Pastoral Care in Practice: Moving Beyond the Human Sexuality Report

Syd Hielema joins us for this episode about fostering pastoral care and hospitality for the LGBTQ+ community within the Christian Reformed Church. In this episode we hear from participants of the "Hospitality to LGBTQ" cohort. Syd discusses the challenges of fear, the importance of a covenantal approach, and how intentional community learning can shape posture over position.

The following is a transcript of Season 9 Episode 3 of the Do Justice podcast.  It has been lightly edited for clarity.  Listen and subscribe on your favourite listening app.  

"Hi, I'm Henry Eygenraam. I'm a member of the COD. At the time that we started this cohort I was the Executive Chair of Classis Toronto. This whole idea about a cohort to work with churches to figure out how it was that we could walk between the lines, within the boundaries of the CRC has decided, was started with a question from a church in Classis Toronto, from Barrie. They wanted us to tell them: how can we do this and be hospitable to people within our church and around us? And so I went looking for resources and one of my colleagues from the COD pointed me to a church in California that had worked this through fairly well. I enlisted Syd Hielema's help and a cohort was born. Phyllis Alberts-Meijers and Gary from Iowa joined us and over the last ten months we've been developing an understanding of: how can we hospitable within the boundaries that the CRC has determined that we need to live in as churches and still be intentionally, actively hospitable to anybody who walks into our doors. So, we've been working at it. It's a work in progress and has blessed us in the process."

Chris: Well, hello friends, and welcome to another episode of Do Justice. My name is Chris Orme and today I'm really excited to be joined by Syd Hielema. Hi, Syd, welcome, thank you for joining us today.

Syd: Thanks, Chris. Good to be with you.

Chris: I want to talk a little bit about your bio, because it's a great bio and what I have in front of me, it says that you're a retired professor, you've been a contributor to many CRCNA denominational ministries, you're a dual US and Canadian citizen. You spent most of your life in Canada, currently you're living in Ancaster, just about fifteen minutes down the highway from me, with your wife Evelyn. And Syd, it says here that you have a passion to serve congregations in their calling to provide a sturdy spiritual home for believers and searchers of all ages. I love that. Thanks for joining us today. Our conversations have been about these focused, topically-centered cohorts and communities of practice within the Christian Reformed Church. I welcome you to talk more about the one that you have been giving leadership to. What was the core question that the cohort that you were leading was looking at?

Syd: So, there are four of us who were leading this cohort together. This was centered in Classis Toronto and the core question first came from the consistory of the very first Christian Reformed Church. They addressed the classis and said, "We understand the Human Sexuality Report of the CRC is calling us to be pastorally loving to the LGBTQ+ community. We don't know what that means or how to do that. What supports can you provide?" The chair of the classis committee at that point was a gentleman named Henry Eygenraam and he took that question to heart and Henry and I have worked together for a long time and he contacted me and said, "How about the two of us host an evening in Etobicoke to explore this question and to see what kinds of responses it evokes?" So, in May of 2023 we had an evening in Etopicoke and about 100 people showed up from almost every congregation in Classis Toronto. And Henry posed the question this way: we have the Human Sexuality Report which lays parameters for what the CRC teaches are Biblical guidelines for sexual morality and walking with the LGBTQ+ community. It provides dozens and dozens of suggestions for pastoral care. Do we as a class recognize that we need support in doing this? And then after about a 90-minute conversation that evening, he posed this question: which of you congregations would like to join us on a ten month journey developing practices in response to this core question, "How do we learn to practice pastoral care and hospitality to the LGBTQ+ community in ways that fit with the parameters of the Human Sexuality Report?" Nine congregations signed up for this journey and that core question, which is a bit of a controversial question and kind of interestingly—you might say that both the most progressive congregations and the most traditional congregations were not as eager to address the question. The more progressive because they did not feel it was right to operate within the parameters of the Human Sexuality Report and the most traditional ones because they felt that extending pastoral care and hospitality to members of that community was not the first calling that they had. But there was a big middle ground where nine congregations signed up. That was the core question that led to the project being launched.

Chris: I mean, I'm sure you have a rich well of experiences and stories to share, but can you share a story or experience from the cohort that's been sticking with you? What's the one thing that you kind of go to when that comes up?

Syd: We knew from the outset that there is a wide range of posture in the CRC towards issues related to the LGBTQ+ community. And we knew from the outset that it was not our calling to press for uniformity and agreement and so one of the first things we did was we wrote up a cohort covenant for the nine congregations in which we made explicit that, on the one hand we were going to honor the parameters of the Human Sexuality Report, on the other hand those parameters were subject to interpretation. They did not lead to a cookie cutter approach and therefore when we would gather members of these nine congregations together for cohort events we made a covenant that said, "We are not going to debate positions with us. Our project here is to learn to love our neighbors as ourselves, and especially focusing on our LGBTQ+ neighbors and their family members." Therefore we made about an eight or nine claim covenant and we said to the congregations, "If you're a part of this project, you will sign this covenant." And repeatedly during the ten month journey of the cohort, somebody would say something at a meeting and one of us on the leadership team would say, "We're sorry, but your question or your comment or your calling into question what someone else has said violates our covenant and we are not going to respond to what you said, we are just going to note that. We are going to move on to: what is the core of this project?" And the covenant held! It did not hold easily. We did not sing "Kumbaya" after every meeting. But it held! And I really respect the participants in the cohort for recognizing that this was an issue for which there was profound emotion, profound anxiety, and profound differences of opinion within the project and yet we soldiered on together and respected one another. We launched in September of 2023 and we finished up in May of 2024 and by "finished up," I mean we said the official cohort has ended but we will keep on working together in less formal ways for the long-term journey. 

Chris: Are there elements of that covenant that you'd be comfortable sharing with us?

Syd: Oh, absolutely. So, we first of all noted that it was a very complex issue and that when you read the four Gospels it was quite striking how Jesus often found himself in what we might call messy situations with messy lives that the Pharisees took exception to and judged him for and that this was that kind of a cohort and so we were going to accept that and we were going to accept that there was room for confusion and for wrestling. The verse in Phillippians, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling," became one of the key verses of the cohort. We also noted that different congregations were in different contexts and dealing with different realities on the ground and we were not going to pre-judge what each congregation had to do in responding to difficult realities on the ground. We noted that the Human Sexuality Report, while it laid out clear parameters, also left a great deal open to interpretation and we were going to make that room for interpretation as wide as we possibly could, recognizing that that is the character of grace. We found the verse in Ephesians 3, that we would grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ as we explore together with all the saints, as Paul writes there in Ephesians 3. And so they were basically variations on a theme. One distinction we made was, this is not about position, this is about posture. A position is an abstract statement on a piece of paper that people sign on to, a posture is a manner of engagement, a manner of relationship. We also noted that the heart of the Gospel as Jesus summarized it: Love the Lord your God with your heart, soul, strength, and mind and love your neighbor as yourself. And that central Gospel directive we also wanted to be the center of this cohort.

"My name is Gary Brouwers and I pastor Peace Church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. After Synod 2022 and 2023 I just found myself kind of burned out from the debate in our denomination about the Biblical understanding of homosexuality. It was an important debate, we needed to have it, I just felt the need to move on from the theory and the theology of the debate and start to try to do a better job of creating space in the church for people in the LGBTQ+ community. So I was looking for a place where I could learn from other people how to do this better and I was graciously allowed to participate with this group of churches from Toronto. I am so thankful, because for once I could be part of a group of people where we weren't debating the right and the wrong of the issue of homosexuality, we were a group that could focus on the majority of the Human Sexuality Report about how to effectively show the love of Jesus to a group of people who very often don't feel like they have a place in our church. So we could explore ways to show love in a way that was seen and experienced as love by people in the LGBTQ+ community. So we had this space where we could ask questions of one another and we didn't have to be afraid of the questions. We had the space and security where, you know, I might suggest an idea and I could be way off on my idea, but I knew that I would receive a response of grace and encouragement and not one of fear or reaction and judgment. It was a safe place where people from different perspectives with different experiences where we could all get together and encourage and challenge and sometimes correct one another but always with humble gentleness. I came with questions that I couldn't answer and in a lot of ways in the dialogue with the cohort I found that I was asking the wrong questions. I was challenged to adjust my perspective and look through a different set of eyes and it didn't change my Biblical understanding, but it did change how I saw people. It changed my perspective and by changing the perspective and asking different questions it led to new possibilities. The effects of the past year in this cohort, they continued to do their work, their rippling. I'm not sure where the Holy Spirit's going to be leading me or my church. I am convinced that Jesus is doing something absolutely amazing and miraculous. He's creating a space in this church for people who experience same-sex attraction. A place where they can feel safe and loved in the Body of Christ.

Chris: You know, there are some people listening to this that might still be questioning, how does this cohort interact with decisions that were made at Synod? And what do you want to say about that?

Syd: The first thing I want to say is, I want to tell you a little story. For several years I mentored a young man who is gay and who is theologically, let's just say theologically conservative. He believed the Lord has called him to celibacy and he told me he has made a commitment to deal with his gayness by being celibate. He has read the entire Human Sexuality Report. He supports it. And you may remember that Synod was canceled in 2020 and 2021 because of Covid and the Human Sexuality Report came out in 2019, so the report sat there for three years without being on the agenda of any Synod and so finally in 2022 when Synod did meet there had been three years of tension building, so to speak. And this young mentee followed online all the conversations at Synod about the Human Sexuality Report and the day that it was the primary agenda item, at 6PM he rang my doorbell and he was clearly very, very shaken up and we went out to the backyard on my deck and he sat down and he began to weep and he said, this is almost a direct quote, "The folks who I agree with were the ones who made all the decisions at Synod today, but the way they spoke told me they don't know me, they don't know anyone like me, they don't want to know anyone like me, and I feel very conflicted because though I believe the decisions they made were correct, I feel like it was made by people who don't want to love me and would rather I wasn't a member of their church." That, what took him all of one minute to say on my back deck through his tears, and I will never forget that one minute. That had a profoundly shaping effect on me and I will say this: in my view, the three Synods that discussed the report (2022, 2023, and 2024) have consistently confirmed this young man's initial response. And I've come to give it a name. I call it "positionism." I believe it's an idolatry. An idolatry that says, "Once we have determined what we believe is the Biblical position on a matter, we have fulfilled the requirements of discipleship for that particular matter." And to me, idolatries are almost always reductionist. They take something and then they take it only a certain percentage of the way that discipleship calls us to take it and then declare that we're done with it. I find that profoundly distressing, that the Synod of the CRC has accepted this position, as in this idolatry of saying a position is enough. And what I especially find distressing is that the Human Sexuality Report is primarily a pastoral care document. That was its primary purpose. It had a preliminary purpose, which was to reaffirm the long-standing traditional position of the CRC and then having done that its primary purpose was to give guidance for pastoral care. I do not see the denomination rising to take on its primary purpose and furthermore, what I find distressing is that the Synod has instructed the 49 classes of the Christian Reformed Church to exercise a very firm accountability concerning this position. There are no instructions of accountability whatsoever concerning carrying out the pastoral guidance that is offered in the Human Sexuality Report and in my mind we have sinned.

Chris: Thanks, Syd. I know the charged nature of the discussion, like obviously that interaction with someone who you'd been mentoring has definitely shaped and impacted you and I can—I see it and I can hear it. I just want to say thank you for sharing that. But you talked about positionism, but you also mentioned that the cohorts were designed to help shape posture. So let's talk about how the cohorts might've approached this differently. You know, a key part of learning in cohorts is that you're not on the journey alone. Some of my most formative experiences in my own spiritual growth and my own growth on my own justice journey has been done in the context of community. But from your experiences leading the cohort, what value or impact could you observe people joining together and forming this posture—how did it look different in what you all built together?

Syd: Another piece of the covenant, and I'll use this as a lead-in to your question, was that every congregation is unique—each one has a unique calling, a unique context, a unique history—and that we will respect that uniqueness. And so the nine congregations coming into this project came in at nine different places. So, one of them said—one pastor said, "In my congregation, it will be a radical step if once every three months we pray for the LGBTQ+ community during our congregational prayer. To just simply name this hurting demographic, this marginalized demographic, and pray for them—just to get that phraseology into our congregational vocabulary." Another congregation said, "We have quite a few people in our church whose children or grandchildren are members of the LGBTQ+ community. They don't have places of refuge where they can describe their journeys and describe their relationships with their loved ones and so on and so we recognize that it's actually quite a few members of our community who are in this situation and we want help in providing places where they can tell their stories, they can learn from them, they can encourage each other, they can weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice." Other communities said, "We confess that we are just playing ignorant. That most of our awareness of the LGBTQ+ community comes from the media and we recognize that we have a lot of learning to do and a lot of listening to do. Help us find good articles and good books and videos series." So, three of the congregations in the cohort began weekly video discussions where they would gather on a Sunday evening or on a Wednesday evening, watch an episode of a video together, spend time discussing it together. So all these were in different places, they all had, you might say, a best step to take that was right for them. They learned from each other and so, for example, the three churches that did video series, when we got together they would say, "Well, what did you learn from showing this and how did you deal with this" and so on. And similarly we had other ways in which we shared things together. We had members of the LGBTQ+ community come and meet with us when we had cohort full-group events. And so we found that we had to develop a kind of a menu of practices. We had to listen carefully to what was best for each of the member congregations and we also had to learn that, if I can use this analogy, a lot of us were starting at zero or I would say even negative five [laughs]. Churches were coming in with a history that required repentance of harming the members that it had contact with who were in the LGBTQ+ community and so we also had to learn ways of reconciliation and of acknowledging past sins. It was complex, it was messy, but at the same time it was profoundly encouraging and moving to see congregations wanting to make amends, to be reconcilers, and to take baby steps forward in walking with the LGBTQ+ community.

"Hi, I'm Phyllis Alberts-Meijers and I'm a member at First Christian Reformed Church in Barrie, Ontario. I was involved in the leadership team for the hospitality cohort and our church actually sent a question on our classical credentials form asking for support from the classis to do better hospitality work for LGBTQ+ members and their families and allies in light of the synodical decisions of 2022. We were frustrated, to be fair. And we felt that the HSR was such a big document and had so many pastoral themes that were dominant and yet the synodical decision seemed to focus on some seemingly specific theological points that didn't really represent the reality of the heart of Christianity that we wanted to project as a congregation. So we asked for help and we got response, very good response from Classis Toronto and it turned into the cohort and the cohort was a total blessing. Some of the ideas and the way that people participated showed that it is very possible for us to be in community and motivated by love and inclusion and care regardless of our position on HSR. So many of the participants in the cohort come from different theological perspectives, but we did not have any difference when it came to our mandate to love and care and to be Christlike in relationship with all people. So that was the joy of the cohort and it is sad that our denomination has not embraced the potential that has been so clearly available to us and also that our denomination has not responded to the admonition of many synods in the past to care for our friends of all sexual orientation and of all inclination. We're just really not doing a good job of that and the cohort really tried hard to correct that and I think we did make some beautiful steps in that direction. No decision from Synod can take that away because love is always the foundation of all that we do and we need to care for people and that's the tone and tenor that motivated our hospitality cohort and motivated our leadership team and our participants and I'm grateful for the experience.

Chris: Syd, I wonder, as we do these episodes—we've been doing this podcast for a while—I know there are a lot of church leaders and members of churches who listen and they're wondering, how do I do this? How do I get started? What word do you have for congregations or church members or pastors or deacons who want to start this journey and want to start this conversation? What does the future look like for folks to be able to have those conversations and how can they get started?

Syd: So I can suggest three ways to start. First off, so this cohort that I was a part of co-leading, there were some news stories about it in The Banner and by word of mouth things got around and so at this moment there are two other cohorts beginning with the same core question at their root. One is based in Edmonton for Classis Alberta North and one is being spearheaded by one of the co-leaders of the first cohort, Pastor Gary Brouwers in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He's gathering congregations from all over the US and Canada, so it's a zoom-based cohort that will cross all timezones in both countries. So that's in-road number one, to find a cohort like this and what I love about that step is it provides—there's a resource list design, there's people who've done it before who can give advice, so that's one way. Secondly, I just finished walking with a congregation in Southern Ontario that had heard about the cohort and said, "We're not ready to join a cohort, but we want to be a pastorally caring, hospitable congregation and we recognize that we need a posture, not a position." And they invited me to serve as their consultant and I helped them write a posture document that is an action document, it's a behavior document, it's not a position to put on the shelf. It's quite a bold document. I have tremendous respect for their courage. Last week, their council unanimously approved this document and now they're going to set about implementing it. And so, just simply saying good intentions will not do it. Concrete steps of some kind need to be taken. A third way—and I'm just speaking from my own experience, there are many more than three ways but there are three ways that I have been personally involved in—I've had congregations invite me to come in and lead an evening conversation with their congregation and just explore with them how one might begin a conversation, how one might be very intentional about discipleship in this area of life. And so you might say that the church whose council unanimously approved this document last week invited me in for the final stages of a process. Other congregations have invited me in for the very first stages of a process. There are many others in the denomination who can walk with congregations in this regard as well. So those are the three initial steps that I'm familiar with because I've had experience with them. I also know that Sean Baker, who works for the CRC in Thrive, is walking with congregations and so a fourth way is to contact Thrive Ministries. In Canada we have Lesli van Milligen who's the director of Thrive in both Canada and the US. There are people in GR like Sean Baker who walk with congregations under the Thrive umbrella.

Chris: Syd, as we come to a close here, I'm wondering what are some of the learning for churches in this area? What are some of the take-aways of the work of this cohort?

Syd: First off, there's tremendous fear and the issues and relationships surrounding LGBTQ+ folks and their communities make almost everybody afraid in some ways. I'll never forget that after I presented to one congregation, I was heading out to my car afterwards and somebody ran out of the church, found a place in the parking lot that was not well-lit, and then started pummeling me with questions related to his own family members. And I get it! He wasn't going to ask the questions during the meeting, but he found a dark place out of sight afterwards and I know I could, without even thinking, name many, many congregations who are afraid to talk about it at all! Because they are afraid it will lead to people leaving the church, that it will lead to all kinds of conflict and a lot of CRC folks are pretty conflict-averse and they'd rather just pretend it doesn't exist. So, the first take-away is: of course you're going to be afraid! There's a beautiful Bible verse about that: "Perfect love casts out fear." And, "Do not be afraid," is the most repeated verse in the Bible. So, deal with it! We are called to love God and love our neighbor through our fear and I will tell you that, as I was a co-leader of this project for ten months, I was afraid! I went to each meeting we had with—I could feel it in my gut. So that's take-away number one: you're going to be afraid. The question is not, "Are you afraid?" The question is, "What are you going to do with it?" Fear can be paralyzing and when the Gospel is paralyzed that's not part of our calling. Secondly, when you start the journey of saying, "We will not be paralyzed, we are going to take steps in faith and in love and in hope," do not ask yourself, "Where will this lead us?" Do not try to visualize what might happen five years from now. Just start. If there's one thing I've become convicted of deeply in the Gospel of following Jesus is that Jesus doesn't say, "Make sure you can picture exactly what this is going to look like in ten years and if you don't like it bail now!" [laughs] No! No. He simply says, "Hey, there is a first step of faithfulness sitting there waiting for you. Just take it." I often liken following Jesus to walking in a fog where one can just see far enough, as it says in Hebrews 12 ("Fix your eyes upon Jesus"). We don't see him five kilometers ahead on the prairies. No, we see him fifty feet ahead in a fog. The thing is, when you travel the fifty feet you can see the next fifty feet! So just take the first step and that's enough. When I met with this church who just approved their posture statement last week they said over and over again, "This statement we're adopting is going to make us afraid. But we will just keep on taking the first step and then the next first step and then the next first step." So that was definitely a learning of this cohort, as well. And sometimes the first step will feel laughably small. The church that said, "For us, once every three months we're going to pray for that community," but the pastor said, "I know my people. I know that for them it's going to make them afraid but it's what we're called to do." But this pastor then said, "It's my prayer that after five years we as a church, we will honor the parameters of the Human Sexuality Report but I long to see five gay couples sitting in the pews on Sunday morning in five years as we begin by praying for that community infrequently but regularly."

Chris: Syd, thank you for spending the time with us, thank you for sharing your heart and sharing how profoundly transformative your experience was in co-leading this cohort. We'll be sure to put some notes and links in the show notes for resources so that folks can follow up and find ways to act on the stories that you've shared. Again, our guest today has been Syd Hielema. Syd, thanks for joining us today, really appreciate you.

Syd: Thank you, Chris, it was a delight to share this experience with you and all who may listen to this.

Helpful Links

• Thriving Practices Cohorts https://www.crcna.org/essentials/thriving-practices