Subject: NR #1995-010: DeKoster Blasts ARC for Synodocratic Tendencies To Reach RBPS Staff, Contact: Darrell Todd Maurina, Press Officer [For news tips or content-related inquiries] Voice: (616) 674-8446 * FAX: (616) 674-8454 * E-Mail: Darrell128@AOL.com PO Box 691, Lawrence, MI 49064-0691 Wayne Martin, Circulation Manager [For missing or back issue inquiries] Voice: (708) 895-2139 * FAX: (708) 963-6342 * E-Mail: WayneM55@AOL.com 3539 Madison, Lansing, IL 60438 Ron Ellens, Subscription Services [For subscription inquiries or address changes] Voice: (708) 331-0847 * FAX: (708) 636-9366 16424 Cottage Grove, South Holland, IL 60473 NR #1995-010: For Immediate Release Dr. Lester DeKoster Blasts Alliance of Reformed Churches for Synodocratic Tendencies by Darrell Todd Maurina, Press Officer Reformed Believers Press Service GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (January 14, 1995) RBPS - In a fiery speech at Beverly Christian Reformed Church (Independent) in the Grand Rapids suburb of Wyoming, Dr. Lester De Koster blasted the move toward federation in the Alliance of Reformed Churches, warning that creation of a new denomination would simply repeat the mistakes of the Christian Reformed denomination and lead to the same results in the end. "I have come to ask you, as members of independent churches, to ask whether you are going to use the windows of opportunity which the Lord encouraged you to open for yourselves when you moved out from under the cloud of bureaucracy which is the Christian Reformed Church into the sunshine of independence," said De Koster. De Koster spoke on November 15 - the first day of the 1994 Alliance of Reformed Churches when most of the key advocates of federation were out of town attending its meetings at Lynwood CRC (Independent) in Illinois. While noting that he did not realize the date of the Alliance meeting when he accepted the speaking invitation to Beverly CRCI, De Koster said he was particularly concerned that Alliance delegates might think he had acted in an underhanded way. As a result the lecture was recorded on both audio and videotape. "I am sorry that there are persons absent tonight whose views on this matter are not mine, and they may feel that I 'snook in' when they weren't here in order to mislead you a little. There will be a record for these friends of what I said," noted De Koster. De Koster framed his speech with the words of Grand Rapids Press religion editor Ed Golder, who in a newspaper column on the Saturday prior to the Alliance noted that irony that while more than 15,000 members have seceded from the Christian Reformed denomination over the last few years, many of them are working toward the creation of a new denomination. "Read what Mr. Golder says, they are going to create a new denomination, and then I feel like saying, if you will forgive me, what Paul said, 'O foolish Galatians! Who hath bewitched you?' You have started so well and look where you're apt to go," warned De Koster. "This is what the people who are at Lynwood tonight don't like, and they'll have a copy to see it and if they want to bring me back for cross-examination I'll come." De Koster, a former "denominational bureaucrat" himself as editor of The Banner during the 1970's and communications professor at Calvin College, knew his audience of laymen quite well. "We don't need more committees, we need your participation in your congregation talking about these things, because after all it is to the pew that all things finally turn, and you know quite well it's from the pew that all things get paid for," said De Koster. "You probably know and I well recall that there were members of the bureaucracy ten years ago who said, 'Oh, all those hotheads, get rid of a handful of them and everything will be fine.' Then they began to say, 'Well, maybe we lose half a dozen congregations but that's nothing.' It wasn't I don't know until when that they began to wake up that this is serious business," said De Koster. "It is an exciting thing that you in the various churches you represent and thousands of others are willing to take a hard look at the role of the church in your own life, in the life of your families, in the life of your communities, and it might be in the life of your nation, and to strike out in independence." According to De Koster, the key areas the Alliance needs to address are preaching, missions and evangelism, and theological education. "However we go forward from this moment, what do we have to watch out for? What happened to the Christian Reformed Church? Why did it collapse?" asked De Koster. "The Christian Reformed Church has come down like a house of cards. There are a lot of forms there and the like, but it really is gone. What is the cause and how might it have been avoided? De Koster said the earliest sign of problems in the Christian Reformed denomination was the creation of denominational boards and agencies to do church work, and cited Rev. Idzerd Van Dellen's losing fight against the creation of a denominational mission board. "There were people, and you and I must have been among them, who had a feeling that although the board and the agencies put their hands in our pockets time and time and time again, really it wasn't so bad if you gave money to the church, although they never told you how they spent it, they never told you what their salaries were, and they never let you demand an accounting of the results," said De Koster. "We were just taken in by the notion that if you give generously to something called the church, what the board and agencies did, what something called Calvin College and Calvin Seminary did, what something called the Back to God Hour actually said, was not much of your responsibility." "Will that happen again to the Alliance? Is an Alliance worth the risk? That is something you must decide," said De Koster. De Koster also strongly attacked the CRC for toleration of doctrinal deviations, replacement of psalms by hymns in the worship service, placing of general revelation on a par with special revelation, adoption of the language of crusade evangelism, and use of historical-redemptive preaching. On the last point, De Koster said the current Banner editor, Rev. John Suk, used historical-redemptive exegesis to defend women in office. "Wherever you take the text or the passage you find the Christ in it somewhere, and once you have found the Christ, the Christocentric element, you know the role of that text in the history of redemption, and then you can exposit the text," said De Koster. "Now you have to be blind as a bat not to see that is simply a way of reading into the Bible what you want to find." "The key to the knowledge of God is obedience," said De Koster. "In short, the pulpit says here's the Word of God, do it, and the result is the knowledge of God. Jesus says, if you continue in my word, then you are my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. That does not require a classis or a synod. It requires a pulpit, it requires elders, it's helped by deacons, and a congregation that is prepared to do the Word of God. "I cannot see that the congregation needs more than these simple principles," said De Koster. "There are all kinds of forms of keeping together without creating a classis that starts to hand down law. A classis doesn't have the marks of the church. You can't serve communion at a classis, not legitimately. There's no consistory there. So I say, how does it happen that a body that doesn't have the marks of the church gives orders to a body that does?" Closing his speech, De Koster warned that the independent Alliance churches would have to choose between giving up their hard-won freedoms or submitting to tyranny and a repetition of past events in the Christian Reformed denomination. "What's next for the independent congregations?" asked De Koster. "That depends on you." Crossreferences to Related RBPS Articles: #1994-057: Alliance of Reformed Churches to Headline Questions on Whether to Form a New Denominational Federation, Debate on Adoption of Westminster Standards #1994-060: Alliance of Reformed Churches Adopts Westminster Standards; Seceding Christian Reformed Congregations Move to Convene New Federation; Church Order Committee Avoids Explosion Over Federation Question; Sharply Divided Committee Reaches Unanimous Compromise on Inclusion of Westminster Standards in Alliance Purpose Statement; Independent Churches Decide to Federate Apart from Alliance; Unauthorized Letter to 600 PCA Churches and Leaders Prompts Protests in Presbyterian Church in America and Alliance of Reformed Churches; Alliance Declines Offer of Dordt College Board Position; Confessional Conference on Ecclesiology Scrapped for 1995; Other Matters: Yearbook Problems, Reading Sermons Proposal Rejected, Proposals on Ministerial Training, Revenue Canada, Contact Committee with CRC, Equalizing Travel Costs Voted Down, Alliance Stays in Chicago for 1995 Meeting, Julien Re-Elected Stated Clerk, P.Y. DeJong Addresses Alliance Contact List: Dr. Lester De Koster 2800 Thornapple River SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49506 Rev. Jerome Julien, Stated Clerk, Alliance of Reformed Churches 34 Azores Crescent, Cambridge, ON N1R 7Z4 * H/O: (519) 622-1033 ------------------------------------------------ file: /pub/resources/text/reformed: nr95-010.txt .