A Proposed New Look for RCA Polity

Click here to download highlights from the Chat during the webinar.

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 three members of the RCA Commission on Church Order, explaining just what the amendment does and why the Commission presented it the way they did.

• Brian Andrew is an attorney in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and has been a member of Central Reformed Church, Grand Rapids, since 1998. Brian has served on the Commission on Church Order since 2021, and recently joined the Board of Trustees of New Brunswick Theological Seminary.
• Amanda Bruehl is the Vice President of Operations at New Brunswick Theological Seminary. Prior to NBTS, she served as an RCA denominational staff member for seven years. She has been on the Commission on Church Order since 2023. She has her Masters of Public Administration with a concentration in Nonprofit Management and Leadership from Grand Valley State University and has held positions in human resources, development, and administration in a variety of church and nonprofit settings.
• Howard Moths is an RCA minister of the Word and Sacrament, ordained in 1977. He has served congregations in Bradenton, Florida, and Jenison, Michigan, and has served as clerk of South Grand Rapids Classis and the Regional Synod of the Great Lakes. He is serving his fourth term on the Commission on Church Order.

After their presentation, three stated clerks from across the RCA, people who will have to make this work, will ask questions about the ins and outs of the proposal.

• Rita Burkard has been a member of the RCA all her life.  She served as an elder for two terms, then moved to the office of deacon, which better utilized her talents, and currently serves as the Stated Clerk for the Classis of the Canadian Prairies.  Retired from her career as a Medical Laboratory Technologist (Advanced) in 2016, she lives in Calgary with her husband, Dennis. 
• Grace Rim was born and raised in New York by Korean American parents who worked tirelessly for their daughter’s education and future. She has an undergraduate degree in Psychology with a minor in Child & Family Studies and an MDiv in Academic Theology. She is clerk of Rockland-Westchester Classis and second vice president of the Regional Synod of New York and co-pastor of  The Lamb of God Reformed Ministries.
• Carlos Corro is a Minister of the Word and Sacrament serving as the stated clerk of the Classis of Central California. He has a BA in Philosophy from the University of California at Berkeleyand an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary. He has spent seventeen years working as a pastor and leader in several churches, organizations, and academic institutions in California, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, and currently serves as the Senior Pastor of Imago Church (RCA)  in Visalia, California.

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, but registration is required. Please click here to register.