Quite a Few Ministers in North America

Rev. C. Sonnevelt, Lethbridge, AB

It was a pleasant visit that we received one day. The two visitors, belonging to one of our sister congregations in the Netherlands, had coffee with us after a church service on the prairies of Alberta. They showed much interest in church life in Canada and the United States of America. They were also curious to know whether we had already adjusted to our new environment and our new field of labor. Then, suddenly, one of them asked the question, “It is fine that you are here, but is it really necessary that ministers leave the congregations in our country to work on this continent?”

I must have looked a little surprised, but then came the reason for this question. “Look, it may be true that there are only ten ministers here, but the other side of the story is that the North American church has only 10,000 members. That means an average of one minister for 1,000 people. In the Netherlands we have approximately 55 ministers, but together they serve more than 100,000 souls. A simple calculation will teach you that this comes down to only one minister for almost 2,000 church members. If you look at it from this side, you must conclude that there is no reason to complain about a lack of ministers here. In fact, there are quite a few of them in North America!”

With a stunned look I stared at my visitors. Of course, they did not mean to say that I had been wrong in accepting the call from a congregation overseas. “When the Lord calls, you just have to follow,” they admitted, “even when that means that you have to leave behind what is very precious to you. Yet, is it actually right that the churches in North America call ministers and students who can hardly be missed in the Netherlands? If you look at the percentages, it appears that there are more ministers in America and Canada than in our country.”

That question hit home and kept me thinking for some time. It received no satisfactory answer on that day. However, since the same question is occasionally asked by others as well, I would like to address it here.

Vacant is vacant indeed

Let me first of all say something about that “simple calculation.” From a purely statistical perspective it is correct and clear as a bell, but we should not forget that we can easily use statistics to suit our own purpose. Once we talk about numbers and figures, we might also look at the number of ministers compared with the number of congregations. If we do so, it becomes evident that there hardly is a difference. The Dutch church has one minister for three congregations, whereas the North American church has one minister for two and a half. That is not a huge difference, is it? Besides, many congregations in the Netherlands are so small that they would not be able to maintain a minister of their own.

However, more can be said. The churches in the U.S. and Canada are situated on an enormous continent. North America is many, many times larger than the Netherlands. It is even bigger than all of Europe. Consequently, our congregations are often far apart. Congregations such as Artesia (in the American state of California), Sunnyside (in the state of Washington), Sheboygan (in the state of Wisconsin), and La Broquerie (in the Canadian province of Manitoba) are each located at a distance of hundreds of miles from the closest sister congregation. Most of the time, they have reading services. It rarely happens that they receive a minister more than once every two months. It is undoable for ministers to serve those isolated congregations in between their own services on Sunday. In other words, a vacant congregation in North America is, generally speaking, really vacant.

No emeritus ministers and students

There is something else that should also be mentioned. Currently, the church in the Netherlands has almost fifteen ministers who have retired. Most of them are still preaching on Sundays and sometimes also during the week. If you join those emeritus ministers to the more than fifty ministers in active service, you arrive at the respectable number of some seventy ministers. If, subsequendy, you add the students of the theological school who are in their third or fourth year and are thus licensed to speak an edifying word, the number of preachers is even higher.

How many emeritus ministers does North America have? The number is zero. How many students are there? There are none. For that reason, the congregations without a shepherd have to resort to reading services even more frequently. The task of serving these vacant churches rests entirely with the ten ministers who serve in North America.

Itinerant preachers

As a result, these ten ministers do not have much time to lean back in their chairs. At regular times, they are traveling from one place to the other. Surely, they do so with love, and they have no reason to pity themselves, but all this traveling back and forth—in addition to their work on boards and committees—can be quite a burden for themselves and quite a load for their families. It also goes at the expense of work in their own congregation. It is exceptional that a minister, in serving a vacant congregation on one of his free Sundays, leaves on Sunday morning and returns the same day. It is not uncommon that he departs on Friday morning and returns to his home base on Tuesday evening or even later during the week. In order to reach his destination he often has to drive and fly an entire day. Sometimes, when missing a connecting flight, he ends up spending hours waiting at an airport.

His program upon arrival is often a varied one. He may be asked to lead a meeting for the congregation on Friday evening, to make pastoral visits on Saturday morning, to give a topic for the local or regional youth group on Saturday night, to preach two or three times on Sunday, and to visit the church-related school on Monday morning in order to open the week with staff and students. On Tuesday evening he may be expected to speak for the Ladies Aid, the Trinitarian Bible Society, the Canadian Lord’s Day Association, or you name it. To top it off, a sister congregation some 150 miles down the road would also like to have the minister for a midweek service. They ask, “Does the Reverend happen to be in the area and will it not be a year or more before he can come again?”

An empty school

Let me come back for a moment to those students who are nonexistent. Indeed, that is the reality in North America today; the Netherlands Reformed Congregations do not have a single student. The last student was accepted more than eight years ago. In 2005, he concluded his studies and was ordained in Corsica, a congregation which, since the departure of the late Rev. A. Vergunst to Rotterdam-Center in 1957, never had a pastor and teacher of its own. Rev. E. Adams was the last student. Meanwhile, the theological school in North America is empty, completely empty. The only instructor who is left after the departure of Rev. C. Vogelaar is a teacher without students. There are no future ministers of the Word.

Do we realize what that means? If, under God’s blessing, someone may be accepted next year, it will require another four years before he is installed in one of the vacant congregations. Also, the young mission church in Bolivia is without a minister since Rev. H. Hofman, Jr., returned to North America. We hope that our friends in the old country remember the sister congregations on the other side of the ocean in prayer. One of the old divines has said that there is no greater judgment for a church or nation than when the Lord removes His servants. Oh, may it please God to thrust out laborers into His vineyard, in North America as well as in the Netherlands. It will be an undeserved blessing if He would yet be mindful of that little “lodge in a garden of cucumbers” (Isaiah 1:8) on this vast continent.

Figures and numbers

There is one more thing that I have to get off my chest. Sometimes one gets the impression that figures and numbers play an overriding role in our church life and in our own thinking. Here are some of the questions most frequently asked: “How many members does your congregation have?” “How big is the consistory?” “How many babies have been born in the past year?” “How many young people follow the confession class?” “How many calls are extended to the one minister and how many to the other?” “To which congregation does the new candidate go? Can you understand that?” “On how many committees is our pastor active, and how many books have been published by his colleagues?”

This article shows that even more questions can be asked, for instance: “How many congregations and members does North America have, and what is the situation in the Netherlands?” “How many ministers are serving our denomination on either side of the Atlantic Ocean?” “What is the balance between those ministers with regard to numbers and percentages?” Yet a little while, and we also begin to analyze the ministers in terms of quality and quantity, of their gifts and graces, and—not to forget—their spiritual weight. Sometimes you wonder, “What is it all about?”

God’s good pleasure

Once again I think of those kind visitors with whom we started this article. What would they have said of Philip who had to leave a young and flourishing congregation in Samaria because one poor sinner on the way from Jerusalem to Gaza sighed unto God and needed instruction in the way of salvation? What was the balance between the Jewish minister and his Ethiopian audience? One to one! There was one minister for just one man! Was that really necessary? God’s servant could have meant much more if he had been elsewhere, could he not? No, he couldn’t. For the Lord sends His servants “to whom He will, and at what time He pleaseth” (Canons of Dordt, First Head of Doctrine, Article 3).

Finally, what to think of the great apostle of the Gentiles who could not find an open door in Asia Minor but had to go to Philippi to meet a little group of women because the heart of one of them had to be opened under his ministry? We would have asked Paul, “Was that the reason why you had to go to Europe?” His answer would have been, “Yes, that is why Christ sent me to Philippi,” for “the (good) pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand” (Isaiah 53:10).

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