Episode 279: Synod 2026 — This Is What Reformation Is Really All About — Ralph Wigboldus (Part 1)
“We honestly don’t think that this is a strategy for arresting the decline within the denomination. They saw this as the mission of the church. This is what churches should do, regardless of numbers…There’s so much hand-wringing that’s been going on in the past couple of years. Now let’s just get busy with the work of the church…This is not a strategy that says the top down is going to make everything happen. This is to encourage the churches to do what Christ calls the church to do.” — Ralph Wigboldus
Summary of This Episode
In Part 1 of our Synod 2026 conversation, Ralph Wigboldus gives the Canadian view of the last decade in the CRC. Ralph is senior pastor in Woodstock, Ontario, and served six years on the Council of Delegates. He grew up in the CRC near Kitchener, Ontario, graduated from Calvin Seminary in 1999, and has served churches in Listowel, Sarnia, and now Woodstock. The recurring theme he brings is someone who has been doing denominational work for years and came into Synod 2026 tired, but left encouraged.
Ralph has worked in team ministry across all three churches he has served, always as a co-pastor rather than a senior pastor over an associate. His approach is simple: no one is good at everything, so make your co-pastor look good. Jason adds his dad’s line that he never met a pastor good at both preaching and pastoring, and Willy adds that if you think you are good at everything, don’t tell your church. The point is that team ministry works because pastors have real limitations.
On the Canadian question, the Council of Delegates spent about six years working out how Canada could control its own finances and comply with federal charity law without separating from the binational denomination. Ralph is clear that the Canadian board never wanted to leave; it wanted to keep the denomination strong and united. But after Synod 2022’s response to the Human Sexuality Report, a group that calls itself Toward Canada CRC pushed to separate and form a more progressive, affirming denomination in Canada. Ralph pushed back, arguing their real goal was a more liberal church, not local control of resources, and it cost him some friendships. Eventually a Canadian classis brought an overture to separate the denomination. It fell flat, with only those who brought it voting in favor, which reassured Ralph that the other Canadian classes wanted nothing to do with it.
Since then, much of that group has disaffiliated instead. About 70 congregations have left in recent years, including the church Ralph’s son now attends. Many have gone independent rather than joining another denomination, in part because the RCA in Canada is the more conservative body. Ralph worries about a batch of independent churches with no cohesive structure, and he grieves the losses and the divided families. But he also says the departures have brought a measure of peace. In his own congregation the issue has been a non-issue; only a handful of members left.
That peace defined Synod 2026. Ralph went reluctant, having already put in years of denominational work, but came away overjoyed. Where 2022 and 2023 felt like trench warfare, this Synod was marked by mutual respect, and disagreement was handled with grace. Jason, who was there in 22 and 23 and again briefly this year, says the same thing everyone he has interviewed keeps saying: the denomination has turned a corner.
Ralph served as reporter for Committee 6, Missions and Congregations. Their main item was Resonate’s ten-year church-planting plan, roughly 39 recommendations that arrived late in the process. Ralph and committee chair Jim Kirk held four online meetings beforehand to figure out how to handle it, then moved to adopt the recommendations as a package while flagging a couple that set up next year’s review. What stood out to Ralph: Resonate did not pitch planting as a way to reverse decline. They framed it as the mission of the church, what churches should do regardless of numbers. It is not top-down. It starts with congregations fasting, praying, and raising up disciples and leaders from within. The floor debate was notably energized.
Jason ties this to the podcast’s two-year refrain: the CRC is moving from the fight stage into the build stage. Ralph connects it to Reformation history: divisions happen, then churches get back to ministry. He notes that when the URC left in the 1990s, the CRC lamented the loss, but those became churches doing the work under a different name. Jason points to Calvin’s Geneva as a training ground that raised up leaders and sent church planters across Europe.
Ralph’s takeaway for his own church: it’s on us. Identify people with gifts, talk to them, and encourage them. His congregation spent a year on mentoring, and now the denomination is calling for the same thing. Part 2 picks up the practical question of how a small congregation actually begins raising up leaders.