Welcome back to the Messy Reformation.

My name's Jason Rice, and I'm the associate pastor at Bethel CRC and chaplain at Central Wisconsin Christian in Waupon, Wisconsin.

My co-host is Willie Kroenke.

He's a member at Pease CRC in Pease, Minnesota.

We're just a couple of guys who love the Christian Reformed Church and want to see Reformation happen in our denomination.

But we realize that whenever Reformation happens, in the history of the church, things get messy.

And after the last couple of synods, and as we move into this rebuilding phase of the Reformation, things continue to be messy in the Christian Reformed Church.

So we're taking the opportunity to have conversations with pastors and leaders throughout the Christian Reformed Church to find out what's going on in our denomination, but also to talk about what Reformation and rebuilding might look like.

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With all that said, we're going to get to this week's episode, which is part two of our conversation with Brandon Seaver.

Yeah.

So, um, so you said you're on a committee five congregational care and justice.

What were some of the overtures that you guys dealt with in that committee?

Well, yeah, there, there were several that were, but had some intense conversations.

Um, if you, if anyone listening has a copy of the banner that arrived to their house, they can read some of the summaries there.

Um, a few in particular one that, uh, as far as the highlight goes was just the, the consensus that we had around assisted suicide.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, medically assisted suicide.

And, you know, that which our report led to just, I think it was a unanimous approval of the report.

And we really wanted to have very strong language too, because we knew some of the people on our committee from Canada even spoke to this because it had been fairly recent news how in the Canadian legislature, there was some movement to try to expand medically assisted suicide to what they call mature minors, which is like, oh, we're going to allow mature minors to make a decision about this now, right?

That's scary.

But we just categorically, I think that we used the word deplore, which was the first time someone quipped that.

That's probably the first time the word deplorable has ever been in a synod report, which for that topic we were happy to do.

And other topics, one that was a little more contentious that led to a minority report that I was part of was for virtual churches.

And I have listened to a couple of the post-Senate interviews you've done, and some others have mentioned this too, that that topic is probably going to come back up again, and I would hope so.

One of the lessons, I want to kind of put that in the parking lot of this room and kind of segue a little bit to speak to procedure at Synod.

One thing that I learned is because I was the two minority reports, one of them we did this for, the other one we did not, which was to have a preamble to our reports.

And if you're going to be on a minority report, you really only have an opportunity to give justification to the whole plenary as to why are you thinking the way you are?

Why did you do this minority report?

What's your justification and rationale?

Anything that you want to tell the body about why you made your minority report, put it in a preamble because that's how you're going to try to get everyone to listen.

Because we did that for virtual church, but the other report I was on a minority report, which had to do with reaffirming local authority and baptism.

I don't know why in hindsight we didn't do that, but we did not have a preamble there.

And unfortunately, with the procedural stuff on the floor, somebody tried to table a bit early on in the conversation and that motion to table to the minority report got rejected.

And so we weren't able to actually give more justification as to why we felt like we had a report that they should consider with a bioptism topic.

So, you know, a virtual church is back to that.

One thing that, so we read our minority report and then it went back to the majority report for that to be discussed.

And there was a lot of intense conversation about it.

And then we tried to get back to the minority report to take it up and it got rejected.

That motion failed.

And so I immediately went back to my seat and got in the queue to speak against the majority report.

And it was amazing to me to hear.

I thought maybe this was our fault.

I don't know.

How are there so many people speaking from the floor who are not understanding the difference between digital ministries in a virtual only church?

I'm talking about people who are even working and do things in the online world on YouTube and other platforms.

You know, my dear aunt Sally, she has a health condition and she has to watch her local church from home.

Great.

That's like a hybrid type thing, a digital ministry.

That's not a virtual only church.

Like, let's please, let's get what we're talking about here clear.

Like, let's define these things.

And so there, you know, the misconceptions, with all due respect, if people listening, I, I, you know, I want to honor their view on this, but I can't help but feel like there was so much mixed interpretation about what a virtual only church actually is.

And what we were trying to say, our minority report was that there's so much risk in this in terms of like the marks of the church.

And I'm speaking from an elder perspective, you know, things like baptism and communion, fencing the table, like in the biblical responsibility that elders have and that God will hold them accountable for how they shepherd the church.

That's not worth the risk of letting people experiment with this.

Like, you know, the ordinary means of grace as one of the people on our report, our minority report spelled out, can't be satisfied in that way.

And, you know, I was dismayed a bit on the, again, no disrespect to the people who were tasked to put that report together for us to consider and work through.

But there were theological people who gave input from seminaries onto that report.

And they said, I think their words were like, they don't really see any reason why it couldn't be done.

You know, they wanted to exercise some caution, but I thought really from a theological perspective, you don't see how this can be done.

I can see how it can't be done.

Enough of a concern that at the very least, there should be some time like to put a pause on it and let some people study it more before they before synod would declare, oh, you know, just cautiously experiment.

But yeah, the misinterpretation of people, they just, I think overall, what really hurt things for, you know, why our report, and it was a close vote, 91 to 79, something like that.

I think 89 was a majority.

But there's just, I think there was what we need to do in the future, whoever takes up that work next, because I do think it's going to be a when, not if, is help people understand better the difference between a virtual only church and digital ministries.

because there were certainly people on the floor that just evidently to me at least were confused about that um a couple of things though like exciting things from my committee jason um that i find myself as an elder kind of immersed in at our own church in hudsonville had to do with training for office fairs and i think some churches are as far as i could tell and heard about people's stories as students some churches are doing that pretty well um but some i've actually probably more times than not are not doing that really at all.

And, and so we were able to talk with somebody from the denomination during our committee about coincidentally where we were.

So let me back up a moment.

So we're one of the overtures was that we were going to consider was that there should be a call by synod in the denomination for churches to actively train their elders and deacons.

And what we didn't know, I didn't know until we got into the committee work was that the denomination had already started putting together some pilot materials for training.

And I think they're coming out this fall, actually.

So, yeah, so there was definitely consensus about training.

You know, we want to be able to train our office bearers to live into their charge and to have resources.

we don't expect like me i i didn't come into it knowing all everything an elder would need to do other than my own past experience with having elders but you know we're excited about where that could go um you know that whether it's denominational resources or other training materials like i think it was pretty clear that that everyone embraced that and said it needed to be done um you know other things like uh finding people to be licensed to exhort having the classes identify them to help try to fill in some of these gaps where maybe some classes are struggling to find people to preach.

We know there's a kind of an increasing pastoral shortage.

So, you know, that was approved by Synod.

And I think that that's going to lead to some really good conversations at the class level in the next two years to help train and equip more people to do that.

What else?

Oh, baptism.

So I'll try to be brief here.

This was another minority report that I was a part of where a classist had, honestly, it was kind of confusing to me as to their rationale.

I think we had to kind of infer a little bit as to why they went to Synod with this, but there was something about Synod 24 that they thought was nebulous and confusing.

And they thought that they, in order to kind of understand how this implication would play out in terms of synodical decisions versus what local churches can and can't do, they wanted Synod to reaffirm the local discretion in baptism.

And I think I was even quoted that the banner, you know, it's like, I spoke against it.

This was the by the way, was the instance where somebody tried to table to our minority report a little bit too early.

And I think that people hadn't people hadn't really had the opportunity to discern and discuss the majority report.

So as soon as that that motion failed, we never we didn't get to take up our minority report at all.

Anyways, my point about the baptism was that what they wanted to reaffirm is already in place.

Yes, the local congregations do have an obligation to have oversight into who they baptize.

However, it's not solely up to them.

There isn't a responsibility to higher bodies and higher assemblies, right?

Classes and then synagogical.

And so we wanted to spell that out in our minority report and basically say kind of to be blunt about it, this overture really shouldn't have even been probably before synod at all.

It's just I don't understand why we had to reaffirm that.

I mean, I want to say one thing about, and then I'll let you go from here with another question maybe.

But the minority reports that we did about baptism in virtual church, I do want to help people understand if they're at synod in the future.

You know, you don't have to necessarily disagree completely with a majority report from your own committee.

You can agree with much of it, and you probably should spell out what you agree with and just focus on the differences, right?

I wasn't so disenfranchised, I guess, or frustrated by our majority reports on our committee that I was just adamant that those reports had to fail.

It's just that I had a different perspective, and others did too, about what we wanted to emphasize and the cautions, especially for the virtual church.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I've heard that from a number of the delegates in speaking with them.

They said one of the striking things actually of this synod was that there wasn't like vast differences between the majority and the minority reports.

They were both kind of heading.

A lot of people have said it was more of wisdom.

You know, like we think this way is the better way of wisdom.

We think this way is the better way of wisdom.

Whereas in some previous years, like they were just opposite directions.

Sure.

Like here, choose one way or the other.

And so it has shown that, yeah, this unity that's starting to come more and more in the denomination.

But yeah, I've tried to tell people that, that like creating a minority report is not like a schismatic or like a slap in the face.

Like when I was chairing my advisory committee, I multiple times actually said, if you want to create a minority report, like, go ahead.

This isn't like offensive to the rest of the group.

You just have a different understanding of how you want to do that.

And so, yeah, we had one come out of my committee, and that was fine.

You let the body decide, right?

That's part of the thing.

And so, yeah, minority reports are a good work.

And sometimes they've had, I mean, the whole conversation about biblical sexuality in the Christian Reformed Church came out of a minority report way back in 2016.

And so, they're definitely worth writing and presenting before the body.

yeah yeah so we appreciate your work in that and i agree i think um i think on both of those well i think especially the virtual church thing i think that's something we're gonna have to get back to and i've heard i've heard everybody i haven't heard one person who wasn't i mean maybe i guess i i don't know many people who are satisfied with the decisions that sin had made on that and most of the people i've talked to were just frustrated like people just didn't understand the distinctions we were making.

We were having two separate conversations, you know, like ships passing in the night kind of a thing.

And that wasn't helpful.

So hopefully we can, yeah.

I was going to interject one thing that came to mind about that particular topic, virtual church, that I think people that have been ascended probably realize, especially if you've been on a minority report, it's not only the work that's done on a minority report and, you know those late nights trying to put your best case for the plenary group together but then the other factor that you can't really control is when is your minority report going to be taken up or the majority report on the floor and i do think that the timing of when the virtual church report came up it was brought to the floor did probably did not help the discussion it kind of pigeonholed it into a narrow time frame before there was a scheduled break to be done um in hindsight i felt like yeah that probably impacted things a little bit maybe maybe not maybe it's just me and my my my my uh minority report doldrums here with a not having it be approved but um but it did feel like that a little bit there so there are going to be times and i i don't presume to think that i could really do a great job presiding over a senate like that and making those decisions i don't think i probably if not my skills do but of skill set but um no it is the way it is but you know you kind of would look one, maybe a little bit of a heads up on kind of when you need to be ready to speak, but sometimes you're only going to have about a five to 10 minute notice that you're about to be out.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

I'll, I'll say one thing and then we'll switch and start talking about maybe where we should be going from here, but I'll just, I want to do, I want to throw another or just tap this point again that you talked about.

If you're writing a minority report to write a preamble.

I think a lot of people don't recognize that, but how the procedure works is if there's a majority and a minority report, they both are read.

So they read the majority report and then the minority report is read in full.

And that's really your argument to give the body, here's why you should go for our minority reports.

I remember in 2022, when we had the majority and minority report regarding the human sexuality report, the minority report was like five or six pages.

I mean, it was like, I felt like a 10, 15 minute reading of their report.

And I was like, what is going, this is so annoying.

But then I realized, no, that's what you need to do if you have a minority report to kind of get your opinion made.

So anyways, I think that's worth reinforcing so that people have that in their toolbox moving forward.

But yeah, I'd be curious, Brandon, after this year and the things that have happened, where do you think we need to be looking in the future for the Christian Reformed Church?

Yeah, the sentence in the rear view mirror this year, of course, and thinking of some of the other decisions made that have to do with confessionality, right?

There were some overtures that came up, like trying to do a little bit more of a revisit on Gravomin.

There was a fairly, I would say, robust conversation around our relationship with the RCA.

You know, in some of these topics around Gravomin over the last few years, the reason for Gravomin in some people's minds, there's some intertwining with RCA aspect and the disaffiliating churches.

I feel like some people have spoken of it this way, um i have heard i mean you know uh kind of in the the synod um reflections is that the ship is sailing in the right direction right it's just kind of it's going slowly in the right direction and this was a year where i think we kind of helped the people who were very cautious and concerned about um the the direction of the domination they we i think we had a very collaborative synod overall and one that was very focused on and unity and peace and but also having no qualms about it like our confessionality and what that means yeah um yeah so in the future i think we certainly want to see that this direction continue um i think that there are going to be some aspects that time will tell um probably the one the rca is fresh in my mind because a lot of the churches that disaffiliated are in my area of kind of a neighboring classes in Grand Rapids East.

And, you know, they're moving by and large to the RCA.

And the RCA just changed their polity where it sounds like they're going to meet every three years now instead of every year.

And so the committee that had to take up our relationship with the RCA had to grapple with that a bit and, you know, gave it, I think it's a five-year timeline that's in and it's going to be reviewed annually as to our relationship with them.

So, I mean, there's going to be some things we're going to have to watch for are, for instance, this is hypothetical, of course, but are some of these disaffiliating churches who wanted to kind of live in the tension, the mushy middle, and kind of agree to disagree better together mindset, are they going to leverage the RCA's polity to, while the RCA technically agrees with us on our biblical view of sexuality, we know they don't have some of those enforcement mechanisms at the classist level.

Are some of the churches who disaffiliated from the CRC going to take advantage of that and start to do things that they were eventually brought under discipline for by our denomination.

And so time will tell on that.

I mean, we pray that God would not let that happen.

But if it does, we're going to, synods are going to have to grapple with that before that five-year kind of review period is up, I think.

But, you know, that's one thing to be mindful of.

But I think the other thing, probably the weightier thing for us, for the health of our denomination comes from church planting.

I know you've spoken to that on podcasts and there was definitely some great conversation one evening about that.

I think it was Scott Vanderpil maybe who brought that up on the floor.

And, you know, a lot of passion in that and a lot of priority.

We want to put the action into place, not just speak the platitudes, but also put the actions in the place.

And if we're going to do that, which we should give heavy emphasis to that, I'm also very interested to see how do we do that while maintaining our confessionality and, you know, into the world of training that in equipping the next generation.

We have to focus on that better catechizing our youth, helping them see the beauty of the confessions and the creeds in our in our history of this denomination and help them embrace the faith that they're being raised in.

Because the one day they'll be at synod, right?

yeah and so in in raising future leaders the pastoral shortage i i'm i'm really excited about overall the candidates who were interviewed to go to calvin seminary um mickelson and jousther i think um really great interviews with them and and reason to believe that you know that there's going to be some some very robust theological instruction there in the years ahead um and let's just get more people there right let's let's find who are or who our pastors can be and help our churches out.

And so I guess overall, I would say, let's maintain the work that's being done.

Let's ensure that our leaders in our churches, our elders and deacons are being trained and that they can affirm the confessions and the creeds and live to those and help equip the next generation.

Amen.

Yeah, and I think to go back to something you said earlier, We don't need to have a long conversation on that here, but I just wanted to point out, I think, I don't remember how the publishing schedule is going to be, but I think the podcast is going to be published after this one.

We're having a roundtable discussion with a couple, somebody from the seminary and a local pastor about just Reformed ecclesiology and what does it mean to be a Reformed church?

because as you pointed out, if we're going to start planting a bunch of churches, we do need to have clarity on what is a Reformed church then.

And it's not just something generic, we have something unique.

And so we want to try to play some kind of role in that at the Messy Reformation to try to help drive some of those conversations about what the Reformed church is.

So pay attention to the future because we have some of these round tables coming up and this first one is going to be focused on ecclesiology.

But I want to go back to and just talk a little bit because I know you've been passionate about seeing elders and deacons equipped and trained and especially in the confessions.

I got to participate.

Actually, we posted some of the stuff from the R3 Forms conference.

So people who listen to our podcast got to kind of get a taste of some of what went on there.

And so why don't you talk a little bit about the R3 Forms?

Are you thinking of doing that again next year?

Um, what, what's kind of the future of that?

Yeah, I think that's great.

Thanks for asking.

Yeah, that was a great event.

Thanks for being a part of it.

Yeah.

Um, the, the overwhelming feedback was positive for that.

And so, um, a little bit of a historical take on like how that all came about is that, um, you know, Corey Naderbeil, who I mentioned earlier and myself and, um, another guy at our church, we had, we've been discussing, you know, we, we wanted to try to, we, we felt like we needed to do some of that equipping and that there was a desire for that in our area so we came up with this idea to um have a of a day training not like not a conference but kind of a conference um we debated on whether to have it be like a friday evening and an all saturday thing or just a one day we just kind of went the way we did for this one in particular um brought in some some pastors and speakers and uh chad van dixhorn who i know you i think um played you you were able to interview him and play that on your podcast.

But we really just, we had a day available to anyone who wanted to come.

We kind of geared towards leaders in the church, but we had people from my own church who was like, do we have to be an elder or deacon to go?

Like, no, not necessarily.

No, just come and come and learn with us.

So we had some resources we shared and we just spent a day in worship together and in like, you know, sessions like yours going into some of the history of like the cans of door and why confessionality matters.

Why is this a big deal?

Like we, you know, there were some people who said, you know, oh, this felt like it was just a pep assembly for the confessions.

Like, well, yeah, actually it was like, I'm not sure if that was supposed to be a negative comment, but yeah, mission accomplished.

It was.

And also to somebody who had said, you know, I just don't make sure you don't put the confessions above the Bible, right?

You know, it's like, well, of course not.

But let's help people understand how our confessions and the creeds are built on the word of God, right?

They don't replace it.

And we're not putting a special emphasis over the Bible on those things.

So I think it's been, you know, and this is of course, just maybe it's my own one-sided view on things with my growing up and away from the CRC is like, we're not really sure like what is being done like this to train people.

You know, we've, we, I spoke a little earlier on about how it's been my understanding and talking with our churches that there's not a lot of that happening.

Not a lot of discipleship programs and not a lot of leader training at all.

So this was kind of like our little way of trying to do that.

And you asked about whether we're going to try to do another one.

The answer is yes, we are.

That's still kind of in the planning cases right now, as far as like when it will happen and who will be there.

But I would think like within the next, whether it's later this fall or in the spring, we're definitely mindful to do another one.

So thanks for asking about that.

Yeah, no, it's exciting because it's one of the things I agree with you.

I just being a stated clerk and talking to a bunch of different officers and office bearers in the in classes.

There's a lot of churches who are hungry for this, some kind of training.

And we're just in our classes, we're trying to come up with ways to do better at equipping our elders and deacons and office bearers in our classes.

And a lot of churches struggle to try to figure out how to do this.

And so it's nice to see somebody stepping out and doing that.

And yeah, it was great.

So I'm excited about that.

And I just encourage more people to do this.

of this kind of been one of my big passions has been like i am thankful to hear that the denomination is working on some material that you said might be coming out this fall for training elders and deacons and that's great but i think part of the problem has been that a lot of churches have just waited for the denomination to put out material and then they're kind of like oh why isn't that it's like and i just want to tell people no just go do it create the stuff and start doing it where you're at.

And it seems like, and this isn't even a full shot against the denomination.

It's just, there's something about a local church doing something like that where people are like, yeah, let's be a part of that.

We want to join.

We know these people.

And so there's something special about a local church running a training program like this that gives it extra life and depth.

So that's great.

I want to see more of that happening.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, great.

Well, we're starting to come toward the end of our time here.

And we always give everybody an opportunity to kind of, you know, give a final word to all of our guests.

And I always remind everybody, we have just a wide range of people, more people than we ever, a wider range than we ever expected to be listening to this, anywhere from middle schoolers up to retired members who are listening to this, and office bearers and a whole host.

So what would be a final words you would want to leave with them as we come to the end of this podcast?

Yeah, thanks.

I would say I'll speak to anyone listening that's an elder or deacon and say, don't be afraid.

If you feel like your church is not, whether your emphasis on and teaching the confessions and the creeds, like whether it's through youth catechism or adult discipleship, if you don't see that happening at your own church out to the level that you'd like it to see it, engage your pastors lovingly in that conversation.

And, you know, that's how a lot of, in some ways, the three forms of unity event came about was, you know, we were asking these questions and we had a desire to see something like that happen.

And we just kind of trusted God to help us put the pieces in place and do it.

So my encouragement would be for people to really be thinking and praying about that and just to emphasize the importance of it some people listening to this might say ah yeah well these you guys say because you all agree you know on the confessions and you think it should only mean this but some people you know obviously are just building they disagree with you okay that may be but why like what let's let's let's get into the minutiae a little bit on that and see like what are these disagreements coming from right and but let's let's recognize that but then let's also show the beauty and the truth of God's word and how our confession, you know, reinforce that and help the next generation understand it.

Right.

So that there are the next generation of elders and deacons and Lord willing pastors coming up.

Let's do our part in let's revisit this, the notion of what our obligations are to train and equip them.

And then I would say to people encouragement for people who are considering in their classes, whether maybe Synod 26 is on the horizon for them.

Maybe it's been a while since they've gone to Synod.

I would say if you feel like you have a passion for what's going on in the church and you feel like you are a person who likes to network and communicate with others and just have great conversations around these topics like we've discussed here, don't be afraid to just carefully discern whether Synod might be something you should check out and go to.

So I'm hopeful and optimistic that someday, Lord willing, I'll have another chance to go for sure.

It was that much of a blessing to me to meet people from different parts of the country and the world and meet some new friends and just have a great fellowship with them, learn from them and discern with them.

And it all is edifying to the body of believers for sure.

That's all we have for this week.

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