Boards Approve Investigating Corporate Restructure for ReFrame

ReFrame Ministries, the 87-year-old media ministry of the Christian Reformed Church in North America, is an agency of the denomination “subject to the authority of synod” (ReFrame -US Corporate Bylaws) and regulated by the “denomination’s Church Order, its Rules of Synodical Procedure and the mandates of synod” (ReFrame Canada bylaws) but it currently has legal identities, one in the U.S. and one in Canada, separate from the corporate and legal structure of the CRCNA.

Unlike the CRC’s mission agency, Resonate Global Mission, or congregational support ministry, Thrive, ReFrame is independently incorporated as a nonprofit, registered in Illinois (where it started in 1939 as The Back to God Hour) and also in Canada. Two separate boards—one U.S. and one Canadian—govern its operations. At the October meetings of those boards, members discussed a proposal to begin the process of including ReFrame in the denomination’s charitable and corporate structure instead.

Specifically, it’s proposed that “ReFrame Ministries maintain its purpose as an agency of the CRCNA as the media ministry tasked with using ‘media to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the world’” and the denomination would “begin the process of including ReFrame Ministries in the CRCNA's charitable &corporate structure in the same manner as Resonate and Thrive in both Canada and the United States.”

That would eliminate the corporate requirement to hold additional board meetings, the duplication of board insurance fees, and redundant expenses (such as annual charitable registrations in six different states), the proposal noted. However, regarding ReFrame’s many collaborative arrangements with several global partners, “care would need to be taken to ensure that this transition is non-disruptive to those agreements.”

ReFrame director Darryl Delaney, who has been in the job five months, acknowledged “several areas to investigate and address” before anything would be finalized. “Any anticipated efficiencies need to be weighed against potential risks,” he said, referencing a memo prepared by ReFrame’s director of administration Nelly Kooistra. The “question of whether closer legal identification with the denomination could create security, regulatory, and access risks” for ReFrame’s ministry in restricted areas was one of several identified concerns. Both boards voted to “approve the proposal as presented in principle, pending a satisfactory investigation into the merits and implications.” That investigation will be carried out by executive director (Canada) Al Postma and by director of U.S. ministry operations Dan DeKam, along with legal teams on both sides of the border, ReFrame, and the ministry board executive teams.

It should be complete by January. When this comes back to the boards in February 2027, they “must be willing to reconsider,” Delaney said, adding: “I have not yet concluded that realignment is the best for ReFrame.”