“Make Something From Scratch” would seem to denote a cake, or a craft, but i submit to you my final exam for IDIS 770: CRC History and Polity, made from scratch. Now please allow me to defend myself:
This particular class was kind of like a mash up of two separate classes: history and polity. The history portion finished about a third of the way through the semester and we began the polity portion. Since it began I finished approximately 0% of the related readings and went to less than 50% of the classes, meaning that I knew almost nothing about the subject. I had completed one earlier quiz that I had studied for and aced, but only with the help of my fellow EPMCers (that’s my program) and by the time the final came around I had completely forgotten that there was a quiz at all. I had to check the syllabus to be sure.
The exam was a take home test, and it took one of my class mates an hour and a half to complete. Not so for me. I took 9 hours. The test was four questions, including one about the administration of church discipline, one about children at the communion table, another about the role of the church order, and another where I was asked to evaluate a decision made by synod concerning whether or not former elders could be delegates. I knew nothing. Averaging slightly more than two hours per question I did readings, looked over notes, read information on the website and read the church order (the subject of the class) for the first time all semester. All in all, I’d say it was a very educational experience. I started with nothing (or scratch, you might say), but by the end, I wouldn’t be surprised if I aced that baby.
Glossary
Church Polity: This is the basically the formal ways in which the church runs. The document itself is called the Church Order.
Church Order: Most denominations have some sort of polity to govern how services are organized, how the church is governed, how someone can become a pastor or elder, etc. The class is a very technical type of class because the polity is very technical. For example, the CRC church order includes that if you are not an ordained minister you cannot raise your hands above your waist when giving the benediction. That makes it sound incredibly inane and tedious (it is a little tedious), but it is actually really important, and it is a document that is formed by the whole church. If I thought there was something wrong with the church order, I could write it up and submit it, and if others thought I was right, it could get voted on at Synod and potentially change the document. The point is to keep some sort of order in the church, and to protect churches and the denomination from too much power in a few people’s hands, and to make sure that people are actually teaching the gospel, instead of some other crap, which often happens in churches. Someone in my class (on one of the rare days that I was there) described it like this: “It’s not that the denomination is saying that we can’t change, but it is asking us to change together.”
Synod: This is the highest governing body in the CRC. It is made up of elected elders and pastors from all of the classes (classis is a regional governing body of the same type). The pastors and elders that go every year change, so it can never be one group of power hungry people. It is a representation of the churches.
Delegate: An elder or pastor (I can’t remember if deacon’s can go? I should look it up in the church order) is sent to Synod as a delegate.
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