At this time of the year we again review the newly published Agenda (“things to be done”) for the June Synod of the Christian Reformed churches. Such a survey may interest members of church consistories who get (but few of whom may read) the 472 page book, as well as other of our church members and readers.
The book contains reports of boards and standing committees, denominationally related agencies, and study committees and then overtures and printed appeals.
Radio and TV
The book begins with a brief report on what often seems one of the most exciting and influential opportunities the Lord has given our churches, the radio and TV outreach with the gospel. First there is a listing of the various radio and TV programs and their accompanying literature distribution in the English language. Then our attention is directed (as the daily news also often is) into the Arab world. There radio can and does reach ears and hearts in many places where because of Moslem opposition no missionary would be tolerated. Where today some advocate a policy of compromise in the missionary efforts toward the Islamic world, Rev. Bassam Madany is convinced “that Islam and Christianity are incompatible” as he preaches in his native Arabic the gospel of Christ as the only Savior. The gospel is broadcast in the Spanish language over approximately 135 local stations in South America and four in Spain as well as large facilities which reach around the world. The voice of Isaac Jen directs the gospel to close to one billion Chinese in their native language. Similarly, French language broadcasts reach into France, Africa, the Caribbean and Quebec Indonesian, Japanese and Portuguese programs reach other large areas of the world and since July 6 of last year a beginning has been made in a Russian program. The Back to God Hour has a new opportunity to program broadcasting of Radio Dominca in the Caribbean, which it asks the Synod to approve.
Calvin College and Seminary
The less than 6-page report of the Calvin Board of Trustees tells us virtually nothing about what is really happening in our college and seminary. As I observed last year, one could never guess from its few housekeeping details that these church–owned and supported institutions for training our future leaders confront us with some of our most threatening problems. The Board tells the church nothing in this official report of what it is doing about the year old student complaint against Professor Stek’s refusal to commit himself to presenting the first chapters of Genesis as factual history. Neal Hegeman’s article in this Outlook reveals the problem. A college student’s letter sent in for this issue of The Outlook also tells us much more about what is being done with the Bible in classrooms than does the official report of our delegates to those whom they are supposed to be representing.
In connection with the Calvin Report we may take notice of Overture Number 15 which refers to the requirement that students who have attended other seminaries spend one year at Calvin Seminary before becoming candidates for the ministry of our churches. Classis Hudson asks that this requirement be waived in the case of a Westminster graduate who has been preaching and teaching in its churches and community for several years. If the practical purpose of this old rule is considered to be to guarantee that the candidate will be thoroughly familiar with the Christian Reformed churches’ faith and practices, there appears to be no need for its application in this case. It is ironic that that rule which was originally designed, it seems, to assure the Reformed orthodoxy of applicants for our churches’ ministry can now be converted into an obstacle to the entry of students who want to hold a consistently orthodox position.
World Missions
Our churches’ missions now reach into 23 nations overseas. Of the total budget to support these activities 52 percent comes from quota income, 48 percent from congregational and individual giving. One of the most significant developments has been the increasing transfer of formerly mission activities to the control of the national churches. In Mexico some very serious problems have developed in this matter. In Nigeria last November the operations of our churches’ mission in the Tiv area were turned over to the Synod of the Tiv Church. In 1980 our Board also “decided to use the money budgeted for three missionary positions to assist NKST (the Tiv Church) in expanding facilities at Reformed Theological College of Nigeria, which now has over fifty students” (p. 49). This is the school which the Reformed Fellowship long encouraged and supported although it was opposed by some of our influential missionaries and administrators. Now it is getting official endorsement and support.
The report calls attention to the continuing problems that arise where our churches‘ missions and world relief organizations carry on independent work in the same areas (p. 43). The same churches conducting such two-headed programs is bound to raise problems both of principle and practice.
Attention is directed to the explosive political situation in Central America. The report mentions “critiques of capitalism” and “the inhumanity of multinational corporations,” etc. (p. 60). “It may be forthrightly said that in general our missionaries identified themselves with the cause of those who have been victimized by the rich and powerful elite. As is so often the case, it is among the poor and struggling ones that the gospel finds entrance. This gospel is by no means a call to quietude in the postponement of the blessings of salvation into the future.” “The churches so planted become yeast and ferment and are enabled to address the injustices of their societies in the name of Christ. On some occasions our missionaries have been in extreme danger because of their courage in this context. At the same time, it should be clear that the missionaries may themselves become an embarrassment to the national groups they nurture.”
In this connection our readers may have noticed the open letter in The Banner (April 13, 1981, p. 32) which our Latin America area mission secretary, Rev. G. Bernard Doctor, writing under our churches World Mission letterhead, addressed to President Reagan urging him to deny further military aid to the government of El Salvador in its war against a take-over by Communist guerrillas. By what authority does this mission secretary (whose reappointment must be decided by this Synod – p. 39) presume to commit the whole denomination to such a partisan opinion on a strictly political issue? The Lord never committed us to bring a gospel of political revolution, although He was under constant pressure in the political situation of 1st Century Palestine to identify Himself with a political revolt against the Roman over–lords. Paul and the other early missionaries preached “repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ” and studiously avoided being diverted into trying to destroy the political systems. The influence of the gospel did eventually correct social evils and alter institutions, but to make of it a political revolutionary movement is a perversion, the kind of perversion of which the Liberal churches of our time are notoriously guilty. It is as wrong in principle as it is foolish in practice for the missionary as a guest in a foreign country to try to tell the people among whom he lives how they must handle their internal affairs. It would seem that when our missionaries and even our mission administration try to hinder the established government from defending itself against a Marxian guerrilla take-over they are asking for their expulsion. And when the missionary identifies himself with one class of people (or race) against another he is no longer faithful to his gospel calling to bring the gospel to all kinds of classes and peoples (1 Cor. 9:19–22 “I am made all things to all men that I might by all means save some.”). These indications of our mission policy in Latin America raise some serious questions about what kind of mission we are supporting.
Home Missions
The Board of Home Missions surveys domestic mission and church developments. It is attempting to put more emphasis on local authority and responsibility (p. 72). In connection with the Home Missions report we may notice also the later Report 38 (p. 418 ff.) which contains the recommendations of the Council of Indian Churches on the formation of a new classis of Indian churches. One wonders about the need or propriety of making the significant changes in the church order and form of subscription which are recommended for the use of the Indian churches. These are hardly racial matters and the notion that they should be simplified for Indians seems itself to reflect a kind of race prejudice that should not govern decisions of our churches. Quota adjustments for Indian churches are unnecessary if we only remember that quotas have never properly been more than general recommendations. (See Overture Number 12 on Quotas.)
Publications
The Board of Publications devotes a good deal of attention to its committee structure. Since 1973 when the systematic teaching of Christian doctrine on the basis of the Heidelberg Catechism was “consciously abandoned” in favor of a United Church School Curriculum a number of our churches which are still committed to systematic catechism training of the young have disregarded most of the productions of the education department, which were not designed to meet their needs, and obtained other catechism books. (The Reformed Fellowship sells a number of them.) The Board has decided to reprint a number of its older materials (some lightly edited), for which there continues to be a demand.
World Relief
Our World Relief Committee continues to function in a number of areas of the world. It directs attention to the annual Day of Prayer and Fasting which it is endeavoring to sell to the churches. It has been observed by those familiar with the Moslem World that a number of peculiarities of our promoted practice resemble rather closely those prescribed for the Moslem Ramadan. And one has about as little Biblical grounding as the other. The Committee also shows an inclination to stray from the helping the needy in the name of Christ into the, for the church, tricky political ground of working for “social justice and structural change” (p. 105). The report calls attention to the fact that in its Bangladesh work with farmers there is a “complete lack of an evangelism program” and little or no prospect of getting one. It closed its Jordan program in February of 1980 because of the impossibility of an evangelical witness in it.
Tracts
The Back-to-God Hour Tract Committee is recommending that its operations cease since they are largely duplications of what others are doing.
Bible Translation
The Bible Translation Committee has begun reviewing the New American Standard Bible.
Translation and Educational Assistance Committee
Since 1979 an effort has been made to merge the work of translating Christian literature into other languages with that of assisting students from churches abroad to come to Calvin Seminary for further study. In view of the differences between these two programs it is now being recommended that the Synod abandon the effort to merge them under one committee. The literature translation program is one that calls for enthusiastic support in view of the classic Reformed materials that are being made available in other languages. The support of students from abroad at Calvin Seminary is a more doubtful business. (1) Uprooting students from their own culture and manner of living for an extended period of study in the U.S. sometimes does more to hinder than help them prepare for effective Christian service in their own country. (2) The Report alludes to the problem of separating families and the expense of supporting whole families when the husband and father studies here. (3) More serious than the economic and social problems of this program is the question whether study at Calvin Seminary will strengthen or weaken their Christian convictions and ability to give sound, Bible-believing leadership to their home churches.
Interchurch Relations
The report of our committee dealing with interchurch relations both in its dealing with the Reformed Ecumenical Synod and its handling of the relations between churches shows more of an inclination to criticize the South African situation than to deal forthrightly with our continuing church relationship with the Reformed Churches of the Netherlands. As I pointed out in the April Outlook (“Time to Break Fellowship,” pp. 5–8), those churches in their recent decisions clearly reject the authority of the Bible, insist on compromising even such fundamental doctrines of the resurrection of Christ, and insist that what the Bible brands as immorality and vice abominable to God must be tolerated without criticism in their churches. Yet our committee makes no recommendation of any action by our· churches and has tried to deter the Reformed Ecumenical Synod from an apparent inclination to condemn the actions of those churches (pp. 154–158). Has the time not arrived when our churches must adopt Overture Number 5 (pp. 436, 437) of Grand Rapids South to “sever relations with the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland”? Or will our churches defy the injunction of God’s Word, ”Have no fellows hip with the unfruitful works of darkness but rather reprove them” (Eph. 5:11)?
Liturgy
The Liturgical Committee confronts us with another 45 pages of new liturgical material. This includes, among other items, more variations on Lord’s Supper forms, an effort to distinguish by the color of print what is supposed to be mandatory and what is optional, more baptism forms, responsive readings of the law, and a collection of prayers which the committee recognizes “are never used in most congregations and only rarely used in the rest of the churches” (p. 185). Although the committee’s work seems to show more of an inclination to retain much of the dignified phraseology of our older forms than some former committee productions did, one also notices in this year’s collection the reappearance of the wedding prayer that presumptuously instructs the Lord how He should direct the couple and counsel them when they get in trouble (pp. 190, 191)! Twice there appears the grandiloquent request to be “openly marked” by “a faith that will stand the light of day and endure the dark of night” (pp. 203, 208). Ask yourself what that is supposed to mean. The mixed metaphor makes no sense. Should our Synod officially approve it as a guide to our churches to show them how to pray?
Notice the florid style and poor exegesis of “grain from many fields” and “grapes from many hills” (p. 169; cf. 1 Cor. 10:17).
We read this instruction regarding LENT: “The season of Lent is a period of recollection for the whole church. It continues for forty days from Ash Wednesday to Palm Sunday. In the Bible, the number forty has a symbolic meaning –signifying a spiritual struggle, to which God promises victory. The church is called to partake in forty days of purification, of setting aside of discipline, of meditation and prayer, before celebrating Easter.” By what authority is this relic of Roman Catholic superstition resurrected and made a duty of Reformed churches? To recall it as a custom may have some value; to make it a duty is to teach a false doctrine.
Notice the weakness of the second question in the proposed form for adult baptism: “Do you believe that the Bible is the Word of God revealing Christ and his redemption, and that the confessions of this church faithfully reflect this revelation?” Observe how little this really says about what the applicant believes. If the old form is in some respects unnecessarily detailed, isn’t this too ambiguous?
One becomes increasingly skeptical about the usefulness of this rapidly swelling collection of liturgies. The churches who have become addicted to seeking novelties in their worship will never be satisfied with or limit themselves to what is prescribed in the annual committee productions and other churches who find the recommended forms needlessly complex and pretentious or worse will continue to ignore them. In the attention to endlessly changing forms the seriousness and simplicity of proper worship of the Lord is in danger of being lost from sight. And even the diverging ways we worship help to separate our churches from one another.
Ministers’ Pensions
The pensions of minister s get a review in the regular report (#37, pp. 214–221) and in a special report (#30, pp. 271–301), as an overture (#2, pp. 430–433) challenges the way they are funded. Especially the special report argues the propriety of the present system.
Race
A Race Committee was appointed some years ago with a broad mandate to eliminate racism in the church “and throughout the world in which we live” but with no specific job assignment. The result has been frequent frustrations for the committee and a growing waste of church money. A review of past budgets showed how half or more of the money collected was spent to man the office and the rest was given to other agencies to fund activities that gave special favors to members of minority races such as scholarships exclusively for their benefit. I know of no effort to even try to explain how such racially discriminatory activities were supposed to remove race discrimination! During the last year a new discriminatory program has been added, to develop minority leadership. This year the Agenda report (like last year’s) tells us virtually nothing about what the committee is doing with its money, asks for an increased quota, $2.70 per family (which multiplied by almost 70,000 church families should bring in nearly $190,000), and asks to be given permanent status as a standing committee of the church instead of having to seek periodic renewal of its assignment. How long will our churches, pressed by an economic recession that curtails important gospel ministries, insist on spending almost $200,000 on this self-contradictory and inherently wasteful enterprise?
Synodical Interim Committee
The Report of the Synodical Interim Committee gives considerable attention to a sub-committee report which deals with the disturbing problem of ministers who are leaving the gospel ministry and the low morale it reveals among ministers.
In connection with this report we notice also another (#38, pp. 402–415) which had to review the performance of the Synodical Interim Committee. This review committee had to deal with the hierarchical development of the Synodical Interim Committee which “has come to function as a board responsible for a sizable agency with a growing staff, program, offices and budget.” “We worked,” says the report, “at encouraging the SIC to become more accountable to Synod (and, through Synod, to the church) for its own agency–like functions . . .” (p. 404). “Similarly, the SIC staff members should function not as ‘faculty advisors’ to committees at Synod, but in the same consulting role assumed by other agency staff members.
“C. The SIC’s work at program planning and coordination with the agencies appears to be still (or to be again) upside down. Despite the 1976 Synod’s clear directives and unmistakable intent, the SIC appears to have taken to itself, as it did before, the role of coordinator. And the other agencies have let the SIC do it, thereby absolving themselves of the responsibility to coordinate their own efforts.
“D. The rules governing the SIC seem imprecise, and they reflect little or no awareness of the fact the SIC has become a substantial programming agency requiring administrative guidelines and procedures.” Therefore the review committee proceeded to recommend some improvements of the rules that should govern the functioning of the SIC.
The review committee report plainly places before the Synod the fact that the Synodical Interim Committee has become a hierarchical body which increasingly manages the business of the church without being really accountable to anyone. Its proposed rule revisions are supposed to correct that. We notice, however, that one of the proposed new rules even seems to greatly enlarge the power of this committee:(B, 3, p. 409). The SIC “shall identify, analyze, and make recommendations to synod with respect to matters of denominational concern, but which do not fall within the mandate of existing denominational agencies.” If this means any thing it seems to say that the SIC is thereby empowered to bypass consistories or classes, to initiate “overtures” to the Synod to do anything that concerns the denomination! The Synod will have to take more effective action than this if it is going to maintain for (or restore to) our churches anything like a genuinely Reformed church polity instead of a growing, independent bureaucracy.
Financial Reporting
A very important development in our Agenda which is likely to slip by unnoticed is that financial reports of the work of various church agencies have almost completely disappeared from its pages. Some committee reports include a little footnote such as that on p. 127: “Financial statements and reports will be placed in. the Financial & Business Supplement—Agenda for Synod 1981.” We notice on p. 248 that “This detailed supplemental agenda and its contents represent the denominational agencies‘ response to requests for greater accountability and disclosure in the use of denominational funds.” Elsewhere we learn (p. 244) that “This volume will be sent to all delegates to the Synod of 1981. It is also available to all of our consistories upon request.” The regular Agendas are sent to all of the church consistories so that every office–holder in the church gets or can get a copy; but the financial supplement is sent only to Synod delegates and those few consistories who will go to the extra trouble of putting in a special request for it. Notice that the effect of this policy is to conceal very effectively from even the officers of the churches what is being done with their gifts! Responsible business agencies and industries and respectable charities publicize their financial reports. Why does our denomination by this subterfuge of a supplementary report keep most of our churches from knowing what is being done with their money. And this device has even been cited as a reply to recent overtures that asked for more public disclosure to our members of our financial activities! This policy of secrecy can only encourage suspicion and invite abuse. This effective financial secrecy about church business is a very significant and important feature of the previously mentioned hierarchical perversion that increasingly characterizes our denomination.
Denominationally Related Agencies
Among the denominationally related agencies which present brief reports as they seek the continuing support of our churches we notice a report from the new King’s College (p. 259–60), and Overture Number 16 (p. 445) asks for a recommendation of its support. When it opened it was welcomed by some as starting considerably ahead of some other such schools because it was not committed to holding any church creeds. Regarding this matter the report only indicates that the context of its education is “a view informed by the Bible, the authoritative Word of God as confessed by the early church and in the creeds of the Protestant Reformation. The College is committed to offering a Reformed biblical perspective to its students most of whom are from the Christian Reformed Church.” The overture for its support mentions only its “teaching from a reformational philosophy of learning.” Does or should our Synod have any standards for determining what institutions it should recommend?
Capital Punishment
This Synod again finds itself confronted by the report of a committee on Capital Punishment. The report, presented in 1979, reappears with a few editorial changes, but essentially the same as the earlier version. Classis Orange City in 1976 asked our Synod to address our governments in favor of capital punishment. The report of this committee is for the most part an argument against the tradition in Reformed theology and ethics that God’s righteousness “demands” the death penalty for murder. It quotes repeatedly from John Murray’s extensive treatment of the subject in his Principles of Conduct (as well as many other authors). Yet it comes to an opposite conclusion from the one reached by John Murray (and other Reformed scholars). Why? The answer to this question is revealing. John Murray in a chapter on “The Sanctity of Life (pp. 107–122) does his usual extensive Biblical study calling special attention to Genesis 9:2a, 5, 6, noting “the reason for the exaction of the death penalty, ‘for in the image of God made he man.’” Analyzing the text he points out that “here a charge is given to man to execute the death penalty.” “. . . the accent falls upon the divine image in man as the rationale of the execution of the death penalty.” He shows how later Old Testament legislation simply confirms and conforms to this divinely revealed principle and that the New Testament passages do the same. He deals at length with the various arguments that have been brought up against the principle he sees in these Scriptures, concluding, “We have sufficient evidence, therefore for the conclusion that the institution of capital punishment is not abrogated in the New Testament. . . .” “The perpetuity of this sanction accentuates the gravity of the offence involved in murder. Nothing shows the moral bankruptcy of a people more than the disregard of the sanctity of human life. And it is the same atrophy of moral fibre that appears in the plea for the abolition of the death penalty.” “The deeper our regard for life the firmer will be our hold upon the penal sanction which the violation· of that sanctity merits.”
The committee rejects this whole argument of Murray and others and devotes its attention mainly to criticism of the text of Gen. 9:6, “whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made he man.” We are told that this is not really concerned about retribution but about societal protection. It is suggested that if this security “could be attained by . . . restraints short of execution, would not God’s gracious intent still be honored. . . ?” We are told that this is not really a command but a permission. That it was not talking about governments, that it may have been merely “something like a proverb,” or a prediction. It suggests that “it is doubtful that capital punishment . . . is one of the better ways in which the state can give expression to its esteem for humankind.” It attacks the unity of the text attempting to separate the two parts, expressing “doubt that God could present as a reason for the death penalty the fact that man is made in the image of God.” While killings are sometimes necessary “in order to secure the public good,” “they are not something either God or man can posit as a goal or establish as a plan.” Could anything show more clearly than this critical manhandling of this text the contempt of this committee (of present or past Calvin professors) for the text of God’s Word? The committee argues that while the government does not have to execute the murderer it may resort to capital punishment, but should only do so in exceptional cases. The apparently conservative sound of this recommendation should not obscure its radical character. Denying the ground that God’s Word gives for exacting this penalty, it makes its use merely a matter of the government’s (and the committee’s) opinion of what is expedient! The Bible warns us of God’s judgments upon those who reject His Word. One does not have to look far in our society for the evidences of such judgments. One of them is the ever increasing level of violence and the multiplication of murders, which makes our society increasingly resemble that which existed before the Genesis flood. Should we be surprised at this development (which has reached the point at which a president is shot shortly after taking office) when even our church theologians reject the very principle of law. which the Lord established to check such violence? This tampering with and rejecting God’s Word is bringing and will bring frightening consequences (Deut. 4:2; 12:32; Rev. 22:19).
Women in Church Office
The same issue which surfaces in the report on capital punishment, the question of whether the Bible’s plain teaching will control our decisions, confronts our churches also as they face what may claim much of the Synod’s attention. That is the question of whether women are to be admitted to church offices. After an interesting and instructive historical survey (pp. 346–372) the reporting committee splits into three when it makes recommendations. A majority of four members would “allow consistories to ordain qualified women to the office of deacon, provided that their work is distinguished from that of elders” making the necessary church order changes which would permit this.
A minority of three would open the office of deacon to women without the qualification that their work would have to be distinguished from that of elders.
A minority of one, Rev. Henry Vander Kam, recommends that “the present practice of excluding women from ecclesiastical office be maintained” on the grounds that
“1. Biblical teaching does not warrant a change (1 Cor. 11:2–16; 14:33–36; 1 Tim. 2:9–15).
2. The headship principle would be violated if women held such office.
3. The nature of office prohibits a change in practice.”
Additionally, four overtures ask the Synod to throw the office of deacon open to women and two (numbers 4 and 20) argue for the opening of all offices to them. (The latter, authored by Dr. Marvin Hoogland, argues by selective use of Scriptures that history is moving toward the principle of democracy “as most nearly in conformity to the will of God” and reduces all authority, even that of Christ, to nothing more than service (conveniently forgetting about His exaltation and return to judge).
Although much has been written, also in The Outlook, about this subject, the main points of the argument are relatively simple. The Scripture passages cited by Rev. H. Vander Kam state plainly that women are to “keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak” and that these are “the commandments of the Lord” (1 Cor. 14:34, 37), and that in the church the woman is not permitted “to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man,” as a principle traceable to creation (1 Tim. 2:12, 13). Many labor, along the same lines as those followed by the committee on capital punishment to destroy the teaching of these Scriptures. Will the Synod listen to them and positively agree to contradict these Scriptures; or will it, as many are suggesting it do, approve of every church doing whatever it pleases, thereby really also setting aside the Biblical teaching?
It will be tempting to many to follow the recommendation of the committee majority and by curtailing the part that deacons in our churches now have in church government, permit their holding the office of deacon without their violating the Bible’s prohibition against women’s rule in the church. This attempted compromise will probably satisfy no one and a serious objection to it is that no one has ever been able to produce any clear evidence from the Bible that women ever held the church office of deacon—or that deacons were prohibited from assisting, as they do in our churches, in the government of the churches. If a majority at the Synod drives through some kind of compromise in defiance of the lack of Biblical grounds it will be bound to deepen the widening rift in our churches.
The Verhey Case
The same issue of maintaining the Bible’s authority for our faith and life which the Synod faces in the major issues already mentioned confronts the Synod again as the Dutton church, after many evasions and delays, this time with the support of the Classis Thornapple Valley, gets its appeal on the Synod Agenda (Appeal Number 1, pp. 467–468). The church was compelled to object to Dr. Verhey’s misuse of the Scripture, not only in the matter of the serpent in Genesis and the earthquake mentioned in Matthew 28, but as a principle which he defended in dealing with all of the Bible. The 1979 Synod while admitting that his views were objectionable, minimized them, in defiance of his own explanation, and in effect, by its inaction condoned them.
Classis Kalamazoo in Appeal Number 3 brings the same matter to the Synod asking the Synod to declare that such views as these “cannot be taught in our churches.”
Quotas
Overtures 1, 12 and 13 deal with quotas, Number 12 asking that their nature be explained as recommended averages not taxes (to “bind consciences” in violation of Belgic Confession Article XXXII. Cf. also article on Quotas in Sept. 1980 The Outlook).
Marriage Guidelines
Overture 21 calls attention to weaknesses and contradictions in the Marriage Guidelines decisions of last year, asking that they be rectified.
The Boer Case
Appeal Number 4 argues that last year’s Synod in the manner of its rejection of Dr. Harry Boer’s attack on the doctrine of reprobation was really revising the creed and in this way attempts to reopen the whole debate. It must be remembered that Synod decisions include only what is specifically stated and never imply accepting all of the argument of the committee reports on which they are based. This is true even when, as in this case, the report is referred to the churches as useful for further study.
As the Synod faces some major decisions may there be much prayer that they may be directed by God’s Word and Spirit and not by a concern to please men and women.