Good News: Women in Ministry (Jane Halton and CRC)

When I tweeted for good news stories about women in ministry, Jane Halton, up in Vancouver, wrote in to tell the story of her church … and, prompted just a little from a few questions I asked, this is her post about women in ministry in the Christian Reformed Church and specifically in her own congregation.

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When I first read Scot’s tweet, I immediately thought of all the good news for women within my own congregation and how we stand out within in the not-so-good-news for women within our denomination.

The following is a summary (with some commentary) of the Women in Ecclesiastical Office description on the CRCNA website.

The CRC began to talk (at synod) about policies that disallowed women in any ordained position in 1970. Over twenty-five years and ten committees later, the first three women were approved as candidates for Ministry of the Word at synod in 1996.  To this day, synod still allows for classes (geographically grouped churches) that don’t believe in the ordination of women to continue this practice.

Women couldn’t be delegates at Synod until 2007 but as recently mentioned inThe Banner, “Eight years after synod declared that women can be delegated to synod, that representation is less than 7 percent. None of this year’s female delegates are pastors, and none of them were appointed to be chairs or reporters of advisory committees.”

In 2014, out of the 1940 ordained persons in the CRC, less than 5% (88) are women and 8% (16) of the 187 delegates at Synod were women. (Quoted from an email from theYearbook office at the CRCNA).

What is really discouraging to me is that there is currently no official movement toward fixing these dismal numbers. Because the CRC holds both positions (to ordain and not to ordain women) as ‘Biblical’ there is resistance to further support women’s ordination (or even offer any support to specifically women) because it may be seen as taking ‘sides’ rather than equipping women to do the job they were ordained to do.

Despite the limited support for women within the denomination, my church, First Christian Reformed Church Vancouver has been promoting ‘good news’ for women in ministry for decades.

In my attempt to learn more about the history of women in my own congregation I spoke with long time church member and current elder, Elsy TerMaat. Here is a bit about what I learned from her wonderful story.

In 1969 Bastiaan (Bas) Nederlof (Elsy’s father), a strong supporter of women in office, became the pastor at First. Pastor Nederlof even spoke up about his support of women in office at synod, where he was a delegate over ten times.

Around 1984, when female deacons were first permitted in the CRC, Elsy (Pastor Nederlof’s daughter) was approached by council to stand for a position. She didn’t feel her gifts were that of a deacon but more of an elder, so she declined (more than one request!).

In 1999, a few years after women were permitted as elders, Elsy was asked to stand as an elder, but lost the vote (to a man). Later that year, when one of the elders moved away, Elsy was ordained as the first female elder at First and was installed by her own father, Bas.

Elsy attended synod as a delegate for the first time in 2010 and spoke against a motion that would allow churches who didn’t support women in office but who were in a classis that did support women to in office to be able to move to a different classis that held a similar belief. This motion was denied.

At First CRC Vancouver, soon after the first female elder, came the first female preacher.  Willemina Zwart, a Regent College seminary student, was the first woman to preach at First. One of the male congregants (who was vocal when he disagreed with something) was heard saying “Oh, that is what the church has been fighting about for all these years!” (inferring it was no big deal).

When I asked Willemina about this experience she replied, “I didn’t know that I was the first woman to preach at First CRC Vancouver.  That’s hilarious…in that I didn’t know until just now!  My experience at First is a major part of my call story…I think enough to say that if it hadn’t have been for my experience and key people there, I’m not sure I would have had the courage to follow God’s call into ordained ministry within the CRC.”   We are good news for women! (We’ve had at least three other female interns since Willemina go on the become the first female pastor of their congregation)

All of the pastors after Pastor Nederlof also supported women in office and in 2007, including Pastor Henry Numan. Pastor Numan was instrumental in Julia Vanderveen’s call to ministry and in 2007 Julia and Trevor Vanderveen were installed as the first co-pastoring couple at First (and, thus Julia became the first female pastor).

Currently, Julia and Trevor share a 1.25 pastoral position. Julia works part-time and spends much of her remaining hours caring for three boys under seven.

Her role as pastor includes leading parts of the worship services such as communion, baptisms, and preaching. She also teaches some adult Sunday school, does pastoral care visits and many other random things pastors find themselves doing.

My favourite thing to experience is when Julia at the helm is a sermon because that is how I experience it: I am being taken on a trip into scripture and I want to hold on, listen and learn. Her sermons are passionate, poignant and her enthusiasm for worship is contagious. She cares deeply about the scriptures and the spiritual life of her congregation. She uses her strong voice and her emotions without apology. She was also the first woman to preach at five other CRC churches.

In 2013, First CRC hit another milestone in support of women, without any celebration or dissent, Caroline Short was elected the first female chair of council. At first I wasn’t sure if the quiet way she was ordained to this position was actually ‘good news.’ Should we celebrate or be grateful that it was so normal?

Her ordination was preceded the year before by four women being appointed as elders. And then during the next installation Caroline became the chair.  As I sat in the pews, pleased as punch, it occurred to me that she must be the first female head of council.  Perhaps no one said anything because our church is so accustomed to having women elders and Julia as one of our pastors. But it still felt like it needed to be noted. I brought it up during ‘coffee time’ after church and some people said it had occurred to them that she was the first woman, but most just said, “Oh yeah, I bet that is right,” and offered no sense of victory.  I still feel a bit torn between “Wow, we have achieved normalcy,” and “No wait, we still need to celebrate!”

My hope and prayer is that the support women have received and the “normalcy” we have experienced in Vancouver will become a common place as more women are called, equipped and supported in their God given gifts with in the CRC.