The CRC circulatory system

What Grand Rapids doesn't realize about the rest of the denomination

The Christian Reformed Church functions like a giant circulatory system, with Grand Rapids and its institutions at the center. 

Or it did. For most of the CRC’s history, people from the edges of the denomination, places like Pella and Ripon, came to Grand Rapids and its institutions before being returned to the edges, places like Sioux Center and Rehoboth. For decades, the denomination functioned this way, but in recent years, the circulatory system has stopped circulating. The edges of the CRC are less connected to Grand Rapids, and alternative networks have emerged, mostly among conservative factions of the denomination, mostly bypassing the center. The breakdown of the Christian Reformed Circulatory System has led to our current denominational crisis.

Here is how it happened.

Origins of the circulatory system

Until the 1920s, the CRC was sustained by a steady stream of immigrants. Dutch was its lingua franca. For the half a century since the CRC’s founding, immigrants arrived together and settled in clusters. These clusters then birthed new communities. Early settlers arrived in West Michigan and spread to Chicago, Wisconsin, and beyond. Another group came to Pella, and spread from there into parts of Kansas, Nebraska, northwest Iowa, and eventually Lynden. From northwest Iowa, immigrants fanned toward the north in Minnesota and North Dakota, and to the west as far as Lakeview, South Dakota. CRCs followed Dutch settlers to southern California, the Central Valley, Montana, and the Pacific Northwest, assisted by Home Missions. The migration continued in a different form in the mid-twentieth century, when Dutch refugees were denied entry into the United States and settled in Canada instead. The CRC became a bi-national organization, centered on Grand Rapids.

The postwar years

By the end of World War II, and even after Dutch immigration stopped, the CRC remained a close network of communities. In the slow–and then fast–process of Americanization, it experienced rapid boomer growth, expanding into the suburbs. Even as it did, the Grand Rapids urban churches remained at the center of the denomination. The circulation was in place.

How the circulation worked

Grand Rapids had always been at the center of the denomination. The most important institutions are Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary. For years, Dutch immigrant enclaves at the edge of the denomination sent their “best and brightest” (PVK’s words) students to Calvin for study—men to be pastors and women to be teachers. They met, married, and returned to the periphery, or to somewhere else on the periphery. A high school graduate from Lynden might go to Calvin and get married–or instead go to Rehoboth and teach for a few years before returning to Lynden, or perhaps settling in some other enclave. Along the way, they would marry, have children, make friends, and join local churches.

The circulatory system brought people to Grand Rapids for other reasons, too. They came for preaching conferences at Calvin Seminary, the Stob lectures, and reunions. It was often where study committees and standing committees met. The Board of Trustees, back when it was called that, met in Grand Rapids. Denominational publishing–and most CRC authors–lived in Grand Rapids. Curriculum, hymnals, and The Banner were all published in Grand Rapids. Even publications like the Today devotionals and the Back to God Hour, though a few hours away near Chicago, were institutionally close. 

CRC people are institution builders. Thanks to agglomeration effects and economies of scale, it was easier to build secondary institutions in Grand Rapids. It was the center of the circulatory system. Throughout the twentieth century, this is where the CRC’s secondary institutions were formed, including places like Pine Rest, Christian Schools International, Bethany Christian Services, Youth Unlimited, and others. Many of the major Christian publishers today were founded by CRC people, including Eerdmans, Baker, Zondervan, and Kregel. The denominational headquarters and many of its agencies are located in Grand Rapids, too.

The center of the circulatory system had its effect even when people didn’t pass directly through it: SWIM (Summer Workshop in Ministry) teams sent CRC youth from one corner of the denomination to another.

By the 1980s, Grand Rapids was at the center of a vast network of 1000+ churches located Dutch enclaves throughout North America. From all corners of the denomination, its schools, denominational agencies, and institutions drew people in and sent them back out. Its publications functioned to unite the disparate corners of the denomination. It was still possible to walk into nearly any of the CRC’s 1000+ churches and find an identical order of worship to the one back at home.

The circulatory system breaks

In the 1960s and 1970s, many of the urban churches began to weaken, particularly in and around Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Grand Rapids. People began moving to the suburbs, hastening the liberalization of the urban elite. By the 1980s, despite white flight and membership decline, only the urban churches of Grand Rapids–at the center of the circulatory system–remained influential.

The circulatory system began to falter in the 1980s and 1990s. The percentage of Calvin students who were CRC declined to 50% around 2000 and has fallen further since. Fewer CRC students came to Calvin and were sent back out. The same thing happened at the seminary: the denomination opened other pathways to ministry. More pastors got M.Div. degrees from elsewhere, and the time required at Calvin Seminary was reduced. The denomination allowed for the ordination of evangelists (now commissioned pastors). Changes in function of the CRC’s higher education institutions meant the center of the circulatory system weakened.

After ordination, pastors became less inclined to look to Calvin University for continuing education. Many follow John Piper and Tim Keller. CRC pastors from the corners of the denomination now meet together at the Bethlehem Pastors Conference, TGC conferences or Kevin DeYoung’s Corum Deo pastor’s conference. They look outside the CRC for preaching advice. They recommend R.C. Sproul books to students.

Meanwhile, Christian schools in the Dutch enclaves began filling with non-CRC people and transforming into broadly evangelical Christian private schools. And as these schools lost their distinctly CRC identities, fewer of their high school graduates were sent to the center of the circulatory system at Calvin. By the late 1990s, Calvin had become simply one among many Christian liberal arts colleges listed in high school graduate programs. For CRC students who came to Calvin, its denominational identity often was not the primary reason. By the 2020s, far more students from Lynden Christian High School, for example, are likely to have been raised in any number of broadly evangelical traditions outside the CRC, and upon graduation they are far more likely to enroll at Grand Canyon University than Calvin University.

More practically, the price of housing is driving the next generation of CRC-ers from the communities they grew up in. Instead of returning from Calvin to places like Palo Alto, they’re located multiple towns away. These towns don’t have CRC churches, and CRC migrants are less inclined to plant churches than they were a generation ago. The days of new generations forming diaspora and starting new CRCs, Christian schools, and related institutions are over.

What’s replacing the circulatory system

Institutions are sticky. It’s hard to move (or sell!) a denominational building, for example. And it’s not just buildings. There are boards, organizations, and systems leftover from a previous era. Many are located in Grand Rapids, but the dynamic responsible for their creation is no longer operational. It was natural for the Boomer-era CRC to build what it did where it did. But these same institutions would not have been built and will not be maintained by the Zoomer grandchildren. The institutional CRC is controlled by an Establishment still centered in Grand Rapids—an Establishment who owes its creation to its position at the center of the circulatory system that is going away.

People aren’t coming into Grand Rapids from the edges of the system, and Grand Rapids isn’t sending them back out. Because of this dynamic, Grand Rapids has become disconnected from the rest of the denomination. Last year, the editor of the Banner didn’t realize that an ad for Better Together would be viewed as offensive by the conservative edge of the denomination, for example. This is astonishing. How could something so obvious be so unapparent to the denominational organ? 

Meanwhile, as the GR-based CRC Establishment continues the leftward drift begun in the 1960s, the rural edges of the denomination are becoming more conservative. And these conservative churches are growing. They were quicker to open during COVID and saw less decline than urban churches. They benefited from the conservative resurgence of 2016 (which also led to the election of Donald Trump, though I am not suggesting the conservative CRC people are Trumpers, many are emphatically not). For decades, the CRC on average drifted leftward. This reversed in 2016, and it’s the churches at the edge of the once-robust circulatory system responsible for the change.

In a previous generation, these isolated edges at the denomination couldn’t opt out of the circulatory system if they wanted to. But the internet changed that. Communication networks can now work around official denominational communication channels and institutional infrastructure. These churches have succeeded because they have no other option but to organize this way. And the left can’t compete. The left still relies on outmoded institutional methods of getting things done. The left is scrambling to keep up, but they can’t wean themselves off the institutions they’ve built. As long as the institutional infrastructure functions–however ineffectively to the right’s organization–it will always be easier to use than trying something new. The left hasn’t evolved because they’ve not had to. 

In fact, the right has become so accustomed to a new way of doing things that they take it for granted that the left would operate the same way. They wrongly believe that their attempts at online organizing can compare to Abide. They can’t. And they wrongly believe the left came to Synod 2023 with a coordinated plan to derail the proceedings on Thursday. It didn’t. As I argued yesterday, the Synod 2023 debacle was a symptom of the left’s disorganization, not its coordination.

What the Grand Rapids Establishment needs to do

The perception from the right is that Grand Rapids is disconnected and oblivious at best and elite and corrupt at worst. Perception is more important than reality. The CRC Establishment in Grand Rapids needs to understand this. The conservative half of the CRC thinks the way it does, for example, because it views GRE as siphoning off resources in the form of money, time, and personnel—largely funded by them—in service of projects and initiatives that undermine their theological and ideological positions and actively work against their interests.

When Herb Schreur speaks at Synod in his overalls, he looks out of place among the denominational elite. He’s arrived from rural Iowa into the city, unaware of how to talk and behave. That’s the perception. And what the Establishment in Grand Rapids doesn't realize is that Herb Schreur is the average CRC elder. In much of the CRC, council meetings and church events work around the milking of cows and the planting of fields. Men—usually men—take off their boots before council meetings.

To its peril, GRE underestimates the degree and importance of this perception in the rest of the denomination. The circulatory system, to which Grand Rapids owes its existence, is nearly gone. And when it goes, it is not coming back.

The right’s only option is Synod

In the past decade, the right has rediscovered and leveraged its ability to influence the denomination at Synod. They can’t control the institutions and agencies, and they’re far away from the center of institutional power. But they can control what happens at Synod. The left stands aghast at the decisions about the HSR, confessionality, Neland in 2022 and 2023, and worries about what “finishing the job” in 2024 might look like. But they’ve really given the right no choice. Synod is the only meaningful way for the right to maintain its voice in the denomination in its post-circulatory form.

Acknowledgements

Almost none of the ideas above are mine. Many are common in Lynden, Washington; I heard them growing up. Since then, I’ve had conversations with friends who’ve articulated parts of this. I’m pretty sure the metaphor of a circulatory system originated with Paul Vander Klay. I’m not sure he would agree with everything above, but he’s articulated a history of the CRC in some of his videos that’s very similar. And as always, this is first draft thinking.

Thanks for reading,

Kent