SPEAKER_03 0:02

Welcome to the Reformed Deacon, a casual conversation with topics specifically designed to help local Reformed Deacons. There are nearly a thousand deacons in the OPC alone, so let's take this opportunity to learn from and encourage one another. We're so glad you could join us. Let's jump into our next episode. Hi, my name is David Knockla, and today's episode of the Reformed Deacon is one I recorded a few months back when I traveled to Namibia, which is located in the southern part of Africa. I was there serving as part of the OPC's foreman delegation to the tenth quadrennial meeting of the International Conference of Reformed Churches, known as the ICRC. We'll talk a little bit about what the ICRC is further into the episode. In this episode, I'm meeting with six of the seven members of the ICRC's Diaconal Committee, a committee of which I'm also a member. As you listen, I think you'll quickly come to understand the importance of this group of like-minded men coming together to discuss worldwide diaconal needs, especially with the current events happening around the globe. I hope you enjoy the episode.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Hi everyone, my name is Peter Boone, and I'm from South Africa, the neighboring country from Namibia. I'm ministering as a pastor in Pretoria, the capital city, and I'm a member of the three Reformed Churches in South Africa. Recently I had the privilege to visit Philadelphia with uh staying with David. It was a huge privilege to be over there, and I'm experiencing that the bonds between us and you guys there in America are becoming more and more intensive, so we are very thankful for that.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

Hi everyone, my name is Aaron Be. I'm from South Korea, and I represent um Kushin denomination, and currently I am uh teaching as a full-time professor at Cushing University, and I have majored intercultural studies, uh formerly known as uh Mishology. I'm glad to be here.

SPEAKER_04 2:19

Greetings from Namibia, everyone. My name is Rick Postman. I come from Canada, not too far from Toronto, but an hour out of Toronto. Attend the Brantford Free Reform Churches, and I'm a part of uh Rhodendeed Ministries.

SPEAKER_05 2:32

Welcome. Hi, my name is Dirk Van Garden. I'm from New Zealand and a member of the Reformed Churches of New Zealand. I'm a retired pastor now and uh have been a part of the diaconal committee since its inception about nine years ago.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Hi, everybody. Uh, I'm Hey Dreyer, also a retired English federal Christian Reformed Church in the Netherlands. I'm certain from this conference, I see conference as a member of this committee.

SPEAKER_03 3:04

Fantastic. And uh missing from our group right now is Chris Borsma, who's from Brazil. His flight got cancelled, so he's not with us. But represented here is how many continents? We've got five or six continents.

SPEAKER_05 3:18

We don't have Antarctica, but um well actually we there is Europe, there's South Africa, or the African continent, Asia, Australasia, North America, and South America. So only Antarctica is missing, but they're the frozen chosen that live there.

SPEAKER_03 3:40

So let's talk a little bit about ICRC, like what it stands for and why it exists. And maybe Peter, would you want to just explain what ICRC is?

SPEAKER_05 3:51

I don't think it's the International Confederation of the Cross or whatever it is, the Committee on the Red Cross. I I've been interested to hear it referred to in a worship service this morning as the International Council of Reformed Churches. We are not, we're a conference, and by virtue of that name, we are trying to say that we meet together to confer rather than to supervise each other, might be one way to describe it.

SPEAKER_04 4:20

I learned something from Dirk every day.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Yeah, I just learned something. You have anything there, Peter? Yeah, it's very true what you say, and that's um also the essence also of reformed church polity. We don't have superstructures, but that we come together in meeting together in a conference, whatever you want to call it. And the ICRC, the International Conference of Reformed Churches, was instituted, I think, in the 1980s. And since then it has continued to grow. Every conference after every four years, new um federations are added. This conference also. Um, unfortunately, this was the first time that a federation um is leaving us now, but um, for the rest, every time new ones are added. So we are now at about 39 federations all over the world. Yes, yes, and um so churches joining they have to subscribe to the reformed confessions, whether the three forms of unity or the Westminster standards. Um, yeah, so those are the preconditions. And if you want to join as a member as a member church, you have to be sponsored by two existing member churches that can attest to your orthodoxy and uh you know who you are as a church federation.

SPEAKER_05 5:47

What would you guys say is the main purpose of the ACRC profits? Well, basically, the conference, when we actually meet together, it's a it's a great opportunity to share together, to get to know each other. Uh my feeling is often that uh the most important aspect of the conference are the meals. Uh the fellowship. Yes, and the fellowship around around the meal table as well. That's what I meant. So uh, but at the same time, through the years, the ICRC has developed certain emphases, and there are four of them basically. Uh there is, of course, the emphasis on organizing regional conferences, usually by continent. There is secondly the emphasis on missions, which is probably the oldest of the of the emphases. And in the last number of uh eight or nine years, two other committees have been added, uh, one of which is the Theological Education Committee, which is focusing on how we can cooperate and stimulate theological education uh in our member churches. And the fourth committee is ours, the diaconal committee.

SPEAKER_03 7:04

Good. Well, that's a good segue. I think that just focusing now on the diaconal committee, why should you talk about that a little bit, Dirk?

SPEAKER_05 7:13

Well, the diaconal committee originally received its mandate at Cardiff in Wales. I think that would have been 2014 or 13, one of those two. And there, as our mandate, we received exactly the same mandate as was given to the missions committee, except that the word missions committee was crossed out and diaconal committee was put in its place. So there was a sense in which the understanding at that point was somewhat along the direction of giving or helping uh diaconal aid, especially to those countries in the world where this was more necessary. We've always been adamant that we are a diaconal committee and have seen our task somewhat differently from that original mandate, and we've spent a lot of time on this. So the emphasis now is much more on doing two things fundamentally. The first is this communication amongst the member churches when diaconal needs and where diaconal needs arise, and how we can perhaps uh coordinate the giving and the receiving. So, in a sense, let the left hand know what the right hand is doing in this particular place. So it's all about taking all of our diaconal organizations in the member churches and providing a means in which we can share together. The second emphasis has been much more on the development of the task of the deacon. It needs to be said, I think, at any rate, that in the last 50 years there's been a lot of deep reflective thinking on the nature of the diaconal office. Some churches I think we're really behind as far as that's concerned, then there have been a number of member churches of the ICRC that have done a lot of hard work in developing the whole concept of what diacony or diaconal ministry is all about at local church level. So our committee has worked hard to put some form of statement together, and we are hoping that this will end up in the hands of the various diaconal uh courts of our churches, also the OPC, I suspect, and that we can in that way encourage and stimulate what the diaconal office is all about. In some ways, the diaconal office for many years has been the orphan, uh, simply in the sense of, okay, you're the guys that turn the lights out and make sure that the offerings are taken and counted and then given out. But diaconal ministry is much broader and deeper than that, and we would encourage your deacons to have a close look at the statement that we've prepared.

SPEAKER_04 10:00

Yeah, I think we wrestled. The first point I would like to modulate a little bit, Dirk. I think we wrestled with that initial sense in the mandate of coordinating response to, let's say, disasters, that kind of thing. In the end, we concluded that we were not in a position to do the coordinating just because that would that would be almost having some full-time people. And in the end, after wrestling with that for quite some time, I think we came to the conclusion that we can, I think we used the phrase connect the dots. So if we know that there's a need over here in this part of the world, and we know that this church is working there, let's make sure those two are talking. But then to extract ourselves from the loop, as it were. So we're, I guess we're in the business and the church sanctified business. Yeah, so so we're in the interest of we want to make sure, and I think that's especially Dirk's point, is that there isn't a disconnect. So there can be real needs over here in this continent, and lots of federations unaware of the needs of our brothers and sisters in that. So we want to make sure we're almost like the uh switchboard.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Yeah, networking.

SPEAKER_04 11:01

Networking, yeah. So we're you know between each other. They're no longer part of the conversation, as it were, like you know, the switchboard operator, right? Connected in. We'd like to be kept informed, but we're not in the middle of the process. So that's just the just the uh the qualification there.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

Anyone want to talk about an example? I think the um whole situation with Ukraine is an excellent example. Uh, when you would go to the ICRC website, you will find a letter that we have written as diagonal committee to advise all the member churches what they should do if they want to help and reach out to Ukraine. It's not that we are gonna receive funds and distribute the funds, but what we simply did is that we listed organizations that are trustworthy and that can help in Ukraine that have the contacts, and that member churches can contact them and give their to nations to them. So that's I think an excellent example of our networking task.

SPEAKER_04 12:13

We also had the COVID situation, a number of scenarios where we were able to connect various organizations or churches to a real need in different places, including India would be an example. One of the members of the ICRC really was struggling, and a few of us were able to connect with them.

SPEAKER_03 12:31

You know, I I think back to the Macedonians receiving and sending funds to for the famine in Jerusalem. And in a sense, I mean, very far away, right? They didn't have internet and all that type of stuff. But that was one church in one region, you know, ministering to the needs of another church, and in a way that we we facilitate a little bit the connecting of our sister churches, like-minded churches in one part of the world with like-minded churches in the other part of the world.

SPEAKER_04 13:04

It's interesting how the world has become almost like a global village, eh, in a certain sense. That would be unheard of not so long ago. Yeah. We would hear months later of suffering in India or suffering in Africa. Months later, now we hear, we're in a position to hear very quickly.

SPEAKER_03 13:19

To hear, and now even through these avenues, you know, that becomes a responsibility of ours to help us our member churches to be reconnect.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

Yeah, and to give their uh the economic work more meaning for themselves and their environment.

SPEAKER_05 13:37

You might be interested to know how we as a committee function, living as we do in six different continents. What's become so interesting, especially in the last number of years, is how easy it is now to communicate. And so we had to do a lot of juggling time-wise in order to be able to organize a Zoom meeting. So I might be meeting uh a day ahead of you. Well, I'm in New Zealand. You Americans are about 18 hours behind us, I think. And then our brother in Korea has to really wake up early at 6 a.m. to do it, and the brothers in the Netherlands and South Africa are midnight. So five minutes. It's been wonderful that this group of, well, we're here with six, but our seventh member in Brazil is missing. But we've gelled as a group together, and there's quite a range of expertise and experience amongst us that has been mutually enriching for us personally, but also, we believe, for the members of the ICRC. It's really neat to see tomorrow's sun shining through Dirk's window.

SPEAKER_04 14:44

Yeah, that's right. As I look at the at yesterday or the previous afternoon sun. In the afternoon. And Peter sitting in the dark.

SPEAKER_03 15:02

What are ways do you think that the Lord's blossod are efforts? You know, we've been uh some of us have been at this for nine years, which is really hard to believe. But as you, and maybe, you know, Dirk, I don't know how many of you have experience with ICRC before a diaconal committee existed. How do you think this has been helpful for the even for the ICRC as it considers its work?

SPEAKER_05 15:25

Well, my personal view is that the creation of this committee gave the ICRC a focus on diaconal ministry, which I think is so very, very necessary, especially when we are dealing as we are with 39 different denominations spread around the world, and some indeed are very much in need of encouragement both financially and also in terms of just instruction on the nature of the diagonal office. So this new committee that was then formed at Cardiff has begun to stimulate and to enable this kind of discussion to take place. And my dream and vision is that in the not too distant future it might be possible to have as a conference theme, for example, diaconal ministry, and in the broadest sense of the word. And I'm I mean that, you know, in many denominations mine, for example, the deacons were usually the younger men having their first experience of the office, and I've often heard the expression you are apprentice elders. And I honestly believe that this is a complete misunderstanding of the nature of diaconia or diaconal ministry, as it's highlighted and taught in scripture. And the presence of our committee, I think, has created an awareness to think about this and maybe to act upon it as time progresses.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

Perhaps I can share something personal. Being a member of the diaconal committee made me aware more and more of how important this office is that Christ gave to the New Testament church. And of course, I I have studied a lot about deconal ministry, especially because I I I was a missionary, but being part of this committee helped me even more to go to the essence and to learn more, and I think it's God providence also that it was led that way that then all of a sudden COVID struck. And diagonal ministry was so necessary in the local church. So it was not me that proposed it, but our church they came to me and asked, can we have this as a theme for this year being a diagonal congregation because we realize we need it. So and then I was well prepared to take it up, thanks to my membership here. So I'm very grateful, grateful for that, yeah. And and really how we function now as a local congregation compared to how it was, it's a world of a difference, and and it's thanks to God. Um He He leaded it in that way, and he even used COVID for that end, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

And and and of course it's nothing new, it's it's something that is already in the church. In like this morning we had a sermon in in uh Wintook South, and um the the sermon started with the sentence uh we uh we will hear the word of Jesus Christ, and we talk about uh we talk about uh putting that in practice and be holy. And then when you follow the sermon, these last words, although they were taken up in the sermon, they were not worked out. And that was a pity, according to me, from diagonal when you listen to a sermon as a deacon, you should uh all be aware that there is something uh that you uh you hear about how do I do that on Monday? And uh and and we always talk about that, but we sometimes we forget to to strengthen and encourage the congregation that uh when we uh we listen to the word of God and and we uh prepare to be sent like we were uh to uh this morning, uh that sending has also a focus and it has to be uh given uh feet and and and hands.

SPEAKER_05 19:44

Could you tell us a little bit about your background? I mean we met first in 1988, and you were a a diaconal missionary.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

In the end of the 70s, I went to uh South Africa as a missionary, and um there we uh discovered that um building up the congregation was actually uh 50% of the work when we proclaim Jesus Christ. And the people asked us, the congregation members asked us, uh, but how do I do that in my my life when I'm uh uh a woman who is uh suppressed by my man and not even allowed to go to church often because my husband says uh you have to do my washing and how do I proclaim Jesus Christ to him? And uh slowly and slowly we discovered in the congregation that uh working and preaching on Sunday needs to be followed up by uh working on Monday. Yeah, that was uh time and again stressed in that congregation. And when I came back uh in in Holland, uh slowly I went to the deaconal side of our uh church and I uh felt very blessed that I would head at the diagonal department and help to develop these kind of things. If you were preaching that sermon about what do we do on Monday, what would you say? What would you say? When Jesus Christ is uh is telling us that we are uh we are people who are saved from sin, and when we strongly believe that we are saved, our lives have to be examples, fully examples from Monday to Sunday of that saving grace. And saving grace that uh goes into every aspect of life. So it depends on your sermon and the focus of your sermon, what you will tell the congregation uh of uh Saving race in this text and saving race in this moment like the COVID situation, I think uh saving race is that you should be uh very much aware that you can you're able to to uh contaminate the whole congregation, so you have to be careful. Not because you are you are forced to buy the government, but you are forced to buy love for the other.

SPEAKER_03 22:28

So as you listen to our interactions, I one of the ways I've really been blessed on this committee is is working with brothers from different parts of the world and and different church backgrounds, like faith and practice, and yet a diversity that's there, that you know, we in our churches we have different strengths and weaknesses, we have different emphasis, and that's where I think as a committee we've really learned from one another in our emphasis or lack of emphasis or how we nuance things, um, and even that's portrayed even in what He was just talking about. Aaron, you've been on the committee for three or four or five years, something like that. When you think about the committee and its work, yeah, what are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_02 23:13

Um, yeah, I think this um working as a member of this uh committee, um, it provided me uh with a holistic view of the calling of the church. Um we normally think about the church and its work. We talk about the word of the word of God and uh preaching the gospel.

unknown 23:32

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

And I think uh mercy ministry or uh diagonal committee uh work is uh I think it uh provides a balanced uh view uh on the calling of the church. And when we go to the gospel and the in the church, early church history, uh uh the ministry of Christ, the disciples and the apostolic uh uh church, uh uh they did not only uh spread the gospel but also uh they uh uh did a diaconal uh work. So I think that's the biblical uh view of uh church's calling. And I think I I think again a diaconal committee uh has uh gave me a uh kind of a new perspective.

SPEAKER_03 24:12

One of the things we've been working on in the OPC is developing what we call a network of deacons. So you have the deacons locally, that's ultimately you know where you know diaconal ministry is very personal and local, but we have diaconal committee at our presbytery levels, classist, I guess, in the reform uh tradition, and then at the denominational level, we have a committee on diaconal ministries, and so diaconal ministry at each level where needs can be passed up through the level. We we've got a connectedness and that type of thing. And I'll just share with you one of to me, I see the ICRC diaconal committee as another level of that network of deacons. It's not just within the church, within our denomination, but it's even with it's even connected to the sister churches around the world. And again, I think Ukraine was a wonderful example of how that manifests itself, where you know the needs in one part of the world, you know, were being met and are being met by gifts from across the world, around the globe, all coming in and ministering to the needs of those who are going through a crisis. It's beautiful. And just the communion of saints and how that I mean, that's where it gives our ecumenicity and our and our fraternal relations, it gives them feet, it gives them hands, it it's it's tangible. I know you love me by your love, and how is love portrayed is through action and not just words, and that's the beauty of diacral ministries, but but I think that diacral ministries in the fraternal realm just really you know ties us together in ways that you know words and going to each other's assemblies and stuff like that just is not I mean, there's a whole another level of and depth of our relationship, and so it's just kind of beautiful to see. And I feel like, frankly, I think we've barely begun. I think we're still, as a committee, we've been doing this for nine years, but we're still trying to find our way forward. And so just encourage our listeners to pay attention, keep an eye on what's going on, and and uh we we welcome feedback and encouragement as to ways that we can be you know working more together. So, thank you, brothers, for this time together, and I think it's been great. Look forward to seeing how the Lord will continue to tie us together as sister churches knit us together in that ministry versus.

SPEAKER_02 26:36

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 26:37

Thank you. God bless you. God bless, God bless you. God bless. Thanks for joining us. Go to our website, thereformdeacon.org. There you will find all our episodes, program notes, and other helpful resources. And please make plans to join us again next month for another episode of the Reform Deacon Podcast.