Hello CRC

Well, this is officially my first post as a Seminary graduate and I could not be more pleased to be "out". There were great parts about seminary and bad parts about it, but quite honestly, Calvin Seminary can be a frustrating place for some people who don't fit the mold all of the time, and I'm one of them. But now, as an official "candidate", I can start imagining my role as a Christian Reformed pastor. For my final exam at seminary, my professor posed the question, "what is good pastoral leadership, what issues do you see in the CRC in the next 10 years and what steps must be taken to address them?" Big question, but here is my best stab. There is undoubtedly more to come......

Excerpt

"Day by day, I am more convinced that the key to effective leadership in the Church is humility – a characteristic that is often very lacking in our profession. I have a colleague at the Seminary who wisely says that the only acceptable sin among Christian Reformed pastors is pride. It causes me to reflect on leaders I have known within churches, at seminaries and in other areas of the “Christian” world. I think this is reflective in the servant leadership we have begun to address in the CRC. Some might assume that just because someone becomes a pastor they are naturally prone to servanthood because of what they give up. But we should know better than anyone that this is not always the case. The definition of leadership from the CRC's "Effective Leadership in the Church" booklet says that “good leadership is helping the congregation embody in its corporate life the practices that shape vital Christian life, community and witness in ways that are faithful to Jesus Christ and the gospel and appropriate to the particular group’s setting, resource and purpose.” I think one of the first keys to this definition is “helping” – which I read as synonymous with “equipping”. This attitude of pouring into others before we worry about ourselves is the essential key of leadership. The contextualization of such a stance is addressed in the second part of the definition which references a particular group of people’s (ie, a congregation’s) unique ministry setting. This is precisely the way that Jesus led, matching His leadership style to the people that were around Him – always a servant, but also always cognizant of the situation that He found Himself in. Reformed polity also supports this line of thinking by making the pastor one of the elders – and giving the group of elders ultimate authority in an individual church. Together, as servant leaders, this group is able to meet the felt needs of the community in which they find themselves.

I believe that the gap that must be bridged in the next decade (if it is possible that soon) is to realize that this servant leadership is a principle and our traditions are often matters of selfish longing. I believe that the CRC, from the top to the bottom, needs to realize that its individual churches are in community contexts which are increasingly distant from and abandon the selfish clinging-to of traditions which inhibit local ministries. It is a sad fact that many of our churches are dying and that precious few are even pretending to keep up with population trends. We have sectionalized evangelistic growth to the “Home Missions” crowd instead of finding ways for established churches and new churches to inform one another for the betterment of us all. Denominationally, we have prioritized perpetuation over innovation and failed to reach many of our communities at their own place of need. Instead of encouraging spiritual growth and discipleship, we have fooled ourselves into thinking that one-day-per-week preaching is far and away of most importance and poured our resources into that area. Our buildings are all to often seen as fortified castles rather than ministry launchpads for impacting our communities.

I believe the task of bridging this gap is a enormous, but I think it is, quite frankly, a matter of life and death for the CRC and it all starts with personnel. If we insist on intellectual capabilities as the most important determinant factor in who can become a senior or lead pastor, we will continue to perpetuate these mistakes. If, however, we begin to see leadership as intellect, love, humility, compassion, service, wisdom and self-sacrifice as co-equal capacities of future leaders in our church – starting in our own Seminary – we may see change not in a decade, but in five decades. This needs to start with professors and mentors who also value these capacities equally. Second, we need to stop the new church/established church standoff that currently exists in our denomination. Each has something to say to the other side, but both are slow to listen. If leaders are simply identified as “churchplanters” because they’re innovative or transformative, then we will continue to perpetuate less innovative and less transformative leaders in established churches, which will seal those churches’ fate. Finally, we need key leadership at the denominational level that will guide us into the next century. Financially, we need to harness the stewardship power of baby-boomers to finance the next decades of work towards innovation – not simply into throwing our resources behind churches that perpetuate. If we can accomplish these grand tasks, we will need to live into that booklet’s definition more than what we currently do."