Synod 2024 officer speculation
Program Committee influence, Paul DeVries, and why Scott Greenway should be president
The president, vice president, clerk (what’s a clerk?), and the second clerk (wait, there are two?) have two main responsibilities:
They run Synod
They serve as the program committee for the following year’s Synod
Their full duties can be found here.
What officers can (and can’t) do at Synod
On the first—running Synod—the officers actually don’t have a great deal of power. Presidents can technically cease debate (as Chad Steenwyk, standing in for Paul DeVries, tried to do at the end of Synod 2024) and make wide-ranging ruling, though all are largely subject to Synod. The body has the right to challenge the chair at any time, and often does. Paul DeVries encouraged this throughout Synod 2023. Officers may not serve on advisory committees; they may not vote; and they may not speak to motions. When Paul DeVries spoke against exercising discipline on Neland last year, he did so as a member of the ad hoc committee, which meant he had to relinquish the chair to Chad Steenwyk.
On the second—functioning as the program committee for the following year’s Synod—officers can sway the direction of subsequent Synods, at least initially.
Among other things, they do the following:
Approve all faculty, young adult, women, and ethnic minority advisors to Synod and assign them to committees (when such advisors will be present)
Appoint the Synod parliamentarian, who for many years has been Kathy Smith (there’s an overture this year to change this—more on that in a future email)
Select and assign committee members
Here’s an example of how this operated at Synod 2023:
At the prior Synod in 2022, officers were Jose Rayas, Derek Buikema, Aaron Vriesman, and Luanne Sankey. Vriesman and Buikema were members of the Abide steering committee (Vriesman still is), and Rayas, in his role in Consejo Latino, has been loosely connected to Abide. For example, he gave one of the Abide online lectures prior to Synod 2022. All three were instrumental in choosing who was on which committee for Synod 2023, including the now well-known Committee 8 that presented majority and minority reports on gravamina. Though not all members had direct connections to Abide, some did:
Jason Ruis, who chaired the committee, was and is on the Abide steering committee. (Also, here’s a quick plug for Jason Ruis’s Messy Reformation podcast. Everyone in GRE needs to listen to this to understand how the CRC outside West Michigan thinks.)
Todd Kuperus, the reporter, wrote the following: “In addition, through some of its publications and through its convention, The Abide Project has also helped churches to think through what it means for us to love people who struggle with sexual sins.”
Patrick Anthony has written for the Abide Project.
Dave Bosscher was a former steering committee member and fairly active in 2022, though I’m not sure if he still is. He’s an excellent preacher and well-respected. (Derek Buikema, VP of Synod 2022 and chair of the debate on the HSR, guest-preached at Bosscher’s church while he was in Grand Rapids for Synod 2022.) My understanding is that Bosscher was fairly active behind the scenes at Synod 2022 as well.
Many others who signed the majority report have other degrees of connection to Abide, too.
Do I think the 2024 Program Committee stacked the committee a certain way? Absolutely not.
Additionally, the program committee needed to be careful to ensure the advisory committee was comprised of individuals who would produce a majority report consistent with the views of the majority of the rest of Synod. This isn’t a bad thing. If it didn’t, the floor debate would become ugly, or it could result in the response to the 2016 advisory committee report which was rejected. This made it inevitable that Committee 8 would produce the report it did, but I’m not sure there was a better alternative. This is complicated work.
(Imagine a Synod 2023 Program Committee comprised of GRE officers who stacked Committee 8 to produce a report that, among other things, dismissed the gravamina overtures. Had such a committee brought a report to the floor, debate would have descended into chaos, and the matter would have needed to be dealt with on the floor of Synod directly. It would not have been pretty.)
At the same time, it would also be naïve to assume there weren’t biases. The advisory committees do much of the hard work of Synod, and its members are chosen by the program committee.
It’s too early to know what Synod 2025 will deal with, but it will probably be more on gravamina, discipline and/or disaffiliation for affirming churches, Classis Grand Rapids East, and so on. Thus, the affiliations, positions, and stances of Synod 2024 officers are important. Delegates will vote for their officers accordingly.
The point I’m making is not that the Program Committee dictates how subsequent synods operate. Rather, my point is that the decisions the Program Committee makes have path-dependent qualities for how Synod 2025 will deal these matters.
How Paul DeVries ran Synod 2023
Before we can talk about Synod 2024 officers, we need to talk about Paul DeVries.
Paul DeVries was both lauded and loathed for the way he presided over Synod last year. He has been criticized, mostly from the right, for the following:
allowing stories and sermonizing
for not ceasing debate, which in turn, caused two problems:
more delegates, usually on the right, called the question than what’s typical for a Synod—and were then criticized (unfairly, I think) from the left
the left was accused (not unfairly, I think) of filibustering
for removing the clock
for not reading vote counts
for allowing too much time for things other than debate, such as updates from denominational agencies, worship, etc.
In short, he didn’t keep things moving quickly enough, which caused the debacle on Thursday afternoon, leaving Synod 2023, “incomplete and broken.”
The right wants the left to leave. The left wants to be left alone. Neither option is easy; probably neither option is really possible, at least at a single synod. No amount of church order handwaving will change this. Our institution is 167 years old; it will not be dismantled in a single year. Paul DeVries faced an impossible challenge, caught between those who want to hasten it and those who want to delay it. My own view is that Paul DeVries did the best he could with a bad situation, and I don’t think any other president could have done any better.
Synod 2024 delegates who have been officers
As far as I can tell, there are only five delegates to Synod 2024 who have been officers before:
Jose Rayas. This will be Rayas’s 15th synod. In 2022 he was president of Synod. This, of course, was the year Synod debated the Human Sexuality Report and Neland’s ordaining a deacon in a same sex relationship, though Rayas turned the chair over for the HSR debate, since he also served on that committee. In 2019, Rayas was first clerk. This was the year Synod heard the interim report from the HSR committee. In 2016, the year Synod rejected the report of the committee on pastoral advice to same sex individuals and instead formed the HSR committee, Rayas was vice president of Synod. In short, Rayas is probably the most well-versed on HSR- and confessional-related matters and helping Synod navigate complex issues. In addition to his experience at Synod, he is also active in Consejo Latino. My view is that he did an excellent job in 2022, and would likely do the same in 2024.
Scott Greenway. This will be Greenway’s seventh Synod. He has been president twice: in 2018 and 2014. Neither of these Synods were a complex as 2016, 2019, or 2022. He’s served on denominational boards, including the board of the Back to God Hour (when it was called that). He’s also the vice-chair of Calvin Seminary’s board.
Luann Sankey has been to Synod once before; she was the Second Clerk in 2022.
Derek Buikema was vice president of Synod in 2022 and led Synod through the HSR debate when Rayas recused himself. I thought he did an excellent job with the exception of censuring of Dominic Palacios.
Henry Kranenburg has already been to Synod 11 eleven times and served as Second Clerk twice.
This means we will likely have a relatively inexperienced executive team in 2024, but it’s not unprecedented:
In 2010, all four officers were first-timers.
In 2014, the only officer with experience was Jake Kuipers, and he had served as officer at only one other Synod.
4 Synod 2024 officer predictions
It’s fun to speculate. Let’s begin.
Prediction #1: Scott Greenway and Jose Rayas will be president and vice president. Rayas has more experience and will probably do a better job running debate, but Greenway is closer to the CRC Establishment and has more context. And bro is pastoral, no cap, which will be important during what will probably be a very painful Synod, especially for the left. Additionally, Greenway’s history in the denomination and proximity to the CRC Establishment will make it easier for the left to accept and deal with whatever Synod decides. He’s not one of them but, for better or worse, his insider status, proximity to Grand Rapids, and history with the denomination means he understands them in a way Rayas doesn’t. To put it somewhat differently: Rayas might be slightly more qualified to lead during Synod, but Greenway might be slightly more qualified to lead after Synod. Despite these minor differences, both would be outstanding presidents.
Prediction #2: There will be two other officers who are Abide-affiliated or Abide-adjacent. Whatever your views on Abide, they know how to get things done, and the moderates know this. Efficiency and leadership can make up for a bit of ideological misalignment. Derek Buikema would be an obvious candidate. I could also see Lloyd Hemstreet, Josh Christoffels, Lora Copley, Dave Bosscher, Stephen Terpstra, or others in this network nominated.
Prediction #3: Abide is somewhat Midwest-focused. I hope Synod considers people from outside this network, too, like Luann Sankey, from Central California and a previous officer, or Douglas Fakkema from Classis Pacific Northwest, reporter for the advisory committee that worked on the HSR at Synod 2022. Both know the issues well.
Prediction #4: I’ll also predict that there will be no officers from the CRC Establishment and no officers from any classis with affirming churches, including GRE.
I have more thoughts, but I have things to do, so I need to end here. As always, everything above is very first draft thinking. Send corrections, please.
Thanks for reading.
Kent
Hi Kent,
Thanks for jotting down your thoughts. I certainly haven't agreed with everything, and your missing a bit in my estimation, but it is still interesting to get your perspective on some of the events in the CRCNA over the last few years. However, this post particularly had a number of errors that I specifically wanted to try and clarify some of.
1. Presidents can't/Chad didn't cease debate (he proposed it, and Synod voted to cease debate). Just as calling the question doesn't close the speaker queu, Synod has to vote in favor of closing the queu, the President can merely make the proposal without waiting in the queu themselves, but Synod always decides.
2. Officers can serve on Advisory Committees, but being an officer pulls them out of a lot of those duties (thus, when I personally am deciding who I want to vote for for as an officer of Synod, this is one of my biggest narrowing criteria, passed the "who do I think is capable of leading well" question).
3. The President does not generally vote (maybe in a tie breaker if needed, I don't know), however the rest of the officers still vote (they are all duly sent delegates of Synod).
4. The officers can all speak to motions, they just don't do so from their position of officer. They get in the queu, like the rest of the delegates, and go down to the floor to speak (even the President in theory could do so, just by relinquishing the chair for that matter). Last year, as you pointed out, Paul spoke, but had already relinquished the chair for that part of the meeting as he was on the in-loco committee. However, he did not speak as a member of that committee, but rather as a delegate (which was absolutely his right and prerogative). But earlier in Synod, at other points of the proceedings, both of First (Henry) and Second (Richard) Clerks spoke to other motions (Chad was the only officer that didn't speak, and that is traditional protocol that they don't speak, but not a rule).
5. Cedric already corrected some of your overstatement of what the Program Committee does. Delegates each pick their preferred committees or two when they register, and then Synodical Services has a whole list of how people are assigned. I'm guessing the program committee actually adjust only a small fraction of what the system already puts in place.
6. Derek Buikema never served on the Abide Steering Committee. I was on the ballot for the original Steering Committee (Aaron Vriesman beat me out for our region), but Derek has never even been on a ballot, let alone served on the Abide Steering Committee.
7. Patrick Anthony wrote for Abide after Synod 2023 (maybe we are too "mid-west" focused, but I don't think any of the Abide leaders knew him at all before serving with him last Synod).
8. Scott Greenway, when I first heard he was delegated through the grapevine in February, was who I thought most likely to serve as President (however, I didn't know that Jose was also delegated back then).
9. Henry Kranenburg served as a Second Clerk before, and First Clerk last year (which I voted for him last year, but probably wouldn't again this year).
10. For inexperienced officers, I believe in 2022, Jose was the only DELEGATE that had served as an officer before. So having 5 with experience to choose from gives far more than some synods have.
My understanding is that they also can’t add delegates from a classis that has submitted overtures that will be handled by a particular advisory committee to that committee. That means the many delegates whose classes submitted overtures about gravamina can’t serve on that committee. Another layer of difficulty in choosing who goes where that could be mistaken as bias, but its just part of good process