard. Those issues are very important and vital. The human impact on people’s lives with respect to the decisions made by Synod on the Big Hairy Questions must be dealt with care and empathy. But those need to be dealt with individually and at the local Church and Classis level. Delegates have a responsibility to show up with professionalism and the understanding that Synod is there to act on all the issues before them. Use your persuasion in committees to direct the recommendations that come to the floor for a vote. Make a case within the timed guidelines directly on the floor about the particular motion under consideration and hope to persuade your fellow delegates. But the job of the Executive Committee, every delegate, and Synod is to act upon all the issues at hand, bring a vote to the floor to decide that issue, and complete your business, regardless of the weight of that decision and your personal feelings or emotions.

The Executive Committee, and particularly the President of a Synod, is tasked to ensure that all the business before Synod is brought to the floor for presentation, debate, and a vote. They need to ensure decorum, following Parliamentary Rules and Procedures, keep the process moving, and adjust schedules to ensure the business of Synod is completed. Ethically, a President should also remain partial to allow the delegates to vote on and decide the issues that they are tasked to do. This is particularly important if you are presiding over a Synod that is going to decide Big Hairy Questions. A true leader will understand these challenges of a Big Hairy Question Synod and make sure they do all that is necessary to ensure they complete everything that Synod is tasked to do.

The CRC Small Minority and Supermajority

Synod 2022 managed to get their business done on the Big Hairy Question of same sex marriage despite the immense difficulty. I would suggest that happened because the delegates of the LGBTQ+ position were hopeful they could convince Synod22 to adopt their position. But they were ultimately shocked to find out they were in a small minority as Synod22 upheld the traditional stance on same sex marriage by a 74% vote. In political, business, and legal terms that type of outcome is often referred to as a supermajority (with 60% being the threshold for that term). PVK outlined the surprise of the small affirming minority and this reality adeptly in his post Synod22 YouTube commentaries.

“No Easy Option for Progressive CRC Churches”

I think it is important to detail why I use the terms “small minority” and “supermajority”. I think it is important because it speaks to the psyche of the delegates as they came to Synod23 and played a role in its failure. The vote tallies are empirical facts, and it clearly was an issue after Synod22 and leading up to Synod23. Synod23 President DeVries decided to not announce electronic vote totals over concern that it would “show the divide” in the CRC. Yet there were delegates in the small minority position who asked for the vote totals, particularly on Thursday around the critical vote on Committee 8 regarding Neland Ave (starting at timestamp 2:04:25 of the Thursday morning Session). It was clear that one delegate felt that the 74% vote in Synod22 was used against the small minority over the previous year and another delegate wanted to know the total to see how far she and the small minority were away from the position of the CRC supermajority. That revealed vote total was still over 70% in Synod23. I know the terms “small minority” and “supermajority” seem harsh, but it is the reality and played a major role in both the mindset and tactics of the small minority and President Devries that resulted in Synod23’s failure.

There is clearly a struggle in the minds of the small minority to comprehend how they could be so out of touch with the supermajority and the clear direction of the Church they genuinely love. Given their surprise by Synod22 as detailed by PVK, I bet they don’t have many friends they associate with outside of Church who think that way. Our secular culture is celebrating PRIDE, diversity, and all the buzzwords at every level from major corporations, the mainstream news they watch, the secular friends they have, the politicians they support, public schools, their social media feeds, and on and on. And the secular view of same sex marriage enjoys clear majority support in the United States. They have honestly and sincerely brought that secular view into their faith life and their positions on CRC decisions and firmly believe they are on the right side of history. It is rare that they find themselves as a small minority in most of their passionate positions today.

But Christians in the United States are still overwhelmingly in support of holding to the traditional stance on marriage that has always been held in the Christian faith and are clearly in line with the CRC supermajority. And when you look at Christians outside the United States, as was demonstrated by the Koreans, Latinos, and other ethnic groups on the floor of Synod, globally Christians are even more “conservative” on these views than United States Christians. These differences represent our cultural divide both inside and outside the Church and was clearly an undercurrent of Synod23. The CRC and supermajority position merely reaffirms the always held belief, the small minority has moved away from. I did find it a bit ironic that white progressives spent a lot of time talking about diversity, etc, yet virtually every ethnic minority that spoke on the floor voiced opposing views to theirs. I almost self-censored this comment but it was obvious and glaring throughout the week.

I would note that in today’s secular culture, the CRC supermajority rarely find themselves in line with the secular majority in the United States. I can most closely relate to this because I have experienced it. We are increasingly maligned, cancelled, and told that we are racist, white supremacist, misogynistic, “phobic”, and a slew of other buzzwords which were used on the Synod floor. If we want to hold positions in government, major corporations, academia, public education, etc. we must undergo Diversity Equity and Inclusion training and submit to struggle sessions and confess to our many “secular” sins whether we have committed them or not. Many of us agree with the heart of what the small minority feels on many of these issues but reject the call to affirm and ally with every belief of the secular age that those positions require. Particularly for those in Church leadership. We feel increasingly under attack and misrepresented. I felt the young Latino female delegate, who spoke on the floor Thursday morning, said it beautifully and made the most hopeful case to come together on holding to the confessions and trying to stay as one (Timestamp 3:32:38 of the Thursday Morning Synod):

“I'm one of the young adults’ representatives and I really try to avoid getting into this subject. One because it was my committee and two because I was struggling to find the words to talk about this. But I do hear a lot of people being broken being damaged being hurt and I totally understand that. Me myself I'm a person that is very open to emotions, so I feel the pain. But at the same time, I feel that there are words taken too loosely. I feel like you guys in a way are thinking that we don't love the LGBTQ community. I feel like you guys are thinking that [there] is a civil war between us, between Christians. Some that support and some that don't. Some that care and some that don't and that is not the true in the committee. We spent long hours talking back and forth. Sharing ideas and it was difficult. It was difficult because we know it's people and it's not just people; there are brothers and sisters so yes there is love there is love for the LGBTQ Community. There is room for them [at] the table. The thing is that we need to also follow what is stated in the Bible in what God says about those things in leadership. In the book of Ephesians I think, I don't know how to pronounce it correctly, it states things that we need to look at in the people that are going to be leaders, that are going to be looked at right. There's a responsibility and there's a difference between coming to church and serving in church and being part of the church. And then there's a different responsibility when you are the one teaching. So, I just wanted to let you guys know that we did think about the LGBTQ community. Yes, we do that. We do love the LGBTQ community and there there shouldn't be words accusing each one of us from one side, or one belief to another, that we didn't think, or that we're trying to destroy families, or we're trying to destroy churches because, different opinions are not what destroy churches or families it's sin. Sin is what destroys churches and families. Love can endure those things. Love can heal a lot of things, but we need to understand that we are one. We're talking about the ones that think this way. The ones that think that way. We are one. We are supposed to stay together and fight the enemy on these things and ask God for wisdom. Thank You.”

Just like the small minority, the CRC supermajority honestly and sincerely bring their rejection of the current secular view into their faith life and their positions on CRC decisions and firmly believe they are on the right side of history.

What a conundrum we in the United States and the CRC find ourselves in. I would love to see the CRC follow the amazing speech given by the young Latino delegate. But as the events unfolded and the speeches that followed, there is no middle way between these two positions, as both sides are steadfastly set in their positions. The chasm is too great. These are irreconcilable differences. A wise therapist once told me a marriage is over long before the divorce is considered.  The CRC marriage is clearly over, yet it seems like some are still in denial that somehow a divorce can be thwarted, hearing more stories will change people’s minds, or that more time will somehow make the divorce easier. That isn’t the case in a failed marriage or the obvious Church “split” the CRC has already experienced.

Without taking a side on this issue, you cannot divorce these realities from its impact on the CRC and its delegates leading up to Synod23. As the minority position dug in and defied Synod22’s confessional decision, with Neland Avenue and Grand Rapids East the most notable example and part of Committee 8’s work, the supermajority responded to carry out the decisions of Synod22. Both parties followed the CRC Synodical process and submitted overtures to be considered and decided on by Synod23. The table was set for Synod23 to do its job and decide on the Big Hairy Questions no matter how hard they were. But Synod23 failed miserably to complete the business it was required to do and devolved into a complete debacle on Thursday.

General Reflections as I watched Synod 2023 Unfold

Synod23 started out with elections for Synod officers and President Paul DeVries was elected. He set the tone for the Synod and prepared them for the difficult tasks ahead. He noted right from the top, and reminded them throughout the week, that they must complete their business by 3pm on Thursday. To complete the business before it, the CRC Synod assigns portions of the agenda to advisory committees who are responsible to deliberate on each committee report throughout the week and vote on recommendations from the committee to bring to the floor to be voted on by the full Synod. Most of the Big Hairy Questions were given to Committees 7 & 8. Committee 7 mainly had to do with reaffirming the Synod22 confessional stance on same sex marriage. Committee 8 mainly dealt with how to bring into compliance and discipline office bearers and Churches who refused to comply or disagreed with that confessional stance. So, the most important and hotly debated issues that people spent months preparing for, and undertook painstaking deliberations in committee working on, were going to come toward the end of Synod23.

You can read all the Synod23 committee documents and reports here: https://www.crcna.org/synod/documents)

President Devries made some decisions right out the gates that were notable at the time.

• His decision to do away with using a visible 3-minute clock, such as was used for Synod22, to ensure business could be moved along.

• His decision to table challenges to voting on the nominations to the Council of Delegates, until after Synod had acted on Committee 8’s recommendations on confessional compliance. These were important because it would remove certain nominations of individuals who were currently, and if Synod23 upheld Synod22 which it did, from being eligible to participate in their nominated roles. President DeVries promised to take up those challenges after the voting on Committee 8’s recommendations were complete.

PVK noted the potential issue of removing the visible clock in his YouTube commentary at the beginning of Synod but trusted in President DeVries. I, trusting PVK’s wisdom and watching President DeVries’ competence with respect to his command of the working of Synod, didn’t think these decisions would be fatal at the time, but ultimately, they were.

As I watched through the week, it had all the marks of a tense but normal Synod. It was very clear that the delegates were there to decide the Big Hairy Questions (mostly contained in Committees 7 and 8), but normal business was undertaken. The monotony and tedious nature of Synod was at work with moments of levity and passion displayed.

The Mr. Smith Goes to Washington Moment

Before I fully dive into Synod23’s failure, I do want to highlight the high moment for me. That moment came on Tuesday night when Rev Vander Ploeg hit the floor to make his impassioned plea and a call to evangelism. [Note: there are a lot of “Vander’s in the CRC.] I was excited to see that PVK noticed the same thing and he put out a wonderful video telling the full backstory of the diligent efforts of Rev Vander Ploeg over years that brought him to the floor to make his case. PVK titled the video “CRCNA Synod 2023 Rev Vander Ploeg Goes to Synod and How God loves His Little Flock”.

If you have made it this far, which I doubt many will, make sure you watch the video. It will bring a smile to your face. I don’t want to ruin the ending for you, but it is a feel-good story. He compared Rev Vander Ploeg to Jimmy Stewart’s classic character in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington which has become synonymous with the “filibuster”. How prophetic this comparison would be.

Filibustered

As the week went on, I noticed a trend. The small minority was dominating the floor time, particularly as the week wore on, and the supermajority were mainly silent other than to call the question and a few short response speeches. I mentioned this on Twitter multiple times as it was obvious. In addition, many of the speeches from the floor went well over the time limit, particularly on Wednesday. It was evident that President DeVries and the Executive Committee were not moving the floor speeches along. His decision to remove the visible clock that PVK and I noticed, was starting to loom large. There were occasional reminders to keep to the point that was on the floor and to state whether they were for or against the current motion under consideration. Those reminders were repeatedly ignored.

Quite a few of these small minority speeches did not speak to the actual point on the floor. They were general speeches and stories proclaiming their passionate disagreement with the confessional stance that was resoundingly adopted in Synod22 and, when given a chance to vote, was resoundingly reaffirmed by Synod23. Pleas to be heard. A call for more time to consider and delay. Taking time to hear more stories. There were many of the secular buzzwords of the day. Many of the same themes were repeated over and over by different speakers. The same speakers came to the microphone repeatedly.

With respect to the pleas to be heard and the call for more time to hear stories, PVK noted in his post analysis of Synod22 that many of the small minority hoped that by telling the heart wrenching stories that opinions would be swayed. They weren’t in Synod22 or Synod23. Why is that? It is not because those who hold to the always held Christian beliefs lack empathy for those stories. We truly do as the young Latino delegate described so well. We too have wrestled with this issue for years and have gay and lesbian friends and family in our lives. We have all had to do our own soul searching, studying, praying, and contemplating on this extremely difficult issue that secular culture has brought to the forefront of our society. We have arrived at our positions after careful and prayerful deliberation. As much as the small minority won’t be changing their opinion anytime soon, neither will those who hold the traditional stance. There is not a misunderstanding. There is a careful and steadfast disagreement on both sides that will not change anytime soon. These are the irreconcilable disagreements in the marriage and these positions cannot coexist in a Church body. This is not an opinion. It is evidenced by every single Church denomination that has dealt with this issue.

The small minority dissent and opposition were thoroughly documented throughout the week and the emotions started to ramp up to a fevered emotional pitch on Wednesday night.

PVK tweeted out the following after Synod: “Texted a friend coming home from #crcsynod . He said it felt like a funeral. I agreed. Wed night was like the calling hours. Thursday was like the family fight at the funeral. I'm not sure when I'll dare make a video about Thursday.” As someone who witnessed and felt Wednesday night and Thursday in real time, this was self-evident and difficult to watch.

He ultimately did make such a video.

I must admit that my initial impression watching the week unfold was that both President DeVries and the supermajority were bending over backwards to ensure the small minority felt “heard” because it was obvious they would be voting to uphold and implement the actions of Synod22. I trusted that President DeVries would land the plane and get the job of Synod23 done. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

It wasn’t until Thursday morning that I looked at the Committee 8 report. It was then that I realized that was where the rubber was going to hit the road. Committee 8 set forth the guidelines to bring Churches, Classis, and office bearers into compliance and it had several items to be voted on. I realized how slowly President DeVries had worked through other issues on the floor and that is when it hit me. President DeVries had not moved the body forward in a timely fashion and put Synod23 in peril of not completing the business it was assembled to do. That is when the F word “filibuster” jumped into my mind. Hello Mr. Smith.

That became even more apparent as the morning kicked off. President DeVries started the morning session setting forth all that they needed to accomplish. He had left them with a daunting task. As a foreshadowing of events to come, one member resigned in protest over the decisions made on Thursday night.

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ARTICLE UPDATE 7/21/23: This delegate who resigned in protest is a CRC Pastor that has a gay son who is a CNN Producer. Jake Tapper highlighted this protest on his weekly CNN show State of the Union.

CNN Video of Jake Tapper's Segment on the Protest

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Then there was a motion in an effort by a supermajority delegate to ensure they got to the business at hand:

“We have I think 20 plus recommendations from Committee 8 as you already mentioned. There's a lot of work to do. I still want to hear from as many voices as we could and so I would make the recommendation that we both bring back the clock as well as Synod 2022 had to do and move to two minutes per speech.” President Devries denied this request and said he would continue to give grace on this matter.

This is where the filibuster became obvious. There was an attempt to stop the calling of a question too early, even though calling the question is a standard universal practice used for governing bodies to ensure business gets done. There were pleas for “more time”, to be “heard”, and the worry about “silencing voices”. There can be no mistaking that the small minority saw the Committee 8 recommendations and knew that the votes were not going to go their way. It was obvious at the very start that the CRC was entering into a full blown filibuster and the motion made by a supermajority delegate was made precisely for that reason.

They started considering Committee 8’s appeal of Neland Ave After passionate speeches mainly by the small minority, the motion to deny Neland Ave’s appeal as recommended by 8A was passed. This is the point where the request was made from delegates to see the actual vote totals discussed earlier. They challenged the Chairs decision to not share the vote total. One delegate from Classis Hamilton articulated very well the position of the small minority and why she wanted to know how the vote came out.

“I also would vote that we accept the challenge. I understood the rationale for not recording or giving the counts was that we wanted to foster unity here as a body and not demonstrate the division we have. But I think that over the last three days we have seen that there's division. We've spoken about the division in our speeches, and as one who is often voting on the losing side of the vote, I would like to see how many of my brothers and sisters here are with me and whether I have a place here. Whether it truly is a divided body or whether I'm part of a very small minority that probably should go and do something else. I'd like to know.”

This is the heart of the matter. To try and hide the elephant in the room made no sense. It was time to see the reality after a week of highly emotional pleas. The motion was passed to have the vote totals revealed. Synod23 was still a resounding supermajority at 70%. The small minority came in at 26%. The CRC is clearly divided, but the division is not even close. Every small minority CRC Church, Classis, and office bearer must now answer the question articulated so well by the Classis Hamilton delegate. I recognize this is an extremely hard thing to do.

This set the stage for the meltdown to come and the shocking development of President DeVries hitting the floor to passionately argue against 8B of the Majority Report. 8B set forth grounds and procedures for Neland Ave, Classis Grand Rapids East, and its office bearers to come into compliance with CRC Confessions by December 2023 and to make public declarations of the same. But by President DeVries own admission, relaying what he knows from being a party of the In Loco Committee that dealt with Neland Ave and Grand Rapids East after Synod22’s decision, they would not comply with this. He even called it punitive. He made the case that 8A denying the appeal was enough. But make no mistake about what he was saying, Neland Ave and Grand Rapids East are going to resist any attempt to submit to or follow Synod22 or Synod23 decisions. This was clearly evidenced by the speeches of Neland Ave and Grand Rapid’s east delegates.

However, 8B was surprisingly defeated, I can’t help but think that having the power of the President’s chair during the week played a key role in this vote. Although President DeVries has the right to address the floor, using that power to come and fight on the floor has at the least the appearance of impropriety.

The Family Fight at the Funeral and the Failure to Act

From that moment on it devolved from there. Shortly after lunch break is when the “family fight at the funeral” broke out and the filibuster came to a head. That is when the small minority emotionally lost it and President DeVries lost total control of Synod23. People were resigning in protest. Tearful pleas were made for more time. That is when President DeVries and the Executive Committee decided, an hour before Synod was slated to end, that the remaining items on Committee 8 would be punted to Synod 24.

Although I do think delegates have a duty to act with professionalism, I appreciate the emotional realization that the small minority was going through. This was the only thing they could do to stop the inevitable. They created a scene and President DeVries acquiesced. The best they could do was to bring Synod to a halt and live to fight another day. I know in their heart of hearts they believed they were like Mr. Smith going to Washington.

But if you are in the supermajority you reject this framing completely. There were many dark comparisons the small minority made against the supermajority over the week but the most graphic for me was comparing the current decisions on LGBTQ+ to the failures of the Church on slavery. Which implies that if you disagree with them, you are like a slave owner. How can you find common ground from either side if this is truly the divide? You can’t and it is not going to change over the coming year.

Throughout the week there many calls from the floor and from President DeVries to win with grace. I couldn’t agree more. But my dad taught me another valuable lesson I have shared with my sons. That is not a one-way street. It is just as important to lose with grace. The storming off of the floor and the emotional outbursts felt like someone tossing the board game over when the game is clearly lost.

I also found the decision to punt Committee 8’s work to Synod 24 by President DeVries to be extremely disrespectful to the resounding majority that came to Synod23 to do the business it was tasked to do. Many, if not most, of the delegates are volunteers. They sacrificed hours preparing, used valuable vacation time to attend, they worked painstakingly to prepare the recommendations for the floor, and were there to represent their Churches and Classis, their voices deserved to be heard too, and act on the super majority of Synod23.

If you listened to the entire week, you know the small minority had ample time to be heard. The delegates in the room knew exactly what they were doing. As was so eloquently put by the young Latino delegate, their pleas were heard but the supermajority disagreed. A true non-biased leader in a Big Hairy Question moment would have allowed the protesters to leave, reminded the remainder of the delegates that he would require decorum from the floor, that ample time was given for the small minority to be heard, and pressed ahead with the hour left to get the business done of Synod23.

I have no doubt that President DeVries is a tremendous leader and a Godly man of immense character. His lifetime of work serving the Lord is an example I could only wish myself and my children could live up too. But I can only judge his job as President of Synod23 by his decisions and the results. His failure to keep the clock and control the movement of business failed. He never asked them to work late, cut short breaks, or adjusted the schedule despite knowing they had the Big Hairy Questions to decide. He balked on his promise to bring to the floor the challenges to officer positions. By every measure in the ultimate analysis the moment got to him, and he failed in his leadership.

Where to go From Here?

I have watched these moments play out across the mainline Churches in the United States. The time for the divorce is here. PVK has been preparing the small minority for this over the last year. I am sure he will do that again as he fosters healthy conversations for the Church and people he loves.

For the supermajority, you have the votes. You reflect the clear will of the CRC. Do you think Neland Ave, Grand Rapids East, and the others who support the small minority will change their minds? Of course not. Neither will you. So, using this year to try and force compliance would be folly. It is important to reach out, call them back into compliance in accordance with Synods 22 and 23, and give them the chance to respond. You already know what that response will be. There is no need to fight. Despite the failure of Synod 23 to act fully on the Big Hairy Questions, Synod 23 gave the small minority their chance to be heard fully. Synod 24 will be the time to act.

Leave it at that and pray. I would humbly suggest that you don’t pray for them to change their minds. Merely pray for God’s blessing and mercy upon them. The same prayer you pray for yourself, your Classis, and your Churches. I think you already have that Spirit. I was quite surprised at watching the Abide Project’s final video wrapping up Synod23. As you can see by what I have written here, I would have voiced much stronger dismay at how Synod23 ended. But they were very positive, lightly touched on some of the frustrations, and set their sights on moving forward. I was encouraged, and I have to admit a bit convicted, by the generous response.

CRCNA Synod 2023 Update 6 - Thursday, June 15

I think this approach is also what will bring together the more moderate voices in the supermajority and for those who are struggling so hard to see their Church family divide. There cannot be agreement on the Big Hairy Questions given what played out on the floor and the realities of how this fight is playing out across our culture, but there can be a loving path to allow them to leave in peace with as many relationships intact as possible.

As someone who has advised boards in similar situations I would suggest to get your ducks in a row. Focus on your Churches and Classis. Come to Synod 24 and ensure you elect a President and Executive Committee that will allow Synod to complete the business that needs to be done to ensure the CRC remains faithful to your confessions. I would also re-elect every member of Committee 8. They deserve the right to bring their recommendations quickly to the floor in Synod 24. You have a duty to do what is clearly in the best interest of the supermajority of the CRC.

I would also suggest that you create a very easy and accommodating path for small minority Churches to disaffiliate. I have seen games played and power used to punish Churches in the breakups of other mainline Churches in the United States. Most notably the progressive leadership of the United Methodist Church and their power tactics being used against Churches that want to leave. Take the Godly path. Extend grace for their exit.

I will continue to pray for everyone in the CRC. I will continue to pray for all of us in the difficult moment we are living in. Our divisions are great, but our God is greater. May the Lord have mercy on us all.

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CRC Pastor Moises Pacheco invited me on his YouTube channel to continue this discussion. If you are interested in following along with this conversation, Moises will be hosting additional conversations in the coming weeks and months.