Episode 233: Synod 2025 — The Problem of Theological Mediocrity — Chris Ganski (Part 2)

“My big worry…is we do not have qualified pastors coming into the denomination to lead churches…It is close to crisis…We need to inspire young folks to take calls to ministry, but we also have [to be clear]: the work of ministry is really hard. You have to think hard. You actually have to be educated…I feel like we’re not willing to ask people to do that hard work….and we currently are not creating these folks…Encourage people into the ministry…help resource them…Pray for the Lord [to] raise up workers.” —Chris Ganski

Summary of This Episode

Willy and Dan are back this week with Rev. Chris Ganski, senior pastor of City Reformed Church in Milwaukee, WI. Chris was a delegate at Synod 2025 and the reporter for Advisory Committee 2 (AC2). Chris continues to share about how he appreciated the charitable, united approach that this Synod took. He turns the conversation to the second significant overture given to his committee–Overture 7. Rather than creating a vetting committee, Synod approved the development of rubrics for nominees to give more background and to share their convictions and commitments.

Dan shares how he appreciated the framework of holiness and unity with trust that Chris offered when he introduced AC2’s recommendations. Given that Chris mentioned early on in the first episode about Reformed catholicity, he invites him to share a bit more on that. “My experience broadly as…a church historian, having had a view into lots of different denominational histories and conflicts…how you go about renewal and reformation matters. I’m 100% behind the decisions we’ve made as far as the human sexuality piece…I’ve always…had to wrestle with [a] tension…I couldn’t just make proclamations; I had to consider the human dimensions, the relationships, and the need for oneness…One of the things I’d love to see for us moving forward as a denomination is to live into that Reformed catholic middle.”

What does that mean? He continues, “We tend to only think on this political map: right, left, conservative, liberal…This Synod, I felt like the…centrist, moderate CRC really asserted itself again…It’s not a balancing of the right wing and the left wing…I mean…more like a catholic center which tries to take its location from the heart of our confessional documents, not the margins…I believe in the distinctives…but…I want to start from the center…”

He shares that Ephesians 4 was a pivotal text in his preparation for this Synod. “You need these moral virtues of humility and gentleness in order to maintain the oneness…The way you break oneness is by lacking those virtues…[As you go further] the church can go wrong in its doctrine and it’s teaching, and it can go wrong in its virtue, but the oneness of the church depends upon both being held together.” Willy points out that he felt this Synod was “a little softer and some compromises were made.” While he’s happy they could come together with clarity, unity, and grace, he also cautions, “I think grace that overpowers discipline means essentially the third mark has the potential to be lost, and that’s a caution that I think is real.” He shares a conversation he had while at Synod in which someone shared with him, “‘The ship is being turned in the right direction, but it turns slowly; so don’t try and turn it too fast.’” 

Given Chris’ background and what Dr. Jared Michelson shared in his interview for CTS, Dan asks what it means to be a pastor theologian as different from a more academic theologian pastor. Chris shares, “I am a member or a fellow of the Center for Pastor Theologians…an evangelical group [of] mostly pastors with PhDs but…doing full-time ministry, not in an academic context…There’s a difference between being a pastor theologian and a pastor academic…They could overlap…but I think sometimes when people hear ‘pastor theologian’...theology equals academic…I try to emphasize…you don’t have to have a PhD to be a theologian, but if you are preaching God’s Word…every time I step in the pulpit, I’m doing theology…I’m exegeting the text. I’m thinking about how it applies to peoples’ lives. Every time somebody comes into my office to talk…or to pray, I’m doing the work of theology…Every part of the life of the church is theological, even synod, even our polity, it all assumes theology.” 

He yearns for the CRC to “...embrace a deeper theological vision,” and believes the problem of the CRC “...is not theological liberalism [but] theological mediocrity.” He sees evidence of that being true when it came to the virtual church and church planting conversations at Synod, discussing sacraments, ecclesiology, and embodiment. Many pragmatic and entrepreneurial points were made, but not deeply theological. We–the CRC–should wrestle towards an answer to the question, “What is the nature of the church?”

For his final words, Chris shares that he feels “...very positive about the denomination…My big worry…is we do not have qualified pastors coming into the denomination to lead churches…It is close to crisis…We need to inspire young folks to take calls to ministry, but we also have [to be clear]: the work of ministry is really hard. You have to think hard. You actually have to be educated…I feel like we’re not willing to ask people to do that hard work….and we currently are not creating these folks.” We need to join Chris in his response to that, “Encourage people into the ministry…help resource them…Pray for the Lord [to] raise up workers.”