Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Mar/93

Contributor - Jonathan Gerstner

Title - Finally Beloved - Diversity and Unity

Topic - Reformed Church In Canada

One of the major sources of tension in any family of Christian churches is the question of how much diversity can be tolerated or even encouraged among its members. I know of no fellowship of churches which has quite the Christian spectrum which the Reformed Church in Canada possesses. We have congregations in which women are encouraged to wear hats, and others in which women are pastors. We have congregations in which the slightest change in the liturgy is considered objectionable, and others in which large segments of services are left open to how the Spirit leads. Our services are held in four different languages, and in five different provinces.

Yet there are also remarkable points of unity. I know of no serving pastor who does not accept the complete authority of the Scriptures as the Word of God, acknowledge Jesus Christ as the divine Son of God, and the only way of salvation. I know of no pastor who does not claim Jesus Christ as his or her personal Lord and Saviour. This unity is also expressed by the overwhelming majority of our members, though one will sometimes be astounded to stumble over a small pocket of unbelief left over in most cases from the "vrijzinnig" (free thinkers or radical liberals) of the church in Europe.

I personally am quite happy to have the honour of representing this diverse body as its executive secretary. Those of you who know me well know that this is not due to any lack of conviction on the many issues over which we disagree. Nor is it out of a lack of belief that these issues are important, and that we need to wrestle with them in love. Rather it is out of the conviction that we are in the middle of a deep and profound spiritual battle, which struggles for the soul of our nation, and for the soul of every man, woman and child in it. The false gospel is rampant which says that no redemption is necessary, sin is illusion, Christ was no more than a good teacher of social justice. This fatal disease has destroyed churches throughout Europe, and we are all in pain as we watch the final death gasps of some of our sister churches in Canada. When we face the Lord, we will have a hard time defending how we wasted our time fighting in the ranks with other believers, while men, women and children went into a godless eternity, and churches of Christ became synagogues of Satan.

The more consistently we hold to the Gospel, the more consistently reformed we will become. If you are not reformed in your theology, struggle with what it means to be saved by grace alone, and your Arminianism will die. Believe that salvation is by faith alone, and any tendency to debunk church growth or to cling to an automatic view of covenantal grace which views all church members as saved will fall away too. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ, as the great inspired reformed theologian Paul put it. We are commissioned to call all people to believe.

The struggle we face is to make sure that we move beyond head knowledge to the true heart knowledge of conversion. One of the chief aspects of the rediscovery of the Gospel at the Reformation was that not all baptized people are redeemed. Only by faith can we or our covenant children receive the gift of eternal life. The unity in professing the Gospel must be used to challenge the unconverted in our pews, and possibly even in our pulpits, to repentance and new life in Christ.

If, however, we lose the doctrine of the Gospel, that is the truths of the way of salvation, we have no way to be renewed and converted, for faith comes by hearing the Word of Christ. I challenge all of us during this trial year in which we receive the stateside RCA magazine, The Church Herald, to see if that part of the denomination shares our unity in the doctrine of the Gospel. Its editorial staff is committed to presenting a variety of different schools of opinion present in the denomination. Some of the articles will be wonderfully evangelical, others will give our former UCC members a frightful case of deja vu. This trial year will provide a very important opportunity for each of us to see what role we, as Reformed Church in Canada, are called to play in the spiritual war for the soul of our denomination. True unity and healthy diversity in a family of churches can be maintained only where there is unity in the doctrine of the Gospel.

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