The Christian Reformed Church’s Council of Delegates, meeting by video conference at the beginning of February, received a report from the first meeting of the Diaspora and Ethnic Ministry advisory committee, which was formed in October to better integrate diverse leaders and churches within the CRCNA with denominational structures.
General secretary Zachary King reported on behalf of the group, recalling for the Council that it was formed in response to an expressed need over many years for “a direct connection for our diverse synodical delegates and classis members to connect right into the governance system” of the church.
The advisory committee includes members from each of the Council of Delegates’ ministry committees and welcomes a slate of up to six guests “from among the preceding year’s synodical delegates who represent the diversity of the CRCNA from the United States and Canada” who will provide the needed feedback to the Diaspora and Ethnic Ministry committee.
The first recommendation from the group, adopted by the Council of Delegates, is that the Diaspora and Ethnic Ministry advisory committee (not the permanent name) will receive annual reports from the various ethnocentric networking groups within the Christian Reformed Church, such as the Consejo Latino, Southeast Asia and Pacific Islander, Korean Ministers Association, and Black and Reformed leadership network.
“We’re going to bring short reports from all of these networking groups to the DEM advisory committee, and we'll receive those reports, and we will use our Council of Delegates’ report to synod to share brief summaries of the work that those groups are doing with Synod,” King said.
“That way our synodical delegates will become more familiar with the ways in which our churches are supporting these diverse ethnic groups,” King said, while also fulfilling an earlier synodical request to find a way to facilitate regular reporting from these groups.
Felix Fernandez, Classis Southeast U.S., expressed appreciation for the prospect of regular reporting from groups that could have a lot of wisdom to share. “I think it’s important to have different voices at the table, but I think it’s a different approach when we go from saying, ‘Hey, you can have a voice,’ to us saying, ‘We want to learn from you. We understand that your presence here is actually gonna make our denomination better’,” Fernandez said. “I think there's a lot of things that we can learn from our brothers and sisters that are coming from other countries, that can actually improve the way we do things in the United States (and Canada).”
King said the group intends to meet again in April and will bring a proposal for a new name “that won’t be quite so unwieldy” to the May meeting of the Council of Delegates.