Dan Brown's Impending Novel about the RCA

Ok... clearly this is fiction.. clearly this is entirely off topic... I suppose someone will even manage to find it offensive, but at least it's a post on these boards that isn't about homosexuality.Oh yea, and for the record, none of the characters are intended to represent real-life individuals!

I just finished Dan Brown's latest novel, it isn't my favorite.  On the other hand, one of the forums I follow somewhere else is discussing it and someone posted Slate.com's "Interactive Dan Brown Plot Generator."  Fun.  Why not?  I figured... a little bit of searching and replacing and maybe even Dan Brown could include the RCA in his next tome....

A long-forgotten code secretly protected in the depths of Grand Rapids' and New York's most famous churches.
A nefarious cult determined to protect it.
A frantic race to uncover the RCA's darkest secret.

The Serpentine Crypt

When renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to the RCA offices to analyze a mysterious rune—imprinted on a gold ring lying next to the disemboweled corpse of an unidentified staff member—he discovers evidence of the unthinkable: the resurgence of the ancient cult of the Diablofori, a secret branch of the Reformed Church that has surfaced from the shadows to carry out its legendary vendetta against its mortal enemy, the Vatican.

Langdon's worst fears are confirmed when a messenger from the Diablofori appears at the Canadian Supreme Court to deliver a macabre ultimatum: Deposit $1 billion in the Reformed Church's off-shore bank accounts or the exclusive clothier of the Swiss Guards will be bankrupted. As the city braces for disaster, Langdon joins forces with the posteriorally-gifted and charming daughter of the murdered staff member in a desperate bid to crack the code that will reveal the cult's secret plan.

Embarking on a frantic hunt, Langdon and his companion follow a 200-year-old trail through Grand Rapid's and New York's most sacred churches and venerable monuments, pursued by a mustachioed assassin the cult has sent to thwart them. What they discover threatens to expose a conspiracy that goes all the way back to John Calvin and the very founding of the Reformed Church.

Wealth or Debt are Not Qualifications for Ministry

I don't know what the future of the Church Herald Blogs are, but I thought we needed something new to chat about.  I'm cross posting this with my personal blog which, I'm sure, none of you read :-)

One of the best things about the Reformed tradition, in my opinion, is the fact that, throughout the ages, it has placed a heavy emphasis on educated pastors. This emphasis has become less and less important over the past several decades, yet the normative preparation for a minister in the Reformed Church in America still requires a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree, and this - to at least a certain degree - helps prevent (at least to some degree) churches from putting idiots in the pulpit. It also has allowed ministers to sit at the table with other professionals, like social workers, psychologists, lawyers, doctors, etc.

This professional collegiality becomes less of a reality as the qualifications for being a minister diminish (for example, up to 10% of a seminary’s students in a master’s program aren’t required to have a bachelor’s degree — we don’t want doctors who didn’t bother with college, but apparently it’s ok to have ministers who aren’t willing to take the time....) [For the record, I understand that this is meant as an "exception" but I've yet to see it invoked with someone who couldn't get a bachelor's degree.]

Having said all of that, I also understand the key problem with our system. To even candidate for a position as pastor, one needs to have completed (or be very close to) a master’s degree. That means that for the privilege of even applying to be a pastor (one of the lowest paying “professional” positions in the country), one needs to have figured out how to pay for at least seven years of education following high school. In short, to be a pastor in the RCA you either need to be independently wealthy (you can pay for it with family money), really lucky (someone, for some reason, decides to pay for it), or enter into your gloriously-low-paying job with debt dripping from your ears.

In my case, it’s student loans. I don’t come from money and no one graciously offered to pay for my seminary education. Add my student loans and my wife’s and we pay a mortgage-worth of school debt every month... this, merely to reach the most basic qualifications for our jobs.

This is a problem.

Wealth (or debt) should not be qualifications for ministry. On the other hand, neither do I believe lowering our expectations is a good option (although I’d argue it’s the one we’ve flirted most intently with in the RCA).

Yet, let’s be honest, we are never going back to the days where seminary tuition is denominationally covered (as it was when my grandfather went through).

What are we to do?

Let me offer two ideas:

• The "Pay if you Quit" Approach
• The "University of the People" Approach

The “Pay if you Quit” Approach
I actually think this is immediately do-able. Essentially, you put an individual’s seminary tuition costs into a 10-year loan (or 15). If they stay in a local church for that period of time, their seminary tuition costs are forgiven; if not, the costs are pro-rated and payed back at a normative student-loan interest.

For example. Let’s take the 10-year plan. If it costs $20,000 worth of tuition per student (some are more, others less), that’s $2,000 a year. If you minister in a local church for 10 years, you don’t pay any of it back. If you only stay in church-based-ministry 5 years, you pay back $10,000 (with interest set at normative student-loan rates). If you never work in the church, the entire $20,000 becomes a student loan - no big deal.

Why working in a local church? Because I believe it’s ministers preparing for local church ministry that seminaries ought to be focusing on not pre-PhD students or people preparing for denominational positions.

The “University of the People” Approach
I actually love this idea! The University of the People is a free university (albeit, yet unaccredited). Cool huh?! Read about it in the NY Times. I’m not sure how well it’d work for a general university degree; after all, tuition and salaries are part of how we pay for professors’ education, etc. However, I am convinced this would work for a seminary. It would only require two things: (1) scholarly-proven pastors to teach a course once in a while, and (2) theological professionals to do a tiny bit of pro-bono work once in a while.

There are hundreds of doctorally-educated pastors serving in local churches. Many of whom would both love to teach an occasional course and be highly qualified to do so. Add to that, theological professionals (of which there are many!) who could do a bit of pro bono work here and there. I’m not talking about a class a semester, I’m talking maybe 1 course a decade... really.. that’s all. Lawyers do pro-bono work... doctors do pro bono work. If pastors and theologians are professionals, a bit here and there wouldn’t hurt us either.

Make it a distance-learning system (like Western Seminary’s DL Program); use Open Source software; demand excellence from high-quality students, professors, and education (making no exception on any of them).

In the long run I don’t believe it does us well to lower the expectations of those we put in the pulpit - and no, as important as “life-experience” is (and as much as many seminary students need more of it), I do not believe it is an adequate substitute for education. And yet, there is a problem with the way we pay for theological education. Wealth or debt ought not to be basic qualifications for ministry....

Grace and Peace,
`tim

Out of Context – for Good and for Bad

As I began thinking about what I would do if given the opportunity to vote on the Belhar, I spent a lot of time thinking about what a “confession” is. Of course, there are a lot of ways to define a confession, and I wasn't a delegate at Synod, so however I would have voted is entirely irrelevant. However, the question I kept coming back to was the question of context.

It sounds awful, but bear with me. One of the beautiful things about the scriptures is that they can be used outside of their original context. That doesn't mean that all out of context interpretations are appropriate, but it does suggest that some out of context interpretations are. I don't think that's even remotely controversial. Obviously we live in a completely different context than those the scriptures were written in. If we are to believe that they still speak to us and make God's will known to us, we have to believe that it's possible to apply them, in some way, outside of their original context.

The standards are obviously not scripture; they do not hold the authority of scripture; they are not inspired in the same way as the scriptures. That said, one of the beauties of the standards is that they too, in some ways, can be interpreted and applied outside of their original context. Ministers in the RCA affirm that they are “historic” and “faithful” expressions of God's will. “Historic” means that they have an original context different from our own; “faithful” suggests that they, to some degree can be interpreted outside of that original context.

As I've thought about the Belhar, then, I've found myself wondering which of two, very different, categories it fits in: (1) is it a powerful document bound to it's original time and context (and thus not suitable as a confession), or (2) is it a powerful document able to speak in some way outside it's original time and context (and thus appropriate for adoption as a confession).

In the end, I believe it's the latter. Which means, of course, that I believe the Synod made a wise and discerning decision in approving it, and celebrate that the years of study have led us to this place.

Certainly some applications outside of South African apartheid are appropriate, certainly others aren't. The flurry of activity on the Church Herald Blogs, over the past week, has seen a myriad of posts referencing the Belhar (in my opinion) under both categories. The question, then, becomes how it can appropriately be applied outside of its original context.

One of the problems we have, in answering this question, is that as important as it is, we haven't done a very good job at answering it with our other three standards. Nor, even, have we done an acceptable job answering it in the case of the scriptures. Again, it's worth noting that the scriptures and the standards are unquestionably on different levels – yet the question is similarly important.

I can't provide a full hermeneutic on the standards, but let me at least suggest the following:

(1) In order to understand how the standards (and therefore, the Belhar) can be applied outside of their original context, we need to know as much about their original context as possible and what the differences are between their original context and a contemporary one.

(2) The first step in interpreting the standards, is to figure out what they meant to their original audience in their original context.

(3) The second step in interpreting the standards, is to ensure that the “contemporary” (i.e. out of context) interpretation is consistent with the scriptures. (As a standard, I already believe the original interpretation is consistent with the scriptures).

(4) The third step in interpreting the standards, is to ensure that the contemporary interpretation is consistent with original interpretation (i.e. it's inappropriate to try to get the standards to say something inconsistent with what they were intended to say, even though it is appropriate to carefully apply them to different contexts than originally intended.)

OK, it isn't a fully functional hermeneutic... but maybe it's a start.

Thoughts?

Grace and Peace,

  `tim

No, you don't get your way this time...

(Cross posted by permission from my personal blog at Credo ↔ Oratio.)

Every year, as Synod approaches, I talk to the congregation I pastor about what's on the docket and what kinds of things the delegates are going to be talking about, celebrating, learning, etc. Some congregations roll their eyes at the idea of General Synod, but over the past nine years, I think Dunningville has come to understand that Synod plays an important role in the local church as well as the denomination.

Yesterday, shortly before our morning service when I gathered with our Elders to pray, we were talking about Synod and how it can be both extremely fun and extremely frustrating. It's true. If you've never been to a Synod, there are few gatherings of the church that are more fun. Hundreds of people from across the US (and a handful of overseas missionaries flown in to spice things up) are gathered in a single place to pray, worship, deliberate, etc. Good conversations happen over coffee times, meal-times, and - in some cases - late into the night. Good discernment and work is done during advisory committee meetings, plenary sessions and other formal gatherings. All of this can be exceedingly fun.. yes... fun.

Synod, however, can also be frustrating - intensely frustrating! Sometimes it boggles my mind to watch people talk past each other and to see people stand up to speak on things that really have nothing to do with the topic at hand. Sometimes people are so busy crafting their arguments that they don't even notice that the conversation has moved on, or even more humorously, that someone has already made their point (sometimes even more effectively than they did). The other frustrating thing about Synod is that although you are almost always guaranteed to go home after it's all done and be very happy with some of the decisions, you are also - regardless of your theological, doctrinal or social positions - often equally as unhappy with others.

That's where the conversation before church yesterday really caught my attention. Just before we bowed our heads, one of our elders turned to me and said something to the effect of: Synod is good because it reminds people that they don't always get their way.

Bingo!

Of all the wonderful things that happen at Synod, perhaps the most important is that people are given a bigger view of the church - that they're invited (forced?) to recognize that their preferences, their way of doing things, their experience of the faith, and their likes and dislikes aren't what it's all about. Synod reminds people that we're about something bigger than merely remaking the Church (denominational and even universal) in our own image.

Just one more reason that, in the nine years I've been at Dunningville, I can honestly say every Consistory I've worked with has been a blessing. I hope others of you are as fortunate!

Grace and peace,
`tim

Here's an idea (inspired by the Commissioned Pastor concept)

I've essentially lost the argument in Zeeland Classis, I think.  By the end of the year, if not the end of June, it is possible that Zeeland Classis will have taken upon itself the privilege of ordaining Elders for the position of Commissioned Pastor.  My concern, as I've already noted quite publicly, is that it sidesteps our whole polity - Congregations elect (call) and ordain elders through a specific process, not Classes. 

Having said that, if the RCA is going to ignore the means by which we traditionally have called, prepared and supervised people for the office of Elder, why not Deacon, Minister and Professor of theology?

How about we create Deacons for our Small groups or our Classes?  The office of Deacon is a good office, why should only congregations get to elect (call) and ordain them?

Can we create a regional minister office?  In other words, set up a program (outside of the normal ordination track) by which the Regional Synod ordains people the office of Minister of Word and Sacrament?  Or maybe we could go the CRC route and make ministers denominationally?  This way the Regional Synod or Denomination could "step in" where local Classes might have not be willing to ordain someone and make sure they nonetheless get ordained.... After all, if they seem fit why not?  Quite frankly, there are some Classes I don't agree with, why should the people who live there "bounds" be punished by their local standards and the experiences of those who know them best?

Perhaps it could go the other way too... Classes could make people Professors of Theology... or Regional Synods maybe?  I realize this is a little more awkward, but if a Classis made a Professor of Theology, that person wouldn't have to be accountable to the Synod.  S/he could simply choose a Classis they agree with and not worry about the larger church...

Ok, perhaps all of that is a bit "tongue in cheek" (or maybe even a smidge sarcastic), but seriously... I believe there is a certain wisdom in the traditional separation of powers and that side-stepping them is problematic (although certainly convenient in some situations).  In the end, though I don't ever buy "the ends justify the means" argument.

How about you?

Grace and Peace,

  `tim