Episode Replay: Why Reformation Is Always a Return, Never an Evolution — Lee Christoffels
“All the discussions we have really hinge on our understanding of the authority of the Scripture and an accurate understanding of it…We need to keep the central theme of Scripture controlling everything…We need to keep understanding the fullness of the biblical message…the unity of the Old and New Testaments…We’re not just New Testament Christians; we’re biblical Christians.” —Lee Christoffels
Summary of This Episode
Due to unexpected scheduling conflicts, this week on the Messy Reformation is a re-run of episode 97, which brings us back to Jason and Willy’s conversation with Rev. LeRoy (Lee) Christoffels from late 2022. To this day, Lee continues to serve in retirement as an associate pastor with preaching and visiting responsibilities at First CRC of Edgerton (MN) as well as regularly providing pulpit supply at other churches. Prior to retirement, he served five congregations in Iowa, southern California, New Jersey, and southwest Minnesota.
As one of our oldest guests, Jason asks what joys Lee has found throughout the last fifty-plus years in ministry. Lee shares that he still loves preaching and the challenges that can come with it. He’s loved being able to watch people come to know the Bible and what the Reformed faith is, and to see them grow through different stages of life and even multiple generations.
That leads to a conversation between Jason and Lee encouraging longer pastorates (25-30 years). While Lee admits he sometimes wishes he’d stuck around in some places longer, that wasn’t the general culture in our denomination. He points out that being with a church for that long forces the pastor to preach on things they wouldn’t get to in the typical ten years or less call. He does share, though, “Some of us just don’t have the staying power…But there is a great advantage in staying and seeing through peoples’ lives and being used by the Lord to mold their lives in a good direction.”
Jason moves on to remind us that the 1970s, especially the early years, were a weighty time in the CRC, and asks Lee to share what he remembers and to compare it to the present. Lee identifies each CRC looked more like others, but the cultural shifts of the ‘60s really began changing that, which continued into the ‘70s. In the denomination, biblical authority and the infallibility of Scripture were being seriously questioned, but not everyone went along with that. There was a gradual pressure on the church that effected other things, including the debates over women in office.
Zooming out, Lee also notes history is always connected. Some of what bled into the early years of the CRC when Dutch immigrants came to the United States around the 1850s was the secession in the Dutch church in the 1830s. That involved attitudes towards confessional subscription, which wavered as time has gone on. Looking back at our Synod in 2022, he saw clarity again that he hoped would continue.
Some of the clarity and confusion in the last five years or so has been around the understanding of what it means to be “Reformed.” The confessional contingency has at times been accused of being fundamentalist and just like Baptists. The more progressive side champions the idea of “always reforming.” Lee points out, change is great, but it has to be us being molded to Scripture and repenting of our sin. Willy acknowledges that we need to remember the whole phrases. “Reformed and always reforming according to the Word of God.”
Lee sees unity around our Confessions—the Three Forms of Unity—being a strength and blessing for us. The Confessions are not over Scripture, but they continue to help guide our understanding of Scripture because we believe what’s in them is from Scripture. Especially as we become a more ethnically diverse denomination, the Confessions are a much better thing to unify around than simply an ethnic origin and can help shape faithful practices.
One of the last big topics in this episode is Lee sharing, “To be Reformed is to be catholic.” He explains that the Reformers wanted to clean up and help the Catholic church come back to the catholic (unified) faith, not “the Roman faith.” As they continue to talk about the need for such a reformation today, Lee names the primary problem facing the church today is exegesis, interpretation, and the authority of God’s Word. “All the discussions we have really hinge on our understanding of the authority of the Scripture and an accurate understanding of it…We need to keep the central theme of Scripture controlling everything…We need to keep understanding the fullness of the biblical message…the unity of the Old and New Testaments…We’re not just New Testament Christians; we’re biblical Christians.” He also offers a great resource in Catherine Vos’ The Child’s Story Bible, which Jason adds a seminary professor referenced this as “the best example of redemptive-historical story-telling”—good for any age!