I’ve been a part of the Christian Reformed Church in North America all my life. I was baptized at Bethel CRC in Listowel Ontario, professed my faith at the Lucknow CRC, and married J in the Bethel CRC in Acton. We presented our first child for baptism at First CRC in Guelph, the second was baptized by the pastor of the Palmerston CRC, and the third back at the Lucknow CRC. It was there that I served on every committee other than the building committee, and led Sunday School classes, Teen Club and Youth Group. I served in Lucknow as an elder, twice, and finished my time there as their interim pastor. Since then I’ve served four other CRC congregations in my role as interim pastor. I currently serve as an elder at the Bethany CRC in Bloomfield. I really don’t know anything else.
I have to admit though, that through many of those years there was a sense of discomfort. As a family, we never supported Christian schools the way the denomination did. Our stance on abortion isn’t as black and white as many, in a denomination that was at the forefront of right-to-life campaigns, would have liked. We had high ideals about creation care before that was in style. We were willing to embrace the idea that there might be more than one way to live pure and chaste lives outside of the one man and one woman model that the church suggested.
While there was discomfort, there wasn’t anyone saying we couldn’t be there, that our views somehow disqualified us. Maybe we learned to stay quiet, to get along, but there was always a feeling, a hope, that better days might be coming, new progressive ideas might take hold. I was always quite pleased to be a part of what I saw as the most progressive of the Reformed denominations in Canada.
I started this blog, almost thirteen years ago, as I embarked on something new at what was then known as the Waterloo Lutheran Seminary. My mind was opened there as I learned with students who came from all walks of life, from all sexual orientations, and from a spectrum of religious backgrounds. I realized that the reformed air I was breathing, wasn’t the only air, that faith wasn’t only gifted to those who came from Dutch immigrant congregations, and that there was much to explore and contemplate outside of the sphere where I had grown up.
I didn’t go to seminary to become a pastor. Doors kept opening in front of me and I kept saying “What’s the worst that can happen?” and walked through them, until one stormy night, in February 2014, I was making ordination vows in front of a full church. It wasn’t at all planned, but that’s what happened and I was able to make all of those vows in good conscience. Yes, there was some discomfort with the culture of the denomination that was ordaining me, there was even some discomfort with the official positions it held, but I had no problem saying yes to the creeds and confessions that are the underpinning of the church.
That changed this week. The Synod of the Christian Reformed Church in North America met and pretty much squashed any hope that the denomination would continue on any sort of progressive trajectory by officially, and confessionally, determining what is and is not sin in the area of human sexuality. They have closed the doors on our LGBTQ+ brothers and sisters, kids, and grandkids. There were words eloquently spoken to try to turn the tide, but in the end, a well-organized, conservative majority won the day and took the denomination.
I don’t know what’s next for me. I think I’ve served well in the churches where I have worked. I think my life experience, the diverse training I got both from WLS and Calvin Seminary, and the gifts I’ve been given made me a good pastor. But, it’s going to be very difficult to continue being associated with a denomination that wants to narrow the scope of God’s love with judgment, that wants to be in control of how God’s grace could be distributed, and that is unwilling to allow some mystery to be present in our relationship to God and to each other.
I’m feeling sad, a bit angry, and a little lost. I think I’m grieving, grieving the loss of something that has been a part of my life, for my whole life, something that is gone.
Someone wrote this week (likely quoting someone else) something like…When there is a split in a church you should look to see which side the marginalized are on because that’s the side where Jesus will be too. I’m already pretty sure where the marginalized will end up in this story, I just need to figure out how to be there with them.