CRTS Conference

CRTS hosted an other interesting and successful theological conference: its 4^th 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 5^TH annual conference in January 2015!