Episode 122: Conversation with President Hoekstra & Todd Zuidema (Part 2)

“Every class here, every course…every major…including our athletic program and all of our co-curriculars, build around a…framework of four essential questions. First of all, your religious orientation, and it basically comes down to who owns your heart?…Who do you serve?…We claim here that we all serve Jesus Christ. Secondly, is the creational order of how things hang together…We're talking about an ordered structure, and this is where…the Dooyeweerdian and Kuyperian [language comes in] about how things are ordered…But then also we see the brokenness and that's the third piece of creational development. We see that sin is entered in and there is an antithesis—that's something that's unique about the Reformed worldview is that we do acknowledge the brokenness of sin but also the resurrected Christ that we can see the kingdom breaking in…Lastly is contemporary response. We say to students, what are you going to do about it? How are you created to make a difference for Christ in the world.” - Erik Hoekstra

Summary of this Episode

This week on the Messy Reformation, Jason and Willie continue their conversation with Dordt University’s President, Erik Hoekstra, and Director of Church Relations, Rev. Todd Zuidema. The interview picks up with a reminder that Dordt’s educational investment goes beyond the classroom. Yes, students are getting a degree and preparing for life after college, but that also involves helping kids grow up—learning to socialize, build friendships and more intimate relationships. As a Christian university, they can encourage but they can also show how the gospel challenges students and popular culture.

An underlying question is: how does an institution do this with a growing number of students from increasingly diverse backgrounds? Dordt staff and faculty are asking questions like “What can we assume the average freshman student will know about theology and doctrine as they come to the door?” The answer goes back to the old three-legged stool analogy—yes, the role of the church and parents is to help teach and catechize but Dordt can help, too! Todd encourages pastors that may not have the traditional second service, where the Catechism was historically taught, to pull out the Belgic Confession, the Canons of Dort, and the Heidelberg Catechism during their weekly sermons to help sustain a confessional heritage and strengthen our churches.

Erik provides a glimpse at how Dordt has maintained their “thick” Christian identity by highlighting two documents—The Educational Task of Dordt University and The Educational Framework of Dordt University. The Task directs that “Every class here, every course…every major…including our athletic program and all of our co-curriculars, build around a…framework of four essential questions. First of all, your religious orientation, and it basically comes down to who owns your heart?…Who do you serve?…We claim here that we all serve Jesus Christ. Secondly, is the creational order of how things hang together…We're talking about an ordered structure, and this is where…the Dooyeweerdian and Kuyperian [language comes in] about how things are ordered…But then also we see the brokenness and that's the third piece of creational development. We see that sin is entered in and there is an antithesis—that's something that's unique about the Reformed worldview is that we do acknowledge the brokenness of sin but also the resurrected Christ that we can see the kingdom breaking in…Lastly is contemporary response. We say to students, what are you going to do about it? How are you created to make a difference for Christ in the world.” 

Jason reminds us, “One of the great heritages of the Reformed faith is this understanding of Christian faith and life worldview.” So, every vocation a Christian works in can be done for the glory of God. Erik expands on that by pointing out how the Christian worker, even when they aren’t often dealing with people, work with integrity, steward their resources, respect creation, and recognize our work is a good gift from God which can be used to bring God’s kingdom to fuller fruition. He encourages pastors to spend time in the normal everyday work of their congregants and to ask how what is heard on Sunday gets applied in their week. Dordt takes this serious enough that they have started offering programs that typically would only be found in a community college. “We give students a deep taste of what an education looks like from a Christian and a Reformed world and life view, but also give them the hands-on experience to be able to send them out in the factory…the field…the construction site, and to say that those vocations have value in God’s kingdom and to say there’s a way to think Christianly about how to do that work.”

The conversation then shifts to the concept of “semper reformanda secundum verbi Dei”—Reformed and always reforming according to the Word of God. Looking at the CRC today, Jason identifies one of the big conversations in the CRC currently is “What does it mean to be Reformed?” He mentions a recent interview in which Dr. James K.A. Smith of Calvin University asks if we’re thinking about sexuality in a Reformed way, and states that Smith’s understanding seems to be “semper reformanda,” but forgets any reformation has to be according to the Word of God. Jason points out that he—in the more “conservative” camp—gets accused of being “too traditionalist or too fundamentalist…because we’re holding too hard to the Word of God.” Yet that’s what being Reformed entails.

The final part of the interview recognized there are different threads in the Reformed tradition—pietist, confessionalist, and transformationalist. Rather than separating those distinctly, there needs to be some balance. That’s a corrective, which is hopefully showing through in the generation coming up as seen at Synod 2022. It’s not just the young male ministers of the CRC, but there are several women university and seminary professors as well as CRC pastors who have been quite influential in recent work. There is optimism around the future of the CRC and Dordt’s continued partnership with local churches!