Join World Missions and World Relief?
The CRC Synod of 1984 moved in the direction of joining World Mission Board (WMB) and the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee (CRWRC). The main motive is to have united word and deed ministry in the mission of the church.
Although the synods’ and the synodical committees’ motives are good and their principles are sound, the proposed solution needs radical revisions in order to bring out the best of both of the agencies under discussion.
WMB is a church planting and development agency. WMB missionaries are church workers and have high view of the church. Church planting and development should not be minimized or compromised in missions. WMB should be encouraged in developing the church and its office: the offices of minister, elder and deacon.
CRWRC is part of the deaconal arm of the church but in practice operates as a social work agency which is involved in relief projects and has as its emphasis long term developmental projects. CRWRC personnel are not usually ordained as deacons and do not necessarily join the national CRC church to work through the deaconate. CRWRC personnel are Christian social workers , who operate on social work principles and use ecumentical agencies and community organizations as their base. Often when CRWRC works with the CRC churches it finds difficulties in operating from the national church deaconal base. This has been the case in the Dominican Republic, for example. Although the kingdom can use Christian social workers, para–church agencies, ecumenical agencies and community social organizations, they just don’t make the deaconate into these!
There is a great difference between the church deaconate and social work agencies. The deaconate is an office of grace, where gifts (with no repayment attached) and mercy (to the household of faith first) are required. In a social work project, repayment on short term loans and equal attention to community needs are practiced. The deaconate is a church office and the responsibility of the church. Social work is a social vocation necessary for all of society. The deaconate is a church office while social work is part of the office of all believers. The deaconate can cooperate with social work agencies but it is not a social work agency at the local, regional, national level or international level.
We are affirming the necessity of both agencies but not the mixture of the two. If Synod forces WMB and CRWRC together, the danger of turning national church deaconates into social work groups is very possible. Deacons become money lenders rather than givers, collecting dues rather than offerings, chairmen of social work programs run through the church, rather than chairmen of church projects. If we shift the social work into the church we are repeating the social gospel heresy.
The solution proposed so far by the synodical committee is a mixture of both agencies-one board for two agencies. The difference that exist are not resolved but administratively institutionalized. The best of both agencies are not accented but the struggle ofeach to change the other to its own image continues. WMB is trying to shift CRWRC onto a church base and CRWRC is trying to shift WMB onto a community base.
Isn’t there a need for both? Let CRWRC develop the social work side of kingdom work and the WMB the deaconate. Is it not possible to recruit a team of church deacons for the WMB, who would receive training at RBC, Calvin Seminary (MARS) and other educational institutions who offer courses in theology, ecclesiology, missiology and social work? These deacons would be people with deaconal experience in their home churches and would be sent out by the local consistory (in conjunction with the WMB) as deaconal workers, trainers and members of the national church. The deaconate belongs in the church!
Is it not possible for CRWRC to develop Christian Reformed social work agenc ies, which could supplement and help the deaconates to realize their calling. These would be para–church organizations such as RBC, Dort, Trinity, Redeemer, Kings, MARS, ASCS, Pine Rest, Bethany, Calvary, etc. It is a strength of the Reformed tradition that it leaves room for extra-church Christian organizations. This solution is workable. I know deacons and former deacons (with or without BA’s and MA’s) would respond to the call to form a deaconal arm in the WMB . (CRWRC is far too selective in hiring personnel). This task force would open up the doors for short term work projects, long term deaconal training, relief work and any other deaconal work that the national church needs. While CRWRC only works with a few of the WMB churches, in this way all of the WMB churches and related churches would have the opportunity to develop deaconates.
The WMB is ready for this. It is not new to many fields. I believe the Church in Nigeria included both Word and Deed work under the WMB. In the Dominican Republic, through the structure of the ministry centers which are arising in the different zones, the church–based, church-run and church serving institution are functioning well.
Let CRWRC be what CRWRC turned out to be and let WMB be WMB, but please, let’s not mix the two!
WMB missionary: Rev. Neal Hegeman, Santio Domingo
Missionaries of Whose Kingdom?
Kerk Informatie is the official paper of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. Its August, 1984 issue featured an article entitled “Letter of an American Missionary: Central America Preoccupies Us.” Loosely translated, it reads, “We say it with a bleeding heart, and as gently as possible, that God can never will that we kill poor people. By training and equipping others to kill and to maim I myself am not even free of guilt. The millions of dollars that are invested in this dreadful crime will some day condemn us.” Thus writes the American Sid Rooy, in a circular letter which the South American missionary paper also received, regarding American involvement in Central America. Rooy is sent out by the Christian Reformed Church of the United States . As professor of church history at the theological school of Buenos Aires . . . . He has been teaching church history there for twenty years and always cooperated with our returned missionaries . . . .
“The churches there, according to Rooy, strongly identify themselves with the Latin American people and their crises. Anti–American slogans appear on houses and walls in the city . Regarding this ‘Yankees Out of Nicaragua’, Sid Rooy says, ‘The Christians in Nicaragua defend their government, which is not perfect, but is in any event, significantly better than that of the former dictator Somoza.’”
Rooy writes further, ‘We know that the situation is complex; there are no clear solutions. But we murder brothers and sisters in the Lord, Baptists, Reformed, Pentecostals and Roman Catholics, who also pray the Lord’s Prayer, confess the Apostles’ Creed, are baptized in the name of Christ and celebrate His Supper.’
Thus the writing of our missionary is cited to support the current anti-defense hysteria of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands.
We ought to note further that Missionary Rooy, on whose views the Dutch paper focuses our attention, has also, according to missionary reports, translated books for Jose M. Bonino, a fellow–professor at the Union Seminary in Buenos Aires and a “liberation theologian” who, though profess ing to be an evangelical Christian, accepts Marxist social views and promotes Marxist-style revolution.
When our missionary denounces (and misrepresents) helping those who are resisting the seizure of their countries by athletic Communist revolutionaries as a murdering of fellow-Christians, he is in fact, giving support to Communist revolution. Then we are compelled to ask whose Kingdom he, and we, to the extent that we support him, are promoting, Christ’s or Antichrists’!
When our missionary denounces (and misrepresents) helping those who are resisting the seizure of their countries by atheistic Communist revolutionaries as a murdering of fellow Christians, he is in fact, giving support to Communist revolution. Then we are compelled to ask whose Kingdom he, and we, to the extent that we support him, are promoting, Christ’s or Antichrists’!
This is no isolated incident. We have noted evidence from time to time from our other mission fields as well as from missionary and relief administrations of such a movement toward “Liberation Theology.”*
Thirty-five years ago while we studied Chinese one of the deepest concerns of some of our Presbyterian fellow-students was the question of what kind of colleagues they would find in their assigned field. Would they be real Christians or not? Later we heard one of the Presbyterian colleagues of these our fellow evangelicals preach a sermon in Peking which did nothing but praise the accomplishments of Communism and decry the backwardness of Christianity. A significant part of the Communist leaders who took China were trained by such missionaries. It is now a half–century ago that J.G. Machen and his fellow-Presbyterians were driven, by such accommodating of contradictory religions in their denomination’s missions to organize an Independent Board of Foreign Missions whose missionaries evangelical Christians could confidently support. Current missionary developments on our fields compel one to ask how far we are from such an impasse.
*A discussion of this subject of Liberation Theology is found in Dr. Lester De Koster’s articles in our May, June and July-August OUTLOOKs under the title, “Is Liberation Theology Christian?”