Dave Bosscher on the Future of the CRCNA

(This is an edited transcript from Episode Fifty Four of The Messy Reformation podcast. You can find the full version of the podcast here. This was Dave Bosscher's answer.)

What do you think needs to happen for us to see some reformation happen in the CRC?

I might be a little different than most in my answer to this. I think the answer to that is, actually not much. I don’t actually think much has to change.

Let me explain. Right now, there’s a very low ebb and enthusiasm among leadership for being a part of the CRC. Largely, the reason most churches and pastors affiliate with the CRC, and will be reluctant to go, is that this is where they’ve been for years and years of faithful ministry. It’s a heritage thing. You know, you don’t see many churches exiting other denominations saying: “I want to be part of that strong CRC thing.” You don’t see the RCA saying that. The conservative wing of the RCA is largely going into the ARC and into The Kingdom Network. They’re not coming to the CRC. The reason many of us are still affiliated with the CRC is because we believe in a lot of the good things of the CRC, but we don’t leave because we have a heritage here.

I really think it’s important to highlight what I think the problem is.

Practical Reasons for a Denomination

There are only a few practical reasons to be part of a denomination. If you were just starting a church from scratch, you didn’t know what the CRC was, and you were just a complete stranger and you’re figuring out why you should be part of a denomination, aside from any theological answers to that question, there are a few basic, practical things that a denomination provides. And when you name these things, you recognize what the problem is and why enthusiasm in the CRC is so low. It also shows you just how close we could be to all of that turning around.

Collective Leadership

One reason you’d be in a denomination would be for a pool of collective leadership. So, one of the reasons we’re in the CRC is that when I leave, I will have a bunch of lay people trying to find a pastor. They will try to figure out who shall lead them. They will not be overly good at asking the right questions. They’ll be better than most. My elders will be faithful, but let’s face it, it’s going to be tough. And so, being part of a denomination that puts me in a network of leaders, whereby, when they go searching for someone credentialed in this particular circle, it at least narrows the pool of who they could trust.

Okay. How’s that going right now? Well, right now, there’s many people credentialed in the CRC that I wouldn’t hire for dog catcher. I mean, when people graduate Calvin seminary, there are people with some absolutely horrifying beliefs. The seminary puts them through oral comps and they do a pretty good job with that, but they’re thinking, “Well, classis will filter them out.” Then it gets to classis and classis goes, “Well, obviously they put in all this work at the seminary and they passed the oral comps. We wouldn’t want to be the ones to be the roadblock in the way.” Now, that might not be true. But there’s some stuff out there in the water. People sign on the dotted line and say, “Yes, I affirmed these confessions,” then immediately preach against.

So that advantage is one reason for being in a denomination. That’s part of the low ebb. That’s part of why nobody’s really that excited.

Partnership & Common Mission

Here’s another reason: partnership and common mission together.

If you were just a single, nondenominational church of 200 or 300 members and weren’t in a denomination. If you want to do things like send missionaries or have coordinated efforts to fight things like poverty in your city, things that are far bigger than what one church can just do, you need to pool your resources with other churches. But in doing that, you don’t want to be funding things that wind up being pulled off the tracks of the gospel or the scriptures. So a denomination provides you a network of people to partner with that have similar convictions, where we’ve all agreed on a set of values and a set of convictions, where it will not get pulled off the tracks.

Well, once again, that confidence is low, too. Our denominational HQ is incredibly over-inflated. Six years ago, I got access to some numbers. Of all the Protestant denominations in the United States, we had the highest overhead or denominational dues of anybody. We have 0.4 denominational employees per church. That is massive, and we don’t even agree on a lot of the things we do with that money. And some of it’s not even under our confessions. And then you have questions about World Renew actually spreading the Gospel and what sort of churches are we planting? I think the bright spot for conservatives is we still really appreciate Resonate and the stuff they’re doing, but there’s a lot of other things that the bureaucracy has gotten beyond us.

And it’s not that some of these things shouldn’t be done. It’s that they shouldn’t be done in the way that they’re being done. And they, perhaps, shouldn’t be done at that level. Churches ought to do some of these things.

So the partnership aspect of it is missing. We want to be in a network of churches where we can all work in the same direction. But that’s divided.

Mutual Accountability

Finally, you want top be in a denomination for mutual accountability (And I promise this ends with optimism, but let me at least set the stage).

One reason you want to be in a denomination is so you don’t have leaders doing enormous harm to their churches because they’re mutually accountable.

I’ve been at my church for almost 10 years and if I wanted, I bet I could railroad my elders. I could go to the crowd, and go over their heads, and get a lot of things done that my elders wouldn’t agree with, but wouldn’t even feel very equipped to fight me on. Why? Because I have the credibility.

Now, that can feel very advantageous and tempting, but when you have a leader who is unaccountable, you get things like Rob Bell over at Mars Hill. His teaching went completely off the tracks, as far as the sending church was concerned, but there was no recourse and it grew into a giant disaster. And that story is there time and time again.

It’s good to know that I’m in a denomination where I’m accountable to other people where I’m not alone wise. And if my church starts running off the rails, there are others who will approach it from a place of wisdom and say, “This leader is really doing something here that is unbiblical.” Now, I know my elders can do that, but it’s nice to know that there are other pastors out there.

And if we have common problems to solve, it provides a tribe where we can meet and we can work through these issues. So let’s say we have an entire denomination that is terrible at evangelism. I’m sure that’s not true, but let’s just say, hypothetically, it’s really true. If we’re all having that problem, then this provides a tribe where we can all workshop that without fighting about other differences. We’ll differ on minor things, but on the majors we’re together.

Now, in the CRC, there’s such division among the tribes that not every church is gospel centered—which is just the basic and therefore the solution. So the problems they’re trying to solve aren’t even the same problems we’re trying to solve. That hampers communication.

There really is no mutual accountability. I mean, classes are vapor locked by division and they’re not really going after things they need to go after. I say that because I want to know somebody would go after me if I was doing foolish things.

So, you wonder why there’s no enthusiasm? That’s why. All the practical reasons you’d have a denomination have been compromised.

Making it Better. Taking a Stand

How could that all get better? Here’s why I say that it’s simple. I want you to imagine this. Imagine that at Synod this year we put our foot down seriously and say, “Look. The Bible says what it says about human sexuality and about homosexuality. You know, there’s six passages across three different genres of literature in two different languages. All of them are saying the same thing. If God wanted to tell you that homosexuality and its practice are not good, how would you want him to word it for you? Would you want him to use the word homosexuality? He does. Would you want him to tell you a story about how wrong it is? He does. Would you want him to use the phrase of men having sex with men? He does. What wording in Greek, English or Hebrew would you accept?” And if the answer to that is, “I don’t know,” then the problem is not with the Bible, it’s with you.

If we were willing to do that, I want you to imagine what happens the following year. Yes, it’s a big fight. But if we actually said to a group of people, “Look, if you’re not willing to stand under the word of God, we would like you to re-affiliate somewhere else because you’re a minority in this denomination and you are not entitled to three quarters of a billion dollars in assets that have been put forth by faithful people for faithful ministry. It’s not yours and we’re not giving it to you.”

Healthy Conversations. Solving Problems.

For one thing, yeah, there’d be a lot of blood on the ground and it would stink (And frankly, there are friends I have on the other side of that aisle, who would feel very hurt), but the ground would be set for some actual, healthy conversation at a classis level. You’d no longer be wondering if you have somebody over your shoulder who is about to bring theologically liberal solutions to bear on practical problems.

You’d find a tribe where we could actually talk about the Bible. Right now, certain people feel like they can’t even put their voice out. They can’t even raise their head on the Pastors of the Christian Reformed Church Facebook Page (which used to be a great problem solving place, and now it feels like, pardon me, but a tiny communist country where we’re all just trying not to say the wrong thing).

When the quality of that conversation gets better, then we can start actually solving our problems.

What if that happened? And then, the very next thing we do is say, “Penal Substitutionary Atonement—the idea that Jesus died for my sins—is the center of the gospel. Period. Let’s all agree on that.” Imagine how clear the air is suddenly.

We can start answering questions.

Now that we agree on homosexuality, how do we actually start ministering to people who have that problem? Because, the fact is, we’re not very good at it and we need to get better. Right now, we can’t even talk about that without getting into a fight about basic things. A year from now, we could.

What happens then if we can start clarifying that we’re all gospel-centered? What are our other biggest problems? Well, we have a discipleship problem. We have some ecclesiastical problems and how we’re structured. The way we do Synod doesn’t make any sense. Our deacons are in too many meetings for people who are supposedly servants. All those things become addressable when the obvious big division, when that fight gets taken out of the equation. And I think, if we’re willing to have that kind of integrity, that one simple thing could make a lot of other really good things possible.

This will get me in a little hot water with some friends, but guys, I love you. I think at that point we could start having serious conversations about what part of our denominational ministries need to stay and what things the churches on the ground need to do. We can stop having pastors with the illusion that if they look to the right swivel chair in Denominational HQ, someone will descend from on high and give them the solutions to their problems. That’s not how it works.

We could have a denominational HQ that’s lean, mean, and is in line with the church’s vision. Then they could actually partner together without feeling like they’re a thousand miles away from this place in every way.

Doesn’t that sound like a future you want to live in? Because I don’t think we’re that far from it. I think the first domino falls, and I think momentum picks up. 

I think people are hungry for exactly what I just described.