Christian 'House Cleaning' Needed Amid Divisions, Says Global Church Leader
The head of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches called on the North American Christian family to "engage in some house cleaning" as divisions within the Church and lack of collaboration for God's mission continue to plague the Body of Christ.
WARC general secretary Setri Nyomi said that when Reformed churches heal divisions in their own families and commit themselves to engage in mission in unity with other Christians, they are fulfilling an essential Reformed call.
"It is a shame that there are so many divisions within the Christian family - especially within the Reformed family," he added in a presentation Friday marking the 150th anniversary of the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) in North America. "This shameful tendency calls us as Reformed Christians to engage in some house cleaning within our own family."
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The Dutch Reformed churches in the Netherlands, where the CRC traces its roots to, have a long history of mergers and schisms, and the CRC has not escaped these. The CRC split from the Reformed Church in America in an 1857 Secession, which was in part the result of a theological dispute that originated in the Netherlands. Some other denominations later merged with the CRC, most notably the True Protestant Dutch Reformed Church in 1890. Other churches later split from the CRC, including the Protestant Reformed Church in the mid 1920s, the Orthodox Christian Reformed Church in 1988, and the United Reformed Churches in North America in 1996.
Today, the CRC is a denomination that has about 300,000 members in 1,000 congregations across the United States and Canada.
In his presentation Friday, Nyomi reminded delegates from the United States and Canada attending the Sesquicentennial Conference that churches around the world are called to engage in God's mission – together. They are called to work for the transformation of the world – together.
"Our vocation includes mission and making a difference in the world. The Church is therefore called upon to bring the good news to all in our own communities as well as in lands beyond our communities," Nyomi said, according to WARC's communications office.
And part of that mission is clearly being fulfilled.
"In many parts of the world Reformed churches are at the heart of health care delivery, education, advocacy for justice, peace, good governance and eradication of poverty. We understand these to be part of our calling," the WARC general secretary noted.
However, Nyomi said there is today a "blind spot" in the Church's mission engagement – that is "how we do mission in disunited ways."
"There are countries in which there may be five or six Reformed churches which are not collaborating. This is not a good witness," he said.
Meanwhile churches with more resources are able to control the way mission partnership is undertaken and there are cases where host and immigrant churches are not working together. A true sense of partnership needs to be developed, the WARC leader added.
After congratulating the church on marking 150 years of mission and ministry, Nyomi reminded delegates of their calling to be "prophetic in advocacy, challenging the forces of evil and death and speaking in places where the victims of oppression, injustice and suffering do not have a voice or presence."
Reformed faith at its core means being critics of structures in church and society which contradict the life-giving message of Jesus Christ, he added.
"It is part of the Reformed ethos to be agents of transformation in this way - reforming, criticizing and changing whatever contradicts the fullness of life for which Jesus came," Nyomi said.
"After all, we are the ones who from the 16th century have held that we are 'ecclesia reformata sed semper reformanda.' As the Reformed church, we continue to be reforming."
Over the course of three days, CRC held its 150th anniversary conference on the campus of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich. The denominational event, which concluded Saturday, featured both plenary and break-out group presentations on various aspects of the historical heritage of the CRC and the challenges of the present and future of the denomination's ministry.
