As many of you know I've become a member of a Dutch Reformed Church. I am grateful for this church, it has been a huge blessing in my life and I intend on staying there (and in the denomination) for as long as I can.

However I've noticed that there is a lot of apathy in the church, and from asking around it seems like this apathy is pretty widespread among the Dutch Reformed. Why is this? I think I have some idea: 1) They're whole families are in the Church as well as their friends. They know of nothing else. 2) The Church has failed to engage the people in a way that is significant. The faith is austere and soemwhat removed.

Do any other people with experience in these circles have any idea what I'm talking about? Where does this come from. More importantly, how can I help?

__________________
Mr. T. Reuben Skerritt, BRS (Old Testament)
Member: Canadian Reformed Church of Brampton, Ontario
Student: University of Toronto BA, Philosophy (Hons)
Toronto, Canada

"There from thy holy habitation
Thou wilt thy saints provide
With every blessing of Salvation
'Til all are satisfied.
With awesome deeds so just and mighty,
God saves of from all woe
To those who walk with Him uprightly,
He will salvation show."

-Anglo-Genevan Psalter

Could you be a little more specific on what they're apethetic about?

__________________
Patrick
OPC
MDiv, RTS Jackson.

"He does well, that discourses of Christ; but he does infinitely better, that by experimental knowledge, feeds and lives on Christ." Thomas Brooks.

Will do. It seems as though they've some of them have been infected with what Karl Barth called "Cultural Protestantism." Meaning that everything they've ever known is somehow connected to the Reformed faith from family to school. This, I think has bread a sort of apathy.

But specifically, there is little desire to preach the Gospel in the community. If there is a visitor that no one knows (which more often than not means from outside Canadian Reformed circles) either myself or the Dominee (minister) greet them and try to make them feel welcome. It seems as though most young people tune out the sermon and make a diliberate attempt to fall asleep.

What can I do but pray?

My Mother was a member of a Christian Reformed Church here in Texas for a long time, and we visited on several occasions, and felt what you are talking about. I asked the Pastor about it and he said that the Dutch reformed tradition is what he referred to as "Fenced Christianity". In other words they were content and complacent about their Faith. The Pastor seemed to be very concerned about it and would preach at times against it. He and I were praying together one day and he was moved to tears over the fact that he felt a large portion of his own Congregation probably weren't even converted. He seemed to be a really great Pastor, He had come there from an inner-city church in Chicago. Where I am sure things were much different. His Father was the Prof. of Church History at Calvin Seminary, so he had grown up in that kind of atmosphere.

__________________
Sean Jones
Covenant Presbyterian Church OPC
Fort Worth Texas

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the Word of Truth.
2Timothy 2:15

We have a regular, if small, flow of young dutch reformed ladies from Holland who meet with us at chapel. It is obvious to us that though many of these people know more than most about the reformed faith, they are unsaved. We have had the joy of seeing one or two young ladies saved amongst us.

The apathy, in my opinion, stems from a lack of spiritual life in the church attenders. No life, no love for Christ, and a formal adherence to rules and regulations relating to appearance and conduct which almost border on a modern pharisaism.

How to change things? Wake people up! (God willing, by the Spirit!) Show people that they are not 'ok' just cause they grew up in the church, but that they need a living and personal experience of the living God! That God is looking at their hearts, not at their Sunday Best Outfits.

Preach evangelical sermons in the church, and challenge every hearer to examine their hearts before God.

What I have said might seem a bit trite and maybe obvious, but it is very much on my heart to encourage people along these lines.

The apathy among my people, for I am still tied to them both by blood and by culture, is multi-levelled. There is, of course, the cultural impact, in that many of those here in Canada immigrated in the 1940's and 50's, after the war. They stayed among their own group, tying everything they did around the church community. I remember those days, in part, as a very active church time. We had so many church activities going, and the halls were usually full all the time. For a time it was very important to do this, as it was the only family many of us had; and there were new families added every week for quite a few years.

My Mom tells me, and I never knew this before, that even non-churched Dutch immigrants joined the church because of the thick community atmosphere. I had reproached my Dad and Mom lots of times about an elder who took exception to making all the services English language only, because he could not see why we we should neglect the Canaanite language. Really, he said that. But he was one of those family heads who joined the church, but who was not from Church background. There was a little bit of politics at play in making him an elder. Now I understand. Now I also understand why the reaction to what he said was what it was: a kind of polite smirking and silence, but no rebuttal.

This cultural closeness carried into the workfield. My Dad worked for a Canadian farmer, as a herdsman. It was a big operation by standards of those days, and was a very good job to have. But it was not as good a paying job as many others in the Dutch community had. Many owned their own farms, and had enough money to build schools. Yet even in this circumstance, all the other employees of this farmer were also Dutch, because he went by my Dad's recommendations. And so it went with almost every business run by Dutch immigrants. (During a particular stretch of my Dad's tenure there his sons, my brothers and I were the "other employees"; but before we were old enough for that, or after we had "flown the coop", the workers there were still Dutch. )

There was a separation between "our" church and other churches, even the Presbyterian Church. My Dad's boss was from the Presbyterian Church, and they even had a pastor with a Dutch name, but they were always seen as not as good, or not as theololgically sound, or somethig like that.

Now there was a reason for that. The Dutch were, for all intents and purposes, a nationless people. During the war a serious social rift had grown; neighbours could not be trusted during the war years, and now it was hard to rebuild that trust, especially with the socialist attitudes running rampant everywhere. And then there was that horrendous church split during the most depressive times in the war. The words from many lips at that time were, "That too yet, on top of everything else." Many people, my parents included, felt alienated from all of life, if even the church could not hold it together. They immigrated much for the same reason that many Puritans immigrated in the seventeenth centure, because of religious freedom. They were not here to join an already existing church with it's own problems; they came here to continue the Reformed heritage.

My parents would have been alligned with the church that split off during the war, though they deeply regretted to do so. So when they came to Canada they first attended an RCA church, until they found a CRC church. When a CanRC church formed afterward, the Canadian wing of the split-off church in Holland, they did not seek to join. The reasons that existed in Holland did not exist here in Canada. There was no reason for a separate existence, they thought.

I add this part for a reason, because as there was a cultural togetherness among the Dutch within their church community, so also there was a separateness among the Dutch when the lines between the two churches were drawn. I never knew any Dutch Canadian Reformed people until my cousins joined that church. I had an uncle who was "dominee" there, and I didn't know it until my cousins came under his unfluence. We didn't have many cousins, or any other family, here in our new country, so this was quite a blow. They would have very little to do with us after they switched churches.

There was a kind of aloofness among us as Dutch Christians. We were better Christians, and we knew it. The troubles that the United Church of Canada was going through was a laughably simple problem to solve: just teach the catechism. Our concern for our Christian brothers in this country was over-ridden by our cultural closeness, our concern for our own. We had our own church, our own school, even our own economy to some degree. We never forgot those who helped us out in the early years of immigration, but we did not reach out into the community with the wealth that we brought with us, our depth of religious commitment.

It is also to be noted that those who immigrated were a very industrious bunch. They were well used to working long hours, of having long term goals, and of putting themselves to the tasks at hand. Very few of them were educated beyond grade school level. They knew the Psalms and Catechism by heart, those who were from church background; and they knew the Church Order, and had a good sense of wisdom in counselling others, as elders of the church. But not many knew how to handle their children in the Sixties, when they passed on from High School to Colleges and Universities. They were not ready for the cultural attack that took place in North America. The cultural barriers they had put up were not enough stem the wave of new ideas and the cocky attitudes that their children brought in when they began to infiltrate the larger community. Many were farmers at first, and life was simple and basic; they were overwhelmed by the changes.

Some churches fared better than others. The Free Reformed were more insulated, because they were smaller in number. The Canadian Reformed as well, though not as much. The Reformed Church was already down the road of influence when we got here, so they didn't count. But the CRC, with many American churches already in existence since the denomination began in 1867, also had a built-in influence. At first all the kids who could afford it were sent to Calvin College, in Grand Rapids. But it did not take long before these too came home with strange ideas. The other denominations did not have a Calvin College, so they were not as effected as the CRC.

This is a brief history, from the perspective of a son of an immigrant. It is important to bear this history in mind, I think, when considering the Dutch mind-set.

It is not that they are not Christians; it is not that they have no heart; it is not that they are culturally selfish; it is not that they think more highly of themselves. They are a deeply convicted people; they are first to reach out in time of need; they shame others in how they put others ahead of themselves. And they are consistently so. What they lack is a coherent and thoughtful [i:6d5da6ac9f]raison d'etre[/i:6d5da6ac9f] as members of a wider community than they are used to thinking about. They need to know who they are, and why they are here; something beyond their own limited personal reasons, but rather reasons that have divine origin. In my opinion, this is our great need as a Dutch community. And because we don't all realize it, the past tends to be revisited on us in our own cultural atmosphere.

That, I think, is the reason for the apathy, Tom. It looks like apathy, and acts like apathy, and has effects like apathy, and it is apathy to some degree. But you cannot charge the Dutch with an overall apathetic attitude, unless you confine it the the narrowness of their cultural know-how.

__________________
JohnV :detective:

John Vandervliet
Ontario, Canada
member of: Canadian Reformed Church
"In coming to understand anything we are rejecting the facts as they are for us in favour of the facts as they are" C.S Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism

Sounds like a dose of Puritan experimentalism might be in order...

Thank-you John for your very careful anaysis. It is helpful to have a historical outlook on these issues, to be sure.

I'm sorry if it seemed as though I was painting with a bit of a broad brush.

It makes sense why this church community has become quite insular; I've heard much about how the war was tough on the Dutch but I've never known why. But the real question is how can I help, as a young layman, in such a church? Is it a little too lofty of me to think that I can help? How can I help?

[quote:0bb47fa878][i:0bb47fa878]Originally posted by Richard B. Davis[/i:0bb47fa878]
Thank-you John for your very careful anaysis. It is helpful to have a historical outlook on these issues, to be sure.

I'm sorry if it seemed as though I was painting with a bit of a broad brush.

It makes sense why this church community has become quite insular; I've heard much about how the war was tough on the Dutch but I've never known why. But the real question is how can I help, as a young layman, in such a church? Is it a little too lofty of me to think that I can help? How can I help? [/quote:0bb47fa878]

Tom:

I had your question in mind throughout, and then forgot to conclude with any suggestion. I'm sorry for that slip.

You have every right to "paint with a broad brush." It is so for all our actions, no matter the history, that we are judged in the face of the public at large by what we do. "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another." People have a right to question us on our true relationship with Christ by what we do, and they are not always careful to do a history search first. No history excuses a lack of demonstration of following Christ. That doesn't mean that we aren't disciples; it just means that we have work to do for Christ's sake.

Though you may be in a position to understand some things that the Dutch do not, that does not mean that you are in a position to do anything about it. It may be, but it is not necessarily so. Two things you can do are, first, doing yourself that which you think they ought to be doing. Don't let getting everyone else to do likewise be your goal, but rather doing it in love for those to whom it is meant, with earnest zeal. Second, you can pray for your fellows, your brothers. They are not less saved for being as they are; they are less faithful. Nothing else but a true desire for God's leading will fix that. And that is not in your hands to accomplish, just to minister to. So the cultural apathy is not the main concern here. That will change once the Spirit is given right of way in their hearts when it comes to things that they have traditionally and culturally shut out.

This from someone who was there once. In my case there was an apostacizing in the doctrine of the Word. I think that was different. But in my youth I did my share in opening the doors to liberlization, though at the time I did not realize it. I tried to break the cultural barriers in my own way, because I saw things that really disturbed me and my age group. I did not take as seriously as I should have Dr. Schaeffers warning to first be caring of others in all that we do, that is always fisrt.

Thanks John!

I always was curious about that phrase "if you ain't Dutch you ain't much." Most say it with a grin, but it makes me wonder if there is some pride lingering there.

Patrick:
We have all had our running jokes on our own ethnic group. Sometimes when we speak tongue-in-cheek we bite our tongues in our eagerness or pride.

The Dutch are known to be cheap; but so are groups inside every ethnic group. The Dutch are maybe frugal; but so are some who are not Dutch, who have a name for frugality. Other ethnic groups stick to their own as well. Can we help it if "much" rhymes better with "Dutch" than any other group?

Still, though, as you suggest, the stigma is deserved. There is a lot I could say in their defence; but there is also a reason why I am not in one of those churches anymore. And you're not far off the mark.