WSC IT specialist Adam laments the development in the CRC of the office of “ministry associate” (which must be found in a n obscure textual variant of Eph 4!).
I couldn’t respond directly on his blog (I hate Xanga) so I reply here:
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This seems to be an extension of the CRC office of “evangelist.” This is also the triumph of the Second Great Awakening in the CRC. Remember the CRC was founded, in distinction from the RCA, because the latter was perceived to be too broadly evangelical! Now the CRC seems to be hell-bent-for-leather in a hurry to catch up for lost time. Yes, the Methodists and Baptists beat us stuffy Reformed types to the Western frontier with untrained lay preachers and they set up mission stations while we were still in seminary at Princeton. But who had to try to clean up the theological mess made by the enthusiastic evangelicals? It was the Reformed (and other) guys with seminary training.
It’s the difference between field medicine and theater surgery. In combat medicine medics do what they can with what they have but one doesn’t turn than into a normal practice. This is what the CRC has done with this new office. They’ve turned field medicine into a routine and marginalized standard, trained medical practice. This another reason why the best analysis of what’s happening in the CRC is not “it’s going liberal” but rather to say “It’s going evangelical.” Thence it will likely go liberal and segments of it already have, but the main body of the CRC is just joining the American evangelical mainstream and the creation of a semi-trained office of “ministry associate” is just another step toward Charles Finney.
R. Scott Clark
R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.
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“This another reason why the best analysis of what’s happening in the CRC is not ‘it’s going liberal’ but rather to say ‘It’s going evangelical.’”
Speaking as an office-bearer in a self-proclaimed “flagship” communion in the CRC, eggs-actly.
I have found that many, many love to invoke the dreaded L-word when assessing things about the CRC. But I find this simply to be a function of those who get equally derided with the F-word. What you get is a bunch of “Liberals and Fundamentalists” barking past each other in the haze of both being Evangelical and simply not realizing it. Then they think they get somewhere when they decide that there’s room for all kinds and unite under the banner of all the colors of Benneton. Psst, blue and red Evangelicals, you haven’t solved anything.
The Outhouse is based upon the premise that the large swath of American religion is Evangelical as opposed to Confessional. i think I read that somewhere…
Zrim