A Proposed New Look for RCA Polity

What is a “Middle Assembly,”  and Why Will It Change Our Judicial Business?

 After two years of work, the RCA’s Restructure Task Force presented eleven recommendations to the 2024 General Synod. You can read more about that here, and see the discussion we had in the 2024 General Synod Recap. Of all of these recommendations, the biggest—which will condense the denomination’s current classes and regional synods to a single level of “middle assemblies” and change how judicial business works—both to reflect the reduced number assembly levels and to prevent some of the pitfalls this has presented for other Reformed bodies—is set for a classis vote between now and next March as the biggest single amendment to the Book of Church Order in a number of years.

Why is this all one huge, ungainly amendment? What does it mean for how the RCA does business? Is this a good idea at all? To answer some of these questions and to help classes answer others for themselves, the very first webinar of the Reformed Church Center’s twenty-fifth year will be “A Proposed New Look for RCA Polity,” to be held on Thursday, September 19, 2024, from 12:00 noon to 1:30 pm Eastern Daylight Time on Zoom.

This program will feature two members of the RCA Commission on Church Order, explaining just what the amendment does and why the Commission presented it the way they did, and three stated clerks from across the RCA, people who will have to make this work, asking questions about the ins and outs of the proposal. Once they have gotten the ball rolling, the floor will be open, as always, for all participants to ask questions and offer opinions. This discussion is VERY important for everybody in RCA classes as they begin to think about how they should vote on the proposed amendment, and should be instructive for folks in other Reformed and Presbyterian denominations to think about how their polity landscapes might be changing.

Registration:

As ever, this Reformed Church Center program is free for anyone and everyone who wishes to attend, and, as ever registration is required. Please click here to register.