Women in Office in the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (GKV)

I have been debating whether to write this post.  I don’t like to be the one who breaks bad news.  I don’t like to point out the failings and weaknesses in other churches.  Yet putting our collective heads in the sand does no one any favours either.  There is a need to be up front about what is happening among our sister churches and we need to speak up — because we care and because there is no guarantee that we will not head down the same road.

Een in Waarheid has a story here (rough English translation here) about a church planting project in the Netherlands that’s sponsored by the Reformed Churches (GKV) — those would be the sister churches of the Canadian Reformed Churches.  The work (“Stroom” — “Stream” or “Current” in English), in Amsterdam, is close to institution.  However, the GKV classis involved (Amsterdam/Leiden) is faced with a problem because Stroom already has a provisional council which includes female elders.  The church planter, Martijn Horsman, defends the practice.  As a church plant, Stroom comes from a different context and that needs to be taken into account.

What we have here is a blatantly unbiblical practice being smuggled into the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands under the cover of mission and church planting.  Forget about what the Bible teaches — that doesn’t even really figure into the equation.  Stroom is about the freedom of Jesus and finding new ways of bringing that into practice.

Thankfully, there are voices within the GKV protesting this.  The story reports how a GKV missionary in Ukraine, Rev. Henk Drost, has voiced his opposition.  He argues that this has do with disconnecting Reformed identity and the Reformed confessions from mission.  He is correct.  There are those who see being Reformed and being mission-oriented as being antithetical.  To be missionary churches, we have to give up our Reformed identity and therefore also our confessions.  This makes our Reformed identity more about culture than about confessing and holding to the truth of Scripture.  To be sure, there are certain aspects of our identity that are more culturally conditioned than we have previously recognized.  But is the restriction of the offices of the church to men only one of them?  If the GKV accept that argument it’s a dangerous step away from the authority of Scripture.  Let’s pray that the brothers in Classis Amsterdam/Leiden will have the wisdom to draw the line with Stroom and call Rev. Horsman and his fledgling congregation to repentance.

The Reformed Church is (Still) Alive in Ukraine

“The Reformed Church is Alive in Ukraine,” was the title of an article by J. Van Rietschoten in the July 9, 1999 issue of Clarion.  In that article from long ago, we learned of the mission work being doing in Ukraine by our Dutch sister churches.  Van Rietschoten told of how the Reformed church at Hattem had sent out two missionaries, Rev. Marten Nap and Rev. Jan Werkman.  They were working to assist the fledgling Evangelical Reformed Church of Ukraine.

Now flash ahead to today.  I recently had an opportunity to visit Ukraine and see some of the mission work first hand.  Rev. Nap and Rev. Werkman have repatriated, but others are carrying on the work.  How is the Reformed faith progressing in the largest country in Europe?  What kind of fruit has come from over a decade of work by the Dutch missionaries?

I was greeted at the Boryspil airport in Kiev by Rev. Jos Colijn.  He was mentioned in Van Rietschoten’s earlier article, but at that time was working in Hungary.  Since then he has moved to Kiev where he teaches church history and dogmatics at the Evangelical Reformed Seminary.  This institution provides theological training via a modular program.  The staff comes primarily from our Dutch sister churches as well as from the Presbyterian Church in America (who also have a number of missionaries working in Ukraine).  The students come from the Evangelical Reformed churches, as well as from the Presbyterian churches.

On the Lord’s Day, I worshipped with the Evangelical Reformed congregation in Kiev.  There were about 40-50 people in attendance, mostly made up of young people and families.  This church has its own modest building and pastor.  Interestingly, the service was conducted in a mixture of Ukrainian and Russian – not uncommon in Kiev.  After the service, the brothers and sisters spent time fellowshipping, just as they do in other parts of the world.

Evangelical Reformed Church building in Kiev, Ukraine

Later that afternoon, I joined my Dutch colleague as he taught a catechism lesson at a house church in another part of the city.  This church had been Pentecostal and was in the process of learning how to be Reformed.  The pastor and elder of the church had invited Rev. Colijn to teach them the Heidelberg Catechism.  In a room in a small apartment in a huge complex, there we sat with some ten people and Rev. Colijn taught the Reformed doctrine of the Lord’s Supper.  There were some questions and discussion afterwards, but from all appearances his teaching was well-received.

With Rev. Henk Drost (r) and Rev. Cor Harryvan (l), GKV missionaries in Ukraine

That weekend the other two Dutch missionaries (yes, there are now three!) were much further south in Ukraine.  Rev. Henk Drost and Rev. Cor Harryvan were assisting two of the Evangelical Reformed congregations near the Black Sea.  They returned to Kiev on Monday along with a group of men who were going to attend the conference scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday of that week.  Rev. Henk Drost lives in the city of Rivne, about 350 km west of Kiev.  From there he provides mentoring throughout Ukraine for the Evangelical Reformed Churches.  Rev. Cor Harryvan has the same task, but he is based in Kiev.

The reason I was in Ukraine was to speak at the All Reformed Conference.  This was held on Tuesday November 8 and Wednesday November 9.  I spoke on the subject of my doctoral dissertation, the missionary significance of the Belgic Confession.  The Conference was held at a Baptist retreat in a beautiful outlying area of Kiev.  Attending the conference were Reformed and Presbyterian elders, pastors, and missionaries from all over Ukraine.  There was also one brother who came from the neighbouring country to the north, Belarus.  In terms of the time travelled to reach the Conference, some of these men had given up far more than I had.  They spent many hours by train and bus to attend this time of learning and fellowship.  They appeared to be quite interested in the subject and we had some excellent discussions.  Of course, since I don’t know Russian or Ukrainian, all of that had to take place through a translator.  Sergey Nakul was always at my side (or slightly behind me) giving me the gift either of tongues or of understanding – he did excellent work!

All Reformed Conference. Pastors, elders, and missionaries attended from all over Ukraine and Belarus.

From the conference it became apparent that the Reformed faith is holding its own in Ukraine.  There is some modest growth, but there are also many challenges.  Some of those are cultural and have to do with the fact that Ukraine is a post-communist nation.  Communism fostered suspicion and a lack of trust that is still embedded in the psyche of Ukraine.  Some of the challenges are spiritual and have to do either with the atheism birthed by communism or false teachings masquerading as Christianity.  Other challenges are personal.  Slavic peoples admire strong men who dominate even to the point of tyranny.  In Reformed church leadership that approach rarely, if ever, ends well or really serves God’s people.  Despite these challenges, the Reformed churches in Ukraine are committed to the truth of God’s Word and to the life-changing power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  They continue to reach out to this dark world and, in small measures, God is blessing their efforts.

In the earlier article in Clarion, mention was made of the St. James Bible College.  Some United Reformed pastors had been involved with teaching the Heidelberg Catechism at this institution in Kiev.  Even though St. James was not Reformed, they had been invited and were welcomed to bring Reformed teaching.  Before I left for Ukraine, and after I returned, several people asked me about this.  I inquired about it while in Kiev.  This institution apparently changed direction in the last decade and is now hostile to the Reformed faith.  This is a sad turn of events, but the upside is that the Lord did bless the efforts of URC pastors such as Rev. Ray Sikkema.  Some of the current students at the Evangelical Reformed Seminary first heard and embraced the gospel of grace via this means.

These days there’s a lot of negative press about our Dutch sister churches.  To be sure, there are some reasons for concern.  But there in Ukraine I encountered some Dutch brothers who were deeply passionate about being confessionally Reformed and missional.  My time there was delightful, not only because of the cross-cultural experience (mmm…borscht!), but especially because I felt a real bond of fellowship with my Dutch colleagues.  I could enjoy their fantastic hospitality and some thought-provoking discussions on theological and missionary matters.  We can be thankful for the good work being doing by these men on behalf of our Dutch sister churches.  May God continue to richly bless their efforts for the gospel of our Saviour.

More information about the Dutch mission work in Ukraine can be found at the website of the Ukraine Committee (includes English content).

OPC and GKV

Just noted this on the Orthodox Presbyterian Church website:

On recommendation #5, the General Assembly declined to enter into a relationship of Ecclesiastical Fellowship with the the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (vrijgemaakt), in view of concerns regarding its full commitment to a Reformed understanding of the sufficiency, interpretation and authority of Scripture.  (h.t. GvP on Refnet)

That could put the OPC into an interesting situation at the ICRC, sitting at an ecumenical conference with a federation with whom they have refused ecclesiastical fellowship.  I hope that we’ll be hearing more from the OPC on their concerns.  After all, the purpose of the ICRC includes this:

Article III – Purpose

The purpose of the Conference shall be:

1. to express and promote the unity of faith that the member churches have in Christ;

2. to encourage the fullest ecclesiastical fellowship among the member churches;

If I remember correctly, the OPC objected to continuing membership of the CRC in NAPARC, so there is a precedent.

Reflections on the RCN

It seems like I’m being rather curmudgeonly as of late.  Bear with me as I get one last burden off my chest.  I promise to turn things around from here on into the summer break (I always take a blog break in the summer).

Today’s reflections (that’s a nice way to put it) have to do with the Reformed Churches of the Netherlands, the sister churches of the CanRC.  In Dutch, they’re known as the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland and the word Vrijgemaakt (Liberated) is often tagged on.  Our recent Synod set up a special ecumenical sub-committee to manage our relations with the RCN and to express our “concerns” and “grave concerns.”  Indeed, the reasons for concern keep piling up.

Dr. J. Douma was a long-time professor at the Theological University in Kampen.  This is the seminary of the RCN.  He was regarded by some as being one of the more “progressive” professors.  He has recently started up a website where he shares his concerns about the direction of the RCN.  Of course, the site is in Dutch, but you can get a very rough translation through Yahoo (for some reason Google doesn’t like Dr. Douma).  In his first installment, Douma speaks about the concerns he has about the authority of the Bible in the RCN, particularly what is happening at the Theological University.  He mentions Stefan Paas, whom I’ve blogged about before here and here.  Then he mentions somebody else: Koert van Bekkum.  I’ve heard of him before, but I didn’t realize that his scholarly work was controversial.

According to some news stories in Nederlands Dagblad (for which van Bekkum works as an editor), his dissertation argues that the sun did not literally stand still in Joshua 10.  Well, of course, we all knew that.  But we also knew that it meant that the day was lengthened so that the Israelites could be delivered from the Amorites.  Van Bekkum doesn’t appear to believe that.  Rather, it’s just speaking in a literary way about a great victory.  The miracle is the great victory, not the lengthening of the day.  And that, my friends, is just the tip of the iceberg.

What about David and Goliath?  It’s an historical account, right?  Not necessarily, says van Bekkum.  This website (in English) quotes a 2003 article from van Bekkum in which he argues that it is an option for a Reformed biblical scholar to say that 1 Samuel 17 “in a spiritual and historic sense becomes exemplary for David’s struggle with the Philistines.”

In the June 4, 2010 issue of Clarion, Klaas Stam refers to Stefan Paas and this sort of biblical scholarship.  He says that he would rather go back to the hermeneutics of Dr. S. Greijdanus.  Sign me up too, Klaas.  In fact, for those who don’t read Dutch, I’ve got an English summary of Greijdanus’ excellent Schriftbeginselen ter Schriftverklaring (Scripture Principles for Scripture Interpretation).  Greijdanus had the goods.

Now you might say, all of that is taking place in the Netherlands.  Who cares?  Hardly any of us read Dutch anymore, and we’re increasingly going our own separate way.  Thankfully!  But yet over at Reformed Academic, Dr. Freda Oosterhoff and others want us to pay attention to the Dutch and their manner of doing hermeneutics.  Not so that we can see their mistakes, avoid them, and exhort our Dutch brothers to turn the ship around, but because they want us to emulate them and appropriate their hermeneutics.

Where that leads brings me to the next point of concern.  A while back, I posted an item regarding the organization ContrariO and it’s relationship to the GKV.  This is an organization that advocates for homosexual concerns.  Last week, this item appeared in the newspaper Nederlands Dagblad about the establishment of a new website for gay men in the RCN and other Reformed churches (rough English translation here).  The website is here in Dutch and here with Google Translate.  Maybe there’s some good, helpful thought there, but from what I’ve seen there’s also reason for concern.  For instance, ALTh. de Bruijne teaches ethics at the Theological University.  He describes his journey in understanding the place of homosexuals in the church (Dutch, English).  He was a pastor in Rotterdam and when he encountered gay people co-habiting he encouraged them to do so with a godly attitude and allowed them to go to the Lord’s Supper.  Later he describes homosexuals as having “a special calling in the light of the kingdom.”  I wonder if he would say that about pedophiles, serial philanderers, or those attracted to Fifi.  I recognize that de Bruijne and others are trying to address a serious pastoral issue.  Yet, when a pastor preaches a sermon in which he speaks casually about a “Christian” gay couple living together and occasionally falling into sin and it’s okay because they confess it and seek forgiveness — it should be obvious that the church has been compromised by the culture.  And part of that compromise undoubtedly has to do with the acceptance of critical hermeneutics that appear sophisticated, but don’t take the Bible seriously on its own terms.

Our Synod made the right decision.  Let’s keep talking with our brothers and sisters in the RCN and exhort them to faithfulness.  We have the advantage of being outside their culture and they should be able to appreciate that we bring a different perspective and not write us off for sorry sociological reasons like “immigrant churches are always more conservative.”  When you’re on the inside, it can be difficult to see when you’ve been compromised.  You need someone to call you on your wayward way.  The RCN’s David needs a Nathan.

I’ve Got My Mind Set on You

(With apologies to George Harrison)  The Dutch have noticed that we’ve noticed.  My colleague George Van Popta explains.  You can find a (very) rough English translation here.