I think I might be the only person to ever get excited about this, but the Christian Reformed Church’s Agenda For Synod 2008 was released very recently. There seems to be an extreme lack of commentary about most synodical issues, even in the blogosphere, and the agendas themselves are often very dense to the point of being next to unreadable. Thus, behold my summary of those issues I found interesting therein.

I have put page numbers in square brackets [ ] if you want to see where something is.

The Board of Trustees (the BOT!) takes care of denominational matters during the 51/52s of the year that Synod isn’t in session. They prepare each year a large report of what they do, usually a bit dull…

The BOT is putting forth a proposal to no longer have woman advisors, as woman delegates to Synod have surpassed the number of advisors allocated. [24] The BOT is also proposing single nominations for denominational board positions (instead of the current two) [28], and discontinuing the alternate positions on those boards. [29]

A revision of Article 23-d of the Church Order to allow solo pastors of congregations affiliating with the CRC to not require time at Calvin Seminary is brought up again for approval, as it need confirmation after passing at Synod 2007. [31]

There are a few miscellaneous things that don’t fit nicely into a paragraph: The past list of classis that have declared the word male inoperative has been replaced by a list of classis that have decided that women may not be delegated to classis (there are 6). [23] The BOT endorsed the participation of the CRC in Project Ploughshares to participate in the issue of War and Peace. [31] Among the many summaries of various ministries, I found an “Office of Ministry Planning”, [36] which has an interesting mandate. All Nations Heritage Week is recommended for celebration in the churches. [42]

The BOT’s Bible Translation Commitee found the New Living Translation acceptable for use in the churches, with reservations; [29] appendix A is the report of this committee. [43] The report lays out both how the  strong dynamic-equivalence translation approach of the NLT can be useful for comprehension, but this same technique can distance the translation from the original texts. [45-48] In light of this, the committee suggests guidelines on its use, namely that another translation be used alongside the NLT. [48] Therefore, the recommendation includes “with reservations” to ensure this is clear. However, I feel unsure that this will peculate to the churches wanting to use the NLT.

The report mentions that Synod 2006 directed the BOT to appoint a standing Translation Committee, but the BOT decided to establish ad hoc (case-by-case) committees insteads, such as the one studying the NLT. Why didn’t they follow the direction of Synod?

The Interchurch Relations Committee discussed the relationship between the CRC and the PCN (Protestant Church in the Netherlands). [182-185] In the past, the CRC imposed a restricted relationship with the GKN (the Reformed church of the Netherlands) for various reasons. Recently, the GKN merged with some other churches to form the PCN, and the IRC argues the restrictions do not transfer, and maintaining an ecumenical relationship with the Dutch Reformed churches is important.

There were a few study committees, as always. The most significant and controversial is the one studying the Form of Subscription, about which I have already written about here and re-examined in light of some overtures.

Continued: CRC Synod 2008: Part 2