The Messy Reformation

Chris Ganski and Derek Buikema join Jason to talk about the overture out of Classis Wisconsin to Synod 2026 calling for a study committee on the nature of the church. It is not a flashy overture. It is not addressing a fight. But Chris and Derek argue it might be the most important overture on the floor — because every other ecclesiastical conversation in the denomination right now is happening at one or two levels of abstraction away from a question we have quietly stopped asking out loud: what is a church? They trace the overture back through ten years of the company-of-pastors conversations, name the drift of American pragmatism through CRC life, and make the case that a generation has grown up assuming everyone knew what a church was — and now nobody is sure.

The conversation does not stay in diagnosis. Chris keeps the bar for the study committee low and the vision serious: force a theological conversation. Recover Calvin's deep ecclesiology — election, the church as creature of the Word, the sacraments, the ministry of the Word. Derek's contribution is to remind the denomination what study committees actually do. They frame conversations. Children at the Lord's Table did. Human Sexuality did. A serious, theological study committee on the church will do the same — without requiring a controversy to do it. The pivot of the episode is Derek's image: a faithful pastor knows when to fight and when to garden. The CRC has been fighting for a decade. It is past time to also garden.

Then Chris turns to Calvin as a model. Calvin was a refugee. He fled France at twenty-five, landed in Geneva, and was forever an outsider. That experience shaped his ecclesiology. He invented the consistory. He gave the modern diaconate its shape. He sent church planters into France for forty years. Reformed mission did not come out of pragmatism. It came out of a refugee's deep theology of what the church is. Chris closes with a pastoral word for tired pastors and anxious elders: the church is founded in God's election. Whether the church survives is not finally on us. Believe that. Lead from that. That is what reformation looks like.

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Jason and Dan DeGraff kick off the Messy Reformation's annual Synod coverage with a breakdown of the convening session of Synod 2026. The convening session is mostly a warm-up — an hour of tech troubleshooting and a chance for delegates to find their footing before the real work begins. But it ends with the one piece of business that, year after year, tells you more about where Synod is headed than almost anything else: the election of officers.

Chad Steenwyk is president. Derek Buikema is vice president. Jose Reyes is first clerk. Dave Tenclay is second clerk. Jason's point is not the names themselves but what it means that none of these names is a surprise. Four years ago, the idea that a leader of the Abide Project could be elected president of Synod would have been unthinkable — anyone associated with Abide carried what Jason calls the black mark of the plague. Now it just makes sense. That, he argues, is the single most important thing this episode is about: the fog of reformation makes it easy to forget how far the CRC has actually moved.

Dan brings the numbers and the texture. Over 100 new delegates this year — close to 58 percent of the floor — which is roughly the pattern of the last several synods. He and Jason talk about why the convening session matters even when it looks like nothing happens, why around 25 absent delegates is worth a gentle rebuke, and what it means that the delegates got behind strong confessional leaders right out of the gate. They engage Paul VanderKlay's recent video predicting that the pendulum has swung about as far as it will, and Jason pushes back: he thinks Synod is increasingly willing to take the reins on things like the Calvin Seminary presidency precisely because trust in the institution has been lost.

The conversation closes on demographics that complicate any simple read — the confessional fire Jason has seen among Korean, Hispanic, and Venezuelan delegates, the talk of a new Classis Lone Star out of Hispanic church plants in Texas, and the continued decline in women delegates. The hosts commit to a few coverage episodes during Synod rather than daily updates, and Jason ends where the podcast always ends: this is Christ's church, he bought it with his blood, so keep watch on your life and doctrine and keep fighting the good fight in this messy reformation.

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In part two of our conversation with Lora Copley, editor of The Banner, the question turns from where the Banner has been to where it could go. Lora doesn't dodge — she names specifics. A Banner podcast launching this year, fully funded through grassroots giving, hosted by Derek Buikema and Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra. A daily Synod 2026 recap modeled on the work of Abide Project. A growing donor base of "banner builders." Online space for articles ranging from 500 to 2,400 words, giving faithful Reformed voices a platform the print magazine can't yet hold. This isn't strategic spin. It's a vision of a publication actually serving the church it claims to speak with.

Then Willy turns the conversation toward confessionalism, and the heart of Lora's vision becomes clear. She isn't manufacturing a confessional turn at the Banner — the pitches are already coming. A stay-at-home mom in Chicago on a "Now What?" series for young adults. A church planter in the Multiply 222 network who tells every new disciple after twenty-six weeks of catechism that the only place to go next is Berkhof's Systematic Theology — because the book is incredible. The Reformed confessions are not a museum piece. They're how Reformed churches make disciples, and the CRCNA is hungry for leaders who believe it.

Lora heads into Synod 2026 to be interviewed and voted on as permanent editor. She admits she's nervous — her words tumble out like a clown car at the Ringling Brothers circus, she says — but she'll feel deeply dependent on the Lord and His Spirit, and that's a good place to be. We boast in our weakness so that Christ's strength may be known. The closing word is Jonathan Edwards: among all the counterfeits the enemy can imitate of the Spirit's fruit, the one thing he cannot counterfeit is the exalting of Christ. That's what Lora is praying for the Banner, the agencies, the denomination, and the Synod about to gather. Lifted, fixed, transformed eyes on Jesus. There is no other sign and wonder worth chasing.

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Lora Copley never thought she'd be editor of The Banner. When her name first came up, she sent back a crying-laughing emoji. She was a campus minister in Iowa, not a journalist. But on a Saturday afternoon — the day before the application deadline, while her daughter was napping — the thought wouldn't leave her alone. She put in her résumé fully expecting to be politely declined, and instead found herself in Florida, at the Multiply 222 conference, receiving a call she hadn't seen coming. In part one of our conversation, Lora tells the story of how God redirected her into the Banner, and what she's learned about the publication, the denomination, and the work in front of her.

This episode is for anyone who has thrown the Banner in the recycling and assumed nothing was going to change. Lora walks us behind the curtain — how feature articles get planned a year in advance, how unsolicited columns come in, how the Our Shared Ministry pages work, and why submissions have nearly tripled since December. She's not asking the CRCNA to manage decline. She's reading Hebrews 11 and the COD report side by side and refusing to pretend the gospel has shrunk. She wants to know what God is doing in Houston and Pease, Minnesota, and Acton, Ontario — and she wants The Banner to be the place where we hear about it.

The payoff is the moment Jason calls out in real time: he's been one of the Banner's most vocal critics for six years, and he's genuinely encouraged. Lora's vision — a publication that speaks with and within the denomination, that helps the CRCNA know both God and itself, that holds Calvin's twin pillars of wisdom together — is exactly the kind of cross-pollination a denomination in reformation requires. Part two picks up with Lora's dreams for the next five years, the Banner's confessional turn, and her nerves heading into Synod.

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Part two of our Synod 2026 preview goes after the bones: who has authority to discipline, what the church owes the state, what the church even is, and why confessional integrity at every level isn't a bonus — it's the basic ask. The technical density of these overtures hides deeply theological questions, and the answers will shape the future of the CRCNA.

Jason, Dan, and Willy work through the discipline-of-office-bearers task force and the Canadian-law pushback in Overtures 34 and 36, where pragmatism keeps trying to override principle. Then Christian nationalism: Overture 25 from Grand Rapids East, a public reading of Belgic Confession Article 36, and Willy connecting it to the Lord's Prayer. Classis Wisconsin's Overture 33 on Reformed ecclesiology gets the case it deserves — the study committee we actually need. The gravamen overtures are dispatched with the contempt they earn for being out of order.

The home stretch is confessional alignment: every employee a member of a CRC, every adjunct faculty member at Calvin Seminary signing the covenant for office bearers, the next Calvin Seminary president confessionally aligned and passionately Reformed — and synod prepared to reject any candidate who isn't. Synod has the authority. Stop apologizing for using it. Christ is still building his church, and we are ambassadors of his kingdom.

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We're back from a short break with the first half of our annual Synod 2026 preview — and this is not a back-to-normal agenda. The Council of Delegates is bringing 27 recommendations forward, and Jason, Dan, and Willy walk through the bigger buckets the people in the pew should actually be paying attention to.

We dig into Recommendation K (Saturday-to-Saturday synod and the Lord's Day problem), Recommendation O (the quiet authority shift on the Program Committee), the biennial synods proposal in Y and Z, and the pay-to-play two-tier ministry shares scheme tucked into Overture 32. Overture 30 from Georgetown is the financial transparency we should already have. Underneath all of it sits a trust crisis the denomination keeps trying to solve by demanding more trust — when before trust always comes transparency.

The episode lands in the defining membership task force, where Dan calls us to stop rushing people into membership, Willy distinguishes commitment from understanding, and Jason wrestles honestly with both sides of a question that isn't yet resolved. The reformation isn't done. Keep pushing.

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Lee Christoffels was ordained in the Christian Reformed Church in 1970. He has been preaching ever since — in Worthington, Minnesota, where his congregation has held services in four languages and watched the community around it change week by week; in Edgerton, where he now serves part-time in retirement; and in pulpits across the region whenever someone needs a preacher on a Sunday morning. Fifty-two years in, he still loves it. This episode is a conversation with a man who has seen everything the CRC has been through since the 1970s and has something clear to say about what holds.

Lee traces the drift that has shaped the denomination's current crisis back to a single question: what is Scripture, and does it have final authority? That question surfaced seriously in the 70s, when debates over biblical infallibility began to fracture the clarity the CRC had inherited. From there, Lee argues, the line runs directly through the battles over women in office in the 90s to the tensions surrounding Synod 2022. The problems were never sudden. They were the slow consequence of decisions made decades earlier, each one loosening the anchor a little further.

The conversation turns on one of the most misused phrases in contemporary church life: semper reformanda — always reforming. Lee insists the historic qualifier was never optional. Always reforming according to the word of God. Reformation is not evolution. It is not the church adjusting to its cultural moment. It is the church being called back — daily, personally, institutionally — to what Scripture actually says and what the church of the ages has always confessed. As Jason points out, the original Reformers did not see themselves as innovators. They quoted Augustine and Irenaeus and said: we are standing where the church has always stood. It was Rome that moved. That same logic applies now.

The episode ends where every episode ends: this is Christ's church and he bought it with his blood. Wolves will come. Keep a close watch on your life and on your doctrine. Preach the word in season and out of season. Lee Christoffels has been doing exactly that for 52 years. It is worth hearing from someone who has stayed the course that long.

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If episode 267 made the case that the CRC has a congregational health crisis, episode 268 asks why the structures meant to address it aren't functioning. The answer, according to Matt Haan, is simple: classes have never had a plan. Not a real one. They were formed by proximity, not strategy, and the denomination has never seriously addressed that. What would it look like to treat a classis as a territory — a defined patch of the kingdom — responsible for every church and every unchurched community within it?

Matt introduces the CRC belt of the Bible: 80 percent of the denomination falls within 100 miles of I-90, north or south. Everything outside that corridor is harder. Dan DeGraff adds the legacy dimension — it's not stubbornness keeping struggling churches together, it's that the building is woven into people's faith stories. But he also names what he learned at a recent candidacy gathering in Phoenix: some classes have figured this out, and the ones that haven't need to be challenged, not coddled. Meanwhile, Jason drops the news that Classes Wisconsin is bringing an overture to Synod 2026: before the CRC plants more churches, it needs to answer a basic question — what is a church?

Matt closes with the line that cuts deepest: one church in Classis Iakota had more baptisms than 11 classes combined. That's not boasting — it's a challenge. The gospel is still alive. God can do amazing things when people are willing. The question is whether the denomination is willing to do the unglamorous work of supporting the outposts of the kingdom — not just the exciting new plants, but the struggling congregations that need someone to walk with them and help them figure out what comes next.

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The CRC's vacancy crisis isn't evenly distributed. While Thrive reports 146 vacant pulpits, statistician Dan DeGraff's independent tracking puts the real number between 107 and 128 — and the worst of it is concentrated in Canada, where one in four churches currently has no pastor. Host Jason Ruis and co-host Willy Krahnke are joined by Dan DeGraff and Matt Haan for the first of two roundtable episodes on a conversation the denomination has been avoiding: what actually happens to the churches nobody's talking about?

What follows Dan's data is a taxonomy of hard decisions. Jason lays out three distinct buckets — plant, revitalize, and replant/close — and argues that conflating them has cost the CRC real opportunities. Matt reframes what "church planting" could mean: not just new locations, but paid-off buildings with dwindling congregations that need a pastor and a fresh mission. The conversation turns to emerging status, a provision in the church order that should apply to the estimated 206 CRC churches under 45 members — but almost never does. A third of U.S. churches are already under 45 or officially emerging. The tool is already there. Most congregations aren't using it.

The episode ends with pastoral realism. Closing a church isn't failure — sometimes it's the Lord calling a body to lay something down and do something new. But getting there requires more than a decision: it requires swallowing pride, drawing on the covenant community, and letting classies step in before it's too late. This roundtable starts the conversation that needs to happen.

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Before Harry Frielink was a pastor, he was a camp counselor, shaped by a man named Matthew Kingswood who asked a deceptively simple question every summer before the kids arrived: are you in the word with people? Not are you ready with your theology. Are you in the word — actually, with actual people? That question has never left Harry. This episode follows him through the harder parts of pastoral ministry: the isolation, the marriage under pressure, the theological controversies that arrived at Synod and in his living room, and ultimately to his closing word — a phrase that came from a mentor ten years into his ministry, repeated twice for emphasis: blow on the live embers.

Harry is candid about pastoral struggles. He references Paul Tripp's Dangerous Calling — the danger of a pastor who lives above or outside the body of Christ rather than in it — and says this is a trap he's actively tried to avoid by building real friendships inside and outside his congregation. On the scripture authority question underlying the CRC's controversies, he says personal experience and story were placed above the word in the human sexuality debates. His read on the Human Sexuality Report goes against the grain of how the debate was framed: he saw not a culture war skirmish but a gospel opportunity — a chance to name the full spectrum of sexual brokenness and ask, how does the gospel address this? That opportunity, he says, is still there.

Harry is encouraged by Synods 22 and 23, surprised by the vote totals, and grateful for young pastors speaking with clarity and courage. He sees Classis Toronto beginning to turn its attention toward the Great Commission — revitalization, discipleship, getting ready for people already coming to the doors. His closing encouragement draws on three simple practices: blow on the live embers where the Spirit is moving, be in the word yourself, and pray — privately, faithfully, at a level you'd be glad to lead publicly. You'll never preach at a level above your own reading. You'll never lead in prayer beyond your own prayer life. And that, he says, is grounding enough.

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