Toward CRC Canada, a year-old group with a three-pronged argument for an independent church in Canada distinct from the Christian Reformed Church in North America, after many decades, “It’s time for a Canadian Christian Reformed Church.” The Canada Ministry Board, which serves the Canadian churches of the CRCNA, contends that it’s not necessary.
What do CRCNA members across Canada think? We don’t know yet, but many of them have been turning up to Zoom (online video) meetings hosted by Toward CRC Canada, and every Canadian Christian Reformed congregation with a posted email address received the group’s introductory email and invitation to adopt a “Declaration of Readiness for a Distinct Christian Reformed Church of Canada” July 17. Toward CRC Canada chair, Everett Vander Horst, pastor of Meadowlands Fellowship CRC in Ancaster, Ont., said three churches have already indicated their endorsement.
In response to that communication from this grassroots group seeking change, the Canada Ministry Board sent its own email to Canadian CRCs, clarifying “that this group is not a part of your leadership that serves the Canadian CRCNA church” and that “your council may choose to, but is under no obligation to, respond to their declaration request or anything else that may be forthcoming from them.”
Toward CRC Canada—a steering committee of six including pastors Vander Horst, Rita Klein-Geltink, Bruce Adema, Ken Tigchelaar, Gordon Vlieg, and Kathy Vandergrift—responded to that email with an open letter. They contest the Canada Ministry Board’s implication that Toward CRC Canada is “asking Canadian CRCNA churches to follow them out of the CRCNA.”
Toward CRC Canada “is not the problem facing the CRC in Canada; we are offering solutions to problems created by Synodical decisions that do not fit for our context in Canada,” the group says in its open letter. The concerns it presents in its three main working documents—CRC History and Culture in Canada, Contextual Ministry in Canada, and Accountability to Canadians—are those “that live within churches across Canada and need to be addressed in an open, transparent, accountable way,” it says. “The path proposed by the Toward CRC Canada,” which is for “self-directed ministry decision-making and governance” as a unique denomination, “will prevent the impending loss of significant parts of the body … our goal is the opposite of the allegation by the Canada Ministry Board that TCRCC is schismatic,” the letter said.
Vander Horst told The Banner, “Some hear us calling for a completely new denomination, separate from what we have been. That’s not the case. We are already the CRC in Canada, and that doesn’t need to change,” he said. “What needs to change is authority and accountability. We want the full authority, by way of a Canadian synod, to make united decisions for ministry in Canada, while also respecting the authority and wisdom of each council called to pursue local ministry in their own context.”
That goes beyond the intentions of the Canada Ministry Board, which chair Greta Luimes says has been listening and respecting what Toward CRC Canada has brought to the table over the past year. “We appreciate what they bring forward—contextualization of ministry in Canada—we’ve learned from them,” Luimes said. “But our intention was always that we could do this under today’s governance structure, because we already are a separate Canadian entity, legally.”
Towards CRC Canada acknowledges that, but says it’s time to also be separate ecclesiastically. “We don’t need to walk away from or tear down the systems and supports that we’ve worked hard to build, from Indigenous ministries to our capable staff to the pension fund to the Burlington office. We just need to take those structures fully into our own capable hands,” Vander Horst said.
What People Think
The Banner wanted to know how all this was being received by Canadian CRC pastors and members. Hearing some questions and responses in two Zoom sessions, posting a request for correspondence in the Toward CRC Canada’s Facebook group, and reaching out to some specific churches in different cities in Canada, we found mixed reactions and several people not in a position to comment.
Amy Field, 33, a member of St. Albert (Alta.) CRC, said she’s supportive of forming an independent Canadian CRC. “I don’t think we should be governed (ecclesiastically) by a group of people that are primarily from a different country,” Field said. Though organizational governance is carried out by the fully Canadian ministry board, ecclesiastical decisions on theological and Church Order matters happen at synod, the general assembly of the CRCNA, which is three-quarters American. “Canada’s the minority, and we can see that in how the decisions are made and how our voices are heard and just the way things are run differently,” she said.
Ken Benjamins, 60, a pastor from Calvin CRC in Dundas, Ont., said he knows and appreciates Vander Horst as a fellow pastor in Classis Hamilton, but he does have concerns about pursuing this approach. “I’m not convinced we have a unified identity or vision as a Canadian CRC,” Benjamins said, noting, “We are all quite diverse and different—Alberta is different from Ontario, which is different from Quebec. Even churches within the individual classes are diverse and different.”
Confessionally, “we are no different than the U.S. churches,” Benjamins continued. “Some people are assuming that Americans vote one way and Canadians vote another,” but he doesn’t think that’s the case. “The U.S. isn’t exactly homogeneous either.” Benjamins believes, in an era where denominational loyalty is waning overall, “we need the Americans.”
John Hiemstra, 68 a member of Inglewood CRC in Edmonton, Alta., who is a retired professor of political studies from The King’s University, has thought for decades that the Christian Reformed churches in Canada would be better served by an independent Canadian denomination and is “currently supporting the formation of a CRC Canada Synod.”
“What I’ve seen over time is that the substantial difference that exists in the cultures and political cultures of our two countries really does affect how you see things and how you act on things, and the church has to be in tune with what’s going on right in front of it,” Hiemstra said. “It would fine-tune the effectiveness of working with the gospel in the Canadian setting if we actually had and set spiritual direction here, directly within the people who live here, the culture here in Canada.”
Hiemstra said he has “a lot of warm feelings and thankfulness” for the ways American Christian Reformed churches supported the planting of Canadian churches, including his childhood church in Terrace, B.C., and he recognizes “a mutual enrichment that can sometimes happen” between U.S. and Canadian churches but he sees, “this factor of working in ministry within the culture that you actually know” as “not just an administrative matter that a separate bureaucracy can deal with, but it’s deeply a spiritual matter.”
“There’s a spiritual thrust to what’s going on in our culture, and that has to be discerned by people who live and experience and move in that culture and in their guts know what’s going on,” he continued. “Those are different—not better or worse, just different—in the two countries and we need to take those things seriously in the way we make key directional decisions that these bureaucracies (the Canadian and U.S. ministry boards of the CRC) are actually following and ministries are actually engaged in.”
There are eight churches in Manitoba and northern Ontario that are part of the one binational classis in the CRCNA, Classis Lake Superior, encompassing those regions and parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin. The Banner reached out to these congregations, three of which are without a pastor, but none of those who responded agreed to speak on the record. One pastor noted the uniqueness of the bi-national classis, “which I appreciate as a church that could be pretty isolated from the rest of the CRC geographically.”
Johannes Schouten, 56, pastor of Nelson Avenue Community CRC in Burnaby, B.C., said he first heard of the Toward CRC Canada group last fall when it sent a letter to the Canada Ministry Board outlining “some of the many reasons that we feel it is time for the Christian Reformed Church in North America to birth into two, distinct and separate national denominations.” He said he’s had some contact with the group’s work and could have seen himself supporting such a thing earlier in his ministry. “I still feel pretty Canadian and love serving in Canada and being part of the Canadian culture, but maybe I’ve just gotten used to pastoring in this binational church,” Schouten said. “There’s a distinct identity in Canada, but I don’t feel as though we have to do this as maybe I would have thought 25 years ago, when I would have been much more eager to support this.” Schouten said part of that hesitation comes from perceptions of what supporting an independent Canadian CRC might mean to others. “Other pastors might say, ‘oh, I know why you’re in favor of an independent Canadian CRC, because you want to have a different decision about human sexuality and the HSR (human sexuality report received by Synod 2022).’” Schouten said for that reason “it’s a bit of a challenging time to take a stand on this.”
Confessions and Context
Toward CRC Canada has been asked about that. It is open about what it calls “the requirements of a new and narrowly defined confessionality” hindering “local ministries in our unique and diverse Canadian contexts” (Post-Synod 2024 statement of Toward CRC Canada, from its website). Synod 2022 declared as confessional the understanding that homosexual sex is among several sexual behaviors to be considered unchaste and a violation of the seventh commandment. Synod 2023 upheld that ruling, and Synod 2024 set a course of discipline for churches acting publicly against that teaching. Those advocating for Toward CRC Canada say churches within Canada that are currently under limited suspension because of that synodical decision are fully welcome to be part of an independent Canadian CRC. “Church life, where we are called upon to make disciples, requires sensitive care for people who have a diversity of views and real-life experiences and relationships, within and outside of local churches,” the group’s post-synod 2024 statement said. “This includes matters such as same-sex marriage, but also diverse views on baptism and Indigenous ministries and justice issues. TCRCC proposes that Canadian CRC members be able to come together and discern what is best for ministry in Canada.”
Toward CRC Canada steering committee member Kathy Vandergrift, who previously served the denomination on a cultural and structural review task force and as president of the Board of Trustees (precursor to the Council of Delegates), said, “It is important to note that the impacts of Synod 2024 fall heavily in Canada because of the relative number of churches and office-bearers who may be forced to leave. No classis in Canada sent overtures (to synod) in support of (declaring) confessional status (for the definition of unchastity) and many sent multiple overtures of concern about that move,” Vandergrift said. (See Overtures 26-29, 31-33, 35, 37, and 49 in the Agenda for Synod 2022—two of these are from Canadian classes and the others from Canadian members, councils, or groups of church councils; and Overtures 16, 23, 27, and 28 in the Agenda for Synod 2023—three of these are from Canadian classes.)
Vandergrift has also been part of the leadership of the Hesed project, a group formed in 2022 to resource churches in the CRCNA, particularly in Canada, “about faith, sexuality, and gender identity.” It published, with permission Vandergrift said, a list of churches (current as of April 2024) who came forward with statements declaring themselves welcoming or affirming of LGBTQ people, regardless of relationship status. Seven are Canadian; 11 are American. (Another three American churches have shared such statements with the Grand Rapids, Mich.-based group All One Body, which has advocated for full-inclusion of LGBTQ brothers and sisters in the Christian Reformed Church since 2011.) Overall the CRCNA has 242 Canadian and 758 American congregations (as reported in the 2024 denominational summary).
It was asked in the chat feature of Toward CRC Canada’s Aug. 13 Zoom meeting, “Unless we can describe our relationship to the confessions in less stringent ways than the current Covenant requires, can a Canadian CRC actually help (prevent these departures)? … Has your steering committee had a sense at all that such a discussion would be more possible in a Canadian CRC than it is in the CRCNA?” Vander Horst responded that “it would be arrogant for us to dictate” what an independent Canadian CRC might do, but “we believe that if there was a Canadian synod brought together there would be discussion, debate,” and decisions made in Canada. “We are confident that because Canadians are used to living in a diverse culture that a CRC in Canada would make room for questions of conscience and to do ministry as we feel led on a local level. That’s a conversation for a Canadian synod to have.”
What’s Next
Toward CRC Canada thinks there’s a broader appetite for that, and its invitation to Canadian church councils is part of what Vander Horst called gathering “a critical mass” of the Canadian congregations to “formally direct our future.” Aside from the three churches that have signed the declaration for readiness (names not public), Vander Horst said “some have told me it will be on their next council meeting agenda”—many churches don’t hold council meetings in July. “Responses in the last couple of weeks have been informal requests and phone calls for more information.”
Schouten, the B.C. pastor unsure of the necessity for the movement, said he wants his council to talk about it. “I don’t think it’s wrong to talk about it. I welcome that,” he said. “I think it’s a time of soul-searching for the denomination, so maybe this group will help us do that.”
The Canada Ministry Board is open, too, to “working on how the voice and experience of Canadian CRCNA churches can be best reflected within our current polity, in fairness and impartiality,” its August letter to Canadian churches said, noting that “this could require significant changes, which will be determined as we research this.” Toward CRC Canada is eager to hear what that might be. Vander Horst said the group was pleased to see the board’s communique acknowledge “that Canadian concerns are marginalized in the current approach to church polity and they are researching solutions. We hope they come with good solutions soon to prevent more missed opportunities for effective ministry and witness in the Canadian context.”
The board’s next scheduled meeting is October. In its letter it welcomed Canadian CRCs “unsure about anything related to CRCNA ministry in Canada (to) feel free to email our Executive Director, Al Postma, at [email protected] or our current CMB chairperson, Greta Luimes at [email protected].”
Postma said in June, at a Canadian ministry presentation at Synod 2024, that he believes what the Canadian ministry board and ministry office are “doing right now is the best for the churches in Canada.” When he’s asked about Toward CRC Canada, he says his response includes recognizing that “there are a variety of groups that are advocating for their preferred future of the CRC, and I believe that each one does so because they love their church and love this denomination.” He said, “We have done a tremendous amount of work in the last few years to address a significant number of the concerns that the leaders of Toward CRC Canada continue to raise” and expects to continue “this path of improvements and implementing feedback from members, while also celebrating the existing strength of our shared ministries and the CRC churches across Canada.”