2025 Week 23
Hello, Springers!
By the time you read this I should be flying back from Atlanta, Georgia where I’ve been serving this week on our denomination’s Committee for the Review of Presbytery Records (CRPR).
Does that sound obscure and boring? In one sense, yes. Each year, all the regional groups of churches (presbyteries) in our denomination submit all the minutes of all their meetings for review. There are currently 88 presbyteries, and each one meets between three and six times per year.
Each presbytery will send one person as a representative on this committee to help review all those sets of minutes. Have you seen that scene they call “the reaping” in The Hunger Games? I joke about the task because certainly some of it is mundane.
However, and this is important, you should know that our church is not a lone group disconnected from the world and without accountability. We’re part of the Northern California Presbytery with 30 other churches. The record of our church’s actions (i.e., the minutes of our elder meetings) are submitted to our presbytery, which in turn submits its minutes to the CRPR.
Churches in our denomination have mutual accountability to each other. We have a process to review a church’s actions and to hear complaints of wrongdoing.
I hope that gives you a sense of two things:
- Your membership in the church matters. Committed members have the privilege of care and the right to file complaints. We hold each other accountable.
- Our denomination takes biblical discipline and accountability seriously. Churches in our denomination aren’t allowed to make stuff up and decide everything on a whim or preference.
There is a third thing, one that sounds more positive: we have a connection across churches, regions, and the whole country.
Our denomination doesn’t have a corner on the market of biblical Christianity, but our connectionalism makes us stronger. We strive to be a “big tent” denomination that governs itself from the bottom up rather than the top down.
We work hard to hold together as a church across the nation (and world!) that is 1) faithful to the Scriptures, 2) true to the Reformed faith, and 3) obedient to the Great Commission.
To that end, I’m glad to have the chance to work with other elders this week in Atlanta in both the mundane and the important work of reviewing all these minutes. Another plus in reviewing minutes is reading records of new pastors ordained, new missionaries sent out, and new churches planted. God is at work among us!
I’ll also see a few friends who serve on the committee. Pray that we will encourage one other during our time.
in Christ,
Pastor Tag