[NOTE: Statistical graph of PR membership growth accompanies article and available via hard copy for $1]. Raw numbers at end of news release.] NR #1996-089 Missions, New Sem Prof Headline Protestant Reformed Synod Meeting in the Grand Rapids suburbs from June 11 to June 19, the synod of the 6300-member Protestant Reformed Churches marked a milestone in its history by electing Rev. Russell Dykstra as the new professor of New Testament and church history for the Protestant Reformed Seminary. Other synodical business included the opening of a mission field in Ghana, organizing the Covenant Reformed Fellowship in Northern Ireland as a member church of the denomination, and declaring a seminary graduate eligible for call in the churches. NR #1996-089: For Immediate Release Missions, New Sem Prof Headline Protestant Reformed Synod by Darrell Todd Maurina, Press Officer United Reformed News Service GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (July 29, 1996) URNS - The Christian Reformed synod and the Reformed Ecumenical Council weren't the only Reformed ecclesiastical assemblies to meet in Grand Rapids this June. From June 11 to June 19, the 6300-member Protestant Reformed denomination held its annual synod at the facilities of Southwest Protestant Reformed Church in the Grand Rapids suburb of Grandville. Despite the Grand Rapids venue, nobody at the Protestant Reformed synod advocated the ordination of women, theistic evolution, or gay marriage. Rather, the agenda focussed on the selection of Rev. Russell Dykstra as the new professor of New Testament and church history for the Protestant Reformed Seminary, various mission opportunities, and the successful synodical examination of Richard Smit, a graduate of the denominational seminary who will now be eligible for call. Changing of the Guard on Ivanrest Avenue As in other Reformed denominations maintaining a seminary which all candidates for the ministry are expected to attend, the selection of a new seminary professor is one of the most important issues faced by the denominational synod. If anything, that is even more true for the Protestant Reformed, who have only had six professors in nearly seventy years teach at the institution founded by Rev. Herman Hoeksema. The new professor of church history will replace Prof. Herman Hanko, who has taught at the school since 1965. Hanko's 31-year tenure spanned almost half of the seventy-year history of the denomination and included overseeing the move of the seminary from the facilities of First PRC of Grand Rapids to its current location on Ivanrest Avenue adjacent to Southwest PRC. Ironically, the new appointee and the retiring professor share a similar resume. Ordained in 1955, Hanko served two pastorates for a total of ten years: Hope PRC in the Grand Rapids suburb of Walker and Doon (IA) PRC. Ordained in 1986 at the Doon PRC, Dykstra served there for a total of nine years until accepting a call last November to Hope PRC of Walker. According to Protestant Reformed denominational rules first established in the mid-1970's to replace Homer Hoeksema, the son of Herman Hoeksema, Hanko and his successor will share responsibilities for some time to assist in making an orderly transition. "The rule here is when a man reaches the age of 65 the churches begin the process of calling the professor's successor, but the professor may continue to teach on a year-by-year basis until he is 70, depending on the discretion of the theological school committee and his willingness to do so," said seminary rector Prof. David Engelsma in an earlier interview. "The idea is that if a man accepts the appointment this year, he will prepare himself for a year, and after that Prof. Hanko and the new man will share the teaching load for a couple of years. In that way the retiring professor can help the new man take over the subjects and the retiring man is phased out gradually." Dykstra said he hoped to have a productive working relationship with Hanko, under whom he had studied in his earlier years. "I'm very thankful that I get to work with Prof. Hanko for a number of years if the Lord wills that," said Dykstra. "He's contributed so much to this seminary that he will be a great help to me in setting up the courses I will be taking." Dykstra said his goal was to keep the seminary faithful to the purposes established by its founders. Regarded in his lifetime as one of the strongest preachers in the Dutch Reformed world, Herman Hoeksema taught seminary courses while simultaneously serving First Protestant Reformed Church of Grand Rapids, at that time one of the largest congregations in Grand Rapids. "The strong point of the Protestant Reformed seminary is the absolute faithfulness to the historic Reformed faith but taught to prospective pastors so it's not a purely academic training but very much a pastoral training," said Dykstra. "That really to me was the heart of it. The strong point of the Protestant Reformed Churches is they have really trained strong preachers and pastors, and that is going to be my goal in my instruction." Dykstra said he only came to fully appreciate the pastoral emphasis of his seminary training when he actually entered the pastorate. "There were so many times as a minister that I would look back and realize that what I had been taught in a certain area was so practical," said Dykstra. "I was meeting up with a problem in the pastorate and had been trained without realizing it in the instruction these men gave." One consequence of that emphasis on pastoral ministry has been that the Protestant Reformed synod has always appointed successful pastors to the seminary faculty rather than recruiting men based on their academic degrees. In recent years, all three of the Protestant Reformed faculty have taken coursework from Calvin Theological Seminary and received Master of Theology (Th.M.) degrees in their respective fields. Dykstra said he hoped to do the same. "I am applying to Calvin, it looks like I will be accepted in the area of historical theology," said Dykstra. "Nobody is requiring me to do this, but the [Protestant Reformed] seminary is making the money and the opportunity available." Calvin Seminary president Dr. James A. DeJong, said he had enjoyed working with other professors at the Protestant Reformed seminary and expected the same would be the case with Dykstra. "If he is accepted at Calvin Seminary, as I have no doubt he would be, I anticipate that we will enjoy the same cordial, mutually beneficial relationship with him that we have had with the other professors of the Protestant Reformed Seminary who have all taken their Th.M training with us," said DeJong. Dykstra, a native of Walker and a lifelong member of the Protestant Reformed Churches, is 42 with nine children and one grandchild. Prior to entering seminary, he served as teacher and administrator at the Hull (IA) Protestant Reformed Christian School. Missionary Work For most of its history, the primary growth of the Protestant Reformed Churches has been biological, focussing on raising families and keeping them in the denomination. However, in more recent years the denomination has maintained an active home and foreign mission program. After the closure of its Jamaican mission, the denomination has not had a formal foreign mission field but has established a sister-church relationship with the Evangelical Reformed Churches of Singapore and with the Protestant Reformed Church of New Zealand, in both cases sending a missionary pastor to labor in those countries and assist the local pastors and elders. The Singapore relationship has been especially close in recent years due to the relationship of Cheah Fook Meng, a member of the Singapore denomination studying for the ministry at the Protestant Reformed Seminary. Graduating this year from seminary, Meng will return to Singapore and be ordained in his home denomination. The seminary has also trained ministers for the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Australia, a small denomination based in Tasmania which shares some of the Protestant Reformed theological distinctives, including opposition to the "free offer" of the gospel. While formally under the auspices of the home missions rather than the foreign missions committee, the Protestant Reformed Churches are also active in another foreign field: Northern Ireland, where the denomination will organize the Covenant Reformed Fellowship this summer as a member church of the North American denomination. Synod this year also decided to declare the African nation of Ghana to be a mission field and to call a minister to serve as a missionary to that country where the denomination has had contacts for a number of years with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Ghana, the Volta Evangelical Association, and a number of independent groups. "Our policy is at this point we have a corresponding secretary and each of the ministers takes terms writing letters. We lead them through a study of the essentials of the Reformed faith and work toward the point where we can send a missionary there," said Rev. Alan Brummel, pastor of First PRC of Edgerton, Minnesota, and secretary of the Protestant Reformed foreign mission committee. "That's been being done in Ghana for a few years and we now have the conviction that we have the manpower to work with there." Rather than working exclusively with one of the several local denominations with which the Protestant Reformed foreign mission committee has had contact and raising possible future problems, Brummel said the Protestant Reformed synod decided to begin a separate work while approving "making the missionary available for the instruction of ministers and members of other churches." "We have decided that rather than working with one of these groups and trying to reform it we will try to have our own denomination right from the start," said Brummel. "We will be sending a missionary who'll probably have to start preaching to his family and then trying to build up a church that would be in accord with our distinctives." "It would be better for those who are interested to know we are going to be singing the Psalms right from the beginning, using a good version of the Bible, and preaching twice on Sunday," said Brummel. If a missionary accepts the call to Ghana, he will be under the dual jurisdiction of the synodical foreign missions committee and the Hull PRC, which will serve as his calling church. The synod also approved sending a voluntary layperson to assist the work of the ordained missionary and decided to use a "suitable local radio station in Ghana" for broadcast ministry when the missionary begins his labors. Cross-References to Related Articles: #1994-044: Protestant Reformed Reach Highest Membership in History Contact List: Rev. Alan Brummel, Pastor, First Protestant Reformed Church 251 Maple St. W., Edgerton, MN 56128 O: (507) 442-5931 Dr. James A. De Jong, President, Calvin Theological Seminary 3233 Burton St. SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4387 O: (616) 957-6086 * H: (616) 957-6087 * FAX: (616) 957-8621 * E-Mail: DEJJ@Calvin.edu Elder Don Doezema, Stated Clerk, Protestant Reformed Churches 4949 Ivanrest SW * Grandville, MI 49418 O: (616) 531-1490 Rev. Russell Dykstra, Professor-Elect, Protestant Reformed Seminary 1550 Ferndale SW, Grand Rapids, MI 49418 O: (616) 243-8632 Prof. David Engelsma, Rector, Protestant Reformed Seminary 4949 Ivanrest SW * Grandville, MI 49418 O: (616) 531-1490 Prof. Herman Hanko, Professor, Protestant Reformed Seminary 4949 Ivanrest SW * Grandville, MI 49418 O: (616) 531-1490 Protestant Reformed Membership Grows 21% in Decade 1987: 5219 1988: 5316 1989: 5454 1990: 5527 1991: 5739 1992: 5894 1993: 5959 1994: 6259 1995: 6281 1996: 6318 Total churches: 27 Professing members: 3455 Total membership: 6316 Sister-Church Relationships: Evangelical Reformed Churches of Singapore: Total Churches: 2 Total membership: 324 Protestant Reformed Church of New Zealand: Total Churches: 1 Total membership: n/a Covenant Reformed Fellowship of Northern Ireland [to be organized as member church of PRC, July 24, 1996] Total Churches: 1 Total membership: 8 families Source: Don Doezema, Stated Clerk, Protestant Reformed Churches ------------------------------------------------ file: /pub/resources/text/reformed: nr96-089.txt .