Episode 276: Synod 2026 — Confessional Identity, the Sabbath, and the 150-Church Vision
“If us conservatives really grab hold of this and start planting solid churches, we can make a huge difference — not just in our denomination, but for the kingdom…Susan LeClear said we had double the number of candidates at Synod this year. The young men are getting excited about what’s happening in the CRC..There’s something attractive about it: we’re fighting, we’re building, we’re bringing the gospel out in confessionally Reformed ways.” — Jason Ruis
“The work of the church is to be taken seriously, done dutifully, and done joyfully. I saw a lot of happy warriors at Synod….They can be contentious, they can fight and deliberate well — but they do it joyfully, as ambassadors of the kingdom, because Christ promised he’ll build his church and the gates of hell won’t stop it.” — Willy Krahnke
Summary of This Episode
Part two of the Synod 2026 recap picks up with one of the week’s quieter but more telling decisions: removing Our World Belongs to God from the Covenant for Office Bearers. Willy, who watched the hour-long debate closely, makes the crucial distinction — by the end, Synod wasn’t arguing the merits of Our World Belongs to God as a contemporary testimony at all, but whether it belonged in the document office bearers sign. His own conviction is clear: ordination should bind a leader to the ecumenical creeds and the Reformed confessions, and nothing in addition. Jason highlights Brittany Clark’s floor argument — if we’ve already voted not to include the Belhar, why keep one contemporary testimony and not the other? For both hosts this is another thread in the same rope: the CRC is doubling down on a confessionalist identity. Jason relays the line of the week, offered by a self-described transformationalist on the floor: the confessionalists are in the driver’s seat, the pietists are riding shotgun, and the transformationalists are in the back seat — and I’m okay with that. Willy, who counts himself a transformationalist and doctrinalist with a Kuyperian streak, agrees, and notes the arc of the week: Monday and Tuesday were hard to watch, but by Wednesday the boldness arose.
From there the conversation turns to the decisions about Synod itself. Both hosts warmly affirm two outcomes: keeping Sunday as a genuine Sabbath in the middle of Synod, and the decisive rejection of biennial synods. Willy, who sits on the COD and registered a negative vote on the biennial proposal, says the voice vote with no dissent tells him the denomination’s pulse is being read accurately — and that the task force behind these recommendations is out of touch. Jason hasn’t found anyone outside the task force who wanted biennial synods, and he makes the deeper case for meeting yearly: this year Synod twice or three times tabled a majority report to take up a minority report, only to have votes swing back — proof that real deliberation is happening, the kind that goes off the rails when a denomination only gathers every two years. Willy will carry that report back to his classis, he says, with a smile on his face.
The heart of part two is the episode’s most hopeful turn: the unanimously adopted ten-year church planting vision, and the Saturday-night State of the Church address that set it up. Jason, who has long described Zach King as a likable but uninspiring leader, offers a genuine and surprising correction — King did a really great job, earned a standing ovation, and showed something Jason hadn’t seen in him for a while. King named the denomination’s moment as a pivot from a season of fighting into a season of building, an Antioch moment marked by discipleship, leadership development, and healthy church planting. The concrete goal is striking: 150 new churches in five years, roughly three per classis. Jason asks listeners to picture their own classis with three additional solid, confessionally Reformed congregations — the cumulative effect would remake the denomination. Willy, the transformationalist, can’t help noting it would remake the culture too, and the post-millennialist in him gets excited enough that they have to laugh and rein the conversation back in.
But both hosts ground the vision in realism. The CRC can’t plant churches it has no pastors to lead, so step one is leadership development against a real shortage. The plan includes hard conversations about legacy churches — closing unhealthy congregations in a way that seeds and fertilizes new ones — alongside the classis realignment that also passed this year. Jason’s encouragement to conservatives is to stop waiting and grab hold of this: Susan LeClear reported double the candidates at Synod this year, evidence that young confessional men are drawn to a denomination that is fighting, building, and carrying the gospel out in Reformed ways. The episode closes on the note that defines the whole recap. Willy reflects on the happy warriors he watched at Synod — delegates who fight hard and deliberate well, yet do it joyfully as ambassadors of a King who promised to build his church. And Jason lands the plane on the takeaway he keeps returning to: don’t wait for the denomination to do the ecclesiology work. Do it yourself, grassroots. We are called to act.