Episode 137: Reflections on Synod 2023 with Patrick Anthony (Part 2)

"Weeds and wheat [are] growing up together until the end, but God is allowing that because He’s sparing the wheat and that’s a beautiful thing…As much as I talk about how we need to figure things out and do it soon, I also know that if that doesn’t happen, that's okay, too. Nothing’s going to be perfect until Christ returns, and He’s my hope.” -Patrick Anthony

Summary of This Episode

Jason and Willy are back with Rev. Patrick Anthony, and the episode returns to Patrick’s reflection of his time at Synod. He offers a glimpse into the divide of the Advisory Committee he served on, but really it’s one that ran through the Synod body and through the denomination currently. The divide is an “epistemological” one, according to Patrick—“Do I believe that God has spoken and I can rest on what he has said? Or do I believe that he is speaking something new and that I need to hear it.” Those essentially are the two distinct sides in the denomination. Some are still trying to determine which they belong to or if they must, but it boils down to that. 

As we’ve heard from others, Patrick noticed a clear and significant change from the Advisory Committee room to the synod floor. There was a general sense of caring, working together, and being as united as possible as the group did their work. When a decision needed to be made, the stakes were high, and there’s “finality” to what’s being waded through—things changed. Willy wisely asks why? Patrick returns to his comments about unity and theology—we don’t have that. Because of the epistemological divide mentioned earlier, everyone is “so convinced that they’re standing on the Word of God or hearing from the Holy Spirit; therefore, they have God’s opinion on the matter.” Jason chimes in—in committee, there’s still hope but a direction forms on the floor.

The group moves onto discuss what didn’t get done—essentially calling Neland Avenue CRC to repentance. Even in the Advisory Committee, it took some time for the whole committee to wrap their minds around that—what it is and “the beauty and graciousness of it.” When that got to the floor, the overall lack of time and being caught off guard by remarks made without anyone being able to formulate a response led to an undesired outcome. Patrick shares about feeling deflated in the moment, “…I really thought it would have been so good for Neland [Avenue] to have the opportunity to see [the denomination as a whole is telling us no], ‘We really should repent for even just that.’” After some time of reflection, he’s fine with how things ended, because he sees it as allowing time for difficult conversations rather than quick explanations that wouldn’t have dealt well with nuance.

One of Patrick’s takeaways from his experience is the realization that he enjoys polity, and he provides a helpful analogy with railroad tracks. “…[Church polity is] like the tracks that our unity runs on…You need tracks, and you ought to be able to divert those tracks, build new tracks, if necessary, but you got to have tracks because those tracks are taking you somewhere.” For the denomination, he sees the need to have more conversations about our identity, because the current worldview differences are untenable. We need to unify on a particular theology. 

From there, he and Jason go down a bit of a rabbit trail with J. Gresham Machen’s “Christianity and Liberalism,” which definitely has parallels within the CRC. The content of our issues may be different from what Machen addressed, but the sides drawn up in the CRC and what they represent mirror what Machen addressed. There’s a need for us to move from addressing how do we all get along to what do we believe, lest we end up with watered down theology. 

There’s a recognition that we are most likely headed for a split, though it’s not what the Messy Reformation side desires. We don’t want to kick people out. Jason shares a personal story about welcoming someone into his home and providing them a place to live, and part of that involved expectations. When the person eventually did not follow those and had opportunities to change but did not, they could no longer stay in his home. That wasn’t because Jason and his wife wanted to kick her out, but she made decisions and charted a course that showed she didn’t want to be there. When churches or people choose to say “no” to the expectations, beliefs, and practices of the CRC, they are making a choice that they don’t want to be part of what the CRC is and what it stands for. Jason summarizes Ecclesiastes 8:11, saying, “Delayed discipline makes everything worse. Discipline carried out swiftly brings a matter to an end.”

Patrick’s closing words remind us: “…Weeds and wheat [are] growing up together until the end, but God is allowing that because He’s sparing the wheat and that’s a beautiful thing…As much as I talk about how we need to figure things out and do it soon, I also know that if that doesn’t happen, that's okay, too. Nothing’s going to be perfect until Christ returns, and He’s my hope.”