My Experience At Covenant Christian Reformed Church Of Appleton Part 5 - The Congregational Meeting That Took Place After 30% Of The Congregation Departed

The elders prevaricate on the women in office issue and decline to apologize to members who departed when it became apparent the church had misled them

Over the last few Substack posts, I have been detailing my experience at Covenant Christian Reformed Church of Appleton, WI and the events that led to the departure of 30% of the congregation.

Part 1 describes my unsuccessful attempts to determine the accuracy of the information I was provided at the new members class and receive a clear account from the elders of the church as to what they believed about various resources and beliefs being promoted by denominational entities such as the Office of Race Relations, the Office of Social Justice, and the Banner.

Part 2 describes the departure from Covenant of both the senior pastor and the associate pastor and the 6 months in which the elders made confusing statements about the church’s doctrinal stances and refused to provide clarification when asked.

Part 3 describes the efforts by my husband and myself to seek the assistance of Classis Wisconsin Church Visitors as well as the way in which the elders at Covenant dragged their feet in setting up that meeting and hid its purpose from the congregation.

Part 4 describes how Covenant experienced a sudden mass exodus of congregants over the issue of women serving as elders, something that members who recently joined the church were led to believe would not happen but which the elders argued had been allowed since the 1990s. The elders also expressed their intention to hire an egalitarian pastor and not conduct further study of the issue of women in office until that pastor was in place and able to lead such a study and discussion.

At this point, with the departure of all of the families that we were closest to, it became clear that the church was spiraling downward at a rapidly increasing rate and there was no future for our family there. My husband and I did, however, feel we had an obligation to press the matter at the quickly approaching congregational meeting and raise our concerns in a way that would allow others in the church to at least get a hint of what had been going on behind the scenes.

JUNE 2024 – THE CONGREGATIONAL MEETING

The congregational meeting took place on Sunday 06/16/2024.

When it came time to vote on the elders, my husband publicly explained to the congregation his concerns with having Don Voogt serve as an elder, saying:

“I cannot in good conscience support Don Voogt being an elder. Some of the primary responsibilities of an elder, as described in church order, are to oversee doctrine, provide counsel and discipline, and to defend the faith. Over the last year, I've witnessed firsthand Don's desire specifically to prevent doctrinal discussions from taking place at this church. When I and my wife raised concerns about teachings being promoted by denominational entities and asked the council of this church to clarify whether or not they agreed with these doctrines, Don specifically asked us to drop the matter. He told us via email that it was shameful for our church to even be talking about these doctrinal concerns. He also included a caveat in the finance committee recommendations regarding Ministry Shares that clearly shut down all further discussion about doctrinal issues by stating—this is Don's quote from the finance committee minutes—‘It is understood by way of this action that council would not continue to labor through a process of discernment regarding the lack of merit of allocated giving to the church, to individual ministries, or offices within the Christian church.’ He also stated in an email to the finance committee ‘I am now of the opinion that it would be better to go ahead and move Synodical Ministry Shares out of the general fund as a better path forward than a painful discernment process regarding allocation of Ministry Shares.’ When asked how these recommendations aligned with recent updates to Ministry Shares enacted by Synod, he refused to provide an explanation stating that he was counseled to not discuss this in email with my wife.

“These actions are in direct opposition to the responsibility of an elder to maintain doctrine and shepherd the church, and they're certainly not appropriate for an elder of a church that has recently declared that sound doctrine is its number one priority.

“These issues are not unique to Don, but are present in the current council as well. Over a year ago, my wife and I went to the council with examples concerning doctrine we saw being promoted by denominational entities. We asked them to explain whether or not they agreed with those teachings. Over a year later, the council has still not explained what they as a body believe. Forget about whether it's even sound doctrine. They can't even explain what they believe and what they support. In fact, the elders have explicitly pushed back against the idea that they have any responsibility to deal with matters of doctrine, which led my wife and me to have to formally bring our concerns to Classis Wisconsin church visitors in a formal appeal.

“This unwillingness on the part of the Council to be clear and open about what Covenant believes, has now resulted in multiple families departing. Between parents and children, Covenant has lost over 30 people. That's 25 to 30% of weekly attendance. I want to be clear; these families have not left because Pastor Mark left or because we're in-between pastors now. They have left because of the faulty leadership of council and the inability of leadership of this church to openly deal with doctrinal matters regarding women in office or Ministry Shares. I believe the electing of Don Voogt to the Council will only exacerbate the systemic leadership issues at this church, and I cannot in good conscience vote for him to be an elder. Thank you.” (Listen To Audio B1)

The congregation proceeded to approve all three of the candidates the council had put forward as elders, and because there were three openings all three of them were elected to serve as elders.

Ministry Shares were discussed. Some congregants expressed a desire to put Ministry Shares back into the general budget.

My husband wanted to know why the church council was still accepting and transferring money to denominational entities that it had stated in council minutes it recognized as promoting non-biblical ideas and organizations. He reminded them that they had told the congregation in their minutes, “The Council will still pursue the appropriate procedures and appropriate channels to bring the council's deeper concerns of the CRC website content and links to non-biblical ideas and organizations to the notice of the CRC headquarters. The Council will exercise diligence through this process. We will communicate frequently with the congregation through the process and anticipates that the process will require time, especially given our attention to the congregational needs and pastoral transition.”

Additionally, I asked, “You said in the Council minutes that they were taken out of the budget so that you could have more time to discuss the underlying doctrinal issues. So would you be having the underlying, you know, discussion about doctrinal issues before you ever went ahead and put them back in the budget?”

Joe DeHaan responded, “So we, council, was discussing content on the denominational website until Mark accepted his call, at which point council tabled the discussion on the content on the denominational website which people found disagreeable. Just note, that it is the end of my term, however the members of council who are continuing [to serve on?] who made that commitment with that motive. So, it is up to council to decide how to handle that issue of Ministry Shares going forward.”

It concerns me that the council went from identifying content on the denominational website as “non-biblical” to Joe DeHaan describing it merely as “content […] which people found disagreeable.” The problem is not that people don’t like the content; the problem is that it is un-biblical.

The issue of women serving as elders was also discussed.

Mike Ivy told the congregation “There was a question raised by Rob a few minutes ago about it seems that, de facto, the council and the search committee have made a decision to call an egalitarian pastor. That was not what our communication said. Communication said that we need to call a pastor who is open to serving with women elders even as the pastor leads the congregation through a study, a biblical—a study of what the Bible says, the broad sweep of the Bible. So that we as a congregation can participate in a study and discussion about that particular issue.”

It remains unclear to me how hiring a pastor who is willing to serve with female elders is different than hiring an egalitarian pastor.

Mike’s statement prompted me to have the following exchange with him:

Jessica Anderson: Is there a reason why we're not having Pastor Roger lead us through this discussion? I thought that was one of the purposes of having a transitional minister was to kind of deal with these things before we had a new pastor.

Mike Ivy: The new council will consider whether to ask pastor Roger to lead us through that study and discussion. Probably won't happen in the July meeting which will be the first organizational meeting of the new Council. But the new Council will consider that, and we are already discussing with Pastor Roger the possibility of him leading us in that discussion.

Jessica Anderson: I guess—then I'm confused, because it sounded like you were gonna call a new pastor and then have him lead us through this discussion.

Mike Ivy: And we might.

Jessica Anderson: Okay

Mike Ivy: I don't know, Jessica, which way. Let the new Council get organized, and we'll discuss we'll discuss whether to ask Pastor Roger to lead us through the discussion or not.

Jessica Anderson: Is there a reason why he—why you wouldn't want him to? I mean, I thought that was his purpose here, in part, was to help get our ducks in a row as we called a new pastor.

Mike Ivy: The reason why we might not want him to is because his leading that study and discussion would be a take-away from other responsibilities that we regard as perhaps more important than that discussion at this time in the life of our church. It's a matter of prioritization.

Jessica Anderson: What are the other responsibilities that you don't want to take away from?

Mike Ivy: Other pastoral responsibilities that he is that he is currently performing.

Jessica Menn: And the new pastor will not have those responsibilities?

Mike Ivy: The new pastor will obviously have those responsibilities.

Jessica Anderson: Okay, so it just sounds like you just kind of don't want Roger to do this possibly.

Mike Ivy: That's not what I said, Jessica. I said that the new council will consider whether to ask pastor Roger to lead us in that discussion or not.

Jessica Anderson: Okay.

Mike Ivy: That's what I said.

This exchange continues to confuse me. Roger Sparks is Covenant’s specialize transitional minister. One of the primary jobs of an STM is to help a congregation work through any sort of issues that they are dealing with so that they can have their house in order when the new pastor arrives. It is difficult for me to understand what duties and responsibilities would take precedence to the point of completely removing his primary function as an STM. It does not make any sense to me why they believe it would be less difficult for a new pastor to walk a church through this than an STM particularly given that I would expect a new pastor would have more additional responsibilities on his plate than the STM has.

It also makes no sense to me why Covenant would wait until after it hired a pastor before having this important discussion given that the pastor may or may not end up holding views that align with the decision the congregation comes to. To me it would seem important to reach a decision on this matter first and then hire a pastor who holds to the views the congregation has settled on otherwise the church runs the risk of being in the same situation it is currently in—i.e. holding an unclear position on the matter that results in it not being presented honestly to new members.

My husband asked why this had not been brought to the congregation for discussion but was, instead, only discussed by the search committee and elders.

Mike Ivy answered, “[B]ecause the church has bylaws that that state how we do business. And the church has ways of establishing church policy. Those ways have been exercised. Ways to change church policy, which exist, have not been exercised. And so, the vote that was—that that this congregation took (and some of the people who participated in that vote are here), that vote from the 1990s, is last establishment of the policy of the church. And so, until there is move to change the policy of the church, which would involve changing the bylaws, then that is the policy of the church.”

Joe DeHaan chimed in, “Right, so that's the last time the church discussed this. Which does not mean that we would not do so again and discuss and take a vote on it. I do want to make sure everybody understands that this was not a topic that was given to the search committee. It came up naturally through the discussion at the search committee and then kind of developed from there. So, Council never passed this as a responsibility to this committee. Just make sure that's absolutely clear.”

One of the meeting attendees asked if any of the people who had recently left over the issue had taken steps to initiate a church-wide discussion reexamining the policy or did they just leave?

Mike Ivy responded that, primarily, “the comment was ‘We're leaving the church.’ There was not, to my knowledge, not an effort to initiate a broader discussion if that's your question.”

This prompted the following back and forth between myself and Mike Ivy, with my husband and Joe DeHaan chiming in:

Jessica Anderson: [To the question of whether an attempt was made to initiate discussion] Dominic said that he and Kelsi tried to open some discussion about the matter in the search committee meeting, and the other members of the search committee meeting, you know, when he said, "Hey, let's take a look at what the Bible says. Let's read through the passages on it." And he said that the other members in the committee were not willing to open their Bibles or review those [Bible verses] or discuss it. So that was my comment. I guess my question then—

Mike Ivy: May I comment, Jessica. I was in that search committee. That was not what occurred.

Jessica Anderson: That is what Dominic told us happened.

Rob Anderson: Well, one of you is lying to us then.

Mike Ivy: I'm sorry, Rob. I didn't hear you.

Rob Anderson: I said one of you is lying to us, either you or Dominic.

Mike Ivy: Well, I can just tell you—

Jessica Anderson: But I guess then—

Joe DeHaan: Also, it is not the responsibility of the search committee to have that discussion. That is a discussion that would be led by the elders with the congregation. So, it's not an appropriate conversation to have within the search committee.

Jessica Anderson: But I just—to [that] point, they did try to open some kind of discussion about it.

Looking back on this exchange, I can say that, in the matter of Ministry Shares, I had not sought to start a church-wide discussion on the matter and had come to the elders and asked them to clarify whether or not they, as a body, agreed with specific teachings I saw being promoted on the denominational website. To this day, the elders have refused to explain what the leadership of Covenant Christian Reformed Church of Appleton believes about race, race relations, social justice, and the promotion of Black Lives Matter and Antifa by denominational entities to name only a few of the questions I asked them. And without responding to my questions or consulting me, the elders turned the matter into a congregational discussion. Now in the matter of female elders, they faulted the people who left for not pushing harder to bring the matter to the congregation and for only discussing the matter in the search committee and with leaders in exit interviews. This leaves me confused as to what the process is for keeping discussions private versus making them public. It seems to me that in this situation when the elders became aware of this issue that they could have made an effort to provide guidance to various concerned congregants on the avenues available to them. The elders would have been much more familiar with the church’s bylaws than the average member would have been and part of, and one could easily argue that part of their duties to guide the church and provide counsel would be making sure that members were educated about the options available to them in the church’s bylaws.

Having said that, had the congregants who left chosen instead to stay and press the issue I find it difficult to believe the elders would have responded any more positively to them than they did to me.

The discussion between Mike Ivy and myself continued as follows:

Jessica Anderson: I guess my question then is, you know, having attended a new members class within the last few years, [in] the new members class I attended, this church was not presented as egalitarian. It was told to me in in the class that I attended that, yes, they had a vote, and yes, they had at one time allowed female elders, but we have come into a place of only having female deacons and not female elders. So, I would assume that my experience is probably similar to the experience many people who had gone recently through new members classes experienced. And I understand it's not your fault that they were told that, but has the council taken any steps to reach out to these people and apologize for them having [been] misled and having joined this church under false pretenses?

Mike Ivy: The straightforward answer to your question is, no, the council has not reached out to apologize for anything that they were told in the new members class. That's the answer to your question.

One of the meeting attendees asked what I thought was a very good question, “So according to the bylaws which have not changed since the 90s, on paper Covenant Church is willing to have women elders. Because of Mark's changing views, we have not had any since 2019. Can you just describe a little bit—it's the elders responsibility to nominate new elders. How was that done? Is there—is there accountability with that? Is it a unanimous vote per nominee? I just—as I'm hearing all this discussion, I just keep thinking that if this whole conversation had come up when the mismatch between Pastor Mark's views and the bylaws that first surfaced, I think a lot of a lot of hurt wouldn't have happened. So can you just tell us about that a little?”

Mike Ivy responded:

 “I agree with you. This is a this is a topic, worthy of discussion years ago. As an elder of this church, I accept personal responsibility for not having made it a topic of discussion while Mark was still our pastor. I had personal discussions with Mark about it, but I never, I never initiated anything beyond those personal discussions even while, as an elder, I knew that Mark was leading us in a path away from the policy of the church without addressing the policy of the church, which should have been done and wasn't. And so, we are now [indecipherable].

“So, I stand before you this morning as an elder of the church, repentant and asking your forgiveness for not having performed my duties well as an elder in the church. And, Marie, I don't know I don't know what else to say beyond that. This should have been a discussion a long time ago because we knew that we were not acting in accordance to church policy. And so, I can only ask—I can only ask your forgiveness.” (Listen to Audio B2 and Audio B3)

I find that statement confusing for a number of reasons. One, he, an elder, standing before the congregation as an elder, indicated that he believes this should have been a topic of conversation years ago; however, earlier the council indicated it wanted to wait until the church gets a new pastor before having this discussion.

Additionally, Mike was willing to apologize for not having pushed this issue and clearly seemed to believe an apology was in order, but he wasn’t willing to reach out to departing members and apologize to them for the way the church had handled the matter, misled them, and wasted their time and energy volunteering and participating at a church that was not clear it held positions that made the church a poor theological fit for these families.

Finally, I felt Mike placed the lion’s share of the blame for the current situation on Pastor Mark, which decreased the overall impact of the apology, particularly given that I don’t know how accurate Mike’s representation of the situation was as compared to how Pastor Mark would have described it. I know from having attended the new members class, that Pastor Mark was open with people about the status of women serving as elders at Covenant. Based on Mike’s recounting of his experience, it also sounds like Pastor Mark had discussions about his views with people who were elders, and his views were not unknown to the council. If they did not push back against what he was doing, it would seem inappropriate for them to then turn around and try to blame him for the situation the church found itself in when Pastor Mark was trying to follow his understanding of scripture, was being open about it, and was not receiving negative pushback from the council.

After the meeting we did have multiple people approach us and speak in a conciliatory manner. At least one newly elected deacon seemed to recognize that there were some concerning teachings regarding race being promoted by the denomination, so that was positive; though I doubt very much any change at Covenant will come about because of it. Beyond that, the overall two-facedness of the elders as well as their focus on trying to save face versus carrying out their responsibilities in an honest and forthright manner aligned with the Bible made it untenable for us to remain.

This congregational meeting was the last time that we attended a church service at Covenant Christian Reformed Church of Appleton, but it was not the last time we would enter the doors or meet with the leadership.