June’s infographic showed greater numbers of requests and communications to synod. Not only are there more, they’re also getting longer. A Christian Reformed blogger in Grand Rapids. Mich., also noticed this trend. Kent Hendricks used digitized agendas from the Hekman Library website to find the average number of words per overture for nine different years going back to 1944. He thinks the sharp increase after 1984 stems from word processing and the personal computer: “Thanks to the PC, synod is now drowning in paper.”

This graph by Kent Hendricks was originally published May 9, 2024, on his substack “CRC Musings.” Used with permission. The data excludes a 7,931-word study committee report whose full text was included in a 1964 overture. The count starts at 1944 “because the 1934 agenda was both formatted a bit differently and included some Dutch, and 1924 and earlier was basically all Dutch.”