Statistics, Graphs and an Open Heart

Bob Pasley said he wasn’t sure what to think of  a recent, 33-page report detailing trends and challenges facing the Christian Reformed Church in North America.

Pasley, a long-time member at Bellevue Christian Reformed Church in the Seattle area, says he was impressed by all of the information contained in the report, as well as the PowerPoint slides that helped to explain it.

But he said he comes from a generation for which graphs and statistics are fairly foreign.  “I’m not sure what this report has to do with me.”

What he does know, he says, is that it was Bellevue CRC, with its special heart for people such as himself who strayed from church for many years, that first attracted him to the CRC.

“I love this church. The people here have made me feel very comfortable,” said Pasley, who is in his 80s.

The report, compiled by the CRC’s Strategic Planning and Adaptive Change Team (SPACT), is titled “Discerning God’s Mission Together: Join the Conversation.”

Team members recently visited Bellevue as part of a series of visits to CRC communities around North America to present and discuss the report, crafted as part of a process of developing a new ministry plan for the denomination.

The team launched its meetings in early October in Grand Rapids and Denver/Red Mesa. Representatives of SPACT have since gone out to Chicago, Philadelphia,  Los Angeles, Edmonton, Alberta, Burlington, Ontario,  and Orange City, Iowa.

Once the meetings are finished, it will collect responses from the churches and put them into a report which it will to give to the CRC’s Board of Trustees as it creates a new ministry plan.

Represented at the meeting at Bellevue CRC were larger churches and smaller ones, a Korean church, urban church plants, a campus ministry, and a church located far up the Washington coast near a ferry landing for Alaska.

“The CRC’s Board of Trustees has decided that the church needs to fundamentally reframe how we do ministry,” said Rev. Gary Bekker, director Christian Reformed World Missions and a member of SPACT. He helped to lead the meeting at Bellevue, along with Rev. Darren Roorda, pastor of Community CRC in Kitchner, Ontario.

“We are in a post-modern world and the cultural changes affecting the church are huge,” said Bekker. “It is in this context that we are trying to understand what it means to live lives of faith shaped by the gospel."

Rev. Eric Likkel, pastor of Emmaus Road CRC in Seattle, said the report’s findings resonated with him.

“This report can offer hope,”  he said. “I think we have a compelling ministry to offer the world. It is a different vision of life.”

Bellevue CRC is a good example of a ministry with a compelling vision, say its members.

Organized in 1967,  Bellevue CRC is located on a busy, four-lane thoroughfare in one of the most prosperous communities in Washington. Although it faces many of the challenges contained in SPACT’s report, this suburban congregation is full of vibrant ministries, for people of all ages.

Pasley said after the SPACT presentation that he will let others dig through the report and decide what to do with it. He’s satisfied attending Sunday school, a theology class on Wednesday nights and going to support-group meetings that meet in the church.

It was these meetings that initially attracted him to the church, he said.

Jack Byeman, a member of Bellevue CRC who serves on several CRC-related boards, said he was interested in the findings relating to the flight of young people from church.

He has been troubled  by this and said something needs to be done quickly, to reverse this trend. "If we don't crack this issue, we’re in trouble. Our church will dry up," he said.

He noted that the report’s findings show a tension between traditional CRC theology and a more evangelical approach to ministry and said he believes that the CRC places too much emphasis on rules, restrictions, theological explanations and not enough on “leading with Christ's love.”

“The creeds are important. But ... how do we share those creeds in a meaningful way?”

His church, he says, has worked hard to reach a balance, embracing the old while fostering the new. It has various programs, from Bible studies on Saturday mornings to email prayer chains, and from Wednesday programs for families and youth to gatherings of small groups in homes.

It also has a special group for young mothers, composed of mothers from the neighborhood who were invited to attend, says Byeman.

“People from the church go out and knock on their doors and invite them to come. This has been pretty successful.”

Sunday morning worship is critical, because this is when members gather to meet God. But this is also when many members of the church have the chance to participate in planning and putting on the service.

Such large-scale participation is not the norm for many CRC congregations.

“Maybe 50 people in our church over a three-month period are involved in worship on some level,” says Rev. Matt Borst, Bellevue’s pastor. Sunday attendance averages 215.

“We try to make everyone feel included right off the bat,” says Borst. “You don’t even need to know Jesus to get involved when you come in.”