Author Archives: dengelsma

Pressure from the rest of the denomination started months before the deposition. It started with Byron’s response to COVID. Although some in the church world are now giving good, godly advice in articles and books about the proper response to COVID, early on that was not the case. As churches, the PRC floundered. It wasn’tContinue reading “COVID”

Rev. Lanning was deposed, we are told, because he did not follow the church-orderly way of protest and appeal. It was not doctrine! It was behavior! What exactly did he do that warranted the charge of schism? Rev. Lanning was deposed because he was said to have charged men with sin from the pulpit ratherContinue reading “Hypocrisy”

Imagine you are a deacon. You sit down for a meeting, and you find there is just one motion on the agenda: “The committee recommends that we swindle the elderly members of our congregation out of their life savings.” You protest. You plead. You warn. You argue as strenuously as you know how. To noContinue reading “Relief of Duties”

The division that just took place was doctrinal. That is denied by many. It often is in the history of church reformation. Take J. Gresham Machen’s suspension, for example. “Was Dr. Machen’s trial a fair one? Ecclesiastical lawyers maintain that no question of doctrine is involved. In the more adequate view there are doctrinal differencesContinue reading “True Faith”

What I have laid out, to this point, is the corruption that took place in the deposition of Rev. Lanning. But corruption is not a reason to separate from a denomination of churches. Despising the word of God is such a reason. It is the only reason. What the church visitors said about the preaching,Continue reading “Preaching”

“Can Rev. Lanning explain why he doesn’t want to use the assemblies?” This was one of the first questions a delegate put to Rev. Lanning at the recent meeting of Classis East. This question reflected the popular opinion of the day: Rev. Lanning refuses to follow the church orderly way of protest and appeal asContinue reading “Article 31”

The church visitors could have helped Byron’s consistory. Instead, they used us. The church visitors wanted Rev. Lanning off the pulpit, but they knew they had to work through a consistory to get that done. How convenient that Byron’s consistory called them in for help. At our regular church visitation earlier in the year, theContinue reading “Article 14”

The Evangelism Committee of First Reformed Protestant Church has distributed the following invitation for an upcoming lecture on the Act of Separation.

The responsibility for what happened at Byron Center will be required at the hands of their elders. But there will be others held responsible. We called in our churches’ “oldest, most experienced, and most competent ministers” (CO, 44) to help us. They could have, by their “advice and assistance,” helped the consistory of Byron CenterContinue reading “Bullied”

It is the effort of these blog posts to show the unrighteousness of the proceedings leading up to the deposition of Rev. Lanning. Many of the events leading up to and including the deposition were characterized by deceit, hypocrisy, hierarchy, and duplicity. In the last few years alone, Classis East has rejected many protests andContinue reading “Manner”