Kerux: a portfolio of Calvin Theological Seminary - Volume 44.3 - 14 Dec 2009

The CRC in 25 Years

by Alex Snider

CTS Student Senate hosted a Town Hall meeting on November 11, the topic of which was the CRC in 25 years. The meeting was moderated by 1st year M.Div senator, Kyle Brooks. The panel consisted of Dr. Lyle Bierma and Dr. John Bolt, Systematic Theology professors at CTS, and Rev. Jerry Dykstra, Executive Director of the CRCNA. The panelists were given two minutes to answer a variety of questions posed by the moderator and a few from the audience.

One of the questions was about the decline in members the CRC has seen in the last 25 years. All of the panelists agreed that it probably wouldn’t continue. The last big loss was after the decision regarding women in office. Dr. Bierma said that if there would be a break, it would most likely be over the issue of homosexuality.

Dovetailing off of that question, the next was if the CRC would ever have practicing homosexual pastors. The panel agreed that if this would happen, it wouldn’t be in the next 25 years.

A question that is very relevant for the near future.:Will the CRC and the RCA reunite? Rev. Jerry Dykstra answered first. He said that we would not, at least not structurally. He did, however, cite a lot of examples of joint ministries involving both denominations. In his opinion, joining the CRC and the RCA wouldn’t be worth the effort. Dr. Bierma added something that I really liked. He explained what he called “ecumenical math” or “1 + 1 =3.” If we were to try and reunite the two denominations, instead of one denomination, we would end up with three. We would have a CRC group that wouldn’t support the join, an RCA group that wouldn’t support the join, and a group of the two that actually did join. Instead of being a unifying measure, it would cause more division.

Another good point was brought up by an audience member. He wanted the panel to address the issue of declining enrollment of Canadian students at CTS. Dr. Bolt attributed this decline to changes in candidacy requirements which means more Canadian students are choosing to study at schools closer to them. Rev. Dykstra brought up the issue of money. With the current economic climate, it’s possible that some students can’t afford to come into the US and study at CTS. The panelists agreed that this is an issue that needs to be addressed but there seems to be no clear idea of how to remedy this situation.