Some seven years ago I looked at the stats of ministers without charge and inquired of Ministry and Church Vocations whether they knew anything about these people, if they were searching, what they were doing, whether they were open to some form of ministry, etc. Not only did MCV not know, they showed no interest.
A couple years before that while at General Assembly I asked why we were not doing missionary work in the traditional sense, either abroad or in Canada, referencing the number of unreached people groups. (This was not to diminish what we were doing.) No response.
About the same time (my memory escapes me as to precisely when it was) I approached Life and Mission Agency and asked if they would be interested in surveying ministers to get a picture of the nature of ministry within the PCC. I had envisioned a series of surveys that would explore a number of topics over a period of two to three years or so. I even offered to pick up the tab for the online program that could be used. No interest.
In the last 20 years or so the Christian Reformed Church has established four congregations along the 401 corridor from Pickering to Bowmanville.
Hope Fellowship is the largest and the one that attracted attention in the Record article. The singular congregation we started was effectively killed off by presbytery. They are presently working on yet another church plant. The CRC is committed to church extension in a way that we can only dream of.
Can congregations be revived? Yes, but not always. There needs to be a relationship between the openness of the existing congregation to change, the right demographic, and a pastor with the skills to work with both in an energetic, sensitive, and creative manner. Currently we have no means to either assess the former two or to discern those who might fit the latter.
The last person we have had with any degree of commitment to church extension was Harry Waite. It was, however, Cal Elder who set the standard, and this goes back some 30 years.
Perhaps one of the most striking examples of our inability to get our act together is the fact that for over a decade we had a long-range planning committee that never came forth with anything even remotely resembling a long-range plan and now we are at it again and are almost certain to fail yet again.
Why all this? While much could be said, at heart is the fact that, statistically, only two per cent of us are likely to be innovators and creative thinkers and only about 10 per cent early adopters when it comes to change. Translating this, most of us are inclined to be slow to catch on, slow to move, and more suitable as managers … at all levels of the church. If we are going to move forward in any meaningful and significant way, we need to tap into the creative types, the innovative types, the early adopters, and perhaps some of the early middle adopters. Left in the hands of others, we will be tomorrow precisely where we are today and where we were four decades ago.
