8 minute read
Remembering Derke P. Bergsma
IN MEMORIAM:
REV. DR. DERKE P. BERGSMA
Advertisement
by R. SCOTT CLARK
On November 17, 2020, my friend and professor the Rev. Dr. Derke Bergsma went to be with the Lord. You may not know who Derke was but you should. He influenced generations of parishioners, college students, and future pastors. I met him in the fall of 1984 at Westminster Seminary California, where he was my professor. He was also my academic advisor and prayer group leader. It was a smaller seminary then (approx. 75 students) and fairly intimate. I had Derke for all my preaching courses (except one with Bob Godfrey) and for most of my practical theology courses. He was a workhorse who carried an exceptionally large course load. When I returned as a faculty member (and Academic Dean) in 1997, we became colleagues and sometime golfing partners. He was also the faculty advisor regarding all things automotive. Until I met Derke I thought that no man traded cars as often or with as much joy as my late father-in-law, but Derke loved cars and was a great source of wisdom about them. Derke was raised in Wisconsin, a son of the Christian Reformed Church.
As a young man he entered the service during World War II where he was seriously injured in Guam. He would spend most of a year in hospital in Hawaii recovering. As a pastor, he entered the Naval Reserves and served for 33 years as a chaplain, retiring with the rank of captain. He looked terrific in his dress whites. He served all over the USA and beyond. The chaplaincy was a rich source of pastoral experience, which he shared with us readily. I am in a better position now to appreciate the sacrifices made by servicemen and women and how valuable it must have been to the men and women to have a faithful minister of God’s Word to whom they could turn during basic or after deployment. Derke had been through it as an enlisted man and as a veteran, and he understood their experience and their greatest need: the Savior.
In his early ministry he served CRC pastorates in Colton, SD (1954–58) and Warren Park, IL (1958–62). After a period of graduate studies in the Netherlands he returned to the USA and served as pastor of the East Muskegon, MI, CRC (1965–67). He also served as associate minister in the Escondido CRC and later in the Escondido URC, where his membership remained in his retirement.
A CHEERFUL PRESENCE
He was, in my experience, relentlessly cheerful. He had a ready smile and an encouraging word. A midwesterner, who earned his spurs on the Plains, he was an endless fount of stories. This was a source of irritation to some of my fellow students, but on the Plains stories are a part of life. I am sure that I learned as much about pastoral ministry from Derke’s stories about ministry as I did from his lectures. I suppose not a day went by in my first years of ministry that I did not think of some maxim or story of Derke’s which helped me somehow. The stories were not mere filler. They were wisdom, hard won during years of experience in working with the sheep. It was he who warned us about turning off the battery on the microphone when leaving the pulpit, to use a (metaphorical) rifle “and not a shotgun!” when heresy hunting. From his stories I learned how to love the flock and how to communicate with them.
From Derke I learned that God has ordained to work through ordinary means: the preaching of the gospel, but I also learned God is free to work as he will, even through irregular means. Among his many projects in the Chicago metro was to help with a Billy Graham Crusade in the 1960s. As a confessionally Reformed pastor he had his doubts, but as a chaplain and a student of world religions he had learned to talk to and even work with people with whom he disagreed. It was his great hope and fervent prayer that people would come to new life and true faith through Graham’s preaching.
He was loyal to the Christian Reformed Church—he not only served as a pastor but he also taught at Calvin College and produced a large Christian education program for them—until he could no longer support the direction of the denomination in the wake of their decision, in 1995, to permit the ordination of females. In 1996, he left the CRC to become a minister in the United Reformed Churches in North America; but he did not do so angrily but cheerfully. His ministry in the Escondido United Reformed Church was much appreciated, whether it was in the pulpit, speaking to a Bible study, or working with the consistory on a difficult pastoral issue.
I only saw his countenance darken once: when I playfully addressed him as “Dominee.” The smile left his face and he warned me not to call him that again. I do not suppose that he would remember that moment, but I do. I meant it as a term of respect for a senior minister, but he carried the connotation of a domineering minister. He rejected that idea of ministry. In his view, the minister is a servant, not a master. He had a point.
A CHRIST-CENTERED PROFESSOR
Derke spent a good bit of his ministry in the academy. He earned his A.B. at Calvin College and his B.D. at Calvin Seminary. He earned an M.A. at Northwestern University. He completed coursework (Drs) for a Ph.D. in the Free University of Amsterdam and earned a D. Rel. in Chicago Theological Seminary in urban ministry. From 1968–82 he served as Professor of Theology at Trinity Christian College (Palos Heights, IL). He not only gave the first lecture in the college but he also served as interim president. In 1982 he accepted the call of Westminster Seminary California to become Professor of Practical Theology, where he served in both full-time (1982–97) and adjunct (2003–14) capacities until he finally retired once for all.
Some of the bromides he gave us he probably learned from R. B. Kuiper: “Men, there are three points to every sermon: the text, the text, the text” and “preach the text, the whole text, and nothing but the text, so help you God.” But beyond pushing us constantly to preach this text in its redemptive-historical context he was passionate that we should preach Christ. It is a truism in Reformed ministry, but I first heard it from Derke: if you could preach that sermon in a mosque or a synagogue, it is not a Christian sermon. One of his opening lectures in the Ministry of the Word course was to illustrate for us three types of sermons: moralistic, doctrinalist, and redemptive-historical. He would give a brief example of each. Derke was much influenced by Geerhardus Vos (1862–1949) and other proponents of a redemptive-historical reading of Scripture. Unlike some redemptive-historical approaches to Scripture, however, Derke understood the value of the proper, textually-driven application of the text to the congregation. He taught us Samuel Volbeda’s “reconstructive” (not to be confused with reconstructionist) method of sermon preparation.
He was committed to the principle that practical theology did not mean pragmatic theology. He knew that Reformed theology, as our Reformed forebears taught us, is partly theoretical and partly practical. He worked diligently to work out a theory of ministry upon which to base his practice. There are many opportunities in ministry to compromise one’s principles, but Derke taught us to ground our principles in the Word (and the catechism, the confession, and the canons) and to stand on principle rather than to be blown about by every wind of doctrine.
Derke is missed and beloved (probably more than he knew), but as we miss him we should remember what he tried to model for us and to teach us, and we should look where he looked and trust the Savior whom he trusted and in whom he found his only comfort in life and in death.
VANDRUNEN BOOK RECEIVES PRESTIGIOUS AWARD
David VanDrunen, Robert B. Strimple Chair of Systematic Theology at WSC, has received a prestigious honor. Christianity Today named VanDrunen’s recent book, Politics after Christendom: Political Theology in a Fractured World (Zondervan Academic), its 2021 Book of the Year in the “Politics and Public Life” category. The popular magazine selected VanDrunen’s book as the best on the topic published from November 2019 through October 2020.
Politics after Christendom examines the Christian’s role and status in contemporary pluralistic political communities, offering a biblical-theological model of political engagement and exploring themes such as race, religious liberty, justice, authority, and civil resistance. For more than a millennium, beginning in the early Middle Ages, most Western Christians lived in societies that sought to be comprehensively Christian – ecclesiastically, economically, legally, and politically. That is to say, most Western Christians lived in Christendom. But in a gradual process beginning a few hundred years ago, Christendom weakened and finally crumbled. Today, most Christians in the world live in pluralistic political communities. And Christians themselves have very different opinions about what to make of the demise of Christendom and how to understand their status and responsibilities in a post-Christendom world.
VanDrunen argues that Scripture leaves Christians wellequipped for living in a world such as this. Scripture gives no indication that Christians should strive to establish some version of Christendom. Instead, it prepares them to live in societies that are indifferent or hostile to Christianity, societies in which believers must live faithful lives as sojourners and exiles. Politics after Christendom explains what scripture teaches about political community and about Christians’ responsibilities within their own communities. As it pursues this task, Politics after Christendom makes use of several important theological ideas that Christian thinkers have developed over the centuries. These ideas include Augustine’s Two-Cities concept, the Reformation Two-Kingdoms category, natural law, and a theology of the biblical covenants. VanDrunen brings these ideas together in a distinctive way to present a model for Christian political engagement.
As this prestigious award reflects, WSC faculty are worldrenowned scholars, in addition to being faithful pastors and churchmen. Westminster Seminary California congratulates Dr. VanDrunen on this deserving honor.
BOOK SUMMARY CREDIT ZONDERVAN ACADEMIC.
