It has long been an almost impossible job for many church councils and even synod delegates to work through almost 500 pages of synod agenda in the scanty month and a half between the time that they are published and the annual June synod meeting. This year that problem is considerably eased by a recent decision that the most important reports must as far as possible be given to the churches several months earlier. The extra time that the churches now have to consider them should help to achieve more responsible decisions.

THE “VISION–21” SYNOD?

A quick survey of the business to be done suggests that this synod might be remembered as that of “Vision-21.” Our readers may remember (See the Feb., March and May Outlooks) that this is the title given to the report of an elite committee of business executives who, after being asked to make a study of our denomination’s administration, proposed that, in order to become more efficient and save money, all of the denominational agencies be put under the control of a “General Secretary” together with an “Executive Board.” That proposal has provoked the opposition of the first 14 overtures (pp. 431–437), as well as the equally hostile reactions of boards and other agencies. The report of the new Board of World Ministries (now including World Missions and World Relief) three times criticizes Vision–21. It sees a disrupting effect on an organization which is just beginning to function (p. 78), likely detrimental effects on the support and program of missions and no evident cost saving (pp. 96, 97) and disputes promised saving of money and increased efficiency in world relief (p. 120–123). Perhaps most interesting (not to say, amusing) is the reaction of the Board of Publications which deal with Vision-21 in a special report (pp. 50–55). That agency has long been informing us that it was becoming “less like a traditional church ‘agency’ and more like a Christian publishing company” (1985 and 1986 reports) most of whose customers are not within the denomination. Now, threatened by the proposed imposition of a powerful executive over it, it appeals to “three foundation principles,” “The Lordship of Christ is paramount,” “The local congregation possesses ‘original’ authority,” and “We govern by means of delegated authority.” It strenuously objects to having the church “administered by way of an hierarchical structure that one would design for· a business.” It observes that “The historic, Presbyterian system of government, which has been the traditional basis for the structure of the.CRC, has no ‘executive branch’ of government no bishopric or ecclesiastical heirarchy with executive power. The church is the whole Body of Christ made up of many interdependent members using their spiritual gifts for the mutual upbuilding of the whole body . The traditional Presbyterian structure for ordering the church is a series of governing bodies: consistory possessing ‘original’ authority), classis, and synod. Agencies are established to provide particular services and mission activities . . . . They are in no sense ‘management’ or an ‘executive board’ of church government.” Then it goes on to observe that, as in our time church members become more concerned with local and regional issues, the proposed centralization will never work. “If we move to a concentration of power in a central governing body, that governing body will be managing less and less with fewer and fewer resources as the church at large moves in another direction” (p. 51).

It is refreshing to see one of our most independently inclined bureaucracies now stating so well the case that many of us have long been trying to make against the current perversions of church government. Its apt statement of the matter fails only to observe what moved the church fathers to form this Presbyterian (or Reformed) church order. That order was not a mere “tradition,” but the pattern which they saw the Lord teaching us in His Word. If we are ever to find a satisfactory way out of our growing bureaucratic morass, on which this discussion is focussing attention, we will need to rediscover and follow that Biblical guide, as our Reformed fathers did. In view of the volume of opposition aroused by Vision-21, its acceptance by this synod does not seem likely. If the argument about it prods us to seek a Biblical reform of the real and growing abuses in our church administration, its effect could turn out to be very wholesome.

While, on one hand, Vision-21 proposes a more highly centralized and hierarchical form of government, Overtures 15 from Classis Alberta South and 16 from B.C. Northwest (pp. 437, 438) suggests that the time has come to move in an opposite direction, asking the synod to consider beginning regional synods (perhaps meeting annually, with a general synod only once in three years). Such proposals have often been made and the increasing unwieldiness of one large synod and current restudies of church structure suggests that this may be a good time to begin such a move.

QUOTAS

A main argument advanced for Vision-21 was a claim that it would reduce the rising costs of our ever growing central agencies. A number of them are already having to complain about dwindling support. The World Mission states, “Our concern about the shortfall in quota receipts continues. Last year we received about 80 percent of the quota synod approved for us. We expect a gradual decline in this source of income and are taking steps in our five-year plan to reduce our agency’s dependence on quota giving” (p. 99). World Relief states, “Financially it was a heartrending year. The gift flow did not rise to meet the needs and hopes reflected in the budget” (p. 119). A special subcommittee to deal with the problems of small churches is suggesting that they be permitted not to pay a percentage of the per-family quota levied on church families by the synod (p. 324–325). Four overtures (pp. 459–462) also focus attention on the subject of these quotas. Number 46 would have the number of families reported quarterly so as to make the billing of the churches more up-to-date and equitable. Number 47, objecting to a 1986 synod ruling, proposes a procedure by which a church may get classical permission to reduce its quota under certain conditions; it complains that the 1986 synod ruling “excuses from responsibility an unknown number of families for a variety of reasons. Next, it excuses the local church from responsibility for the quotas of those families. Third, it further excuses the classis from all but the confirmation of an attainable quota percentage” (p. 460) Notice the obvious assumption in all this kind of argument that the synod and classis have a right and duty to demand of each family a fixed amount as though it were a tax. Overture 48 asks for a separation of the quotas for Calvin College from that of Calvin Seminary. And the same classis (Orange City) in Overture 49 asks the synod to revise the 1985 decision on the Bredeweg appeal, the first sentence of which read “For an individual or a church to withhold certain quotas is not only contrary to Church Order Article 29 but also breaks faith with and erodes the unity and strength of the denomination.” The overture points out in its grounds that, “This decision is based on a misapplication of the Church Order. Article 29 states that ‘the decision of the assemblies shall be considered settled and binding, unless it is proved that they conflict with the Word of God or the Church Order.’ With regard to quota decisions this means only that the amount recommended to the churches is settled and binding; It does not mean that the amount churches may give is settled and binding.” Then in a second ground it calls attention to the basic 1939 (Article 90) decisions that “any unpaid quota may not be held against a church as a debt” and that the term “quota” is to be used “to indicate the amount per family recommended by the synod.” Overture 50 even more clearly highlights and seeks to correct the abuse of quotas.

As the “RECOMMENDATIONS” they were intended to be, to give church members a guide to the approximate amount of support that is needed to fund the churches’ common projects, all undertaken in obedience to the Word of God and in conformity of our common confessions, one can hardly find fault with such “quotas,” and usually there has been little difficulty in more than meeting them. When, however, they are perverted into “assessments” to compel payment for programs that contradict the Scriptures and our confessions—taxes for which the agencies owe those who give them no accounting, they become the kind of abuses of which we confess in our Belgic Confession Article 31, “we reject all human inventions, and all laws which man would introduce into the worship of God, thereby to bind and compel the conscience in any manner whatever.” Such compulsory “giving,” as a speaker at last year’s conference of concerned aptly pointed out, is a gross perversion of everything the Lord teaches us in His Word about Christian giving (2 Corinthians 8 and 9).

THE ECUMENICAL CHARTER

If Vision-21 and its disruptive implications have captured general attention, another proposal that is at least as threatening to the church and to the gospel has been quietly moving toward acceptance almost unnoticed. That is the Ecumenical Charter which the Interchurch Relations Committee wants the Synod to adopt this year (pp. 156, 157, 170–175). Drawn up by a small sub–committee of that agency appointed in 1983, the committee tried to have it adopted in 1985, but the synod referred it to the churches for study until this year. Noting how little church attention and response the document has received, and some (sharp) criticisms of it in the RES Theological Forum, the committee has made several extensive revisions, but it wants to see it adopted now without being referred back to the churches (p. 157).

The casual reader, trying to wade through 500 pages of agenda and pick out what is important, may, noticing the broad and airy generalizations of this document, dismiss it as another, rather meaningless “declaration.” What difference, if any, will it make? We need to take notice of the fact that in the “mainline churches,” one of the most inexcusable activities that has aroused more disgust on the part of multitudes of members and driven them out of those churches in droves, has been the “ecumenical” involvement in the World Council which has been diverting vast sums of church money to support guerilla movements that murder Christians and destroy churches and missions. Our committee might reply that it is not proposing that we now join the wee (though some of its veteran members have long advocated that). But if we adopt the charter, we will join the WCC and every other such apostate alliance. We in this document will state that WE ARE ALREADY ONE WITH EVERY CHURCH REGARDLESS OF DIFFERENCES (including even in such matters as “confessional formulas” and theologies) and that we must and will dialog with them toward showing that “unity,” the “IDEAL FORM” of which “IS NOT YET KNOWN!” Faced by this declaration, is it surprising that in the RES Theological Forum the Indonesian correspondent had to ask, “How far does the Charter permit the CRC to depart from its traditional stance as a confessional church?” (If our confessional “forms of unity” no longer unite us, what does?) The earlier version of the Charter which the churches have seen, was prefaced by a preliminary statement (not part of it) that it “was based on broad biblical perspectives” and reflected John 17 . . . Ephesians 4 and “a host of others,” “the ancient creeds and Reformed confessions” (including the Belgic Confession Articles XXVII to XXIX and the Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 21) and was consistent with earlier church policy decisions, notably those of 1944. After criticisms (see January 1987 Outlook, “Approaching Ecumenical Suicide?”, the committee has now included this preliminary statement in the revised document. Observe that, whether in or outside of the document, those statements are simply UNTRUE. The theme of the charter, that all churches are one regardless of their differences, flatly contradicts our Lord’s teaching that His people are chosen “out of the world” and “sanctified through His truth.” The Charter wants nothing to do with His warnings against “false Christs and false prophets” who “will deceive many” or with the admonition not to believe “every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.” Its commitment to a unity with all churches flatly contradicts the Belgic Confession’s (Article 29) careful differentiation of the true from the false church. The document does not agree with the emphasis of our churches’ 1944 decisions, but is the opposite to them. Even with the editorial changes which tend to obscure a little its flagrant repudiation of theological differences, it still amounts, as the Indonesian delegate saw, to a rejection of our churches’ creeds. In the Theological Forum already mentioned the representative of the Dutch CRC and even that of the liberal GKN, pointed out that it is not true that we do not know “the form of unity” which the church is to seek. This can only be said by a church which rejects the Bible’s teaching about what the Lord called His church to be!

The committee wants this document adopted now. When we make this official statement, we really confess a unity with every church, no matter how apostate it may be. Next year the committee had scheduled us to join the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, which has long been a virtual subsidiary to the WCC. This Alliance has for some time been wooing and flattering some of our theologians (pp. 160, 161; cf. 197–201) and next year’s envisioned joining it means that we ALLY ourselves with a body which states that “the Reformed tradition” is not “any narrow and exclusive definition of faith and order,” and with some of the most liberal churches in the U.S. These include the big United Presbyterian denomination whose toleration of denial of Christ’s deity has driven out of it the Evangelical Presbyterians who are currently seeking closer relations with us (pp. 194–196), and the even more liberal United Church of Christ. The Ecumenical Charter is a product of, by and for our increasingly independent Interchurch Relations Committee. If we adopt it, it will free the committee to engage in whatever ecumenical adventures it may choose to explore and will commit us to virtually unlimited support of every kind of ecumenical venture. Such a course can never lead to church reformation, but only to sharing the apostasy against which the Lord and His apostles warned us.

Overtures 32, 33 and 34 all oppose adoption of the Ecumenical charter because of is ambiguity and imprecision, preoccupation with the work of one committee, failure to consider other Reformed churches, its unbiblical and unconfessional character, and its unsuitability to guide us in the problems which we actually face in relations with other churches. Will the synod listen and take a critical look at what it is being urged to approve?

THE FEMINIST ISSUE

The feminist drive for office, with which. our synods have been seeking to temporize and compromise, continues to haunt us. This year it confronts us in two reports of a study committee on the Authority and Function of Deacons (reviewed in our April issue). A synod in 1984 decided to permit women to serve as deacons provided that their work as deacons be distinguished from that of the elders. Because of the resulting confusion, the synod of the next year appointed the committee to study that distinction. Now its majority wants to give in to the feminist drive to exploit the confusion of offices in order to gain a full share in church government. A minority proposes that, if the synod’s condition for admitting women as deacons is maintained, the deacons will have to be separated from the governing consistories.

The feminist issue also has to be faced in several overtures. Classis Grand Rapids East in Overture 27 would have the synod reject the ‘84 statement that the Bible teaches that man is to be “head” to exercise leadership and direction. At some length, it attempts to nullify the Biblical passages that distinguish between the differing roles of the sexes (notably I Cor. 11 and 14 and I Timothy 2) and, by misdirected appeals to the office of the believer, deny the plain Biblical teachings about church offices. It also proposes in Overture 28 to reverse the decisions that women are not eligible for the office of elder and minister.

On the other hand, Classis Illiana, in Overture 29, proposes to nullify the decision of 1984 to make women eligible for any church office, as contrary to the Word of God (I Cor. 14:34; I Tim. 3:2, 12), and causing division in the churches.

Finally, Classis Rocky Mountain, in Overture 30, would make the election of “qualified members” to all offices a local option (ignoring the Biblical restrictions already mentioned). Our churches will have to make up their minds whether to be conscientiously Biblical or not. Temporizing and compromise can only produce more conflict and increase the drift of members to other church fellowships that know what they believe and why.

DISCRIMINATION

The Synodical Committee on Race Relations has for many years been handicapped by two fundamental objections to its existence. (1) It is dedicated to the contradictory aim of removing race discrimination by giving special support to selected people and groups only on the basis of their race. To help needy people and deserving students invites general appreciation and support; to give or deny help only on the basis of color, as this committee does, is hypocrisy. It promotes the very sin it is supposed to oppose. (2) Having no field of operations of its own, the committee over the years receives funds using a large part of it for its own support and the rest for its racially limited grants to others, an inherently foolish and wasteful procedure. Despite the indefensibility of such a program, successive synods have annually increased its support from church quotas.

Especially in recent years as it has been venturing into a program for developing and training “multiracial-leadership.” It , in addition to its own direct quotas, has been soliciting and getting extra “assessments” from all kinds of other agencies, which must show their opposition to “racism” by their support. Now the committee (like some of these other agencies—see pp. 240, 47, 120, 124) is asking the synod to “increase the SCORR quota by an amount comparable to that which the Advisory Council or Multiracial Leadership members formerly paid SCORR as their individual agency assessments for membership on the Advisory Council.” The perusal of its report shows how it is naturally involved in a wide variety of efforts to secure preferential advancement for non-whites in all kinds of church, educational and business activities. Its regular report is accompanied by an additional plan for strategies and goals to achieve the same end (pp. 247–257). In addition to SCORR’s reports on its special programs for nonwhites, the agenda also contains a report of a special committee on “Ordination of Pastors from Multiracial Groups” (pp. 356–370). This report suggests special efforts and considerations to attract such churches into the denomination (p. 358), and deals with advantages being offered to non-whites to attract them into the churches’ ministry. The synod a few years ago made special modifications to the Church Order for the Indian churches and later agreed to special seminary training programs for Indians, Hispanics, Asiatics and Blacks which would permit them to be ordained when they were half-way through the program. The committee now proposes a variety of changes in the Church Order to adjust it to the special arrangements introduced to accommodate churches of these other races. When we once commit ourselves to sanctifying various kinds of racial discrimination with the claim that that eliminates such discrimination, where do we stop the nonsense! Could we imagine Paul endorsing such hypocrisy? He immediately denounced it when Peter made concessions to it (Gal. 2:11 ff.)!

While the details of our church practice and customs may and can usually be rather easily adjusted to other circumstances, we do people from other races no honor of favor when we think that we have to scale down our Biblical doctrines, creeds or church order as a concession to them. When they become committed to the gospel they often quickly outstrip in their enthusiasm for its doctrines and confession, our theologians who seem eager to abandon them. The Lord’s gospel does not have a race label and we have no right to stick such labels on it.

Look at the outrageous racial discrimination we have now created. Members of non-white races can be ordained to our churches’ ministry with half of the usually required seminary education. At the same time white students who have gradduated from some other seminary than that of our church, must spend at least one extra year (sometimes two) at Calvin to be declared eligible! Overture 22 would drop that unnecessary and unfair extra study at Calvin, and Overture 21 seeks to further correct the present injustice by putting licensing and candidacy under the control of classis where it ought to be, instead of under Calvin Seminary’s partisan administration, which is not a church assembly. Why should a student from San Diego have to go to Grand Rapids for a seminary interview instead of to the assembly of our California churches which he seeks to serve?

OTHER AGENDA

The synod agenda necessarily gives special attention to problems that demand decisions, and this survey has noted some of them. At the same time, it reports on more diverse and routine matters. We should notice, for example, the continued expansion of the Back-to-God radio and TV programs, not only in English, but in Arabic, Spanish, Portugese, Chinese, French, Indonesian and Russian languages. The 1986 responses increased 25% over 1985’s (p. 19).

We notice the decrease in Banner subscriptions and advertising (p. 34) and the postponement of the new hymnal release until September (p. 40).

Home Missions are seeking to limit the amount and shorten the time of subsidizing missions and new churches. Both in foreign and home missions there is plenty of evidence that overly generous and long–term help, although given with excellent intentions, can hinder rather than help the progress of the gospel. (p. 67). At the same time, trying to program church growth like a sales campaign—100,000 members in a dozen years (p. 57), and preferably non-white! (pp. 66)—is disturbing. In foreign fields we notice the withdrawal from Jordan and Bangladesh and the continuing Mexico controversy (p. 82), the continued church growth and mission retirement in Nigeria, church growth in the Dominican Republic, (pp. 84 ff.) World Relief begun as disaster relief. moving into developmental programs, is also becoming involved in what looks like a more doubtful business of trying to organize the deacons of area churches (pp. 109 ff.). In general, broader agencies should not do what can be done by local churches.

The Interchurch relations Committee wants the churches in the next year to consider rejoining the National Association of Evangelicals, which we left in 1951. The Committee presents a long report which appears to be worth the requested study by the churches during the next year (pp. 161, 162; 176–193). A committee to study the churches’ calling system proposes giving churches the freedom to call ministers for a term rather than indefinitely, and it wants to give the work to the Ministerial Information Service of the Pastor Church Relations Committee (pp. 422–430). Overture 20 (p. 440), opposes the first and supports the second proposal. Overture 23 would try to reduce the size of synods. Overture 25 would make the rather ambiguous 1972 “Report 44” on the nature and extent of the Bible’s authority invalid, and Number 26 would make the 1959 versions of the creeds official because the later changes were irregularly adopted. Overtures 36, 37, 38 and 39 are critical of a Fund for Needy Churches proposal to cut off subsidy to churches of less than 20 families (pp. 321–336; 453, 454). Overture 43 presents a statement against pornography. Overture 54 would, in the interests of ministers’ equality, set a maximum salary for any minister employed by the synod. While Classis B.C. Northwest (Overture 44) wants us to stop supporting the Communistic CEPAD organization in Nicaragua through World Relief (p. 106), Classis Lake Erie (Overture 45) wants us to pray and work for peace with its Communist government.

As we look over the business of this coming assembly, we should remember that not it, but the many and diverse congregations that it for a few days represents, are called to be the Lord’s churches. For their health and faithful Christian testimony, we, like the assembly, must labor and pray.