Update: Churches in Protest
Late in the fall we published a template of a communication that churches could use to communicate their concerns to Synod 2024 (if you happened to miss it you can catch it here). Over the last several months we have heard from many of you about your own congregation’s interest in this kind of a communication and we’ve fielded several emails and questions related to your own versions of this kind of a communication.
First, let us say thank you for your partnership in communicating clear and significant concerns about the impact a change to the established gravamina process would have across the Christian Reformed Church. The gravamina process has been a long held avenue for individuals in church leadership to alert the other leaders within their local church to their conscientious objection to a particular position of the church. Eliminating this ability to serve, even in respectful disagreement, will have serious impact on the future leadership of our local churches and we thank you for standing up and using your voice.
Second, thank you for your willingness to point out that so many congregations have diverse viewpoints across the confessional conversation and that many of those church members are still considered, at the local level anyway, as members in good standing. An unfortunate casualty of Synod’s binary approach, to what could be a fruitful conversation, is the whitewashed (or maybe more appropriately - blacklisted) treatment of these members of the family of God.
As we continue to hear of more congregations joining in this communication we wanted to update you on the number and distribution of churches who have alerted us to their intention of making use of the template or some version of it. As we enter into this new year and as we begin to approach spring classis meetings, we are currently aware of at least 18 congregations across as many as 13 classes who are seriously considering or have already approved similar communications. While this may not be an overwhelming number in total the intentionality and breadth is encouraging.
We share this information for two reasons:
1) We want to encourage many of you who have put forward similar communications in your own contexts with the truth that you are not alone. You are a part of a wider body of people throughout the denomination who are concerned about this potential change.
2) We also want to encourage those who have not yet added their voices to this growing chorus of concern. If you and your local congregation share these concerns we encourage you to join in these communications. To that end we have several resources to aid you in walking this forward (see our recent blog posts from this past fall here) and we are available should you have any particular questions (simply hit reply to this email and we’ll connect with you).
Finally, we recognize that communicating concerns is but one way of addressing the need found in our congregations to build unity across our differences for the sake of Gospel mission. We look forward to sharing an exciting opportunity for churches and both their leadership and members in the upcoming weeks. Be sure to keep an eye out for this announcement coming soon!
Until then, we encourage you to keep taking the next faithful step.
Grace and Peace,
The Better Together Steering Team
