CRTS hosted an other interesting and successful theological
conference: its 4th annual. (Full disclosure: I’m on the planning
committee, so I am a little biased!) Over 180 people registered for the full
conference, and well over 500 people attended the two public sessions on
Thursday and Friday night. We were able to listen to 13 presentations by
professors from the Netherlands, Canada and the USA. People attending came from
as far as Australia, Brazil, Korea, the Netherlands. One thing that became
clear was that the churches in the Netherlands are living in a dramatically
different sort of culture from North America. The seminary there needs to
respond to matters of the reformed faith in a very post-Christian and
postmodern society. When we listened to the speeches of the Dutch professors, we
could notice that they were answering different sorts of questions from what we
would expect in North America. That meant that sometimes during discussion, it seemed
that participants were talking past each other. But on the whole, though our
synods have expressed strong concerns about the direction our Dutch sister
churches are taking, the conference was collegial, brotherly, and I thought, fascinating.
Differences of opinion were explored; differing approaches examined; different
conclusions debated. But for the greatest part there was an atmosphere of
Christian charity, for which I personally was very thankful. I’m already
looking forward to the 5TH annual conference in January 2015!
