My Experience At Covenant CRC Appleton Part 1 - Trying To Determine If The New Members Class Accurately Portrayed The Church

A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.

I have not posted on this Substack for a few months. The reason for that is because, even though some very positive and exciting things have happened at the denominational level in the CRCNA, some very bad things have been happening at the local level with the CRCNA church I have been attending. The church has essentially experienced a church split with 30% of regular attendees leaving. As of this morning, my husband also tendered his withdrawal and my family is now without a church.

I will now be publishing a series of Substack posts detailing my experience at this church along with documentation to support my story. Once I have told the story I will explain why I believe it is important for me to post about it publicly to the level of detail I will be providing. There is actually a very specific, fairly small group of people for whom I am posting this, but I do think there may also be some value to broader groups including Classis Wisconsin and people within the wider body of the CRCNA.

With that, let us dive in….

I started attending Covenant Christian Reformed Church in Appleton, WI in December of 2019.

SPRING 2021

In spring of 2021, I attended a New Members class which was run by the church’s then pastor Mark Pluimer with assistance from his wife Laurie Pluimer. During that class, some of the denominational issues were discussed including the Human Sexuality Report (which had, at that time, not yet been approved) and the progressive drift of some of the denominational offices. Pastor Mark explicitly said he had concerns about some of the denominational offices (specifically mentioning at least the Office of Social Justice if not the Office of Race Relations as well) and said that he did not recommend the Banner. He said that if the CRCNA affirmed same sex marriage he would work to lead Covenant out of the denomination.

Daryl and Elizabeth Bell attended this class as well, and during this class they and I had a fairly serious discussion with Pastor Mark about the danger of allowing entities devoted to left-wing social causes to get a foothold in the church because of the propensity of such entities to turn churches away from a focus on Christ, scripture, and truth and instead devote themselves to harmful left-wing social causes.

When Ministry Shares were brought up during the class I asked if it was possible for the church to designate where in the denomination their Ministry Shares went because it seemed wrong for Covenant to be funding entities like the Banner and the Office of Social Justice when it viewed those entities as concerning. Pastor Mark didn’t seem to know a lot about how Ministry Shares worked, but he was open and receptive to the suggestion and even commented that he thought Synod had recently made changes that would help facilitate that very action.

Indeed, although I didn’t know this given how new I was to the CRCNA, my inquiry turned out to be very much in line with recent changes to the Ministry Shares system. Synod 2019 had updated the Ministry Shares system to give individual congregations more of a voice in shaping the denominational ministries (See Appendix J of the Synod 2019 Agenda which was adopted as presented by Synod 2019), and the Church Administration and Finance Guide now includes a form for churches to indicate how they want to allocate their Ministry Share dollars.

After the new members class, things were left open-ended in that Pastor Mark was very open to my suggestion and believed the church would be receptive also, but he needed to look into the mechanics of how to do such a thing.

During that new members class, we also discussed women in office. We were told that Covenant had voted in the 90s to allow women to hold all offices but had since moved away from that and was now at a place where women served as deacons but did not serve as elders. This was not an issue to me one way or the other, and I mention it only because, although it was not on my radar of concerns the issue of women in office would end up being a pivotal issue for the church.

Overall, the new members class gave me the impression that Covenant Christian Reformed Church was a solidly orthodox church led by an orthodox pastor who strove to be faithful to scripture and to Reformed doctrine and that Covenant did not adhere to the left-wing drift that had happened in various denominational offices and entities.

At the end of the class, I opted to hold off on becoming a member due to the doctrinal issues Pastor Mark had mentioned existing at the denominational level and the fact that, because Covenant had decided to split into two services (a masked service and a masks-optional service) during the previous year and had only recently come back together into one service, I did not know what half the congregation was like or if the church was actually the seemingly solidly orthodox church I had been attending for the last year. I explained this very clearly to Pastor Mark in an email in which I also reiterated my concern about Ministry Share dollars going to wolfish entities within the CRCNA and expressed a desire to see the church discuss designating Ministry Share dollars away from those entities. (See Attachment A.)

While I do not intend to post screenshots of all the attachments I am providing links to, I will post a screenshot of this email because I believe it turned out to be very prescient and foreshadows the way things went at Covenant.

I did not receive any sort of pushback from Pastor Mark on any of this or any indication from him that I was off base in my concerns.

SUMMER 2022 THROUGH FEBRUARY 2023

Synod went very well. Covenant also hired Ben Hoekman to serve as our associate pastor. Like Pastor Mark, he seemed like a very solidly orthodox pastor with a firm understanding of the Bible and Reformed theology. He also was very acquainted with Church Order and the administrative aspects of the denomination (something that Pastor Mark didn’t seem to have as much knowledge of). Synod’s decision to pass the Human Sexuality Report and Covenant’s decision to hire a solidly orthodox associate pastor made me want to more actively pursue becoming a member.

My husband, Rob Anderson, was already a member, and I left it up to him to run down the feasibility of Covenant designating Ministry Share dollars away from theologically suspect denominational entities. He spoke with Pastor Mark and Pastor Ben as well as Dominic DeCoux and David Peel both of whom were elders at that time. It was finally determined that, yes, Ministry Share dollars could be designated essentially however the church wanted to designate them. In his various conversations with pastors and elders, my husband was told that the elders were interested in designating the church’s Ministry Shares and they had concerns about some of the things happening at the denominational level, but they needed to have more information and some examples of the these concerning things. My husband was told it would be beneficial if he could provide those examples to the elders.

MARCH OF 2023

At that request of the elders, I ended up writing them an email in which I pointed them to some of the things on the denomination’s website that I found theologically suspect. I also went through the March 2023 issue of the Banner and tried to point out the questionable statements and general deficiencies I found in several of the articles. Again, I did this because my husband was told the elders had concerns and needed someone to help them find examples of questionable materials. That initial communication is what I ended up turning into the first set of posts on this Substack.

In my cover letter, I asked the elders multiple questions that I thought were very straightforward such as:

• Where do the elders of this church stand on the Office of Diversity? Do you support viewing and categorizing people primarily by ethnicity and country of origin?

• Where do the elders stand on Calvin Theological Seminary? Do you believe it is providing solid orthodox religious training for people studying to be pastors? Do you trust that its teachers are committed and devout Christians? Do you believe that they defend Biblical truth? (This was prompted by Pastor Ben having felt the need to transfer from Calvin Theological Seminary to a more conservative seminary.)

• Where do the elders stand on the Office of Social Justice? Do you support the OSJ’s focus on climate change alarmism and immigration and their promotion of left-wing solutions to respond to these issues?

• Do the elders of Covenant support the OSJ’s lack of any statements opposing abortion, euthanasia, and sterilization even though the Sanctity of Human Life is supposed to be one of the OSJ’s areas of focus?

• Where do the elders stand on the Office of Race Relations?

• Do the elders agree with the Office of Race Relations’ “Statement About The Deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor”?

• Do the elders support their claim that George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were killed due to racism?

• Do the elders agree with their claim that there is systemic racism that pervades our culture?

• Do the elders believe that these “anti-racism resources” linked to by the Office of Race Relations are beneficial and aligned with Christian doctrine?

In these communications, I tried to make it clear to the elders that when I attended the new members class, Covenant was represented as not supporting these things. I also gave them my perspective that regardless of what the elders’ position on these matters were, I believed some sort of change was warranted and they needed to be upfront about what they believed. If they supported these organizations and positions, they needed to make that clear in the new members class and ideally on the church website as well. If they did not support them, then they needed to seriously consider what they were funding with their money. (See Attachment B, Substack Posts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

APRIL 2023

I had a phone call with at least Dominic DeCoux, possibly also Pastor Ben (though that phone call may have taken place in May). During this discussion, Dominic was clear that he was speaking as an individual and not with the weight of the church council behind him; however, my concerns were not dismissed. I was not told I was off base. He did not say anything that would have led me to believe that my doctrinal concerns were invalid or misguided.

I received no feedback from any of the elders that would have indicated to me that I had done something wrong in asking them to clarify Covenant’s doctrinal stances on these matters.

My expectation was that, as the people tasked with maintaining right doctrine within the church and defending the faith, the elders would review my concerns and provide me with answers to my questions.

When people indicate they want to become members at Covenant CRC, they are required to meet with the elders. During that meeting, the elders are able to examine them and they are able to examine the elders. Although I was earlier on in the process of becoming a member, I assumed that something similar would take place in my situation—that the elders would ask me to attend a meeting, they would talk to me about my history and my concerns and go over my questions in an orderly manner. At the end of that, I would be able to determine if I wanted to pursue membership at Covenant and they would also be able to determine if they should encourage me to look elsewhere.

My hope was that, after they had answered my questions, they would then move toward designating Ministry Share dollars away from the more egregious denominational entities and toward ministries that were more in line with what I understood Covenant’s beliefs to be.

Instead, the elders did not answer my questions at all and opted to hold two congregational listening sessions, one on 05/07/2023 and one on 06/04/2023. Over a year later, I would find out that the recommendation to respond with a listening session came not from a member of the council but from Don Voogt who was not even an elder or deacon at that time.

In the lead-up to the listening session, the council did not provide information to the congregants regarding what my concerns about some of the denominational entities were and why I had asked about designating funds away from certain ministries.

MAY 2023

When the first listening session took place, I thought surely the elders would start out by detailing what the concerns being discussed were, but, instead, they much more obliquely said something along the lines that concerns had been raised by some congregants about the focus of some denominational ministries as well as the content and quality of some Banner articles.

The first speaker spent what felt like 10 minutes talking about how wonderful the denomination was and could not fathom why the church would even consider changing how Ministry Shares were handled. It did not appear that she had any idea what the problems were or why anyone would want to designate funds away from certain entities.

I spoke second. I tried to condense everything I had written to the elders into a 4- or 5-minute speech and highlighted the fact that denominational entities were doing things like promoting Marxist organizations such as BLM and antifa and putting forward Robin DiAngelo (a lesbian atheist) as a good resource; the Office of Social Justice was not promoting anti-abortion/pro-life efforts in any sort of substantive way even though that was ostensibly one of its primary areas of focus. I told them I believed the congregation was in great danger from these sorts of things and they needed to act to protect themselves from these unChristian beliefs. When I spoke, it felt as if a bomb had gone off; it did not appear that anyone had been prepared by the elders for the seriousness of the issues underlying the listening sessions.

During that listening session, a congregant who had recently finished up a term as a deacon expressed the belief that white people are all racist to some degree even if they don’t think they are.

At the end, Pastor Mark got up and pointed to the Banner’s recent decision to run an ad for Better Together as an example of the sort of concerning things it published, but a congregant responded that the Banner had retracted the ad (the implication being it was, therefore, not a big deal.)

The elders asked people to provide feedback on their process, so I provided them feedback. I emailed them and told them I was concerned that they seemed to be leaving these theological issues up for a congregational vote. I believed that was wrong and it was their responsibility as elders to maintain the doctrine of the church. I expressed concern that the church was wildly divided on some core things. I provided more examples of concerning things being promoted by the denomination, and I expressed frustration at how difficult it was to get an answer from the elders on what the church believed. I suggested that Pastor Mark hold a bible study for the church in which he could go through these issues from a biblical standpoint. I also offered to come to a council meeting and discuss these things face-to-face with them. (See Attachment C1)

Dominic DeCoux was the only non-pastor council member who responded to me. He thanked me for my feedback and said he would review everything I said. Although I didn’t know it at the time, this was the last pro-active response I received from a non-pastor member of the council until March of 2024 (and even in that case, I use the term “proactive” loosely). (See Attachment C2)

Pastor Ben also responded to me. He reinforced my concerns about the things being done at the denominational level and told me clearly, “I am 100% in support of redirecting our Ministry Shares away from these entities until they have shown significant reformation and repentance from promoting these ideas which are not only unbiblical, but also go against our Reformed confessions and, in some cases, our synodical mandates and decisions.” Outside of explaining why the Office of Diversity (despite its concerning name) might not actually be a problematic entity, he did not tell me any of my concerns were off base or unwarranted. Rather, he reinforced them, and, in fact, we talked about other ways, such as an overture from Classis Wisconsin, in which these unbiblical elements within the denomination might be combatted. (See Attachment D)

JUNE 2023

The second listening session was held. At the beginning, ground rules were laid out ostensibly preventing people from making personal attacks or impugning individuals’ characters or motives; however, these rules were not enforced by the elders. This time everyone was aware of what the issues were, and the people that opposed changing how the congregation handled Ministry Shares had had time to formulate arguments against that. Essentially, changing how Ministry Shares were handled was painted as an unloving and divisive thing to do, and, although this argument broke the ground rule of not impugning peoples’ character or motives, the elders never stepped in and stopped anybody from making that argument.

Additionally, one congregant at this listening session said that she didn’t believe anybody should be treated unkindly because of their “gender,” which made me wonder if that congregant believed transgenderism was valid.

I emailed the elders again and told them I found it deeply frustrating to have to sit in a listening session and hear my character be maligned and, as a supporter of changing Ministry Shares, to be repeatedly called unloving and divisive while I was not able to defend myself and the elders did not step in and put a stop to it. I reiterated my doctrinal concerns and told the elders I was baffled that so many members were not cognizant of the amount of spiritual danger Covenant and the denomination were in if they continued acquiescing to worldly beliefs about sexuality, gender, and racism. (See Attachment E1, Substack Post On Banner Article “Reconsidering How The Church Communicates Love”)

In looking back through my emails, as far as I can tell, none of the council members except Pastor Ben responded to me. Pastor Ben and I had a back and forth about my concerns (which I CC-ed Pastor Mark on.) I reiterated my concerns, and expressed frustration at how unwilling the elders seemed to be to give me a clear up or down answer on my questions. Again, Pastor Ben did not tell me I was off base but, rather, reinforced and validated my concerns. (See Attachment E2)

My husband and I also met in person with Pastor Mark and Pastor Ben. They both seemed baffled that changing how Ministry Shares were designated was turning out to be such a difficult thing to do at the church, but they still thought they had the votes on council to get it done.

In an effort to try to be less “divisive,” I reached out to Don Voogt. I did not know the role he had played in setting up the listening sessions, but I did know that, although he was not currently an elder, he had served as an elder many times in the past and was also the head of the church’s finance committee. He and his wife had both spoken in opposition to designating funds away from erring organizations.

I told him that I was grieved he thought my position on Ministry Shares was an unloving position that promoted disunity. I tried to explain to him that I was not trying to divide the church but was acting from a place of deep concern for Covenant. Given that he had not been privy to any of my communications with the elders and had no background on what was driving my actions, I tried to share all of that with him, and I told him, “I would like to see the biblically grounded churches within CRCNA get to keep the denomination—to keep the Banner and Calvin University and Calvin Theological Seminary and the various denomination offices and turn those entities back to their original godly purposes. I don’t want to see the elements within the denomination that can’t even affirm that marriage can only be between a man and a woman be the side that wins the denomination’s structure, organizations, and entities. I think it would be deeply sad to see all of those entities that began well be taken over and have their focus turned away from biblical truth.” I offered to get together with him and talk face to face, which we eventually did. (See Attachment F)

At Covenant’s congregational meeting at the end of June, the elders put forward their plan to respond to the listening sessions feedback. Per the minutes from that meeting, “Council agrees with many of the concerns and wants to positively influence these parts of the CRC to ensure that their content align with Scripture as well as CRC denominational beliefs and norms. Mike noted that the $20k in the budget for Ministry Shares will not be designated to specific offices until a congregational vote, likely in January. Council will draft letters to the various denominational offices as well as send a delegation to Grand Rapids to have conversations with denominational leaders. Council is doing their best to approach this with humility and grace while holding firmly to the truth.”

Although a timeframe for sending the letters and making the visit to Grand Rapids was not listed in the minutes, I was led to believe that those things would both happen by early fall, possibly September.

Also of note is that the issue of women serving as elders was brought up during the question-and-answer session, and some members of Covenant expressed dissatisfaction that women were not serving as elders. (See Attachment G)

LATE JUNE - JULY 2023

Following up on the email I had sent him, Don Voogt asked to meet in person with myself, my husband, and Daryl and Elizabeth Bell. (See Attachment H1)

Don specifically asked to share the thoughts he had put together for the second listening session but only on the condition that we did not respond to it via email. In those thoughts, he expressed the belief that Ministry Shares were a brilliant way to fund CRC ministries and missions. He was very opposed to changing how Covenant’s Ministry Shares were allocated because “I do not believe it is the best way to effect change. In my opinion, simply withholding money and expecting an institution to change (or hoping it dies on the vine) lacks intentionality.” Rather than reallocating Ministry Share dollars, he was in favor of talking directly to the staff members in denominational ministries regarding doctrinal concerns. He opposed line-item allocation by Covenant “because it would likely be very divisive.”

He seemed to acknowledge there were some issues with the Banner but opposed cutting Covenant’s giving saying, “Ministry Shares cover about one third of the Banners costs; the rest comes from paid advertising and direct contributions. Covenant Ministry Shares amounts to about $224 per year towards the Banner. Those of us that give directly to the CRC for support of the Banner far exceeds $224. Cutting our funding to them will have no financial impact. Instead of withholding $224, how about sending them 224 letters of encouragement and critique!”

Regarding allocating funds away from the Office of Race Relations and the Office of Social Justice, he stated “I think it is shameful to be holding this conversation about defunding social justice and race relations ministries of the CRC from all-white Covenant, in all-white Appleton, while our brothers and sisters in Christ live and minister in the middle of a broken and racially diverse Grand Rapids.”

He finished up by saying, “I think the path we are currently on at Covenant has the potential to turn out very badly. Covenant has a long history of focusing on local ministry (at times even somewhat renegade) and letting Grand Rapids do its thing. Lamenting at times, rejoicing at times. Having the institution of Covenant enter the fray as we are doing now is divisive; encouraging the organisms of Covenant (i.e. each of us) to get involved is a much wiser way, in my opinion.” (See Attachment H2)

Having had an opportunity to research things more since July of 2023, I find this email interesting in that nowhere within it was any recognition shown for the actions of recent Synods, such as the creation of the new Ministry Shares system which was specifically intended to facilitate the intentional direction of funds toward and away from denominational ministries as individual congregations saw fit as well as in Synod 2018’s decision to try to provide greater oversight of the Office of Social Justice by creating a guidance committee to oversee it. (See “Response to Overtures 12-14 and Communication 2” in the Acts of Synod 2018) It is baffling to me that raising these concerns on the local level would be labelled divisive, even though the discussion was very much in line with what was already occurring on the denominational level and the actions proposed were no more extreme than what Synod had already approved.

Don, the Bells, my husband, and I met in-person and discussed the theological issues within the denomination and the use of Covenant’s Ministry Share dollars to fund the denomination in its promotion of unChristian beliefs. Don gave us some background on Covenant, of which he was a long-time member, and described the church as being different or unique within Classis Wisconsin. I don’t remember his exact wording, but the way he described the church resulted in me interpreting his words as describing Covenant as being the black sheep of the classis, being proud of holding that black sheep status, and being potentially far more progressive and less orthodox than I had been led to believe in the new members class or by listening to Pastor Mark’s sermons.

During this meeting, Don repeatedly demonstrated an unwillingness to substantively discuss any of the underlying doctrinal concerns the Bells, my husband, and I had. In fact, he did not even want to discuss the thoughts on Ministry Shares that he had specifically asked to send us ahead of the meeting nor had he watched the videos of the Race Relation’s webinars I had sent to him in June. Rather he seemed focused on emotions and maintaining a veneer of “unity” within the church without ever doing the work necessary to achieve genuine like-mindedness on fairly foundational issues, and he told us flat out at the beginning of the meeting that his hope was that after this meeting we would go the council and ask for them to drop the Ministry Shares discussion.

Although I didn’t know it at the time, Don was the one who had recommended to the council that they hold listening sessions on Ministry Shares, the very thing he was now decrying as divisive and trying to convince us to ask the council to drop. His actions confuse me, because it seems like, through the listening sessions he requested, he set in motion something that by July of 2023 he was regretting and viewing as harmful to Covenant but rather than going to the council himself and asking them to drop the discussion he tried to maneuver the Bells, my husband, and me into do that instead while not providing full information to us or explaining the role he had played in bringing the church to this point.