The Chicago Invitation

I took the time to watch the two Reggie McNeal lectures which the RCA sent to us via email.

I recommend them.

http://http://www.rca.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?pid=3766&srcid=3442&srctid=1&erid=48454

I don't agree with all of what he says (too narrow a view of the Kingdom, too disparaging of the church as "people of God," too discounting of the sacraments as actual small miracles in church), but hey, he's trying to make a point, I'm willing to let him overstate it.

I like so much the thrust of what he says, like about "blessing" and "how can I pray for you" and such. Indeed, that's what I'm teaching our people here already. Also he's very wise on "custom-designed discipleship" and the problems of the program church. And he's delightfully funny.

I'd like to know more what he means by "apostolic," because that worries me. But I do think he'd be very open to a sacramental approach to what he advocates.

Here's what bothers me. It's the way it's packaged to us by the RCA leadership. Somehow the RCA leadership is suggesting that this "missional" approach requires a revolutionary change in our historic structures (classis, synods, etc.) The RCA packaging says that if we like what McNeal has said, we've got to go along with staff-down centralized denominational restructuring.

If anything, I would suggest that if we like what McNeal says, we could much better just discard the whole denominational staff!

If the leadership is really in favor of missional structures, then why don't they get out of the way? Why don't they stop distracting us with all their structural finagling? What a waste of everyone's time the whole "missional structures" thing is, both the earlier attempt and this new current "son of missional structures." What a phenomenal waste of time, the staff's time and our time. The denominational staff looks more preoccupied with the church than we who really take a Reformed approach to Word and Sacrament.

I can't understand it. Don't they see the connection?

I can't see how anybody who watches the McNeal videos would ever want a denominational staff job!

If McNeal is right, then who cares how large or small the RCA is, or what our numbers are.

In the next few days, you will notice some changes to our web presence. I am moving this blog and its sibling web site to another host. The most obvious difference will be that both the blog and the web site will be at the same address. That makes a lot more sense than what we have right now. I also think that the blogging software on our new host has several useful features that aren't available to us now.

The first step in the move will be the regular web site, chicagoinvitation.org. Some time next week, that site will be located on our new host. What that means is that if you go to chicagoinvitation.org in a few days, the site will look different. At first it might look rather spare, but it will soon look much better than what we currently have.

The next step will be the transfer of the blog. When things are ready on the new host, I will transfer the entirety of this blog over to its new home. Then I will place a "redirect" on this blog so that visiters here will automatically be redirected over there. (Sounds vaguely like a line from "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.") The blog will look very different there. But in terms of content, it will be the same blog.

In the end, you will want to use chicagoinvitation.org for all connections to our web presence, whether that be the blog or the site with its archives. It will all be in one "place."

There could be some timing issues over the next few days. If you find that things are broken, email or call me. My contact information, if you don't have it, is in the RCA directory.

Peace,

Dan Griswold

Recent conversations and observations across the RCA suggest that an alternate church order is at work. It is sometimes tacit and sometimes explicit. It isn't always consistent, but it pushes its way forward. When, for example, a denominational task force of which I was chair asked about revising the church order, we received a number of replies from ministers who were impatient with elders who dared question their ministerial authority. At the time this began to express itself as a mini-movement to have so-called "executive consistories."

This has changed and morphed a bit. Now we are getting ministers who ask why we aren't getting with the program of "governance" by moving to Carver at the local level (of all things!!). When Carver was introduced it was intended for the GSC, and them alone (and then it was allowed as possible only as the GSC acted as an agency that hired employees). Now ministers are wanting to move beyond elders and deacons altogether.

This takes a different turn as we begin to hear about something called an "apostolic order." I'm not sure I have any idea what that means in particular, but what's surfacing is a network of churches that find themselves under the authority of the churches that "parented" them. There are new networks growing along so-called apostolic lines. That's part of what's going on with "coaching." Churches and ministers are being measured by whether they are "missional" however that is to be described.

At issue is authority. This has an all-too-familiar sound for children of the Reformation. "Apostolic orders" move in two directions at the same time: they are episcopal on the one hand and free church on the other. Episcopal in that ministers and churches stand in heirarchical relation to one antoher. Free church in that authority is assumed by persons who claim the Spirit. The Reformer struggled against both these camps because they saw the authority of the Word as challenged. Authority was not lodged in persons, but in the Word through the Spirit as the Spirit called together assemblies of offices.

As I understand it, Reformed theology has claimed that the Word creates a way of being in the world. That way of being is always open to challenge. But it does so openly and through structures of authority -- which is what church order is all about, the structuring of divine authority within the church.

Okke Postma put me onto this first, and I met it again in some recent study of a close reading of Calvin's Institutes. Calvin talks about the Spirit in both the third and fourth books. The third book is of the internal work of the Spirit. This is the Calvin beloved by nadere Reformatie folk: the Spirit who works through election, justfication, conversion, etc. The fourth book has the Spirit working externally, through the church. Both books must be held together. The external work of the Spirit is no less necessary than the "internal." Both are held together in the confessions.

We have always been able to hold the two together in the RCA. I'm not sure we still can. We can't if an alternate church order is snaking its way through the church. Should it prevail, we will end up with a different way of being in the world. It may be legitimate. It will not be Reformed. And we will have lost a great deal.

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself.

Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representatives who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent.

The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.

Can anyone think of examples in church organizations? I can.

The good news is that on Epiphany we celebrate a King who defeats the power of all the Iron Laws out there, "so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places." (Ephesians 3:10)

Part of the ideology of the "Missional Church" movement in the RCA is historically inaccurate and unfair.

The ideology proposes language that the RCA has heretofore had something like a "settler" mentality, or whatever, and that now the RCA has to move to a "missional" mentality.

Well, it's typical of ideology to make caricatures of history.

Yesterday I happened to be looking through the Historical Directory, 2000 edition. I happened to be visiting my parents, and we were trying to remember some facts about some old RCA names, like Howard Schade and Richard Vanden Berg.

In passing, I noticed how many new congregations had been started in Brooklyn between the years 1824 and 1977. Thirty-five of them. Yes, 35 new congregations in 150 years. That's more than one new congregation every 5 years, on the average.

By one classis, the South Classis of Long Island, now the Classis of Brooklyn.

So it's just not fair to propagandize revolutionary change in the RCA on the basis of advocating some new "missional" mentality to replace an old "settler" mentality. Those "settlers" certainly believed in New Church Development.

Yes, a great number of those congregations exist no more, though some do, and two of them are very strong. But we all know that from new church starts, that the survival ratio is low.

Yes, there is no question that we need to examine the realities of declining numbers and we need to envision revitalization. But we also need leadership that is more honest with the realities. Not just for the sake of integrity, but also for the practical requirements of success.

By the way, those two old lions of the RCA, Richard Vanden Berg and Howard Schade, were secretaries, successively, of the Board of Domestic / North American Missions. My father told me how hard they worked in support of inner-city churches, how much they encouraged them and advocated for them, and found them money to support their salaries.

These secretaries did not answer to any Chief Executive. They answered to their Boards, and they were committed to the ministries they supported. They were free to advocate for their ministries before the assemblies (because of the distinction between governance from program), and they did so. That, I submit, is good missional thinking and pratice.

Best,
Daniel Meeter, VDM

Okay, so I'm a day late. But I was pondering yesterday what I should say in a New Year's post. And my thoughts predictably circled around the notion of resolutions, of which far too much is written and said this time of year.

The trouble for me is that my New Year's resolving and planning seem so Pelagian. The list of resolutions (read more, write more, pray more, exercise more, eat less, swear less, drive slower ...) become my personal scheme of self-salvation. They tempt me to believe that the sum total of my meaning and purpose are comprised of the things I do or don't do. Indeed, what is my only comfort?

And yet, I find that there is something good and holy about reflecting on the year past and the year begun, something salutary and possibly sanctifying in prayerfully reflecting on my gifts, my passions, my failures, the opportunities for living out my discipleship that God has placed before me.

Peace,

Dan Griswold

I am sad to report that Astrid Zabriski, the wife of Everett (Rett), entered the nearer presence of God yesterday. She and Rett were in their home in Denmark when she died both suddenly and unexpectedly. We have received reports that she will be buried in Denmark, her home. There will likely be plans for a memorial service here later.

Astrid was the beloved wife of Rett, an active participant in the Chicago Invitation. She had developed a considerable ministry in northern New Jersey through her efforts in adult Christian Education. She coordinated both the Pilgrimage School and the Fig Orchard. She was particularly skilled in obtaining stimulating and well-known figures from a variety of Christian endeavors, extending especially but not exclusively to the arts. Her loss will be felt by many throughout the region and indeed the church.

Expressions of condolence can be sent to Rett at his home at 32 Franklin Ave., Oakland, NJ 07436.

Those of us who have gathered around CI weep with Rett in his loss and walk beside him in a ministry that has augured friendship and affection.

I love to pray the Thanksgiving of the Reformed Church:

Holy and right it is, and our joyful duty, always and everywhere to give thanks to you, O Lord, Holy Father, almighty and everlasting God.

You have created heaven with all its host, and the earth with all its plenty. You have given us life, and being, and you preserve us by your providence.

But you have shown us the fullness of your life by sending in the world Jesus Christ, the eternal Word, made flesh for us and for our salvation. For the precious gift of this mighty savior who has reconciled us to you, we praise and bless you, O God.

And some lines from the General Thanksgiving of the 1979 Prayerbook, first added in 1662, originally written by a Presbyterian who came back into the Church of England in the Settlement:

We bless you for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of our life, but above all for your immeasurable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ, for the means of grace, and the hope of glory.

And we pray, give us such an awareness of your mercies that, with truly thankful hearts, we may show forth your praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up ourselves to your service, and by walking before you in holiness and righteousness all our days.

Through Jesus Christ, to whom with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, throughout all ages.

Sure, this holiday has become, for many, as secular as most of them. But we are not bound by such secularity. We can celebrate Thanksgiving by giving thanks, not to goodness in general, but to God, the Giver of all Good Gifts.

And so I offer here some expressions of thanks that may be relevant to this group. I invite you to add your own.

I am thankful to God for:

• the grace of Jesus Christ, which is both the inspiring cause and the humbling standard of all our deeds;
  
• the Church, the body of Christ, which God generously gives to us as the place where we might grow as disciples, and which is always greater than our theological and not so theological descriptions;
  
• the four offices, whose possibilities are always greater than our living of them;
  
• the Reformed Church in America, which is a sign, even when it forgets or abandons it, of the truth in its old slogan, "Nisi Dominus Frustra";
  
• the officers of the General Synod, whose labor is both to listen and to lead;
  
• the General Secretary, with all his abundant gifts of intellect;
  
• my friends in the Chicago Invitation, who have been a joy and an inspiration to me.
  

Blessings,

Dan Griswold

Perhaps you read the recent announcement of a new Coordinator of Multi-Racial Initiatives and Social Justice. This appointment was announced by the Director of Congregational Mission. I haven't mentioned names because the persons aren't directly involved in my comment. I expect that Earl James is a terrific person and Ken Eriks is a faithful servant. At issue is a profound shift in Reformed practice.

This position was once the Office of Social Witness. That was a position within the GSC, but was an expression of the General Synod. The announcement of the new office was by the Director of Congregational Mission. Social Justice has now come under "congregational mission." We've lost Article 36 of the Belgic! And we're becoming Christian Reformed (they changed Article 36 if you recall).

The Reformed vision we lived under understood God working through both the church and the magistrates. The "government" was/is God's servant, whether it recognizes it or not. The church witnesses to the state to God's witness in scripture. The church does this as part of its prophetic witness. A more "Christian Reformed" approach would have individual members of the church witness as part of their vocation. The church itself would not directly involve itself, as an institution, in the matters of government or culture.

By subsuming Social Justice under "congregational missions," the General Synod has backed away from one of its tasks and placed it in the hands of local congregations. Part of what it means to be the church is "proclaiming God's promise and commands to all the world." We still have Article 36!

This is where the Carver model begins to break down seriously. This shift is a profound shift in policy, one not approved by the General Synod, and hence violates the church order. The order requires that "the General Synod alone shall determine denominational policy."

I don't gainsay the CRC in their approach. It is their approach and they work within it. My issue is that is seems that very few people in the RCA know that this shift is taking place. Does anyone know that this shift is taking place? Does anyone care? It makes for a sad day in a tradition that has understood its practice as "historic and faithful."

Al Janssen