Keeping Calm in the Already and Not Yet

Keeping Calm in the Already-and-Not-Yet:
Doing Ministry While Waiting for the 2020 Vision

The 2019 RCA General Synod showed great promise and hope: there were good, honest, civil, prayerful discussions around the possible futures for the denomination, conversations in which everyone was valued.

The 2019 RCA General Synod did great damage and made many people worried: there were angry, hurtful fights, and dangerous attempts to change the rules of our life together to advantage one group and exclude another.

To a greater or lesser degree, depending on one’s perspective, both of these statements are TRUE.

As the delegates come home from General Synod, many are both hope-filled and hopeless. Actions of the Synod are raising anxiety across the church. Raised anxieties are not a good environment for making good, faithful decisions. Many people are feeling highly reactive—also not the best environment for faithful decisions, and one that could do damage to healthy classes and ministries. On the other hand, we have to be thinking about protecting those very classes and ministries should the worst happen.

“Yes,” someone is saying, “but do you mean protecting them from the progressives or from the conservatives?”

The Reformed Church Center at New Brunswick Theological Seminary hopes to give conservative ministries, progressive ministries, and all the ministries in between the tools to stay safe and respond faithfully during the coming months, and so we are hosting three evening discussions—each three to three-and-a-half hours—to help any and all RCA congregations, elders, deacons, ministers, and members find those tools.

Each evening will include a simple supper, a discussion (presented as dispassionately as possible) of what happened at Synod, a discussion of the polity implications, and a discussion of how we can reduce anxiety and reactivity in our congregational and classical systems. There will NOT be talk of strategizing about how to help progressives win or how to help conservatives win. These evenings are all about how we listen for the Spirit so that God’s Church wins.

The three events are listed below. Please plan to attend the one that’s easiest for you, even if it isn’t in your Regional Synod. Come when you can; leave when you must.

Monday, July 8th, 6:00-9:30 pm at New Brunswick Theological Seminary
35 Seminary Place, New Brunswick, NJ
Dinner will be graciously provided by Project Hospitality
Facilitators: Anna Jackson, Paul Janssen, and Micah McCreary

Tuesday, July 9th, 6:00-9:30 pm at the Reformed Church of the Tarrytowns
42 North Broadway, Tarrytown, NY
Dinner will be graciously provided by the Regional Synod of New York
Facilitators: Tim TenClay, Linda Burlew Gold, and Micah McCreary

Thursday, July 11th, 6:00-9:30 pm at Community Reformed Church of Colonie
701 Sand Creek Road, Colonie, NY
Donations toward the cost of dinner will be gratefully received
Facilitators: Jonathan Vanderbeck, Matthew van Maastricht, and one other to be announced

Please RSVP to jbrumm@nbts.edu by July 3rd, indicating which session you plan to attend, so that we have enough dinner to go around.