Peripatetic Pastor

Category: Theses on Denominational Life

  • A MEDITATION ON TRUST: TRUSTING EACH OTHER IN A TIME OF DISTRUST

    What you have done here by ceasing debate is incredibly harmful to what sense of trust the minority has in this body. (Cara DeHaan, from the floor of the synod of the Christian Reformed Church, June 2023) . . . [Vitalik] Buterin [founder of Ethereum and cryptocurrency theorist] argues that one of the most valuable properties…

  • DENOMINATIONAL SOUL: A SECOND TAKE ON SYNOD 2023

    Let’s step back from the dumpster fire that ended Synod 2023 of the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) and take another look at the synod and what it might tell us about the shape of the denomination—its strengths and perils. And, perhaps, what it may tell us more generally about the shape of the church—the conservative,…

  • ENDING UGLY

    ENDING UGLY For the second year in a row, synod—the 2023 synod of the Christian Reformed Church (CRC)—ended ugly. This may be an omen for the life of the denomination. The synod clock ticked towards 3:00 in the afternoon, 3:00 PM being the deadline for adjourning synod. There were flights to catch, schedules to keep.…

  • A LITTLE LESS LOST: RECENTERING OUR FAITH

    My wife and I recently returned from Europe. While there, we walked the cities, Amsterdam and Milan, in particular. We frequently were forced to bring up Google or Apple Maps (and sometimes both at the same time) to get walking directions. Truth be told, the programs don’t work well for walkers, especially not in old…

  • TRADITION

    “Tradition!” Tevye, the milkman sings at the beginning of Fiddler on the Roof. It’s a great beginning, as Tevye walks us through his village and points out how things are done and why. Well, not why. Tevye mostly doesn’t know why they do things the way they do. It’s just what they have always done.  Despite the song,…

  • CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM AND THE FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM

    “What keeps gnawing at me,” he writes, “is the question, what is Christianity, or who is Christ actually for us today?” (Letters and Papers from Prison, Kindle edition, page 353). Compared to what Bonhoeffer was going through in April of 1944, for those of living in the US or Canada these are easy times. True,…

  • THE GOSPEL AND THE FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM

    We have failed our people. We—I have in mind people like me: preachers, church leaders, professors, bloggers—have failed those who come to our churches, week to week, who listen to what we say, who go to our Bible studies, who read our books, who look to us for a word from the Lord. We have…

  • THE BIBLE AND THE FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM

    Are we coming to the end of Protestantism as we know it? In Snow, a novel by the prize-winning Irish writer John Banville, a Catholic bishop asks the beleaguered detective, John Strafford, a Protestant, “How long can you go on protesting?” Strafford doesn’t answer. But as both the bishop and Strafford know, Protestantism has long…

  • A CONFESSIONAL MOMENT

    A Confessional Moment The Christian Reformed Church (CRC) is in the midst of a slow painful crisis of identity—as, indeed, are many other Christian denominations. Or, worse. The denomination may be in its death throes, a small denomination slowly splintering into smaller chunks. It’s not been pretty. The denominational prayer with the appropriate edits might…

  • TOWARD A HERMENEUTIC OF THE CONFESSIONS II

    The Harry Boer Gravamen In a previous post (Toward a Hermeneutic of the Confessions I), I made two broad points about the Reformed confessions. The first addressed the status of the confessions as they now stand in the church to which I belong, the Christian Reformed Church (CRC). What I said was that the confessions…