A team of students from Chatham (Ont.) Christian High School—Brielle Smids, Autumn Farrar, Julia Van Minnen, Autumn Pluim, Liam Taves, Kaleb Groombridge, Jerry Zomerman, and Markus Loewen—accompanied Pastor Nate Van Denend of First Christian Reformed Church in Chatham to lead worship during the opening session of Synod 2025.
Synod is the annual general assembly of the Christian Reformed Church in North America. It is meeting June 13-19 in Ancaster, Ont.
First CRC in Chatham is the host church of Synod 2025. Van Denend preached from Heidelberg Catechism’s Question &Answer 21—“True faith is not only a sure knowledge by which I hold as true all that God has revealed to us in Scripture; it is also a wholehearted trust, which the Holy Spirit creates in me by the gospel, that God has freely granted, not only to others but to me also, forgiveness of sins, eternal righteousness, and salvation. These are gifts of sheer grace, granted solely by Christ’s merit”—and from Isaiah 6. He referenced also the insights of author and psychologist Iain McGilchrist who describes two different kinds of attention employed by the human brain: a narrow, focused, ‘sorting’ attention, and a broader, more open, ‘awareness’ attention. The first is employed in speaking and the second in singing.
Reading what he called the Isaiah 6 curse, Van Denend described our condition of seeing but never perceiving—“our attention is inhibited.” The curse, he said, is not arbitrary, but the result as described in Psalm 115 of our sin of idolatry—idols made by human hands “have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see … ears, but cannot hear, noses, but cannot smell … (and) those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.”
Van Denend said “We need Jesus more than ever to save us from the things we have made … to open the eyes of the blind and unstop the ears of the deaf,” to exercise that atrophied part of our brain employed in perceiving and understanding so that the church may be served, not only with the focused attention on specific policies and procedures but the broader attention that is “wary of the hawk (danger) and open to the dove (the Holy Spirit).”
Besides worshiping together, synod’s formal acts on Friday included an official welcome from Redeemer University President David Zietsma, on whose campus Synod 2025 is gathering; a video exhortation from Thrive ministry consultant Sean Baker; and adopting the program committee report with the assignments of advisory committees and their work.
Zietsma noted that “the CRC was critical in the establishment of Redeemer University” and that the school would not exist without the contributions of congregations, leaders, and people of the Christian Reformed Church. “We continue to receive financial support, prayer and of course many students from CRC congregations,” Zietsma said, asking for a show of hands of Redeemer alumni. Synod vice president Ken Benjamins graduated from the school in 1988 and has five children who are also Redeemer graduates.
Baker shared with delegates in a short video presentation in line with the Synod 2019 request to include yearly “orientation for delegates to better understand the power with which they are privileged, especially with regard to gender, ethnicity, position, and age.” Noting that “power and privilege are loaded terms” that might cause some delegates to tune out, Baker instead referenced Heidelberg Catechism Q &A 10 —“What is God’s will for you in the sixth commandment? I am not to belittle, hate, insult, or kill my neighbor—not by my thoughts, my words, my look or gesture, and certainly not by actual deeds—and I am not to be party to this in others.” Baker encouraged delegates to use the capacity that they have, without the need for special tools or lenses, to “take the time to wonder about how someone else, someone different from you might experience your committee or this space” and if there has been a slight, “rather than be defensive we can be curious, try to make amends.”
Synod 2025 president Stephen Terpstra, who along with the other three officers was elected May 28, read the Public Declaration of Agreement with the Beliefs of the Christian Reformed Church in North America, from the final page of the Rules for Synodical Procedure, and delegates stood in response. Echoing Baker’s admonitions, Terpstra said “it’s human nature to say ‘I want' or ‘I think’… but ultimately you are here as an officebearer of Jesus Christ and his church. There’s no way you can represent Christ without behaving like Christ,” evident in the fruit of the spirit—that every conversation be marked by love, joy, patience, kindness, and self control. “These are obvious things, you all know them, but we expect them,” Terpstra said.
He noted that it is in advisory committees—small groups of delegates assigned different portions of synod’s agenda—where “each and every one of you will have the greatest opportunity to make an impact.”
After formally adopting the report in which those assignments are laid out, and hearing announcements from CRCNA general secretary Zachary King, delegates and advisers were dismissed to those committees. They’ll meet throughout Friday and Saturday, break for rest and worship on Sunday, and bring reports and recommendations to the full synod beginning Monday, June 16.
Synod 2025, the annual general assembly of the Christian Reformed Church in North America, is meeting June 13-19 on the campus of Redeemer University in Ancaster, Ont. Find daily coverage from The Banner at TheBanner.org/synod. Visit crcna.org/synod for the agenda, advisory reports, recordings of plenary sessions, and to subscribe to the daily Synod News email.
About the Author
Alissa Vernon is the news editor for The Banner.