Dear Rev. Langerak,

You brought up an issue in your September Sword and Shield article, Synod’s Letter of Reconciliation: An Evil Business, that has been a concern of mine for many years. What follows is the quote from your article and my concerns.

More serious, the letter does not pass the basic ethical test, something that would seem to be a very important concern for a denomination that is bent on driving out antinomians of every stripe. A judge cannot sit in trial of his own judgment, unless the judge is God. So, for instance, in the Old Testament the ruling of a local judge was able to be appealed to another court. The same judge did not sit in judgment of his own ruling on appeal. But at synod, trumpeting their own righteousness and holiness before the world, many of the men of Classis East, the synodical deputies of Classis West, and the professorial advisors—all of whom played a very large role in the destruction of Reverend Lanning—sat in judgment of their own judgment. They were the instigators, the judges, the jury, the appeals court, the supreme court, the executioners, and the media team all wrapped up into one. The world—the ungodly world—would blush at the corruption of justice in such a system. And such judgment is repugnant in the church of Christ, where justice and mercy are to be preserved with the greatest fidelity.

The system of delegating to the assemblies in the PRC has been a concern of mine for years. When a protestant has a protest to his consistory, which protest then goes to classis, are the delegates from that consistory allowed to vote on that protest? If so, are they not then judges sitting in trial of their own judgment? Should that protest go to Synod, are not many of the delegates—at least all the ministers of that Classis represented at Synod—doing the same, namely, judges sitting in trial of their own judgment? The system is broken! The way of protest and appeal is broken! Sure, it’s there, the possibility of it, but the appeals and protests are made to the same men over and over again. How then can one even hold a slight hope for a different verdict? This practice has lent itself to horrific hierarchy over the years.

We stand in a unique position right now, at the very beginning of a new denomination. We have been told repeatedly that our new denomination is a reformation, and I believe that with my whole heart. Are we committed only to doctrinal reformation? Or are we also committed to practical reform? Are we in a position right now to change some of these practices? If this practice was not acceptable in the case of the deposition of Rev. Lanning, then how can it possibly be acceptable for us as a denomination going forward? What steps are being put in place to prevent this in our fledgling denomination, where office bearers are few in number, which could lend itself even more to this problem? Is it possible to implement term limits on elders, in order to prevent “career eldership”, which was also a problem in our former denomination? Is it possible to have a rotation of delegates at the assemblies and not necessarily election of delegates to assemblies? Is it possible to even have assembly meetings where ministers are not delegates? Is it possible to have a man other than a minister preside over the meeting? (I do realize these last 2 questions would involve change to, or at the very least, discussion on Church Order Art. 41.) These issues are all connected, and the questions should be raised. I also acknowledge there could be a valid concern of making too many rules. I might add, I was encouraged by decisions of our recent Classis meeting to not limit some committees to office bearers, but to appoint male confessing members of the denomination. God be praised!

I look forward to some discussion on these questions, and hope to hear some practical ideas for change going forward.

Thank you for your faithful writing and defense of the truth.

Rebecca Kleyn

REPLY

Rebecca raises good questions. I was inclined simply to answer in order the questions that she raised. But on further reflection I want to make some general points about the corruption that those in the Reformed Protestant Churches have experienced and what the churches need to be on guard against going forward.

We saw a massive corruption of church polity in the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC), some of which I pointed out in my article referred to above. In short, that corruption was the dread error of hierarchy in the church of Jesus Christ. There was widespread corruption of power in other areas of the church as well. I saw this for years in the churches prior to the split of 2021 and was on the receiving end of it. I said in a speech once that I had been charged with sin so many times that I stopped counting. Many times my writings were subjected to censorship and were slandered behind my back. The editors of the Standard Bearer were some of the chief perpetrators of the corruption. I soon realized that the men who were charging me with sin did not care about sin. But they were using charges of sin as a club in the church to intimidate and enforce conformity. As part of this intimidation and forced conformity, these men charged sin against me to the consistory of Crete Protestant Reformed Church, and the charges were so scurrilous that even that consistory could not approve of them.

The editors brought similar charges against Reverend Lanning to the January 2021 meeting of Classis East of the PRC to test the wind—they admitted that much on the floor of classis—and the committee of preadvice made a valiant and deceptive effort to give the charges traction. But the editors’ charges were so transparently false and self-serving that even their own colleagues in Classis East could not sustain them.

I see in the Lord’s providence that I had to go through all those earlier charges of sin so that when Crete’s elders charged me with sin, I could see that they too did not care about sin but were using charges of sin either as a convenience or as a club to enforce man’s wisdom in the church.

Recently Prof. H. Hanko has come out with his view of church power in which he sounds like John Eck, the great champion of papal power against Martin Luther.¹

The ministers of the PRC are now making it more and more clear that their position on church power and church authority is Roman Catholic: it is rule in the church from the top down, by the will and whims of man, by the wisdom of man, for the good of man and not by the will of Christ, the word of Christ, and to the glory of God. Rule strictly subservient to the word of Christ in the scriptures is the only rule in the church that scripture knows, but the Protestant Reformed ministers will have the word of God only so long as it conforms to their wills.

I say these things only by way of example, and I could multiply examples. The larger point is that there was a cesspool of corruption that was hidden by a thin veneer of respectability that the Lord has now exposed and will continue to expose because that corruption angers him. It was a beastly polity.

Defining the organization of a troop of monkeys, an anthropologist wrote,

Many primate species keep the peace by establishing and then enforcing hierarchies with demonstrations of aggression, and when push comes to shove, physical power. When these hierarchies are contested…life in primate groups gets distinctly edgy and unpleasant.²

Such is the church polity of the Protestant Reformed Churches and worse. It is hierarchy enforced by false appeals to unity, rewards, mutual back-scratching, threats, intimidation, manipulation, accusation, bribes, backstabbing, and finally by ecclesiastical murder. Full of man in doctrine, the PRC must also have a church polity ruled by man.

Perhaps we think: “What can we do to prevent this in the Reformed Protestant Churches? Can we multiply laws and regulations to ensure that this does not happen in the Reformed Protestant Churches?”

In short, the answer is no. No amount of rules will prevent hierarchy. I am not against rules in the church. We have the Church Order. But I am against the multiplication of rules. It is an attempt to legislate righteousness in the church. Righteousness in the church is the work of the Word and the Spirit of Christ. No amount of rules is a substitute for the Word and the Spirit of Christ. Hierarchy begins in the corrupt human nature. Beginning there, hierarchy is not satisfied until it has the whole church under its control and casts Christ out of his own vineyard. It must be remembered that hierarchy is fundamentally antichristian. And such is the deception of the human heart that it will bend to its own service even good rules.

I give as an example what the Protestant Reformed Churches did to the Church Order. We are learning now that the PRC completely overthrew the idea of article 31, so that men’s decisions must be submitted to even if they conflict with the word of God.³ I am becoming convinced that the interpretation of article 31 that says that someone who is convinced that a decision of an ecclesiastical assembly is contrary to the word of God may only appeal the decision, and he must keep quiet in the meantime—which is not the historically Protestant Reformed interpretation—was an attempt to make sure that a stubborn and public militancy against false doctrine, as had happened in 1953, did not happen again and to manage the churches so that no controversy could, as many would suppose, get out of hand.

Further, the PRC corrupted the Formula of Subscription, so that the churches teach now that when officebearers sign the Formula, they subscribe to synodical decisions, which I most certainly did not agree to when I signed the Formula. I subscribed with my signature to the three forms of unity alone.

By means of a novel definition of schism—which amounted to saying something bad about respected men or pointing out that the emperor is buck naked—the PRC used articles 79 and 80 of the Church Order, regarding suspension and deposition, to persecute the righteous. The PRC have no use for article 55—which speaks of militancy against false doctrine and heresy—and pretend it does not exist, except for churches other than Protestant Reformed. In addition, the denomination teaches that on the basis of article 14, which speaks of a minister’s asking for a leave of absence, ministers for any reason can be taken off the pulpit by force.

Further, one could make a good case that the denomination’s process for calling missionaries is a fundamental corruption of article 4, regarding the lawful calling. In the Protestant Reformed process for calling a missionary, the foreign or domestic mission committee provides the local calling church with a list of men the committee has deemed acceptable, from which list alone the local church may call a missionary.

I do not know how many other articles of the Church Order the PRC have corrupted, but all the bellyaching about the “church orderly way” is laughable in this light.

The Church Order is a good set of rules, and we follow it. However, when men who are bent on ruling the church themselves and managing the church according to their own whims take hold of that good document, then they corrupt it and twist it for their own purposes. They are very much like the political liberal judges who find every sort of avant-garde and popular social change in the Constitution of the United States.

It is not the rules that are the issue. The principles of good church government are laid out in scripture and are easily known. The men who are put into office are the issue. When officebearers love the truth; love the glory of Christ, the head of the church; love the churches; and love their brethren, the churches will not have a problem. For example, it is not the institution of church visitors that is corrupt, but when corrupt men are put into that position, then they work havoc in the churches. It is not the system of protests and appeals as such that is corrupt—honorable men would recuse themselves from judging their own cases—but the corruption is dishonorable men who sit in judgment and act as God, judging the appeals of their own cases.

I note that in article 30 of the Belgic Confession on the government of the church, the article explains the grand things that belong to church government. Then the article says,

By these means everything will be carried on in the church with good order and decency, when faithful men are chosen according to the rule prescribed by St. Paul in his epistle to Timothy. (Confessions and Church Order, 65; emphasis added)

The issue is the men in office. The failure of the PRC and its doctrinal and church political demise were the result of the men who were put into office. There were ministers who did not know—who obviously and painfully did not know—the gospel. Yet they were not only put into office but were also elevated in the church to the highest positions of influence and power: they were made church visitors; served continually on self-perpetuating church committees; were appointed to special committees to help churches in trouble; and were made professors. The qualifications for elder became contributing a lot of money to the kingdom causes, being able to get along with others, having the gift of gab, or being a buddy, and not having a profound understanding of doctrine and the mysteries of the faith and a love of the Protestant Reformed truth.

It is becoming increasingly clear that, for the most part, many officebearers were ignorant of what the concept of Protestant Reformed truth meant; some of them loathe that term. The men who are chosen for office, for good or for evil, lead the church, and in the PRC the men of the church led her straight into error. Chosen to office were unfaithful men who perjured themselves, were more concerned for their honor than the honor of Christ, were more concerned about an outward conformity and a superficial peace than about contending for the truth; they were men who, when the truth was compromised, refused to stand for truth and thus forsook their offices; and not being content with their own unfaithfulness, they forbade the faithful from defending the truth, behaved as lords in the church, and ruled by their wills and not God’s will.

The most important point that can be made to the newly formed Reformed Protestant Churches is that faithful men be chosen to serve in the offices. Let those men demonstrate that they know what the truth is, that they love the truth, and that they are willing to risk all for the truth’s sake. We must be done with church managers and people pleasers; vain and superficial men; men who, if they are not appallingly ignorant, are rankly carnal. The churches need men after God’s own heart, men who meet the qualifications for office of 1 Timothy 3. We need to beseech the Lord to spare us from hirelings and to send us such faithful officebearers.

The Lord sent the unfaithful men to the PRC in his judgment on her because he determined evil against her, and he carried out the judgment by means of those men who now congratulate themselves for their faithfulness and preen themselves on the accolades of many.

Also, regarding the matter of making rules, I adhere to article 29 of the Belgic Confession: 

The marks by which the true church is known are…in short, if all things are managed according to the pure Word of God, all things contrary thereto rejected, and Jesus Christ acknowledged as the only Head of the church. (Confessions and Church Order, 62–63)

Jesus Christ is head of his church, and he rules by means of his word and his Spirit. That is the only word to which the people of God may listen. If they hear any other, no matter how highly placed, they are unfaithful.

I also adhere to article 7 of the Belgic Confession:

It is unlawful for any one, though an apostle, to teach otherwise than we are now taught in the Holy Scriptures…

Neither do we consider of equal value any writing of men…nor ought we to consider custom, or the great multitude, or antiquity, or succession of times and persons, or councils, decrees, or statutes, as of equal value with the truth of God, for the truth is above all. (Confessions and Church Order, 26–28)

And I adhere to article 32 of the Belgic Confession:

Though it is useful and beneficial that those who are rulers of the church institute and establish certain ordinances among themselves for maintaining the body of the church, yet they ought studiously to take care that they do not depart from those things which Christ, our only Master, hath instituted. (Confessions and Church Order, 66)

When men who believe these things taught in the Confession are put into office, then hierarchy is the more readily kept out of Christ’s church. Again, the issue is what men are being put into office.

Regarding the specific questions of the letter, I would like to say a few things.

Rebecca asks, “When a protestant has a protest to his consistory, which protest then goes to classis, are the delegates from that consistory allowed to vote on that protest?”

The answer is no. That is not ethical.

She makes the same basic point in her question about synod: “Should that protest go to Synod, are not many of the delegates—at least all the ministers of that Classis represented at Synod—doing the same, namely, judges sitting in trial of their own judgment?” In other words, how do you ensure as best as possible an impartial judgment?

That issue in the PRC, which has only two classes, was most glaring at synod. There was a proposal to synod several years ago to divide the PRC into three classes. The delegates and advisors at that synod, at which I was a delegate, were extremely resistant to the proposal. They were protecting their power. They were terrified of a classis that did not have one of them in it to manage things. It would have helped solve the problem of impartial judgments, in that when a protest from one classis came to synod, the delegates from that classis would not vote on the protest. I do not see how the problem of impartiality could have been avoided aside from dividing the denomination into three classes.

To my mind, however, the bigger issue is the unofficial meetings that take place prior to the meetings of classis and synod, in which meetings the issues are debated; so that when a matter comes to the floor, it has virtually been decided already. It is decided in meetings before the meetings. Delegates to broader assemblies ought not discuss the matters on the agenda beforehand. They should deliberate on the floor of the assembly.

Regarding the Reformed Protestant denomination, the matter of hierarchy has been faced already. It is shocking to me that hierarchy so readily was in the thinking of the assembly and so easily ruled to make a decision. That shows that hierarchy is an ever-present danger. Hierarchy is in our blood.

Therefore, Rebecca’s concern about what the Reformed Protestant Churches are doing to be on guard or to put into place practices to guard against hierarchy and corruption of church power is good. She suggests some practical things: terms limits for elders, rotation of delegates to the assemblies, and no ministers presiding over the assemblies. While I do not agree with the suggestions, the discussion is a good one and could be profitably had by the churches.

How do we, with our very small number of elders and ministers, keep lording out of the churches?

I would say this: let everyone first guard his own heart.