Episode 159: Persevering in Faithful Reformation - Reformers Must Confront Sin and False Teaching - Jason Ruis (Part 2)

“If you're a delegate going, you need to do the work of understanding those things well, understanding church order well, reading what it says and studying it so that you can make an argument from the floor [or] in your advisory committee…I want to make sure we don't get distracted by anything else. We need to have a laser focus on these two issues. We all know that there are a million different things that need to get done. We all know that there are lots of different problems in the Christian Reformed Church. But if we try to do all of that in one Synod, it's never going to happen…[There is a military strategy known as] economy of force. A military spread out widely is not effective, but they want to concentrate their energy and their effort into one or two places…You want to make sure that they're the most strategic, high-priority targets…These are the two priority targets that are very strategic at this next Synod…If we can accomplish those two things, it really will completely change the course of our denomination. And all the rest of these dominoes of frustration will begin to fall after that. We still are going to have work to do, but the dominoes are going to continue to fall.” -Jason Ruis

Summary of this Episode

Jason is back this week to address a bit more related to Synod 2024, share a reading from John Calvin, and offer some reflection on a “reformer’s psalm.” As we heard at the end of last week’s episode, Jason doesn’t see a need for a large amount of overtures this year. Delegates will have to deal with unfinished work connected to about thirty overtures from last year–they don’t need more information on that matter. However, he recognizes there is a place for some overtures (that are already in the works) regarding discipline and disaffiliation. 

These two points–gravamen and discipline/disaffiliation–are and should remain the two main foci for Synod 2024. Jason encourages, “If you're a delegate going, you need to do the work of understanding those things well, understanding church order well, reading what it says and studying it so that you can make an argument from the floor [or] in your advisory committee…I want to make sure we don't get distracted by anything else. We need to have a laser focus on these two issues. We all know that there are a million different things that need to get done. We all know that there are lots of different problems in the Christian Reformed Church. But if we try to do all of that in one Synod, it's never going to happen…[There is a military strategy known as] economy of force. A military spread out widely is not effective, but they want to concentrate their energy and their effort into one or two places…You want to make sure that they're the most strategic, high-priority targets…These are the two priority targets that are very strategic at this next Synod…If we can accomplish those two things, it really will completely change the course of our denomination. And all the rest of these dominoes of frustration will begin to fall after that. We still are going to have work to do, but the dominoes are going to continue to fall.” The fight for reformation is not shock-and-awe, and we should understand the progressives know and have publicly stated they don’t expect Synod to change course from the last two years.

This should be an encouragement for those CRC members and churches who may be feeling frustrated and thinking about leaving. Jason shares a comment someone made to him following last year’s meeting, “The only way we lose is if we quit.” So, let’s encourage one another to not quit, to keep fighting the good fight, to support, encourage, and especially come alongside each other when we’re feeling such frustration.

I encourage you to check out the other link Jason is posting with the extended quote from John Calvin. While Calvin is focused on his adversaries and the appropriate separation he was involved in, Jason encourages us to also look at ourselves. “We need to…see where we have failed to do what God has called us to do–in our own personal life, in our churches, in our classes, in our denomination. Some of that failure has been the result of our own laziness and sinfulness, a refusal to get in and do the hard work of being involved in a denomination, but also some of that has been our just refusal to do what God has called us to do regarding discipline. Are we doing discipline in our local churches and are we doing discipline in our classes and are we doing discipline as a denomination?...It’s easy for us to holler and bellow about the discipline that needs to be done at a denominational level, but it's much harder for us to begin enacting it in our own lives, in our families and in our churches and in our classes. So we need to repent. We need to hear the hard words, step back from the cliff and follow God.” 

That brings us to the close of the episode in which Jason offers some reflection on Psalm 38:15-22. “If we're gonna lead reformation in the church, in the CRCNA in particular, we need to learn this Psalm, we need to memorize this Psalm, because it speaks to almost everything I see going on in my own heart in the midst of this reformation, and it speaks to the things, everything I see going on in the lives of other people as well.” Jason captures four main things: 1) Patience: We are reminded we are to wait for the LORD, and faithfully-working while we wait. 2) Enemies: We do have enemies who rejoice when we fail and seek to twist what we’ve said, but the LORD will not forsake us. 3) Own our mistakes: Each of us in this reformation have said something wrong, attacked wrongly, or rejoiced in another’s downfall. For that, we must repent and seek forgiveness. 4) “We need to put our faith in trusting God…that he will give us everything we need in this reformation…to protect us from attack…to give us wisdom and insight into how to move forward…to give us strength…comfort…to forgive us…and we trust him to ultimately accomplish this work in the Christian Reformed Church and to accomplish it in his time.”