Episode 229: Synod 2025 — Synodical Delegate Advice Mashup

Welcome back to the Messy Reformation. My name's Jason Rice, and I'm the lead pastor at Faith Community CRC in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. My co-host is Willie Kroenke. He's a member at Pease CRC in Pease, Minnesota. We're just a couple of guys who love the Christian Reformed Church and want to see Reformation happen in our denomination. But we realize that whenever Reformation happens in the history of the church, things get messy. And things continue to be messy in the Christian Reformed Church.

So we're taking the opportunity to have conversations with pastors throughout the Christian Reformed Church to find out what's going on in our denomination, but also to talk about what Reformation might look like. It's also important for you to know that you are our marketing plan. We rely on you to spread the word about what we're doing at the Messy Reformation. We rely on you to share our content. And we rely on you to give us five-star reviews and give good feedback for our podcast.

You are the marketing plan. You can also support us financially on Patreon or Substack. All of the money raised is used to further the mission and the platform of the Messy Reformation. With all that said, we're going to get to this week's episode, which is quite a bit longer because we've decided to do a mashup of all of our advice for synodical delegates from the past three years.

And so really the first question I have for you, Roger, is what just general advice do you have for a first-time delegate to Synod? Okay, well, yeah, I've been to Synod ten times, and I'll just say in a general way just how to kind of see what Synod is, and then therefore your role on it. I did not grow up in the CRC. Okay. So the first time I heard about Reform Synod, of course, was when I was studying the Canons of Dort. You know, the Synod of Dort. Be like, wow, Synod. Wow, Synod.

Yeah. Really big deal. And then after I was a pastor for a couple years, I was appointed by my classes to actually attend Synod and be part of it. Which to me was like a huge honor. Yeah. A huge honor. And it is. It is. It is an honor to go to Synod. So I'd say, you know, keep that in mind. It's a real honor to be blessed by your classes, whatever classes it is that delegated you, and see it as an honor.

Now, I do have to say that after I was at a synod or two, my view of synod went from like, wow, to a little more like, oh, oh, okay. And I say that not to be critical, but it's just you realize you're there. You're one of 100 and however many other delegates. And not everybody will see things exactly the way you do. And over the years, I've been at synods where there were some really important issues being discussed. And it didn't always go the way I thought it should.

And so you can come away from it sometimes feeling disappointed. At the same time, I think at times I had a little bit of the, what do you call it, the Elijah syndrome, where you think, oh, I'm the only one left, you know, who sees things this way. And at Synod, actually, you develop opportunities. There are opportunities to interact with others, and you can encourage each other. And so there's a real camaraderie that can develop, too.

which is why it's great that Synod will meet in person because camaraderie on Zoom is not quite so easy. It doesn't happen. Not so much. So I guess that's in a general way. I'd say look at it as a real privilege to be able to serve and at the same time kind of go into it realistically. I mean, you're not perfect. I'm not perfect. Nobody comes in with perfect knowledge.

you're one person of 100 and however many it is these days and be ready for some votes you're going to be really excited about in a positive way others you might be somewhat disappointed or frustrated with i mean these things do happen but wow what a privilege to be part of synod and especially this coming synod you know you've got a huge amount of material to work through after the two non-Synods during COVID.

And then you have the huge issues, the Human Sexuality Report, all these other overtures and so forth coming, restructuring the denomination. That might be a little overwhelming for delegates, maybe for you too. There's so much to absorb. I think the deferred agenda is over 700 pages. Yeah, which is more than a normal Synod would deal with. Plus you have this year's business to deal with. And that's a good thing too. Just read through it as much as you can.

When you get your advisory committee assignments, we can talk about that too. But make sure you focus on that because you're, like I said, part of a big, huge gathering.

And when you're in plenary sessions, there's actually a rule for synodical procedure that says speakers are limited to three minutes three minutes and if you've spoken twice and there's someone else in line you don't get a third turn i mean your your impact in the big meeting is going to be limited by time so make sure you're ready to be engaged during your advisory committee meeting yeah uh there you know you might have a little restrictions on how many times you can speak, but there

in a group of maybe 20 versus 160, you can really have the opportunity to represent your classes and his convictions well. Do you have advice for first-time delegates on how to best feel prepared coming into Synod? Especially on a year like this where it seems so overwhelming. Yeah, I've never actually been to a synod quite like this. Some years, you know, the agenda's that thick. Some years it's that thick.

Once in a while you have a synod where you have a number of study committee reports coming at the same time. That actually can be quite demanding. But I would just say, you know, read, read, read. Focus on your advisory committee as part of it. And especially if your classes has been wrestling with some issues and you know you're going to represent them and their concerns, make sure you focus on those things. And don't be afraid to ask questions of others even before you get there.

Say, I've been reading this. I can't quite get it. What do you think this is at? I mean, don't be afraid to ask questions. And when you're there to just make sure you're you're ready to ask if you don't understand, you know, what emotion is about. Say, could the chairman of the advisory committee repeat the motion just so you're not voting because you're expected to. So you just know what you're you're saying when you do your vote.

Yeah, especially this year, it seems like this is not a year to just kind of rubber stamp votes without having real clarity on what's happening. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I think I would encourage, I mean, I know I'm the newbie, I'm not here to give advice, but my plan is to meet with Roger, but also a number of other guys from my classes who are real veterans at Synod and just sit down and try to get advice from them.

And I'd encourage anybody watching this to find a few other guys from classes and take them out for coffee and try to get advice from them and tips on how to prepare and how to just be most productive and effective at the synodical meetings for sure. I'm, again, just want everybody to know it's an honor to serve. It's going to be a challenge, especially this year. But people will be praying for you. And we trust that Christ, who is greater than all things.

will help you as you do your part to provide guidance for his church in our denomination as we seek to hold fast to the truth, reach out in Jesus' name, but not be swept here and there by winds of doctrine. I mean, it's a challenging time. And we might think it's unique to us, but if we've never been through this before, but the church has faced this in many ways across the centuries. It's been the history of the church from the beginning.

The pull to kind of be swept away with culture, the tension of speaking strongly to an issue and it hurting other people or being offensive to culture. I mean, the church has been wrestling with this. I mean, you mentioned the Synod of Dort at the beginning of this. That was going on back at the Synod of Dort and before that. Yeah, absolutely. And, yeah, go back a little further in church history.

You know, you had Athanasius, who, and the saying was, Athanasius contra mundum, is that the Latin phrase? Against the world. And he was dealing with the church and emperors banded together in a way that was trying to lead the church away from, you know, the full-fledged understanding of God as Trinity and Christ as the Son of God. And he stood his ground, so it was him against the world. So maybe it almost was an Elijah situation there, but not really.

He stood his ground, and praise God, we have the Athanasian Creed, as we call it, that reflects his stalwart biblical convictions. I think it was John Knox. He said, one man with God is always the majority. Yeah, there you go. There you go. That's good. And so that's a helpful reminder, too. Even if you're there and you feel like all of Synod and all of your advisory committee is going against you, as long as you know you're standing with God, that's where you should be. Right.

And it may not feel good in that moment. No. But in the long run, that is where we need to be. Right. And we are servants of Christ. Ultimately, we're not servants of the synod. We're not servants of our classes ultimately either. We serve, but we are servants ultimately of Christ. It's to him we will answer on Judgment Day, not Synod 2023. So let's keep that focus, and I think we'll do well going forward.

Amen. You mentioned the advisory committees as being really probably our most, The place where we can have the most influence, probably, because it's a smaller group? Yeah, that's definitely the case. Each advisory committee will have various assignments. Basically, everything that comes to the floor of Senate is filtered through one advisory committee or another, except for maybe the executive director's report and things like that. But all the real business comes through advisory committees.

And their recommendations, of course, that they bring when the matter comes to the full body, they're quite important. They kind of set the stage for the discussion that takes place. And that's why, you know, if you feel strongly about something and you see, boy, I'm not on that advisory committee, but I see they're coming with advice that's like the opposite of what I hoped they would be saying. You know, kind of the little alarms might go off in your mind.

At the same time, it doesn't mean that the advisory committee's take on it is what Senate is going to do. I've seen many times over the years where an advisory committee will come with their recommendation and somebody from the floor of Senate speaks up and says, yes, but what about this? And Senate might go a completely different direction.

So that's where, too, it's important to be willing to speak up and make sure you're reading the information that's coming to you day by day from the advisory committees. So you can see what action they're recommending that Synod would take. Yeah. And when you're on an advisory committee, if you might feel a little pressure, you know, to come with like a unified report.

But if you really are convinced that the advisory committee is bringing bad, basically bad advice, you do have the opportunity to register your protest with the committee itself and maybe even come with a minority report from the advisory committee. And there's all sorts of procedures for how Synod would handle that. So you're not locked into what the majority on your advisory committee says?

And that's good to know because Synod is supposed to be a place where you deliberate, where you discuss, and then make the best informed decisions you can. And so advisory committee there, too. You can have a big role either by voting with the majority or even maybe by coming with a minority recommendation. Yeah. Do you have any advice for someone if they're serving on an advisory committee and they feel like there may be the sole voice going against it?

Do you have any advice for them on how to operate in that kind of environment? Well, yeah, that's not that's not a pleasant place to be. Yeah, because like I said, you will feel a degree of pressure because, OK, so if the advisory committee comes with a unified recommendation, It's more smooth. It's just a smoother thing. And there'll be some time constraints, I think, with the amount of business that's being conducted.

And so you'll hear a little, you know, let's all try to be as unified as we can. But if you can't be, then you just let the chairperson of your advisory committee know that you intend to bring a minority report. And then if you need help figuring out how to do that, and it might be a brand new thing for you, then you talk to the synodical services people, their office and say, how do I do this?

And they would give you information how to write an advisory committee report, in this case, a minority report. So it can be done. And if you say, I feel I need to bring a minority report, you might be surprised. There might be one or two others on your committee that feel the same way. And then you would get together to bring your minority report to the floor. Yeah. And you get to write that basically overnight. You get to do it. Not quite on the fly.

Yeah. But you wouldn't have a lot of time to do it. But if it needs to be done, it needs to be done. And if it means you stay up late that night to serve Christ and his church, you do it. Amen. Yeah. It's not as bad as when Paul was beaten with rods and left for dead, you know, and all that. But you got to do it. Amen. That's true. You got to do it. Yeah. It's pretty ridiculous to complain about having to spend all night typing on a computer when others have suffered much more for the gospel.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, and I have a feeling that there's going to be quite a bit of that at this upcoming synod, where there's going to be, I don't think our advisory committees will be as unified as maybe they have been in the past. And so I think we might get a lot of minority reports. With the issues coming, I would not be surprised either. Yeah. Because of the diversity of opinion and conviction that's out there in the denomination.

It's all going to be represented to some degree at Senate. Yeah, and so it probably, would you say it'd be good advice? Once, you know, I think we're finding out on our advisory committees this week that we're recording this right now. Oh, okay. And so pretty soon here anyways.

And so it would be good to be studying the idea, coming up with possible, even maybe preparing for a minority report if you think your advisory committee is going to go in an unhelpful direction just so you're ready to go once you get there. Yeah. In the back of your mind, you would want to have that ready as a possibility. At the same time, if you don't know what the advisory committee is going to advise, you wouldn't know ahead of time exactly.

And maybe you could support three of their recommendations on a topic, but not the last two or something. And you can say that. I agree with this, this, this, but not with that and that for these reasons. And, I mean, you try to be as friendly and amicable and so forth as you can. But at the same time, there are watershed moments, too. And I think our denomination is heading for some of that as well. And you can't have something both ways. Exactly. You just can't. You can't.

Yeah. So. Yeah. Do you want to explain a little? You've mentioned registering a negative vote and then a minority report. And they're different. So what would be the benefits of registering just a negative vote and not going forward with a minority report? Okay. Well, okay. So you picture yourself in the advisory committee you've been discussing, and then they come with a decision. And let's say you can't really support it.

In fact, you might even want to speak against it when it comes to the floor of Senate. Then you register your negative vote with the committee itself, secretary of the committee, saying you reserve the right to speak against their recommendations. And so that's not quite as weighty, maybe not quite as significant as saying I'm coming with an actual motion to the contrary. But you can reserve the right to speak against what your committee comes up with.

But you should, you know, let the chairperson and secretary of your advisory committee know you're going to do that. Otherwise, you will get some static. Yeah, sure. I'm glad they do some training now for delegates to Synod. The first time I attended, I was new to the CRC just for a few years. First time going to Synod, I had no idea how this whole thing worked. And so I had voted against a motion. And then I saw in the rules that you can ask Synod to revise its decision.

And so I did that. And they said to me, well, did you vote for it or against it? And I said, I voted against it. They said, well, you're not allowed to ask Senate to reconsider it if you voted against it already. I'm like, oh, so then I felt like crawling under my table because I had just committed a major, a major gaffe, you know, a huge procedural blunder. And, you know, so I kind hung my head for a few minutes. But you know, there are some things about that that it's good

to know. And that's why, in case you don't have enough reading already, you can go to the CRC website, search for synodical resources, and you'll find a booklet called Rules for Synodical Procedure. And if you need some good bedtime reading, I'm sure that would be the time to do it. But it kind of talks about some of those things, just the way the Synod is supposed to function, the role of the chairperson, what it means to offer an amendment, things like that.

And it is kind of good to get a little refresher on that, even if you kind of know how things work in your classes. It may be a little different at Synod. So get acquainted with some of that. And if I had done that, then I would have known not to make that procedural blunder back in my early days at Synod. So I say that not to scare anybody, just saying, be informed. Yeah, yeah.

Are there aspects of the rules of synodical procedure, like particular aspects that you think are really important for people to come understanding? Yeah, you know, the whole procedure, the whole thing, too, about majority-minority reports from advisory committees. It'd be good to know how that works before you get there. Just also the fact—well, I think this one is actually important, especially with some of the topics coming up.

Okay. So every synod sort of singles out somebody as being what they call the parliamentarian, sort of who knows how things are supposed to go in the meeting. And so whoever the chairman is, if the chair of the synod is a pretty good parliamentarian, they may not lean too much on the one who's the designated parliamentarian. But some chair people, they're like, well, I don't know what to do next.

So then you turn to that person and they say, well, according to such and such, this is what you should do. And then the chairman will say, well, OK, let's do that. And as a delegate, you might think, oh, OK. So the chairman asked the parliamentarian, the parliamentarian said this. Therefore, it has to be that way. Well, actually, it doesn't have to be that way.

And that might be very important this year, because depending on who the parliamentarian is and how much technicality is going on in discussions and motions and so forth, the parliamentarian themselves might have a certain bias in a certain way and give advice in a certain way. But every delegate has the right to say, point of order. I would challenge that advice and the chair's decision. Now, there you are, lowly delegate from wherever you are, challenging the chair.

That can be a little intimidating. But if you have a good chairperson, the chair will not take that as an attack. The chair knows that's a procedural motion. It's not an attack, and it's a way that you as a delegate can say to the whole body, wait a minute here. We just heard one opinion from the parliamentarian. We should hear more than one opinion on this issue. Some things are so cut and dried and obvious you would never even think of challenging the chair on a ruling like that.

But it's a procedural thing. Like I said, it's not that you're attacking the chair. You're just saying, hold on here, let's pause and think about the advice that we were just given. If it's good advice, great, but sometimes the advice is not that great. And the body has a right, each member of the body has a right to question it. Yeah, I think it's funny when we kind of naturally think challenging the chair is like challenging the person themselves. Yeah, you're not challenging them to a duel.

during the next coffee break. Yeah, exactly. You're challenging the decision that was made. You're challenging the ruling. Yeah, the ruling. And boy, I've never been a chair of like synod. I've been a chair of classist meetings and so forth. And I think we have to give people the benefit of the doubt in the sense that they're up there doing their best. They might never have been a chair of synod before too. There's a lot of eyes on them. They're feeling a lot of pressure.

And so whatever the parliamentarian says, they're probably going to say, oh, okay, let's do that. So again, it's not an attack on them. It's saying, let's put the brakes on just a minute and think about this before we go that direction. So don't be afraid to say, I challenge the chair. And also don't be surprised if your challenge is overruled. But that's just part of life at Synod. Sometimes you stick your neck out a little bit for the sake of your convictions and what you think is right.

And sometimes you might say you're rewarded for that. Sometimes you feel like you're rebuked a little bit. But it's a deliberative body, which means there's discussion back and forth. And especially on the hot-button issues, some people will walk away sad while others are rejoicing. And depending on your perspective and whatever the issue is, you'll be doing one or the other on some of the issues.

Are there any other particular parts of the rules of synodical procedure that you think are important to remember? I was thinking about this a little bit, so I'm kind of glad you asked me that. The church order, you'll find, is a little bit ambiguous in certain areas, which is not helpful. But I guess it has to be. I haven't found a better way. Like it says, basically, the authority of a synod over classes is the same as classes over the local church.

But in our polity, the authority, we believe, is vested in the local church. So what does that mean? So it says it's the same, the one is the same as the other, but it doesn't really say what the other is. You know, exactly. So that's a little confusing. So church order is a good guide, and if we follow it, we'll do things probably decently in good order. I'm just saying there is some ambiguity in some places. And maybe that's why you have different advice given in different things.

At the very end of the church order, there is a very last article. And it says, basically, Synod has the right to suspend its own rules.

It doesn't say it quite like this, but the idea is that if for the glory of God and the good of the church and to be faithful to the scriptures, we find that we need to suspend these man-made rules of procedure, synod has the prerogative to do that synod doesn't usually do that but I have been at synods and I don't know if I was talking to you about this or someone else but where a question is asked to the parliamentarian is synod allowed to do this

and a few years ago the parliamentarian would say kind of with a twinkle in his eye he would say well, actually, a synod can do whatever it believes it needs to do. And then everybody sort of chuckled, ooh, we have more power than we thought we did. Synod can do whatever it chooses to do. Now, that's not written in the church order, but that is part of the way synods have functioned.

And so I guess I'm just saying that so that if somebody says, oh, no, no, no, synod is not allowed to do a certain thing, and you in your heart believe synod really should do the thing that you've just heard synod may not do, again, don't be afraid to speak up, whether you're saying point of order, whatever, and just say, you know, for the good of the church, the glory of Christ, we just really need to do this. And we can suspend our rules, even the church order says, if we have to do that.

So I think that's important, especially for first-time delegates. You've never heard this before, maybe, You've never witnessed this before, that type of a thing. So I would say watch for that. Don't let synod be sort of boxed in by someone saying, we can't do that. Synod has done a lot of things that it technically could not do, for better or worse than it has.

And I think that's in there because we see Scripture as having more authority than our church order, and our confessions have more authority than our church order. And so if we feel like our church order is not living up to or is preventing us from honoring God and the Scriptures, we would understand that we could override some church order stuff. We wouldn't want to do that regularly because that would be foolishness and chaos. But in special circumstances, it makes sense. Right.

And another thing, too, we do have built into the church order and the way things work kind of a system of checks and balances, which is good. For example, the church order is the way we have agreed upon to do things. And so Synod 2022, for example, cannot radically change or significantly change part of the church order by itself. it can propose a change that would be ratified by next year's synod.

Okay. And so one thing to watch out to, you know, some people in the past have wanted to change the church order, and they didn't want to wait, actually, for the next year's synod to ratify something. And so they got creative, and they said, well, we didn't change the church order, but we are proposing a supplement to the church order article under question.

And if you'd look at that, you'd say, okay, but the supplement so contradicts what's in the article itself that really what you've proposed is a substantive change. And I'm just saying this may not happen at this year's synod. But if you see that happening, make a lot of noise and say, you know, this is just not the way we are to do things. We can propose a change, but it takes next year's Synod to ratify it instead of trying to, dare I say, ram it through.

Yeah. Well, yeah, because the supplements don't need the ratification. That's why it's convenient to kind of go after them because you can get it all done in one shot. So, like I said, this may not happen this year, but kind of watch for that in the back of your mind. And like I said, make some noise. You might be outvoted, but at least you've spoken your conscience and stood up for what you thought was important.

I think probably a number of first-time delegates would be very intimidated to speak on the floor of Synod. I would guess probably most first-year delegates don't speak from the floor of Synod because they're maybe just overwhelmed by everything that's going on. And yet this year is probably a year where you're going to need to speak, speak your conviction. So what advice do you have for first-time delegates as far as speaking from the floor of Synod?

Well, I would say, okay, so you're going to Synod, you have convictions. If I were going to Synod, which I'm not, I'm an alternate, so I probably won't see you there. But if I was going and you were going and you just stood up and you said exactly what I was thinking, then I don't have to stand up and say it myself.

Okay. But if my convictions are not being spoken by others, or maybe if you'd say, you know, the five are disagreeing and only one is supporting, you know, what you believe is right, then you might want to speak up and just echo again. But you are supposed to say something new and different. Otherwise, Synod would go on, you know, for a year. Yeah. Everybody has something they want to say. Everybody said everything they thought about every issue, you know, and so forth.

And you will find a few people that are on their feet quite often. In fact, I was at a synod once where there were two who were very vociferous and who are often speaking. And people actually were making a chart. So-and-so, so-and-so. They were making a tally of every time. We don't want to get into that, you know. But do speak up.

And I guess before you speak, you know, if you have a moment during the discussion, you know, you're kind of listening, you know, or maybe even the night before you were concerned about it, you know, and you jot down, maybe you jot down three things you think are important. And you would just, you know, say that I have three concerns about this, this, this, this.

then then you've said what you know you want to say it's a little better than than just standing up and and feeling nervous and then sort of getting tongue tied and so forth so i'm not saying write a speech but you know for yourself and and that will actually help you it'll give you a little more confidence if you've kind of prepared at least i want to say this this and this and then you put your name in the queue in the list and then when it's your time uh then you you get to take

the microphone and and and speak uh so i guess you know prepare a little bit at least um um even during the discussion if you have to i would also say if you really want to speak don't wait too long though to uh sort of buzz in or however they're doing it now to get on the list because one of those procedural things, somebody ahead of you on the list might stand up and say, I move that we call the question. Or I would ask the chairman to cease debate.

So if it's call the question, everybody on the list gets to speak. If it's cease debate, then even if you're on the list, you don't get to speak.

so don't wait too long to try to get on the list because if someone says i move we call the question and you are just about ready to to get on the list then it's like too late too late so that's just a little procedural thing it's not like a council meeting where you know there's uh you know 10 of you sitting around the table and everybody can you know sort of speak as often as they want and you just raise your hand and you're called on. It's more complicated than that.

Yeah, there has to be some forethought put into when you're going to buzz in and what you're going to say. Like you said, you only get three minutes. Three minutes, Max. Which goes pretty quickly. It does. And maybe because of the three-minute rule, it's not happening quite as much. But I think when Synod was two weeks instead of one week, you heard a lot of people just standing up and try to tell funny stories. It was a great, you know, almost a comedy routine there for a while.

But you're not there for two weeks. So, you know, focus and focus. And some people are jolly jokers. They'd use a minute of their three to tell a funny story anyway. What about advice on bringing a motion to the floor or an amendment to a motion? Because you have to submit that beforehand, right? Don't you have to have it typed up and sent in before you present a motion or an amendment to an motion? They prefer it typed up. There is a reference to that in the Rules for Synodical Procedure 2.

So if you want to know the exact rules for that, make sure you check that out. Um, basically the, uh, what the advisory committees bring, um, is considered a motion. Mm-hmm. And then that's just seconded and then, then it's discussed. So as an individual, uh, you can, uh, ask for that motion to be amended. And then of course that would be discussed and is it friendly or not? And so forth. if it's too substantial of a difference, then they would say, no, you're out of order.

The main motion would have to be defeated, and then we could consider your substitute motion. And there you're dealing with the whole parliamentarian thing. And that's why what the advisory committee comes with as a motion is really important. So, again, that's why you've got to speak up and do your best to engage what's going on in your advisory committee. Yeah, invest your time.

Well, don't neglect the other part, but there's a lot of weight in the work that we're doing in our advisory committee. Absolutely. It's going to set the tone for the whole discussion. And that actually has to be defeated, you're saying. That motion has to be defeated before other motions can be considered. Even if you'd come with a minority recommendation from the advisory committee, the way it happens is Synod reads the majority. You would read your minority if you brought a minority.

But it would stick with the majority as the motion that's being discussed. Unless somebody, you know, a few minutes into it says, I move to table the majority so we can take up the minority. And if you do that too quick, that's shut down right away. But after a little bit, you could make a motion like that. If you really think the minority is more biblical and so forth, somebody can do that. I move to table the majority. Let's take up the minority.

And sometimes that happens, and the majority just sort of disappears after a while, because Senate approves the minority recommendation. but it's uh tilted you might say toward the majority definitely yeah because that's that's what takes precedent yeah because that's coming out of the advisory absolutely in terms of speaking uh effectively i would say um remember you are you are representing the church so um you know no name calling.

I mean, uh, when you talk to, uh, couples, pre-marriage counseling and whatever you, sometimes you talk about, at least I do, you know, do you have a, uh, an arguing style? Is it fair? Is it not fair? You know, so no name calling and things like that. Um, but you know, speak the truth in love and, uh, uh, try to speak clearly, you know, identify the things going into it.

You want to say, and if the guy right in front of you, you know, I already said those, you know, two of the three things you had in mind. Just say, I'd like to echo this and this, but I also want to add this. And, yeah, three minutes go by really fast. Yeah. When you're talking to an issue, especially an issue that's complicated. And some of the issues coming are complicated. Some are pretty well cut and dried, you know, of course. But, and you have all the routine stuff.

You know, a certain number of pastors retired. Do you approve that, you know, what the synodical deputies and classes did? Well, yeah, of course. Then you do feel a bit like a rubber stamp, which is okay. Yeah. Because there are these things that have to be done. And some of them are very, yeah, hardly any discussion on that.

Well, we've been talking about that as a classist, too, the importance of our classist meeting, going quickly in the places where we can go quickly, but slowing down in the places where we need to slow down. Right. And so, yeah, some of these things, they can just naturally be a rubber stamp because we want to be able to have the time to spend on the really important issues. Right. So, again, you don't have to speak up on everything. There's one little nuance.

I don't know if everyone realizes, but when you speak from the floor of synod, you technically have to address the chair, right? Oh, that's true. Yeah. You can't talk to the guy next to you. You can't technically even address the body, right? You have to speak to the chair. Right, you do. Which is why you do well when you begin your talk. Well, first you have to identify yourself. I'm such and such from classes, whatever you're representing.

And then the first words out of your mouth after that should be Mr. Chair or Madam Chair, whoever happens to hold the gavel at that time and so forth. you can ask the chair if so-and-so maybe from the seminary or representing whatever may speak to the issue or whatever, but you're not supposed to actually talk to the other delegates. And if you do, the chair should actually give you a very gentle rebuke and say, address your remarks to the chair, please.

And people get the hang of that usually pretty well. But that prevents some of the arguing that you might see on video clips from parliaments where things get out of hand and fistfights break out in parliament or whatever. I've also seen people creatively get around that. In probably a good way by saying, Mr. Chair, I wonder if we as a body would like to be this type of a body. Right. And so you're addressing the chair, but you're also speaking like, is this who we are as a denomination?

That's a good question. So I don't think you're trying to wiggle around it, but by addressing the chair, you're certainly playing by the rules. And you're certainly inviting everybody to ask the same question. Of the chair. That you're speaking out loud. And yeah, point of order, you'll hear that throughout the week. Point of order and whatever, whatever. And, you know, someone will say, Mr. Chair, could you restate the motion for us?

And then either the chair will restate it or have one of the clerks restate it. And that's all important. So you don't end up voting the wrong way on something. Yeah. You know, what does a yes mean? And then they'll explain that and so forth. Yeah. Yeah. And encourage all delegates to do that. If you're not sure, speak up, call point of order, ask for clarification on what we're voting on.

Because, again, I think a lot of people are feeling like we're coming up to, I agree with you, it'd be hard to say this is a watershed synod, but this one and the next few will be watersheds. Oh, on some issues, yeah. And so we really want to be clear on what we're voting on when we're voting on it. Right. It's not all political, but if you have to vote and you need a majority or whatever, it becomes sort of, it feels political, even if it's not.

So to have a discussion when you're not going to vote, like I said, in five or ten minutes. Yeah. Well, at the vote time, people are digging into their trenches. Oh, absolutely. I mean, everybody's deciding which trench am I going to be in, and it's hard to, it really is hard to move people in and out of those trenches in that moment. But if you can have more of a laid back conversation outside of that, then, yeah, you can have some, yeah, it can be productive. Absolutely.

What would you say, how effective do you think it is to speak from the floor? Like when you speak for or against an issue, how many people actually are moved one way or the other from that? Well, I'm going to sound really cynical now. Sorry. But in my limited experience attending Senate, the people who can talk and actually tug at the heartstrings, I say that, of the other delegates, they're the ones that seem to actually maybe persuade people to vote one way or another.

uh let's be honest your first time delight you don't know this yet but synods can be very emotional very emotional get all these people there got all these issues you're thinking about oh you know the future of the church is at stake i mean this is like a a high i mean it's a very emotive experience

Yeah. And, uh, you know, some people who speak and they just, they just, they just tap into that. And, uh, which kind of bugs me because I'm a little more, uh, let's think this through type of a thing. Yeah. That was a very compelling story, but what does the Bible say?

you know and yeah if we do this you know somebody you know and love may be offended and think they have to leave the church but what does the bible say you know yeah so i would say um i'm being a little cynical when i said this but uh if you're going to speak uh be very emotive to be persuasive but don't be emotive stick with the bible and trust the holy spirit to use the truth to uh to lead our churches in the right direction yeah amen but but the dynamic

that group dynamic is very real you're going to feel it uh not quite like at a billy graham crusade where you know you have a few people going down and it's like you're being sucked down a drain you know to go forward when they're singing just as i am but it's it's very very emotional too yeah so be ready for that and uh but speak the truth in love the truth in love i was thinking of what you were just saying uh jonathan edwards talked about

in his sermons he would actually preach you know jonathan edwards is known as mr heady intellectual guy but he said in his sermons he would actually preach in such a way as to raise people's emotions as high as he could but he didn't just he did it through the truth right And so I think that's what you're talking to it. Like we, we don't want to just speak to the heart. I don't think some people will, some people, and they will be effective at it.

Yeah. And you might feel yourself drawn into some sort of a compromise where the Bible doesn't allow us to compromise. So be careful of that. Yeah. And so I would encourage us speak to the heart, but go through the head, use the truth to speak to, to our hearts, to the true desires that we should have. Right. So, yeah. Start with the Bible. Tell all those stories you want. And then end with the Bible. Yeah. And we'll be okay.

Yeah. Amen. Amen. And, you know, we talked earlier about how it's a real privilege to serve at Synod. And it is. And one of the things that I would come away from Synod encouraged by is reports you hear from World Missions, called Resonate Now and Reframe and so forth. At Synod, you get to hear some things that you may not actually reach you in the pew in your own church.

And they talk about how God is working through the gospel, how God is moving people, drawing people to faith, how God is providing and so forth. And that's really important, I think, to hear too. It's very easy to think, oh, things are not the way they should be, and then just sort of close your mind to any possibility of God doing anything good with the CRC. But, you know, as someone has said, God can shoot straight even with a crooked stick, which is good because I'm a crooked stick too.

And so that's actually a very, I find, encouraging thing. And some of the advisory committees, I mean, you get to hear extended reports from the agency directors and so forth. And so I don't know what committees you all will be on, but some are actually very edifying. You walk away going, wow, this is great. Praise God for what he's doing through the Christian Reformed Church.

That's a good word, because I think some probably are coming into this synod ready to just fight like a pit bull, you know? Well, yeah. And you can be so ready to just kind of brawl it out that you almost miss being able to see how God's still using us and working for His glory. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And so it's a good word to come in and just kind of calm down, breathe a little bit.

Yeah. Be ready to stand firm when you need to stand firm, but also be ready to hear that God is still using our denomination for really powerful ways. building his kingdom through us. Absolutely. You've been. That's one of the questions I've been thinking about is, we all know that, I think everyone feels the weight of this upcoming synod. That's why we're having all of these prayer gatherings leading up to it. Everyone's feeling kind of the weight of it.

And people know that it will be, at some points, it will probably feel very much like a battle. Do you have any thoughts on how delegates can kind of walk away from synod feeling blessed and not just kind of beat down, wore out? I've talked to delegates from the past who said, man, it took me a month to recover after that synod because it was so heavy. But do you have any advice on how we can leave this gathering feeling blessed?

Well, I think I was one of those that had to take a month to recover a few times. Because, yeah, not everything goes the way you think it should. And, you know, I don't know if you should be talking to me, you know, about going to Synod, because I've been at Synods where things I was, you know, felt very strongly about and convicted about.

spoke to the issues and voted, you know, my convictions, you know, I ended up being, you know, the tail that the dog was wagging instead of the nose that the rest of the dog was following. And it can be very disappointing. It can be frustrating. And you might wonder, you know, you know, is this a matter of Ichabod? Has the glory departed, you know, and so forth. But you do have to remember that God is sovereign.

You and I are here for such a time as this, just like it was said to Esther many, many years ago. And if we believe that our convictions, our biblical convictions, are being trampled on, obviously you're not going to feel good about that, nor should you feel good about that. so then you do have to ask yourself, okay, is this a matter of an appeal to the next year's synod or not?

And I do think many people over the years, too, have got to a point where they've said, you know, we've done what we could, we just can't see ourselves, you know, we're not going to say anathema to our denomination, but we just can't continue to walk with them. That's a huge decision, and I don't think anyone makes that lightly.

But you just have to remember, I think, that God is sovereign, and maybe you'll remember that story of a missionary preaching the gospel or a radio broadcast in another language and how people are coming to faith in Christ. And you've got to kind of hang on to that, too, and remember that. there's more than one issue. Of course, central is the gospel. Central is whether or not we will maintain the marks of the church going forward.

But, you know, I'll just say, too, if you're discouraged by what happens at Synod, you're not alone. And maybe that's where you need to find someone that maybe you talked to at a coffee break at Synod, And you both were kind of down in the mouth even for a while about it and just talk to them and sort of talk each other through it afterwards. I think most people would be happy to do that.

That seems like for sure one of the big blessings that can come out of Synod is that just relational networking that you had talked about. You can go into it feeling kind of like Elijah syndrome, and that's been one of the benefits of the Abide Project. And even just the messy Reformation people have said, there's other pastors who think the same thing that I think. That's awesome. And then you can get to synod, and you can find even more.

And even if the denomination starts to head in a direction that you don't want, you know, all right, I have other brothers with me. And I'm not alone in this. And we can sit and talk and kind of support each other through this. And so, yeah, we can build those relationships at Synod and leave with that blessing there, too. Right. And I have found, too, that at Synod, you know, you don't always go through the lunch line or whatever by your sort of comrades.

You might find yourself visiting with someone that maybe is like a polar opposite on some of the issues, and you kind of know that. And then you'd be like, okay, God, are you testing my faith? But actually, that's a great opportunity, number one, to be friendly to someone that you've disagreed with, you know you disagree with. And maybe you'd have a chance to say, you know, I just don't quite get it. Why you really feel that this is the way to go? Could you just simply explain it to me?

And I do think that you're not going to agree with this person, but if you actually hear from them why they feel, believe, or convince so differently, then you have a greater understanding, not only of that person, but of sort of the issues and the dynamics that we're dealing with. So I would say you're going to want to find sort of like-minded people, you know, to chum around with and to encourage each other.

But, you know, don't be afraid to, you know, have some of these other conversations, too. It's a good word because on the floor, everything's so formal speaking for or against motions and stuff. And it's hard to really sometimes get to the heart of why people are making these motions. And so sitting with someone you disagree with over lunch and just saying why and then taking James advice to keep your mouth shut and just listen and don't get in a debate with them.

But just listen and hear why they believe what they believe is good. Yeah, and I think that's important.

and I do think that if we actually show you know Christian respect toward each other where we disagree as well toward each other they're all going to vote together on the issue when it comes down to the vote but that's a bridge building thing which we do need too I want to understand people especially the ones I disagree with I do I want to understand what sometimes you go what were they thinking but what were they thinking yeah you know yeah 100 that was uh one of the things i really became

convinced of in my undergraduate programs i went to uh my undergraduate program was in a baptist dispensation like pretty much everything opposite of what what i believe and so i had all of these professors that would say like well reformed people believe and i would go no we don't and And so eventually we had these conversations. I remember getting so frustrated when people were misrepresenting me that I tried to make a commitment to the best of my ability. I will not try to misrepresent.

I will intentionally try to honestly represent these people's opinions and then interact with them on that level rather than creating this straw man that makes you seem smart. But no, we're going to actually interact on those on that level. And in order to do that, you have to sit down with people and say, why do you believe this? Right. And if you can do it when you're not in five minutes going to have to vote. Yeah. That's better, too. Yeah, when you have to vote, the pressure's on.

My most productive conversations have been informal over the years, not when I was going to vote on something. Because they're, you know, it's not all political, but if you have to vote and you need a majority or whatever, it becomes sort of, it feels political, even if it's not. And so to have a discussion when you're not going to vote, like I said, in five or ten minutes. Yeah. Well, at the vote time, people are digging into their trenches. Oh, absolutely.

I mean, everybody's deciding which trench am I going to be in. And it's hard to, it really is hard to move people in and out of those trenches in that moment. But if you can have more of a laid back conversation outside of that, then, yeah, you can have some. Yeah, you can be productive. Absolutely. And that's good. We need to understand real people and not just think about caricatures. So we have this work that we're doing in the synodical meetings. And then they wrap up.

I guess I don't know how early they wrap up in the day, but you're going to have time outside of synodical meetings.

um what's your recommendation for how you spend your time outside of the meetings well um um eat sleep if you can um and uh you know visit with others uh coffee break and whatever some advisory committees actually do their work and they're kind of done and you end up with a little free time there are others that you hear you know you're three days into senate already and you're hearing advisory committee such and such go through the line first you will meet you

know bring your food to x number in a room and you're going to continue your work over lunch even or dinner, whatever. So depending on what your committee is assigned, you can almost end up doing advisory committee work all week, which means you would not have quite as much time to process what's coming from the other committees. But that's your task, though. Number one is your advisory committee's work.

But otherwise, you know, if you have free time, you know, You're going to want to go for a little walk maybe. You're going to want to grab coffee at coffee time. If you drink coffee and, you know, pray too for wisdom. The Bible says if you lack wisdom, pray and ask God. And God in his mercy won't scold you for saying you need wisdom. That's in James 1. So that's a good passage to take with you to Synod. And I know I've prayed for wisdom too many times serving at Synod.

And I do know too, you do learn more from listening than speaking. So the part in James about quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to be angry, that's really good advice for synodical delegates too. And remember the battle is the Lord's, as the Bible often says. You might feel on some issues you're going there to do battle. And remember the outcome ultimately is in God's hands, which is a great comfort and encouragement.

And you could say, even if I disagree with that decision, I guess somehow, for some reason, God allowed, I'll say allowed, you know, that decision to be made. And then you go home wondering about that and what to do about it, too, you know. Do you already then start thinking we need to appeal that decision? I mean, there's a lot of ways you can take that. You don't just take it as, well, that's what sin had decided. So that's how it's going to be forever, because there is that process of appeal.

And, you know, since we're talking about this year's Senate, I do hope people realize that on some of the key issues, whether it's the human sexuality report or whatever, Senate 2022 will review it. They will listen to its advisory committee and they'll make some decisions. And those decisions are to be considered settled in binding. But in a way they're not because there is the right to appeal to next year's synod.

And my guess is that whatever synod 2022 does with that issue, there will be appeals coming to synod 2023. And so I do hope that, you know, the people who are convinced that the Bible calls us to a certain way of obedience in this matter, that they stick with the denomination, you know, through Synod 2023, at least. If things don't go exactly the way you think they should, I would appeal to them, don't bail out, hang in there.

I know Jose Reyes in Abide Project talk a few weeks ago, he kind of said the same thing. Hang in there. We've got to see this thing through. It started a few years ago when the HSR committee was appointed. And we have to see it through, not just to 2022, but through the appeals that might come next year, too. So to me, that's very important. May not be easy, may not be convenient, but I do think that's very important. Yeah, it's important.

We've talked about this with a number of other pastors as well, that Synod 2022 is not the end. It's really the beginning. Right. And like I said, there will be appeals, I'm sure. no matter what your sin does. Yeah. Which is good, and it's a good word to, you know, don't leave us yet. Please. Yeah, stick with us. We need your input. We need your faith convictions. Not just this year, but next year and maybe years to come yet.

Well, and that's why, you know, the podcast that I do, We call it the messy reformation because it's always messy, and that's why we end it every time saying, keep fighting the good fight in the messy reformation. Absolutely.

Because there's this temptation to get so frustrated with the mess and so frustrated with how things are going to just say, I'm going to leave, I'm going to go somewhere else where things are cleaner, and the reality is that other place you're going probably isn't as clean as you think it is either. There's a mess there too. Well, you know, the challenges of living by faith in a world where everything is by sight, that presses in on every denomination.

And, you know, you could start brand new, you know, think we're leaving all the problems behind. But actually, you bring yourself with you. That's what I found. I think I'll move and have a new beginning. The problem is I bring myself with me and I bring all my baggage, if there is any, and all my strengths, but weaknesses too, of course. So, like you said, let's fight the good fight and let's see this through.

Amen. Yeah. Well, one of the most popular videos or series that we've done on the Messy Reformation has been the Prepare for Synod with Me videos that I did. with Roger Sparks a number of years ago preparing for Synod 2022. And we've heard from numerous delegates that, especially first-time delegates, getting ready for Synod, it feels really overwhelming. And they've said that those would have been really helpful in helping lay the groundwork for those.

And so what Willie and I have been thinking leading up to Synod 2024, especially since we're not delegates this year, but we do have some good Synod experience under our belt, We thought we would just do our own sharing some of our own advice on what we've learned from Synod or how to be effective at Synod. And so this episode, we're going to give Willie's got some of his thoughts and some of his advice for Synod. And then the next episode, we'll be sharing some of my thoughts and advice.

A lot of our stuff overlaps. And so I'll be sharing some of the things that maybe some additional things that Willie hasn't shared. So, Willie, why don't you just kick us off first and tell us what's one of the first things you want to tell people about advice in preparing for Synod? Yeah, as we were kind of preparing for this, I got to think, you know, between the two of us, we've got technically five Synods between two of us. So that's quite a bit.

So if we're drawing on all of our experience, I think we can actually be of help to some first-time delegates. And the first thing that I thought of was something that I didn't necessarily take seriously my first year, but I most certainly did my second and especially third year. And it's to read the agenda before synod, even if it's the boring things.

And the reason why that is important is because there are things like from the Council of Delegates report, financial report, all things that aren't a part of the actual overtures or communications. And those things get to be kind of overlooked, even some of the balloting items, you know, who's going to be serving on which denominational boards or, you know, committees of synod.

And those things are really important because you might recognize something that says, oh, that seems kind of out of place. I should ask a question about that. Or, wow, I should really be thinking about that if I want to, you know, speak to this matter from the floor. So I think it's very wise to go ahead and read the whole agenda because then you don't just get a sense of the things that your advisory committee is taking up.

You also get a better understanding of what other advisory committees are deliberating about as well. So that's kind of my first piece of advice is to read the agenda before synod. Yeah. And I would even jump on that. I would say my very first synod, one of the things that really struck me and caught me off guard was you mentioned the balloting process that you go through and you vote for people on COD and all these different committees.

And I remember feeling like, oh, no, I didn't read that information. I don't know these people that well. I don't know who to vote for. I ended up just abstaining from a bunch because I was like, I just don't even know well enough to vote. And that's not helpful either.

And so, yeah, it is really important to even read the reports coming out of COD. These are the people we've entrusted to work when Senate is not in session. And so we want to make sure they're making wise decisions. And if you're reading through that information and you have some questions, write it down and get ready when you go to Senate to be able to ask some of those questions because the COD people are going to be there. At least the president of COD is always there. The vice president is often there.

So you can ask some questions and then Synod is the body to get things done if you want some changes made to COD as well. That's exactly right. Now, my second point actually speaks to deliberations that are, well, I guess it's not about necessarily the deliberation process at Synod, but it's to seek out somebody who has been at Synod at least one other time.

And the purpose of this is to be rubbing shoulders with somebody who has a little bit of synodical experience, who kind of knows what to expect from the week and not just necessarily things for order, but like, oh, yeah, and this is the time we have lunch at this place or this is when we take the picture. Kind of like a synod mentor, if you would. I think seeking out somebody like that is always good.

Somebody who's had the experiences and can kind of pour into you so that the next time you go to synod, you can in turn do that with somebody else. Yeah. Amen. You already hit on what I was going to just say to add on that. If you have been to synod more than once or twice, find somebody who hasn't and kind of be their guide through the week. Because that first year, it can be pretty overwhelming, really, just kind of knowing what's all going on.

That's why I did those prepare for synod with me videos, because I was feeling a little overwhelmed about all the work they need to get done and wanted to be ready. And so, yeah, if you're a new person, find someone else out to kind of be your guide through the week. But if you're a wily veteran of synod, find someone new and kind of mentor them through the week. help make sure they know where they're going, help them feel comfortable and ready to do the work that we've been called to do.

Well, that's right. My third one has to do with what's going on on the floor. And it is listen very carefully to the reporters when they are giving their recommendations to Synod. A lot of what comes out of the advisory committees goes to the floor of Synod. The reporters give their committees recommendations, and that's when Senate either adopts those or does not. And the reason I say listen very carefully is because most often they use very technical and specific language.

And that is intentional. Like, what is the difference between maybe adopting something or receiving something or recommending something? These words all have very narrow and specific ranges of meaning to them, and they are chosen intentionally by wordsmiths in the committee who have composed these recommendations. So just be listening very careful to that, and then you kind of understand a little bit of the differences between terms, and it makes you a better listener.

And if the time may come, it'll make you a better chair or a reporter. Yeah. And would you say to Willie, if you're listening to a reporter and they're using language that you're unsure what it means, I would say a good thing to do at that point would either, well, step one is just ask the people around you at your table.

say he keeps using that word i want to know what that word means um but if they don't even know you could do a like point of order mr chair could you help me understand um what this what this word is why are they using you know we're going to receive this for information rather than adopt something that's always appropriate to call a point of order or a point of clarification either of those are really helpful and it's just a way of you know it's some people can say well

that's just a way of getting around the speaker queue and if you use the point of order or the point of clarification rightly then that's not what you're doing you are actually asking a procedural question about something that is happening on the floor and that is always appropriate to do and this can happen by the chair who is giving the clarification to the

recommendation or the reporter or the chair themselves. So yeah, if you're having a hard time understanding anything, it is perfectly within your right as a delegate to call a point of order and ask for clarification. And another thing in tandem with this, if you believe that the president is making a procedural error, it is also within your right as a delegate to call a

point of order or even to issue a challenge to the chair. Like we say, we use specific language for reason and we do try and follow procedure as closely as we can, but we don't always get it right. And the chair is a fallible human being too. And if the chair does get something wrong, it's perfectly fine to say, I'm challenging your ruling at this given point in time. I think you're making a procedural error and we could go about this in a better way

that is better given our process. Now, again, if you do issue a challenge to the chair, That must be supported by another delegate from the floor. And then it is open for discussion and deliberation and it will come to a vote. Yeah. Yeah. And I would say I wouldn't be, I mean, there was some, so it's synod last year. There was some abuse of the point of order point, right?

And people were using it to, to just to get around the speaker queue and to keep delaying an issue after the question had been called already. Actually, we had voted to cease debate actually at that point. And so there were people using point of order in an unhelpful way there. But don't ever, don't feel like, I think last year I did point of clarification a couple of times even just to make sure that we want to know what we're voting on.

Don't ever vote unless you have clarity on why you're voting. There's always lack of clarity when it comes to challenging the chair. Like when you're voting, are you challenging to uphold the chair's ruling? are you voting to uphold the challenge of the chair? There's always a little confusion about that one. And so when it gets kind of confusing like that, don't even hesitate to say, hold on, point of clarification, what does a yes vote mean? Or what does a no vote mean?

Just so we're all clear, so we know what's happening there. That's exactly right. And my next point actually has to do with speaking to a matter, and it also has to do with the speaker queue, And it is this. If you have a strong desire to speak to a matter that is on the floor, make sure you don't wait too long to get into the speaker queue in order to speak to it. I remember a couple of times at Senate 2019 where it's like, oh, I could probably say something about that.

But then somebody had said, well, the question's called, so you can't get in the queue. Well, what does that mean? Or maybe it's all in favor, say aye. And then they vote and it's like, well, there goes my opportunity.

so just be mindful of the list of the speaker queue and if a delegate has called the question um it's again calling the question i think people can see that as weaponizing but it's really just a mechanism that is used to say we believe sufficient deliberation has taken place it's time to come to a vote and move the conversation forward um so that's its use and function at that

point in time. But once that's done, you can't get in the queue to speak. Yeah. And maybe even another thing, if you know that somebody is probably going to bring the discussion to a close by calling the question, just impromptu right away, get in the speaker queue. Um, that way your chance won't be robbed of you. So that's my piece of advice as far as getting into the queue.

Yeah. And I would say again, um, you know, people want to say a lot of things about the different procedures, the procedures are there so that you can't, they're there to help prevent some of the politicking that happens. And so when people talk about weaponizing the call in the question, it's really hard to weaponize that because it's really testing the body is another way you could see. When you call the question, the only way it passes if it's approved by

the majority of the delegates. And so, you know, I just, I would think it's important to recognize If someone gets up to call the question, they're really saying, hey, are we as a body ready to be done having the conversation and to vote? Right. I mean, that's ceasing debate. But calling the questions like we want to put boundaries on this conversation. I think as a body, we're ready to move forward. It's not one person.

No one person can actually take over a synod proceeding if things are done appropriately and in good order. And so calling a question is really an appropriate thing. If you're like, hey, I think we are, I'm hearing some people repeating themselves often on the floor and and people are not speaking to the point or whatever. I think it's really appropriate to say, you know what? I call the question. I want to see where the body, if the body's ready to vote on this and be done.

Yeah, perfectly appropriate to do that. And you're also kind of speaking to the next thing that's on my list. And that is, if people in front of you in the queue are making the point that you are intent to make, it might be best to just remove your name from the queue and let their word be your point. We have to remember that we are at Synod to do the work of the church, and that is done in a timely fashion. I believe Synod 2019 said that on Thursday at 3 o'clock, Synod adjourns.

So there is a sense in which you are there for that specific time, but you're also a steward of that time. And sometimes being a good steward of that time can mean discerning internally, okay, this person in front of me has said everything that I'm going to say. I don't need to reiterate that for the body. The chair has heard them. The body has heard them. I'm going to sit down and remove my name from the queue and allow these deliberations to continue in a timely fashion. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. And that's, uh, yeah, again, um, sometimes we feel like, you know, I just, I have to speak to this issue. You know, it's something I'm really passionate about. And, you know, I've, I've even spoken to some people that I came to synod to speak to this issue. And it's like, well, you don't have to speak to the issue. If someone else gets up and says it, and they've said it better than you for sure, uh, pull your name out. You don't have to say it again. Um, yeah.

my next point is again about speaking in preparation if you have studied a matter at length before it is before synod and you want to speak to it when the time comes it is perfectly acceptable to prepare what you want to say given a written out speech or maybe you have notes and i think it's most winsome to speak to a matter if possible whenever possible with scripture in hand um i think when we try and craft lofty arguments um that's absolutely fine obviously we use our

speech to be persuasive however we want to always be rooted and grounded in the infallible and inerrant word of god and allow the word of god to speak and to carry its designed effect um so yeah it's perfectly appropriate to study a matter before it comes to the floor write some things down because sometimes people have a hard time being concise and you only get three minutes to speak. And I think that's actually a good thing. I remember at Senate 2019, when we were discussing

that motion, whether to have a three minute time clock or not. And we eventually said, you're actually doing a service to the chair by not making them cut you off and say, you've been going on for so long, make your point or your point has been made. Please sit down this way. The chair just gets to say your three minutes is up. And if the chair extends a little grace,

then they're a gracious chair. But I think it's perfectly acceptable to have a speech prepared so that you can present yourself in the best way that you can.

Yeah. And I would just recommend you always, I would say, go up to the mic with your thoughts written down or at least very clearly the points you want to make in your head because even you know someone like me i preach on a weekly basis you know i'm i love to speak i do this regularly i still get up to the mic and i lose my thought before i get up there so i have my points kind of written out at least somewhat vaguely so i can remember when i get up there because you stand up

there you know you've got three minutes and and it's just a good reminder i think too that actually if you can say something well in three minutes, it's way more powerful than, than rambling for five minutes. And so just, there's something in, um, you don't even have to take the full three minutes. You could, you can get up, make your point, step down in one minute. And if you say it well, um, it will actually land harder and better than, than rambling on and on. So yeah, think through

what you want to say, say it. And then I'll double, I'll double emphasize what Willie said about speaking uh god's word from the floor of synod um it's it's actually uh disturbing maybe maybe that's a little strong but that how little scripture is spoken from the the synod floor and i even remember in 2022 um i made a habit of every time when i got up on the floor i would i would bring my bible and i would read a portion of scripture and i was mocked for that um by people

that I was like, oh, who does he think he is bringing God's word up to the mic? And I'm like, actually, I think I'm not that big of a deal, but God's word has the authority here. So I'm going to bring God's word in and speak that. Isn't this the sword of the spirit that we have? And so I encourage people, yeah, yeah, let's make sure we're bringing God's word into the conversation as we're having these debate on the floor and talking about it.

Well, and another thing we have to realize is a defined amount of time technically means that more people can speak to a matter, not less. When we hear the accusation of, oh, well, you're you're squashing conversation, you're silencing voices. Well, that's not true. Let's say let's say 60 people get to speak for one minute apiece and that's an hour of deliberation. you can have 20 people that are going three that are taking their whole three minutes,

you know, in which case are more, more voices being heard. So the time clock is there. I think just as a wise effort to make sure that the proper voices are heard and that conversation can move along. Um, now my next point, my next point has to do with, um, just remembering your abilities and privileges as a delegate. Um, I've never gotten to use this. I've never been a delegate. I've either been a representative or an advisor.

But it's important to remember that any delegate can make a floor motion anytime they wish to. That is something that you have the authority to do. As a delegate, you can make what's called a motion. It means we are asking for action of synod to do a particular thing. Now, the reason a motion from the floor is different than a recommendation from an advisory committee is once a recommendation from an advisory committee comes onto the floor, it is properly before the body.

And it is to be discussed and deliberated and come to a vote. But if you are making a motion from the floor, this is very crucial. You actually have to have a second to your motion before it can be properly debated. As a matter of fact, this just came up. I just got out of the Council of Delegates meetings that happened last week, and there were actually several motions that did not come out of committee.

And the chair would say, I'm moving this, and this is not from committee, so I'm going to actually have to ask for a second here and support and just move it along. That way it can properly be on the floor for deliberation and consideration. It's also important to know if you're bringing a motion to the floor, you have to have it typed out already with your grounds and you have to submit it to synodical services ahead of time.

And there's a whole separate form that you're going to have on the synod webpage. I don't remember exactly what it's called, but they'll teach you that stuff. But there's a separate form if you're going to submit a floor motion so that they can take it, they can put it up on the screen so that everybody can see your motion, can see the grounds for your motion and have understanding on whether that's something they want a second or not.

And it has to be, you know, if you're bringing a floor motion, it has to be substantially different than something, you know, than what's already on the floor or something that's already been turned down or anything like that. You can't just keep bringing things up over and over again just because you've been unhappy that it got voted down. It has to be there has to be some difference to it. And that's that's really important to understand what you're saying, Jason.

The difference between like what is a friendly amendment? What is a regular amendment? What is a substitute motion? These things, again, they're all very technical, but they all matter. Let's say all you're doing is is tweaking a wording that has no substantial difference at all. Well, if it is deemed to be friendly or not in conflict with the motion at hand, the chair and the reporter can just say, yeah, we receive that as a friendly amendment. And then there you go.

The body actually doesn't even have to vote on that. But if there is going to be a substantial difference, then yes, you do have to have that typed out and submitted as an amendment. And then the body actually has to vote on the amendment itself before they can vote on the whole motion. So there are a lot of differences between what is an amendment, what is a friendly amendment, what is a substitute motion. So, yeah, just read the rules for synodical procedure.

And if you can, I understand this is difficult, but have a good portion of it committed to memory. It will be of great help to you, not just if you're a delegate, but especially if you're a chair or a reporter of a committee. That way you understand what your committee or the delegates can and cannot do. Yeah. I'd also want to jump on, you had talked about just the power you have or your ability as a delegate of synod.

you also do as a delegate you have the ability to go to to go and visit and speak to any committee as well um you have to you have to get approval from the chair of the committee you have to go through that route but you have the right to go speak to a committee and especially if a committee is speaking to an overture that's coming out of your classes you have a right of a right of the floor to be able to speak or i forget exactly the word but

You have the ability to come in, speak to that committee, and explain your overture and answer any questions that they're discussing. So you're not simply just locked into your advisory committee. I mean, that's your main work. That's where you're going to vote. But you do have the ability to go speak to other advisory committees as well.

And maybe on that note, Willie, why don't you, this is not in your, what you're going to say, but why don't you help delegates recognize just how the week of synod goes, how it's broke up, how it begins, what the first few days are. all about and then how the last few days are about. Absolutely. The first day that everybody gets there is typically that Thursday. And that day is arrival and technically speaking, orientation.

If you will, you're checking in, you are maybe meeting some people from your advisory committee, you're greeting other delegates, you're getting your room assignments. That's basically Thursday. Maybe you're finding a good Canadian Bible study to do before the week goes into work. But Friday is when Synod technically convenes. And when Synod is convened and constituted, that is when all of the delegates will gather on the floor. Typically, they will have the election of officers at that Synod.

They will also vote to approve the work of the program committee so that the advisory committees actually come into existence at that point. And then you break out into your advisory committees. Synod has, I think it's at minimum six and at maximum nine advisory committees that meet during the week of Synod. And you are assigned to one of those and you go and your committee deliberates about the overtures that are specifically assigned to that particular committee.

And that happens Friday and also Saturday. And sometimes it can even go a little bit longer. But typically speaking, Friday and Saturday are the days where your advisory committees meet. You do your work. You prepare your recommendations to present to the floor of Synod. and then Sunday is the Lord's Day.

So I recommend you take that day off and observe it as the Lord's Day and then you are able to go into Monday into the plenary sessions of Synod on the floor rested and rejuvenated and ready to deliberate. Now, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are when all of the floor deliberations happen. That is when the committees give their representations their reports, their recommendations to Synod, and they leave it to the body to adopt or maybe

to amend, to deliberate on these matters out of the committees. So that's basically what Synod looks like. And Synod 2019 did declare that Thursday at three o'clock, no matter what, Synod adjourns. So that's what your week of Synod looks like. Yeah. And I just think it's really helpful for especially new delegates to understand that Synod's kind of basically broke up into two sections. Section, you know, or part two parts, maybe part one is advisory committee work.

Part two is plenary sessions on the floor. And so we spend a lot of time talking about floor motions and speaking from the floor and challenging the chair and point of order and point of clarification. That's all stuff during plenary session. Now, some of that does get brought into committee work as well. You can do all of those things in committee work as well. It's just on a smaller level and advisory committees are often a little less formal.

Although if things start to get out of control in an advisory committee, the chair usually will bring in Robert's rules of order to get it under control and say, all right, now you have to speak to the chair, whatever. But advisory committee time, you're in a smaller group. You're talking about your overtures.

Usually, depending on what committee you're on, you're hearing presentations from different organizations connected with your advisory committee or from the seminary or from the college or university, I guess, and those kind of things. But that's part one. And so that's a little less intense, I would say. Well, it depends on which advisory committee you're on. But it's not so rigorous and structured as the plenary sessions.

It's a little more loosey-goosey having a conversation and deliberating there.

that's right and we are speaking to how synod typically functions but i will go ahead and say last year we had multiple committees come out with what are called majority and minority reports now this is important because if you find yourself on a committee that ends up not being able to come to consensus on a matter, what happens is a vote will be taken about a particular overture or set of overtures, and the number of hands will go up in favor of, and the number of

hands will go up in opposition to. Then the chair says to the losing portion, will you be writing a minority report as a response to these overtures? And the delegates have a right to do that. And when that happens, it is at that point that both the majority and minority report committees break apart. They do their work. They compose each of their reports. And then they come back together one more time. They read their reports in their entirety to each other.

And then delegates can finally assent to whichever report they are most comfortable with. So that's what happened. I mean, and this happens at more centers than just 2023, but that is what happened last year, Jason, in both your committee and my committee. And I think that's good for delegates to know.

Yeah. And it's good to know too, you have this right. Um, you know, so if you're, if your advisory committee is going a direction you don't want it to go or that you disagree with your options are, you can just vote against it and leave it at that. Um, or you can vote against it and register a negative vote. And so the difference between voting against and registering a negative vote, if you register a negative vote, then you can speak against it on the floor of synod.

So if you just vote against a portion of your advisory committee, then you're not supposed to speak against that motion on the floor of synod during plenary session. So you could just vote no, register a negative vote, and then speak against it without having a minority report. Or the other option is you can write a minority report. And sometimes we've had those in synods past where it was two people from a committee decided to write a minority report.

Sometimes it's a third of the committee, you know, something, you know, a little bit more substantial. But but you have all of those kind of options moving forward. Yep. And my ninth point is whether you are on the winning or losing side of a particular vote. And this could be in committee or on the floor. always remember to conduct yourself in a way that best represents your Lord, Jesus Christ.

When you go to synod, you have to remember you are made in the image of God, and you have been adopted as a child of God. And because that is true, you are to be bearing good fruit and to be manifesting the fruit of the Spirit, even in a committee room that is not 100% the size you want, and you're sitting with people you disagree with, that doesn't give you the right to let the sun go down on your anger and to stew in it.

But always be respectful to the other delegates in the room, even and especially those whom you disagree with. And remember that your conduct is to best represent Jesus Christ in not only your words, but also your deeds. Yeah, amen. And that means both publicly in advisory committee and outside of advisory committee, right? And both publicly on the synod floor and outside of the synod floor. All of those things are really important. We are Christians, not 99% of the time, but 100% of the time.

And called to follow Christ and to walk in step with the spirit. And, you know, the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Can you imagine how helpful those things are, each one of those, when you get 180-something people deliberating on important matters of the church? That's super significant that we all rest in Christ, seek to live out the fruit of the Spirit.

And when we don't, then we do what Christians do when they don't. They seek forgiveness and they repent and they change their ways. And finally, this is something that has taken me years to comprehend. But we also need to be remembering that Synod is a body of delegates or representatives and advisors who are meeting to do the work of the churches in the CRCNA. Even though these meetings might seem mundane, ordinary, boring, if you will, this is part of our worship to God.

And this is how he has called us to serve his church. He has equipped leaders to serve in capacities such as these. He has given us the duty and responsibility to make decisions that are according to the word of God and of benefit to the church. And that is worship. I think sometimes we parametricize worship to the music, the singing, and those things are a part of worship, but they don't constitute worship in and of themselves. The deliberation process of synod is worship.

The congregational prayer in your churches is worship. The sermon you hear on a Lord's Day is worship. And we would do well to remember these things, that when synod meets and synod deliberates, when synod argues, when synod comes to resolution, that is worship. And that is offering yourself as a sacrifice of the Lord that is pleasing and holy in his sight. Amen. And I would say, you know, we're in a denomination that has been known over the years to emphasize that all of life is worship, right?

And if we believe that you can worship God while working on a factory line in a factory, you definitely can also worship God when you're literally doing the work of the church. It is worshipful to be deciding and voting on budgets because those budgets represent ministry and lives and the gospel going forward. It's worshipful to be making determinations, decisions about doctrine because, well, what is doctrine but our understanding of the God whom we worship?

That's worshipful to make those kind of declarations. It's even worshipful to do discipline in the church because we're restoring. The goal of discipline is to restore airing office bearers or airing people, airing Christians back into fellowship with their Lord Jesus Christ, which is worshipful. Because when one sinner repents, what happens? All of heaven breaks out in worship to God.

And so every act that we do, even the really hard things that we do at Synod, are easily tied back into worship. And Willie's right. It's really easy to forget that because it gets exhausting sometimes and can get tense and heated. but it's a good reminder that everything we're doing there is worship to our God.

And remembering that when we are at Synod, or whether we are working in a factory, you're a doctor in a hospital, you're a preacher preparing a sermon, you're an author writing a book, you are carrying out your chief purpose, and that is to give glory and honor to your God and to fully enjoy him forever. We always ask the question, you know, what is the purpose of life? And the Westminster Catechism, I don't think falls short at answering that question.

It is to glorify God in the way that you live, no matter what you do. So while you're a delegate at Synod, while you're an advisor, a representative, how are you glorifying God by what you're doing at Synod? That's the question you should be asking yourself. So, Jason, we've heard what I have to say on the synodical matters, but you've got some experience yourself. So what are some things that you would say to those who are first time delegates to Synod?

Yeah, well, I would echo much of what you said in the last episode. Obviously, we agreed on pretty much everything you said. And so a lot of what I'm going to say here will be just in addition to that. Or maybe maybe I'll reiterate a few things. I would say the first piece of advice I'd want to give any delegate going to Synod is to immerse yourself in the work of Synod. You're there for one week. You've got one job to do. It's a big job.

I just want to encourage you to focus on that job and that work as much as possible. It's really easy to get distracted by outside things, life going on, other things going on. But I just encourage you, set things up as much as you can so that when you go to Synod, you can have all of your energy and all of your focus on the work of Synod that week. not trying to answer emails back home, not trying to kick out work stuff during synod, but focus on that.

And I was thinking one of the podcasts I listen to regularly is The Deep Life with Cal Newport. Not a Christian, but he's a productivity guy. And he talks about when he goes to write a book, he enters into monk mode. And he goes away to a cabin out in the woods and shuts off all of his devices and shuts off all of his notifications so he can focus on the one task in front of him. And I was thinking that that's a good way to think of synod.

Even, you know, Willie and I have ran a whole bunch of youth retreats over the years. And when we run a youth retreat and we really want kids to focus on what we're talking about, we take away their phones. We just want them to be immersed in the retreat itself. And that's not even just the teachings of the retreat, but also the relationships that are built there.

And so, yeah, I just encourage you, immerse yourself in that work, focus on connecting with people, having really good conversations, and then doing the work that you're there to do at Synod. Mm hmm. I think that's really good. It's good for people to understand that while you come to synod, it's good to be present at synod and for synod, because ultimately your classes is entrusting you. They're saying, okay, we are sending you to Synod as our delegate to deliberate on behalf of us.

So it's good, not just for yourself, but also for those in your area churches, for you to be doing the good work and concentrating on what Synod is doing as well. Yeah. Yeah. And my next point is, is really, uh, uh, I would say just a reaffirmation of what you said in the last episode, but I want to make sure that we hit this point and then maybe a little tweak to it. Uh, but it's enjoy Sunday as a day of rest. Um, and don't, don't feel the need to work on

Sunday just because you're at synod. And I know there's always kind of a push to try to put some more synod sessions and stuff on Sunday, but as much as you can, make Sunday a day of rest. And there's kind of been a pretty typical process the last few years of synod where a group of delegates kind of get together and they say, what church are we going to on Sunday morning? You're usually kind of free on Sunday morning to go to a church. And so you kind of go together,

you worship all together at a church together. And then even typically a bunch of us have gotten together at someone's house or at the pastor's house and had lunch and just hung out and ate together, talked together, and not even about synod stuff, just about life and ministry. And just, so I just said, immerse yourself in the work of synod, but also on Sunday, you're going to need a day to just rest and hang out and get to know people. And so

take the day. And I just remember, I think I'd mentioned this on one of the podcasts a while ago, But one of the delegates I talked to after Synod last year said, you know, at Synod, I finally found the brotherhood I was looking for in the Christian Reformed Church. And so just a reminder that there's this powerful work to get done at Synod. But also there's an opportunity to just rest and connect and just do life with some other people there.

And Sunday is a really good time to do that Sunday morning during worship. But then Sunday afternoon before any of the work is done, you've got a break and you can just kind of hang out and talk. We would do well to continue to recognize Sunday, the Lord's Day, as the Christian Sabbath. Um, I think we would also do very well to recognize that as we rest, we are to meditate and to be preparing for the week that is in front of us.

And it's good to have people around you to say, these are the things that you can be praying for as we enter into our deliberations. But for this time, we rest, we relax, we maybe share a fellowship meal together. We're going to worship in the morning, sometimes even in the evening.

and all of that is entering a little bit into the rest that we are to fully receive in christ in the new heavens in the new earth so i think a good robust theology of the sabbath is good even for the synod worship on sunday amen and i would say and this maybe is going to get me into more some controversial water but we would do better at synod to take all of sunday off from the work of synod and then take all of the little worship services out throughout the week.

And so this is coming from two guys who've been complaining about not getting the work done at Synod for a long time and saying, but we still need to rest and we should rest on the day God told us to rest, which is Sunday. And so I would love to see most of Sunday just completely not Synod focused, be a day of rest and worship and fellowship and communion with our God and then get into the week and then just get down to the work Monday through Thursday.

and maybe i would get in trouble for saying this but i remember in synod 22 they actually had some work for us to do at synod and again whether this gets me in trouble or not i opted out of those proceedings um because yes we do go to synod to do the work of the churches but the lord's day is the lord's day and um i would do i think we would do well to understand that

The Lord's day means you are to rest and honor God most in what you're doing rather than honoring those who've given you a schedule for that day. Amen. Yeah. And I, I've taken a hard line on this for over the years too. I mean, you worked for me when I ran my doc business and you know that we would refused even on a really hard year where we knew we weren't going to get all of the work done before deadlines. we would not work on Sundays and God always blessed it. And guess what?

Actually, the times we said, we know we can't get all the work done in time. We took the Sabbath off and then we got back and I met amazingly all the work got done on time still. Amen. Yeah. My next point is, uh, you know, some people would maybe say it's not spiritual, but that's drives me nuts that people wouldn't see this as spiritual, but I would, I say, take care of yourself. This isn't a self-centered thing,

but take care of yourself like holistically. I'm talking body, mind, and soul throughout the week. Because if you are going to immerse yourself in the week, like I was encouraging you, it takes a lot out of you, body, mind, and soul. You get tired. Your soul feels like it can be dried up. Your mind can even get fuzzy. And so be very intentional about trying to take care of

yourself. And so some of the just real practical things I would recommend to all delegates, eat well throughout the week, just because you have a buffet line and you can pile as much food on your plate as you want. Don't do that. Eat about like you normally would throughout the week, because otherwise you get all this food in your belly and you feel kind of bloated and yucky and you just don't feel good and it doesn't help you do the work. So eat well, or at least as normally

as you would try to get as much sleep as you can. You know, even, you know, last year I was chairing a committee that was working till like 11 o'clock at night and it was tempting for me to go back and try to work for another two hours. And I wouldn't, I knew, I was like, I know I need to number hours of sleep at night in order for my brain and my body and my mind and my soul to function. And so I would go back and I would just go to bed. And so, um, yeah, get as much sleep as

you can. And there's times, there are times, there's always times to be where you have to stay up late and lose a few hours of sleep because there's work to be done or there's conversations that need to be had, but, but as best as you can, um, try to get sleep as much as you can. I also encourage people try to do some form of exercise, especially if that's part of what you normally do. So I, the last two years of Synod, I've gotten up and gone for a couple mile run.

If you leave the dorms and you run the whole perimeter of Calvin University and you run around the seminary and back, it's about two miles if you run the whole perimeter. So I would do that loop in the morning and I would get up early to be able to do that loop because I know that just getting that exercise in would get my mind clear and would help

kind of prepare me for the day. If you're not a runner, go for a walk. Um, and besides the physical things, read your Bible, like don't neglect daily devotions, um, while you're at synod, even though you're busy and you're in all of this work, read your Bible. Uh, just to kind of reset on who God is and what he's done and what he's called us to do.

And, uh, and then pray a lot. Uh, that's one of the other things, um, I've said multiple times that, you know, especially last year, chairing an advisory committee, um, I found myself praying. I really did feel like I was close to praying continually that I was just constantly like, Lord, help, help me understand this. Help me know what to do. Help me know how to lead, Help me know how to do this. And so pray in the mornings, but just pray throughout the day.

I had people in my advisory committee when we were getting to a spot where we felt like we were being stuck. They would say like, hey, can we just stop and pray for a moment? Like, yes, of course. So we would stop. We would pray. Like, don't be afraid to do that in your committee. And so like, take care of yourself. And some of the reasons being here, here's one of the, just the reasons behind this.

You know, you're eating, sleeping, and exercising. They have an impact on literally everything you do, right? And your spiritual health, your soul, your body, your mind, they're all connected, right? And so if you're not taking care of yourself, you're not going to be able to do your work effectively.

And just one of the real practical things is if you're not taking care of yourself by the time it gets to Wednesday or Thursday, you will be so tired and you won't be functioning properly and you won't be able to do the work that God has called you to do. And I really think that that's part of what happened last year was that why emotions were so raw come Thursday and Wednesday night is because people were tired and worn down. And Willie and I have seen this over the years.

We've been in youth ministry long enough to know that the last night of every retreat is always known as cry night. Is it because the Holy Spirit is scheduled to show up on the last night of a retreat? No, it's because everybody's tired and haven't been getting enough sleep and they're worn down and their emotions are kind of raw and they cry more easily because of it.

And so I think Wednesday night of synod has seemed to be cry night in a lot of ways because people are worn down, tired, emotional, and exhausted. And so I just encourage people, the more you can take care of yourself physically, spiritually, emotionally, the more effective you'll be able to do your work and you'll be able to last all the way to the end of synod.

And as fun as it is to spend time and fellowship with people that you love after hours, after deliberation has happened to wind down, don't go out every night during synod. You will regret it. Time will be very fruitful if you also spend time doing and exercising the disciplines that Jason has just told us about. And it is a wonderful thing to spend time with and around those whom you've met, who you've come to love and work with and build up this brother or sisterhood with.

But at the end of the day, you will be more functional if you study yourself well, and then you actually carry that study through into action, and you do the things that Jason's been describing. Yeah, me, man. Yeah, the next thing I want to say is a reminder that the Holy Spirit's at work and leading you while you prepare for synod, not just at synod.

and uh and the reason being i say that i mean we talk about this especially pastors talk about this a lot that we know you know there's some pastors who want to be like well i'm just gonna i don't prepare my sermon i just get up in front of everybody and i'm led by the spirit when i when i preach and i just kind of say whatever comes to my mind and and most pastors kind of say no no no the holy spirit has been leading me in my preparations for the sermon too as i studied

the Spirit-inspired Word of God, He was leading me, helping me to understand it, helping me to apply it. As I prayed over this to figure out how to apply this and preach this to my congregation, the Spirit was leading me in that preparation. As I wrote the words down for my manuscript or for my outline, the Spirit was leading me as I was doing that. And then as I preached it, the Spirit was leading me as I preached it.

And yet, when we get to Synod, Some people seem to have this kind of weird idea that you shouldn't come to synod with any preconceived ideas or notions that you should be like a pastor that gets up on a Sunday morning to speak without any preparation because we're being led by the Spirit at synod. Well, that's ridiculous. That's not how the Spirit works. The Spirit works as you're reading the agenda for synod. And the Spirit works in you as you're going through the overtures of your committee.

The Spirit's working in you as you're having conversations with other believers, trying to figure out how to understand these overtures and how to do that. And so the Spirit doesn't only work when synod is in session. The Spirit's been working, well, forever, literally. The Spirit's been working forever. Yes, He has. And He continues to work. And so just know that the Spirit's working in all of that. And that just reminds you, put in the time to prepare for Synod.

Don't just show up and hope, well, the Spirit's going to lead me at Synod. No, you need to put in the work of studying your overtures, studying all the different things. Know both sides of the issue that are going on at Synod. Understand the different arguments that are being made because the Spirit is working in you in that moment.

And, you know, just on that note, too, I would say if you're on really, you know, there's people may get frustrated about this, but we all know it's true that there's different levels of significance of advisory committees at Senate. There are some that are not that they don't have that big of like really significant issues before them. And there's some other ones that are really big and and and yeah, just they're significant.

They have a lot of work. And if you're on one of those really significant committees.

um spend i would just encourage you spend the vast majority of your time preparing for that committee work and that's not in that's not going to take away from what willie said where he said read the whole agenda like read even the boring stuff yes do all of that but if you're on a significant committee spend the vast majority of your time getting to understand all of the nuance and the detail of what the issues are in that committee, because that's where your primary,

yeah, your primary influence on synod is in your advisory committee. And just trust the Holy Spirit's working in you and through you as you're doing that preparation. And just one other thing, or go ahead, Willie. Well, I was just going to say amen to that, and I wholeheartedly agree with that. Last year, I was put on the Human Sexuality Committee, Committee 7. I still read the report coming out of the Finance Committee, but guess which committee I spent the most time reading

about? Mine. Because for goodness sake, that was the one where I was going to be spending the most time in deliberating over the matters related to those overtures in my committee. It is most impactful if I am the most prepared to deal with that. And to the point that you're speaking of about the Spirit's operation leading up to Synod, I would also amen that, and I would say, let's flip it, and let's live as the person who says the Spirit is only working at Synod in that given moment in truth.

If you push that to its most logical conclusion, I would say, do you make plans for anything at all? Or do you just live in the moment in time, and you just let, quote, the Spirit lead you, quote, however he wills in that given moment in time. I think anybody who is a pastor, even anybody who's like a factory worker knows you need to have a work plan before you take a task under because Jesus calls you to do that.

A king counts his cost before doing this or that, which means he's making plans, he's making preparations, and the spirit leads in that, and we need to trust that. Yeah, and one of my favorite passages, hopefully this doesn't get me in trouble either because I've never heard anybody else refer to this passage, but it's been one of my guiding principles for understanding the leading of the Holy Spirit. And it's in Acts 16, it's verses 6 through 10.

And most people are going to know this passage because the heading is the Macedonian call. But listen to the way Paul and his associates followed the leading of the Spirit. They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. And when they had come to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. So passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night.

A man of Macedonia was standing there urging him and saying, come over to Macedonia and help us. And when Paul had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. But here's the picture I have. Paul and his crew, they had made plans to go some places. And their plan was to go to Asia to speak the word there. But guess what? The Spirit said, nope, you're not going to go there.

And so then they made plans and they were going to go somewhere else. But nope, when they got to Mysia, they went to Bithynia and the Spirit said, nope, You're not going to Bithynia either. And then they get to Troas and all of a sudden God gives them a vision that says, here's where I want you to go. And so the spirit leads in the planning and the spirit sometimes will close the door in front of you and say, nope, this is not the way you're going to go.

And it's like, okay, the spirit saying, no, wrong plan. Go, go. And so you make another plan. You go a different direction. Sometimes the spirit says, go here, go to Macedonia. And so it's a lot more nuanced than most people think is really the idea that spirit's not always going to like speak clearly to you and say, go do such a thing. And so it's the same as when you go to synod, show up at synod, like make plans, understand issues, figure out what you believe, how you understand these issues.

And when you get to synod, be willing to adapt by the leading of the spirit. I think the spirit's still at work at synod, kind of helping you understand, helping you find clarity. And, you know, don't try to go where the spirit's preventing you from going. That's a bad idea, right? And if the spirit tells you, go do that, right? And so it's more nuanced than that, for sure. And just be trusting in your heavenly father who was making plans before the foundation of the world.

Amen. Amen. I want to give some advice on just advisory committee work in particular. And I feel like I have a little more insight into this now having chaired an advisory committee. So this isn't even advice for chairs of advisory committees. If you want some advice on chairing a committee, you can call me and we can talk. I'm not going to say I'm an expert, but I've done it before, so I've learned a few things. But this is more advice for everyone just serving on an advisory committee.

And I already mentioned this, but I just want to make sure that I say it again, that your advisory committee work is the highest level impact that you're going to have at Synod. Because of the work that comes out of committee goes to the floor. And for the vast majority, that sets the tone for the conversation. A lot of the times that's what's approved and moves forward.

And so there's a little bit that can be done from the floor, but really the majority of the work coming out of advisory committee sets the tone for everything. So that's your highest level of impact. So really pour into that. I wouldn't even worry so much, especially if you're on a significant advisory committee, like one of the big ones this year that's talking about gravamen or discipline or disaffiliation, all those.

If you're on one of those, I wouldn't even worry so much about how to speak on the floor of synod or whatever. I would just worry about how to do my work well in an advisory committee. Now, if you're not on a significant committee, if you're on finance, I know finance, finance has some big stuff actually coming up this year about pensions and stuff like that. But, you know, there's some other ones that don't have as much going on. You know, still, you need to do your work well.

This is the work that you've been given to do. Make sure you do it well. Don't rush through it because thinking, oh, this isn't important. No, it's still important. But then I actually have encouraged people to focus on networking with other delegates. And then maybe your role is to speak from the floor to some of these big, significant issues. And in 2022, I was on education and candidacy, which is not insignificant. We're reviewing reports from the seminary and the university. We approve.

We interview professors for the seminary. We had one overture in that committee. And so I wouldn't call it insignificant, but there wasn't a ton of work to be done. We actually got our work done early. And so I thought, okay, my role is to help do this work well, but then my role is to network with other people, get to know them, and then speak from the floor on certain matters. Now, last year, my role was advisory committee chair. So guess what?

I had a very narrow focus on what my job was last year to do the work of that advisory committee. Well, I said I wasn't ever going to speak from the floor. I ended up speaking, I think only twice from the floor, but that was my role. So kind of know your role, but your advisory committee is really important. And when you're in your advisory committee, speak clearly about what you're trying

to say. I would encourage you, like Willie talked about speaking from the floor of Senate, like having notes and knowing what you want to say, do the same in your advisory committee, making sure that you're speaking clearly and well to your issues, know what you're talking about. Like know the topic.

So if you're going into this synod and you're on the Gravaman study committee, you should know every in and out and forward and backward aspect of Gravaman so that you can speak clearly and well in your committee and you can have a good, helpful conversation about those things. But also, not only listen well and speak clearly, but I just said it, I want you to listen well.

It is really important that you're going to be in a group of people, most likely, where there's people who are disagreeing with you or where you think things need to go. And it's really important for you to listen well.

For one, it shows respect to the other person. But also, if you're listening well, you actually are able to now engage and debate properly with the actual concerns that they have. And so a big part of actually being helpful in an advisory committee is actually listening well to what other people are saying and then bringing a response that actually speaks to what they were saying. And then, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say, absolutely.

And the best thing you can understand is that a recommendation given from an advisory committee to synod carries a lot of weight. And something else I'm going to say that also speaks to what you're saying is try and come to as much of a consensus about as much of your committee work as you possibly can. Yeah. I say that as somebody who was in a committee last year who had a very large united report and we're very proud of that. But then on a few issues, we had to go the way of majority minority.

But most of the work that we ended up getting done was a united report. And it is always stronger to be able to say, hey, on the floor, we as a committee, no matter what side you were on, we are united on the recommendation that's on the floor right now. And you should be thinking about that when you're speaking to it. Yeah. Even our committee too. If you look back at all of the stuff regarding Neyland, we were united on that. There was no division on that.

And, and even the Gravaman stuff, if you, we put a note in there just so people recognize that out of the, you know, there was only like two or three recommendations from the minority report that the, or from the majority, there were only two or three items from the majority report that the minority report disagreed on. So even, I mean, 90% of the work that came out

of our committee, we actually had full agreement on. And so, yeah, that's really important. And yet, I also want to say this in your advisory committee, work toward agreement, but don't be afraid to disagree with people either. And don't be afraid to say, I hear what you're saying, but here's why I disagree with that. Because, you know, don't be a jerk in it. You know, disagree agreeably is kind of the cliche way to say it.

But actually having disagreement and debate in an advisory committee is the reason why you're there, is to hash through those things. It's actually a good thing. And I had to remind my committee that multiple times last year, there would be debate and disagreement. You could feel people starting to get really tense about it. And I would have to stop and say, guys, this is good. This is why we're here. We're here to disagree and try to hash through these things and try to figure it out.

And one of the things I told my advisory committee multiple times last year is, like the more we hash this stuff out in advisory committee, the more we kind of wrestle with it and argue about it and debate on it, it's going to be cleaned up more. It's going to be refined more. It's going to come to the floor in a better fashion. And then it's going to actually save Synod a lot more work. And so there's always going to be things that get rehashed from a committee on the synod floor.

Like that's just going to happen. But the more you do in committee, the better work you do in committee, the smoother things go on the synod floor every single time. So, yeah. So don't be afraid to disagree. That's why you're there. Just don't be a jerk when you do it. Always a good rule of thumb to not be a jerk. That's true.

At one point I'm going to make, and I'm going to make it briefly, but Willie kind of pointed to this in his episode, but know the rules of synodical procedure and know church order. And I would say, you know, church order is big. And so it's hard to know it all. And the rules of synodical procedure are not huge, but there's like four or five pages, I think, maybe 10. I don't remember, but know them, especially as they relate to your role in your advisory committee.

And so knowing like, what can I do as a delegate at synod? Like what authority, you know, Willie talked about that in his like, what can I do? What can I not do? If you're a chair of a committee, know like what your role is as a chair. If you're a reporter, know that role. And just know them generally well, because there's a lot of authority and power in just knowing the rules. And so some people may say like, oh, no, you can't do that.

And if you don't know the rules well enough, you're not able to say, yes, I can. And so I had that last year with something. I was like, I'm pretty sure I can do this. And somebody was like, you can't do that. And I couldn't find the rule quick enough. And so I was like, all right, we're just not going to argue it. We'll just move on. And then I looked up later that I was right.

but I didn't know it well enough to be able to say no right here it says I can do what I wanted to do and so know them well and then just one little hack on this you can download the rules of procedure and the church order you can have them on your computer and there's a really handy feature in pdf documents that you can do word searches and so have them both have both of them download it on your computer and use word searches to your advantage. Because if you're like,

where does it talk about gravamen in the church order? Gravamen, click it, it'll help you see all of that. Where does it talk about discipline in the church order? You can find it. Where does it talk about making a floor motion in the rules of synodical procedure? Type it in, find it. What's the rules for ceasing debate? You type it in, it pulls it up. So word search is your friend at synod, especially in trying to figure out rules of synodical procedure and church order.

Yeah, that's really helpful. And I'll just speak from some of my experience too. Sometimes it's pretty intimidating when you want to make an objection to something because you might know that I'm in the minority here as far as what I think the correct procedure is. But I'm going to go ahead and say, if you know your procedure, then just rest in the knowledge that is in front of you. And you can even have it at the ready to say, actually, this is what it

says, page and paragraph and section. So here's the better way to go about this. It's perfectly fine to do that. Yeah. And there's always going to be a few people you pick up quickly who know the church order and know rules of synodical procedure well. Don't be afraid to run stuff by them and say, hey, is this good or not? Can I do this or not? One other just technical thing for being a delegate, especially during the plenary sessions. And so everything's really

technologically focused right now. And so getting in the speaking queue is done through a browser tab. Voting is done through a browser tab. Submitting amendments and floor motions is done through another tab on your, you know, it's all stuff you do through a website when you're there. And so one of the things I tell people just as a delegate during plenaries, use browser tabs generously. So this is just a real practical thing.

Have the voting tab open, have the speaker queue open on a different tab, have the floor motion and amendment one open on a different, have them all open so that you can access them quickly because the internet is terrible and the network, hopefully they have the network updated by this next one. So have that stuff open, have whatever advisory committee is reporting at that point, have that pulled up on a tab so you can be following right along in the report

with what you have happening. I always have the church order and the rules of synodical procedure pulled up, not in a tab, but in a different file with a PDF so I can be searching to make sure I what those are. So just have all these different things open and ready and at your fingertips during the plenary sessions, because that just helps you. If you're like, oh, I want to get in the queue. You already have it open. You can hit the button and it puts you in the queue. It's super

quick. If you want to pull yourself out of the queue, it's open. You pull yourself out of the queue. When voting happens, it's already loaded. You hit the button and you vote. And it works really smoothly that way and it helps take out a lot of the issues that we've experienced.

Another just technical thing, everybody, every delegate at Synod is assigned, you know, their own Gmail, their own Google username that, you know, it gets taken away after Synod, but during Synod leading up to it, that's where you communicate. One of the things that people don't always recognize is that you have access to every Synod delegate. I think even advisors are all on there as well.

So you can go into there, you can just start typing someone's name and their email, their synod email will pop up and you can email them if you have a question for any of the advisors, any other delegates. So it's a really easy way to communicate well and widely with people there. And then because of that, check your synod email a lot.

I would encourage you not to check your other emails a lot because I want you to focus on your synod work, but check your synod email a lot because that's one of the easiest ways for people to communicate at synod. And if you're not checking it often, you're going to miss some stuff. And so just kind of keep, maybe even keep that open in a tab and just kind of keep an eye on it because you might have people reaching out to you.

And then just another thing, I don't, this is going to depend on every different advisory committee. But if your chair and the reporter are up for it, it'd be good to get their cell phone for that purpose. Because the email is hard to get a hold of people, but there were times where people on my advisory committee needed to get a hold of me for something and we missed each other.

Because I hadn't given out my cell phone number and I would have been fine with them knowing my number and texting me or whatever. But it's really important, at least for the chair and the reporter, for you to be able to reach them quickly, to be able to have conversations. Again, especially on some of these really significant ones that our committee met all the way over into Monday morning.

And then even after Monday morning, there was a lot of back and forth between our committee as we were cleaning up reports and stuff like that. And my piece of advice, you talked about even the voting tab on there. Let's say that you are voting electronically, which does happen at Synod. You are asked to go into the voting queue and then vote yes or no or abstain. And let's say you accidentally click no when you meant yes. It is okay if you immediately go and click yes.

And the reason why that's okay is because it will only record your last vote. So let's say you said, oh, shoot, I clicked the wrong one. Or, oh, I'm not sure I made the right decision and the vote tally is not in yet. You can always switch your vote and it will update that and record your last vote. Yeah, that's a really good point. That's helpful to know. We talked quite a bit with you about speaking from the floor, so I'm not going to reiterate all of that.

I mean, I'll maybe just quickly say, you know, get to the point and sit down. That's the whole goal of speaking from the floor. If you can say it in a minute, say it in a minute. If you can say it in two minutes, say it in two minutes. You don't have to use it all.

one of the things though that I have been wanting to say a lot is as you're speaking from the floor now according to the rules of synodical procedure when you speak from the floor you are to address the chair you're not to address the body so you get up and you say Mr. Chair and usually you have to start off and say I speak in favor of this motion or I speak against this motion and then you go on and give your reasoning for that that's how it's supposed to be

done. However, I just want to tell people as you're speaking to the chair and as you're speaking in favor of emotion or against emotion, I really want everybody to be thinking about the elders and the deacons in the room. And as you're speaking, pretend almost in your mind, like you're speaking to the elders and deacons in your church. Like if I was going to explain this to them and make this

argument with them, how would I say this to them so that they would understand it? And it's not, you know, some people have heard me say this and they think I'm like trying to say that like elders and deacons are not as smart as pastors. And that's not the point at all. Actually, the point is I think most pastors show up at synod and they already have their minds made up about all of these things because we've kind of lived in this world for a long time, especially people like me

that are kind of synod nerds. So I already kind of know what's going on, but our elders and deacons are coming in and they're trying to get their heads wrapped around some of these things because they have a life outside of synod and church. And so help them understand by speaking to them and not speaking kind of over their heads. I just think that's a really, really important thing. I would absolutely agree with that. It's also important when you get up to, as you said,

state very clearly, you speak in favor of or you speak against. It's also necessary for the president to recognize you by naming your name and classes where you hail from. So William Cronky, Classes Lake Superior, and they even do this at the Council of Delegates too. And they do that just for procedural reasons, but also for those who are maybe visually impaired. They do it for those services as well. So it's good to note who you are and where you're from. Yeah. And on that note,

don't try to crack a joke when the chair pronounces your last name wrong. I tried to do that 2022 Jose Reyes called me Jason Ruiz and I thought it was funny. And so I made a joke and nobody got it. I got a lot of groans and then, yeah. So cracking jokes is not always the best thing to do from the floor. Not everybody gets it. Not always the point. I want to say to just, we talked about this and I want to hit it briefly again.

Willie mentioned it, but the importance of using God's word when you speak from the floor. And I would say definitely use it. I made in 2022, I made it a habit. Every time I got up and spoke, I either spoke, read from God's word or read from one of our confessions, one or the other, just to remind us of who we are. But the, so you do that, but I also made the mistake in 2022 of reading too much. And so I tried to read like five or six verses from Hebrews 12 and I ran out of time in the

middle of a verse and it was just bad and it wasn't helpful. I read way too much. I could have read one or two of those verses and it would have got the point across just as well. And so, um, so read it, but read, read one or two verses or read one portion from one of our confessions, make it short and to the point, um, in order to get your, get your point across. And, uh, one of my last points and Willie talked about this a little bit, but I do want to double down on it

again, is take control of the meeting as delegates. And so if you think the officers are doing something wrong, you should say something. And so last year, there were a lot of concerns about how the clock was being used and how the officers were allowing for the clock. And there were numerous to, there were numerous pleas to reinstitute the three minute clock. And, uh, and even as we did in 2022, we had a period of time where we shortened the clock down to two minutes rather than three

minutes. And so people made those pleas. Um, and they were, they, the officers didn't do those things. And so I would say step one is to always go speak to the officers with your concerns privately first, go up and speak to them and, and plead with them to, to make some changes.

but if they don't delegates have the right delegates are the ones who are in control of this meeting and the delegates can stand up and make a floor motion to make those changes and if the body agrees with you they will vote and they will overrule the chair and the officers that's important to remember that the delegates are the ones you're not just stuck with a team of officers who are running away with a meeting

in a direction you don't want it to go. If the body wants to take control of it, they can. And so don't be afraid to do that. Call point of order. If you think the chair is doing something that's out of order, I think last year that would have been really helpful. I think last year, a really good point of order could have been a point of order, Mr. Chair. There seems to be many people who are not speaking to the point and are not saying anything new. Could you please remind

the delegates of their responsibilities at the microphone. That's a point of order because it's a point of order that you have to speak to the motion at hand and not say something new. Those are all points of order. And that would have been a good reminder. Now you maybe would have been groaned out and moaned at, but that's something you can do. If the chair, you know, if the chair makes a ruling you disagree with, you can say, you know, so sometimes a chair will say, I rule that

motion out of order. You can challenge the chair, which is not a personal thing, but it's just saying, I think you're wrong in that ruling. And I want the body to make a determination if my motion was out of order or not. So just, yeah, I want the delegates to be reminded that you take charge of the meeting and are not stuck with officers who are running away with a meeting in a

direction you don't want it to go. Yeah, that's really helpful to note. And I would say even last year it would have been helpful to have a point of order can you please instruct people to not abuse the point of order yeah yeah that got out of control at one point it was uh and one one delegate in particular and everybody i mean you can go watch the live stream and know who it is so it is but it was it was a complete misuse of the point of order and it was uh like no i just don't

want synod to keep going. It was just trying to prevent a synod from moving forward. And so, yeah, again, delegates need to take charge of the meeting and make sure that we're, that, uh, that the officers aren't running away from him. And really the final one is, uh, my final recommendation is the recommendation that I think I've given before every, or at least the last few synods is I've given kind of my fair final address is, uh, go to synod as a joyful

warrior. I've said, you know, R.C. Sproul was, I don't know if he even described himself this way or others described him of it, but I remember reading his biography. He was described as a joyful warrior. And, you know, I just have the picture, the best picture of R.C. Sproul as a joyful warrior is in his iconic clip. We used it in preparation for the Messy Reformation Conference. All in one breath, he looks out at the crowd and says, what's wrong with you people? And he's serious.

And they all kind of laugh. And he's like, no, I'm serious. What's wrong with you people? And then like five seconds later, he has a big smile and a twinkle in his eyes. He goes, I just thought I'd like to spice things up here a little bit. That's what we're talking about, about being a joyful warrior. being willing to fight and fight well at synod. And I'm going to tell everybody too, just so

like be ready to fight on day one of synod. You don't know what's going to happen at synod. And I think most people think like, well, we show up at synod and Friday is kind of not that important. And then we go into advisory committees and we can kind of do our thing there and we kind of ease into things and then, you know, plenary sessions, the first few plenary sessions are kind of light and we ease into the fight. No, not necessarily. Be ready like on day one, on Friday morning.

Shoot, I would say even be ready for the first convening session this year that's online. You don't know what's going to happen on that online meeting. And so be ready even in that meeting to fight if you have to. And on Friday morning when Senate officially convenes and everybody's there, be ready to fight if you have to be. So show up being a warrior and being willing to say some hard things if they need to be said and in order to take some unfavorable stances if they need to be taken.

Don't be afraid to be a single person writing a minority report coming out of your committee, even though people are going to call you maybe divisive or whatever. So show up and be ready to do that work, but do it joyfully. Be willing to look at people and say, what's wrong with you people with a twinkle in your eye and a giggle in your heart? And that means not taking yourself too seriously.

just like you're not that big of a deal synod is gonna go on with her without you and if people call you names you're fine because yeah i don't think i'm that big of a deal in general and so it just means like you're not going to be easily offended all of these things make a difference in how joyfully you carry out your work so don't show up at synod ready to be a bear where you're ready to attack people all the time, but don't show up either just hoping to be a happy, jolly Santa Claus

where you're just having a good old time. You need to show up like an R.C. Sproul willing to say the hard things, but do it with a twinkle in your eye. That's all we have for this week. If you want to help us out and support the Messy Reformation, another thing you can do is sign up for our newsletter through Substack. That way you'll get episodes and summaries sent directly into your email inbox.

It also gives us the ability to communicate with our audience, which is one of the biggest struggles of a podcast. So head over to the Messy Reformation on Substack and sign up for our newsletter. But until then, don't forget this is Christ's church and he bought it with his blood. And we've been warned that wolves will come in trying to destroy the flock. So keep a close watch on your life and on your doctrine.

Preach the word in season and out of season and keep fighting the good fight in this messy reformation.