My Experience At Covenant CRC Appleton Part 4 - Everything Suddenly Falls Apart Because Of Women In Church Office
After a year of conflict with the elders, a thing that was not even on my radar resulted in the departure of over 30 people from the church within a 2-week period of time
Over the last three 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 they way in which the elders at Covenant dragged their feet in setting up that meeting and hid its purpose from the congregation.
This part will describe how Covenant experienced a sudden mass exodus of congregants over the issue of women serving as elders.
MAY 2024 – AFTER THE CHURCH VISITORS MEETING
After my husband and I met with the church visitors, we decided to take a two-week break from attending services at Covenant. We took some Sunday road trips with our family and attended a couple other CRC churches. We returned to Covenant on 05/26/2024. A number of people who normally attended were not there, and after the service we were pulled aside by a friend who told us that she and her family as well as a number of other families had all stopped attending Covenant within the last couple weeks over the issue of women serving as elders.
As it was described to me by this woman, the issue of women serving as elders had come up during a meeting of the pastoral search committee. During that meeting, it became apparent that there was wide division between the committee members. Two of the members opposed hiring a pastor who supported women serving as elders. The other five members wanted to hire a pastor who supported women serving as elders.
As described to me, at some point either during that meeting or more broadly within the two weeks we had been away from Covenant, the people who did not believe allowing women to serve as elders was a correct interpretation of the Bible, were either told explicitly or had it strongly implied to them that Covenant had allowed female elders since the 1990s, that that would not change, and they could either accept it or leave. I cannot say that that was explicitly stated in those words to them (my assumption is that it probably was not), but I can say that, whatever was said, that was the message my friend took away from those who supported having female elders.
My husband called Dominic DeCoux and spoke with him. Up until the events of the previous two weeks, Dominic had been an elder of the church and a member of the search committee. As described to me by my husband, Dominic told him that the issue of women serving as elders came up during a discussion in a search committee meeting. Throughout the search process, the committee had sought unity on everything; however, it became clear that there was a deep divide between the two sides on this issue. 5 of the committee members were very supportive of women serving as elders while 2 of the committee members, including Dominic, did not believe women should serve as elders. This prompted Dominic to try to lead the committee to open their Bibles and examine the scriptures that spoke to this matter, but the members of the committee who were in favor of women serving as elders were unwilling to do that.
As described by my husband, the thing that caused Dominic the most concern in all of this was not the underlying disagreement but the unwillingness of the other members of the committee to even open their Bibles and examine the issue scripturally.
I think it is worth noting that if David Peel’s place on the committee had been given to Daryl Bell as it ought to have been, given their overlapping demographics and Joe DeHaan’s claim that the reason Daryl wasn’t on the committee was because David was on it, the split on this matter when it came up in the search committee would have been 4-3 not 5-2.
My husband and I hold different views about the issue of female office bearers. He does not believe scripture supports women serving as elders and pastors and he views female deacons as a gracious compromise. I have been egalitarian my entire life and have only within the last couple years started to consider the idea that my understanding of this matter might be incorrect. This personal reevaluation was not prompted by things happening at Covenant, and the issue of female elders at Covenant was not even on my radar and would not have in and of itself been a reason for me to stay or go, though it may have prompted my husband to leave (and obviously I and our children would have gone with him).
My husband and I met with Pastor Roger Sparks, Covenant’s transitional minister, on Tuesday 05/28/2024 and expressed our concerns about this development. We were concerned that the issue of egalitarianism vs. complementarianism had not been part of the congregation-wide visioning sessions related to putting together a church profile to attract a new pastor. Additionally, although there had been some mention in the February council minutes about the elders wanting Pastor Sparks to provide guidance to the church on female elders, nothing had publicly happened. Essentially it seemed that the pastoral search committee, with the tacit approval of a majority of the council, had decided, on its own without bringing the matter to the congregation as a whole, to limit its search to only candidates who held egalitarian beliefs. This decision combined with the elders’ unwillingness to provide a forthright and clear answer about the doctrinal concerns I had raised had resulted in the loss of, by our calculation, at least 8 plugged-in, high-energy, volunteering families with minor children which amounted to over 30 people which was 25-30% of the church. Our perspective was that this was not the result of Pastor Mark and Pastor Ben having left but, rather, was the direct result of poor decision-making by the elders.
It was deeply concerning to us that the elders did not seem to be concerned by the harm to the congregation that resulted from their actions and that they were not taking steps to alter their actions in order to reduce that harm. It also was very concerning to us that the elders did not seem to be willing to discuss this matter with the congregation.
Additionally, as someone who was not inherently opposed to women serving as elders, I was deeply concerned by the seeming unwillingness of the elders to discuss the matter and work through it publicly because I believed that it was not just important for a church to know if it was egalitarian or complementarian, but it was as important to know what the reasons for that decision were and how the church interpreted scripture in order to arrive at the decision to be egalitarian. There is a huge overlap between denominations that hold to egalitarianism and churches that believe same sex marriage is scripturally allowable and not sinful. Although egalitarianism may not inherently lead to a denomination accepting same sex marriage, that progression often happens. I believe the reason for that is because there are different ways to interpret scripture to allow women to serve in all leadership roles. Some of those ways lead to acceptance of same sex marriage and some of them don’t.
I told Pastor Sparks I believed it was dangerous for Covenant to be hiring an egalitarian pastor without understanding why it, as a church, believes women should be elders and without understanding why a prospective pastor believed women should be elders. It seemed that by doing that, they would be opening themselves up to hiring a pastor who was as likely to believe that women should be elders for reasons that also led to an acceptance of same sex marriage as he was to believe that women should be elders for reasons that did not lead to acceptance of same sex marriage.
At the end of May, the results of the congregation-wide values exercise was released in which it was revealed that the number one value the congregation held in highest regard was Sound Doctrine. My husband and I were stunned given that we had witnessed the elders spend an entire year refusing to simply tell us what they believed much less explain how those beliefs rightly aligned with scripture. The values of Respect, Love, Discipleship, Humility, Belonging, Integrity, and being Reformed also seemed to not align with what we had experienced from the elders over the previous year.
JUNE 2024 – BEFORE THE CONGREGATIONAL MEETING
The June congregational meeting was scheduled for 06/16/2024 at which new elders would be chosen to replace those whose terms were over. My husband was concerned to see that Don Vogt was chosen as a candidate for elder. Article 25 of the CRCNA’s Church Order is very clear that elders have a responsibility to maintain the doctrine of the church and defend the faith. Don, however, over the last year (through personal meetings, statements made before the congregation, and his position as chair of the Finance Committee) had expended what appeared to be a lot of effort toward stopping Covenant from reaching a clear understanding on the doctrinal concerns I raised and from keeping the elders from issuing a clear statement on what they believed. That behavior seemed to both my husband and myself to be so opposed to the responsibilities of an elder that they were disqualifying
.
My husband emailed Don and told him he had grave concerns about his qualifications to serve as an elder and asked to get together prior to the congregational meeting and discuss this.
Don emailed back and said he could not meet prior to the congregational meeting for various reasons. He said, “I do not know that I can adequately alleviate your concerns, so you really should express your concerns to the Council that nominated me. And obviously you can express them at the Congregational Meeting on Sunday.”
He went on to say, “I did find your comment about me shutting down conversation regarding Ministry Shares quite curious. I am sure I have initiated more meetings with congregants over this issue over the past year than anyone at Covenant. And some congregants more than once. Many had the same concerns you have expressed. I always had the feeling each one felt respected by meeting with me, and they appreciated me reaching out to them. And just so you know, I was the one that gave Council the idea of holding listening sessions last spring. If I have done or said something that made you feel shamed for having your concerns, I am sorry; it is not my nature to shame people.”
My husband emailed him back and told him the council had consistently refused to answer questions over the last year, so he would not be talking to them.
My husband also responded to Don’s claim that he had not tried to shut down conversation and that it was not in his nature to shame people, saying:
Regarding the issue of shaming. Here is a direct quote from you:
"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.” While you claim it is not in your nature to shame people, you literally did just that with that statement.
Regarding attempting to shut down the Ministry Shares discussion, that was your main goal throughout all of this, and you have been highly manipulative in seeking to achieve that. In our meeting last July, you explicitly told us and the Bells that your goal was to convince us to drop the matter. You also included a caveat in the Finance Committee recommendations that clearly shut down further discussion about the doctrinal issues by stating, "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 by the church to individual ministries or offices within the Christian Reformed Church." You also stated in your November 6 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 that Council is still intending to go through; I can see that discernment process being divisive, drawn out, inconclusive, and perhaps never-ending." That is not behavior in keeping with the responsibility of an elder to maintain doctrine and shepherd the church; in fact, it is in direct opposition to those responsibilities. (See Attachment Z1)
Don did not respond.
On 06/12/2024, the elders Joe DeHaan, Mike Ivy, and Jim Niemeier sent out a church-wide email addressing the recent departure of members and providing their account of Covenant’s history on Women in Office. They told the congregants that the church’s bylaws allowed women to serve as elders and that, in the 1990s, Covenant had adopted a policy that opened the position of elder to women. They said that the most recent women to serve as elder had ended her term in 2019. They stated, “During the 18 years that he served our church, Pastor Pluimer’s thinking changed with respect to women as elders. By 2019, he adopted the position that, based on biblical teaching only men are qualified to serve as elder. Consequently, no women have been nominated to serve as elder since then.”
The elders expressed the desire to examine the issue of women serving as elders but also stated plainly that they would be seeking a pastor who accepted female elders, saying:
We look forward to welcoming a pastor who will lead us truthfully and gracefully to examine the issue in light of Scripture while presenting the different points of view. We as a church body need to be assured that we have a Bible-based policy on women as elders. That congregational discussion will be most fruitful after we have studied the issue together.
As we study and discuss together, we seek a pastor who is open to serving with women who meet the scriptural qualifications of elder and may be invited to become elders.
My husband emailed them back and asked why the issue had not been brought forward for the congregation to discuss. He was concerned that the direction of the church was being set based on a 30-year-old vote even though the congregation had changed. The mass exodus of newer families as well as the departure of both pastors indicated that even 8 months prior the majority view within the church on female elders would probably have been different than 30 years ago.
He finished up by saying, “By choosing specifically to not hold a study and discussion on this matter now, it seems like the search committee and elders have unilaterally decided that this church will be an egalitarian church without seeking input from the congregation and without studying the biblical merits of the issue prior to issuing a call. And you’re doing that even knowing that it has led directly to the loss of 30+ people from this church. That action seems like one more example of the lack of transparency and poor decision-making on the part of the elders that has been a concern to me and my wife for over a year and for which we have filed a complaint against the council with the Classis Wisconsin church visitors.” (See Attachment Z2)
None of the elders responded.
