CanRC Committee Recommends Termination of Relationship with RCN
The Canadian Reformed Churches have an attractive new website — you can find it here. The new website is publishing the reports going to Synod Edmonton Immanuel in 2019. Amongst them you can find this report from the Subcommittee for Relations with Churches in the Netherlands. As expected, the CanRC committee is recommending the termination of ecclesiastical fellowship with the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. Among the grounds are the following:
a. The decision by Synod Meppel 2017 to admit females to ecclesiastical office is contrary to Scripture as shown in Appendix H of our report.
b. It is highly unlikely that this decision will be reversed on appeal to the next general synod since Synod Meppel decided that the churches could ordain female office bearers immediately, and since the NGK with whom the GKv are in the process of uniting have been allowing female ordination for some time already.
c. By the decision to permit female ordination the GKv has ignored the numerous warnings about unbiblical hermeneutics directed to their synods by the SRN as well as delegates of other sister churches since Synod Zwolle 2008. The GKv has also brushed aside the serious admonitions directed to Synod Ede by Synod Carman 2013 concerning the place of those unbiblical hermeneutics at the TUK as well as in the report Deputies M/F.
d. The decision of Synod Meppel to work towards full unity with the NGK shows that the GKv have moved in the direction of those churches which have also opened the offices to females and which allow same-sex couples to remain members in good standing.
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g. A decision to discontinue the relationship with the GKv would be an encouragement to faithful members within the GKv to take action, and it would be a final call to the GKv as a whole to take stock of the direction of those churches which once stood with us on the same basis of Scripture and Reformed Confessions.
It seems inevitable that CanRC Synod 2019 will take the same step that FRCA Synod 2018 took and, sadly, end their long-standing relationship with the “mother church” in the Netherlands.
