Synod 2024 officers

Less experience, less diversity, and more evidence of a rightward shift happening in the CRC.

Last week, Synod 2024 elected officers:

• President: Derek Buikema

• Vice president: Stephen Terpstra

• First Clerk: Joshua Christoffels

• Second Clerk: Daniel De Graff

All are either directly associated with or adjacent to the Abide project.

Previous experience at synod

This slate of officers has a collective 10 years of collective experience at Synod. This is the least amount of synod experience since at least 2009:

Previous experience as an officer

This slate of officers has only one year of collective officer experience. This is unusual, but not unprecedented. In the past fifty years:

• Synod’s officers had no collective officer experience in 1980, 1996, 2006, 2010, 2011, and 2012.

• Synod’s officers had one collective year of officer experience in 1975, 1997, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, and now, 2024

(Quick note: I find 1996 really interesting. In the late 80s and early 90s Synods elected officers with lots of experience to help navigate the WICO discussions, but as soon as 1995 declared a five-year moratorium, Synod 1996 elected four officers who had never served before—the first time this happened since 1980.)

Synod presidents tend to have more officer experience than other officers. Since 1975, each officer has had the follow number of previous year experience as any officer:

• President: 2.02 years

• Vice president: 0.88 years

• First clerk: 0.83 years

• Second clerk: 0.5 years

Other synodical delegates with officer experience

Synod could have elected more experienced officers, but chose not to.

Across all 196 delegates, five had been officers before, with a collective 10 years of officer experience. (It would be interesting to see how this compared to earlier years; I haven’t had time.)

• Scott Greenway: president in 2018 and 2014

• Jose Rayas: president in 2022, first clerk in 2019, vice president in 2016

• Luann Sankey: second clerk in 2022

• Derek Buikema: vice president in 2022

• Henry Kranenburg: second clerk in 1999, second clerk in 2003, first clerk in 2023

All delegates with any previous officer experience were passed over, with the exception of Buikema.

All officers are white, male, Midwest pastors

The unstated (and sometimes stated) goal of having officers who represent women, people of color, Canada, and various constituents in the denomination is in the past. The delegates to synod have done this in the past, though not in a coordinated way.

What is very unusual about this slate of officers is that all are white, male, Midwest-based pastors. This has not happened in 31 years, in 1993, when the following officers were:

• President: Peter W. Brouwer, from Classis Minnesota South (now Minnkota)

• Vice President: Roger E. Van Harn from Classis Grand Rapids East

• First Clerk: Morris N. Greidanus from Classis Grand Rapids East

• Second Clerk: Stanley Mast from Classis Grand Rapids South

The influence of Abide, Returning Church, the Messy Reformation, etc.

It’s clear that the overlapping networks around Returning Church, Abide, the Messy Reformation, and other groups continue to become more influential. It’s probable there was some politicking before the vote. And it’s also certain that these groups are influencing moderates in significant ways.

But I think the more important point is not that these groups are driving the change in the CRC (though they are), but that they represent the shift happening in the CRC.

Thanks for reading,

Kent

P.S. I just returned from a stimulating and productive week working in the UK. I was able to get away for a bit to visit the manuscript room at the British Library in London, which included this survey of immigrants in London 1568–1569. The plaque doesn’t say this, but most of these immigrants would have been refugees from the Low Countries, fleeing the Duke of Alba’s suppression of the nascent Dutch Reformed Church.