Reformed Church Center Events

To view videos of past events, please click here.

Upcoming Events

Finding John Henry Livingston

January 29, 2025 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

Remembering the Father of the Reformed Church in America

Early in the morning of Thursday, January 20, 1825, John Henry Livingston died in his sleep. It was the seventy-ninth year of his life, the fifty-fifth year of his ordained ministry, and the forty-first year of his professorship in theology. He had reunited the Reformed churches in America after a schism, helped see the Collegiate Church in New York through a war, established the first Protestant theological seminary in North America, and played a crucial role in establishing the liturgy, song, and missional emphasis of the church that in some ways live on today. Yet the person called the “Father of the Reformed Church” in his presence had limits and shortcomings, as well. It has been two centuries since Livingston’s death, yet we are still learning about who he was and who the Reformed Church in America and NBTS are because of him.

On Wednesday, January 29, 2025, from 12:00 noon to 1:30 pm (Eastern US), the Reformed Church Center (RCC) will welcome John W. Coakley, L. Russell Feakes Memorial Professor of Church History, Emeritus, at NBTS and founding director of the RCC. A graduate of Wesleyan, Rutgers, and Harvard Universities and the author of over five dozen books, essays, and articles on church history and theology, Coakley has been working in his retirement on a new biography of the first NBTS professor of theology. He will share his process of continual discovery in a talk entitled “Finding John Henry Livingston.” Following Dr. Coakley’s presentation, there will be time for questions and discussion from everyone present.

Registration

As with all Reformed Church Center programs, admission to this Zoom program will be free and all are welcome. But also, as with all Reformed Church Center programs, participants need to register by clicking here.

Being Reformed in the Twenty-first Century: A Gift or a Challenge? – Celebrating a Quarter Century of the Reformed Church Center

April 24, 2025 @ 4:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Celebrating a Quarter Century of the Reformed Church Center

While New Brunswick Theological Seminary (NBTS) is a historically Reformed Seminary, founded by the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church in North America, it has, in the last half-century, become increasingly diverse, both culturally and ecumenically. By the late 1990s, there was a perceived need to provide a place to care for distinctly Reformed things so NBTS could honor that heritage while being more intentionally ecumenical. The Board of Trustees approved the creation of a “Center for Reformed Church Studies” on May 21, 1999, and the “inaugural” program of the Center was held on April 30 and May 1, 2001. But the first four programs of what would become the Reformed Church Center were held during the 2000-2001 academic year.

This is why we will celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Reformed Church Center on Thursday, April 24, 2025, beginning with a special hybrid lecture: we will be in-person as well as online for the first time since 2020. Our speaker will be Setri Nyomi, Interim General Secretary of the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC), whose topic will be “Being Reformed in the Twenty-first Century: A Gift or a Challenge?”

Setri Nyomi is a Ghanaian pastoral theologian, ecumenical leader, and theological educator. He was General Secretary of the WCRC—formerly the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) – from April 2000 to August 2014, the first non-European General Secretary of this church family that unites Presbyterian, Reformed, Congregational, Waldensian and some Uniting Churches globally. Ordained in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Ghana, in 1980, Dr. Nyomi has served as Senior pastor in several congregations in Ghana and has been part of a pastoral staff in the USA. He has also been a Senior Lecturer in Trinity Theological Seminary, Legon, Ghana, and a Visiting Professor at Princeton Theological Seminary in 2016 and at the University of Goettingen, Germany, in 2018.

An ecumenical leader known for his commitment to the mission of the church and its relevance to the twenty-first century as well as to the church’s role in being a beacon for justice in the world today, Nyomi has received academic degrees from University of Ghana, Trinity Theological Seminary in Ghana, Yale University Divinity School, and Princeton Theological Seminary. He is also very committed to Christian unity and ecumenical engagement and is married to Akpene Esther Nyomi; they have three adult children and five grandchildren.

After Dr. Nyomi’s lecture and discussion, there will be a gala celebration dinner for everyone who is able to join us in New Brunswick, as we remember the good work done by the Reformed Church Center and look forward to the future.

Registration

Registration information will be available soon, but mark your calendars now for this special event.

Past Events

Examining Mental and Spiritual Trauma for Religious Leaders

December 11 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

Click here to download Dr. Pater-Ennis’s Slides as a pdf.

Examining Mental and Spiritual Trauma for Women in Ministry

Trauma affects religious leaders as well as parishioners and congregants. Trauma can be either vicarious or direct for religious leaders. It is possible also for religious leaders to experience both vicarious and direct experiences of trauma. Vicarious trauma occurs when we watch others get injured in some way and are not protected from the perpetrators in local congregations or in religious institutions. Direct trauma occurs when religious leaders are hurt by perpetrators in either local congregations or in religious institutions.

Trauma can be experienced as post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression, and create physical symptoms as well. In addition, there is a higher incidence of suicide among clergy. For religious leaders, religious trauma syndrome can be either vicarious or direct.

In a society that once lifted up religious leaders, the crises of religious systems coupled with changing societal beliefs about religious adherence, have all contributed to more stress on clergy and other religious leaders. Thus, congregations have placed unrealistic expectations on clergy and their families to change patterns of participation. Clergy are experiencing more burn out and more pressure than any time in years in the past and are leaving their ministries and having mental and physical health issues.

Pamela Pater-Ennis, founder and CEO of Hudson River Care & Counseling, LLC, in Hoboken, New Jersey, a multi-lingual, multi-cultural, and multi-faith psychotherapy and coaching practice, has also founded My Sanctuary Healing in Teaneck New Jersey, committed to providing counseling, research, and prevention for victims of religious and spiritual abuse. Dr. Pater-Ennis is also an RCA minister of the Word and Sacrament and an adjunct instructor at NBTS. In her practice and ministry, she has done extensive ecclesial, educational, and clinical work around the issues of religious trauma syndrome and feels that women would have far less trauma symptoms if they had had the opportunity to both report their incidents of abuse and know they would be validated. She will share the insights she has gleaned so far and her progress toward creating a network of mental health clinicians trained in religious trauma syndrome in a Reformed Church Center program, “Hurting, Healing, (W)hole: When Trauma Impacts Religious Leaders,” to be held on Wednesday, December 11, 12:00 noon to 1:30 pm on Zoom.

After Dr. Pater-Ennis’s presentation, there will be a response by Faye Banks Taylor, Assistant Professor of Spiritual Formation and Field Education and Director of Field Education and Career Services at NBTS. A native of Virginia, she holds degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University, NBTS, and Drew University and she is an ordained itinerant elder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and presiding elder of her district. After Dr. Taylor’s response, there will be general discussion with everyone present.

Talk About the WCRC and Reformed Ecumenism

November 14 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

Looking at the World Communion of Reformed Churches

Since its founding in June of 2010, the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC) has been at the forefront of world ecumenical discussions. With 232 member denominations, it works on behalf of eighty million Reformed Christians globally. For ten of those twenty-four years, two members of the Reformed Church in America have been a crucial part of the WCRC’s work.

Lisa Vander Wal is an RCA Minister of the Word and Sacrament, recently retired, with a Master of Divinity degree from Calvin Theological Seminary and a Doctor of Ministry degree from New Brunswick Theological Seminary. She as Vice President, President and Past President of the RCA’s General Synod from 2010-2013, has been active in the ecumenical work of the RCA, and will soon complete her term on the Executive Committee of the WCRC as Vice President, representing the Caribbean and North American Area Council (CANAAC). Vander Wal and her husband, David, reside in Niskayuna, New York; together they have two adult children and two grandchildren.

Phil Tanis, a former mayor of Holland, Michigan, has recently completed a decade of service for the WCRC, as Executive Secretary for Communications, Executive Secretary for Communications and Operations, Executive for Communications and Operations as part of the Collegial General Secretariat, and Transitional Director for Communications and General Council Preparations based in Hannover, Germany, for all of that work. He previously served the RCA in similar capacities. His political development work in Bulgaria, for the International Republican Institute, included the country’s first presidential primary election. He is married to the Reverend Dr. Gretchen Schoon Tanis, a Minister of the Word and Sacrament in the RCA; they have two children.

With Phil and Lisa both being friends of the Reformed Church Center and both completing their work with the WCRC around the same time, this seemed like a good time for us to Talk About the WCRC and Reformed Ecumenism, so we will do just that on Thursday, November 14^th, 12:00 noon to 1:30 pm Eastern Standard Time on Zoom. People from all Reformed bodies are welcome to join us.

A Proposed New Look for RCA Polity

September 19 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

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.

2024 General Synod Recap

June 26 @ 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm

The Reformed Church Center Debriefs General Synod 2024

You’re invited to join people from across the RCA—those who were there and those who weren’t—in what has become an annual custom: discussing and debriefing what happened at General Synod, and reflecting on the promise and challenges facing the denomination as we move forward. This year, it will include the report of the Restructure Task Force with their eleven recommendations!

Kelvin Spooner, moderator of the Commission on Race and Ethnicity, will talk about new antiracism initiatives that were discussed.

Joshua Scheid, our brand-new General Synod president, will talk about the mood of the Synod, the view from up front, and what he sees as the big work of the coming year.

Tony Davis from the African American Black Council (AABC) and Kim Van Es, moderator of the General Synod Council (GSC), will talk about the AABC’s proposals for dealing with racism in RCA church order, the GSC’s response, and what the Synod did with is all.

And Sherri Meyer-Veen and Micah McCreary from the Restructure Task Force will talk about that group’s report, their long day of presenting, and what the Synod did with it all.

Then everybody at the webinar will get to make observations, ask questions, and discuss!

Racism in Reformed Church Order?

May 1 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

The Reformed Church Center Explores Racism in Our Polity

In its report to the 2023 General Synod, the RCA’s African American Black Council (AABC) claimed that the Book of Church Order (BCO) was “(a) racial, ethnic, and cultural tool of exclusion.”[1] This shocked some readers, who needed to step back and see how they, as white people who often grew up with Reformed polity, wouldn’t recognize that was going on.

The AABC statement and the General Synod Council response are just the beginning of a longer conversation in the church. In order to help that conversation along, and to help folks who weren’t at the last General Synod, the Reformed Church Center is hosting “Racism in Reformed Church Order?” on Zoom on Wednesday, May 1, 2024, from 12:00 noon to 1:30 pm Eastern Time.

Earl James, retired Coordinator for the African America/Black Council of the Reformed Church in America as well as retired Coordinator for Advocacy in the RCA, currently serves as vice president of the AABC. In this work, he has assisted RCA African American congregations and people, and others as well, find and walk pathways to living more fully into the Biblical vision of shalom and the human hope of the beloved community. His previous denominational roles involved increasing cultural agility, multiracial initiatives, and justice. He has brought his experience and his study of RCA polity to bear in helping to identify places where the church order is inherently racist and discuss what we can do about it.

Matthew van Maastricht, pastor of the Altamont and Helderberg, NY, Reformed Churches and adjunct instructor in RCA Studies at NBTS, is also a doctoral candidate studying Reformed polity at the Theologische Universiteit Utrecht and a founding leader of the Society for Protestant Church Polity. In his spare time, he serves as General Editor for the Congregational History Series of The Historical Series of the Reformed Church in America. He will respond to Earl James’s concerns and observations with an eye toward paths where we might make the order stronger and more just for a multiracial, multicultural church while continuing to be true to its Reformed roots.

After Matthew and Earl have laid out the case, we will open the discussion to everyone as we dream together about what might be possible and help one another see the situation with different eyes.

[1] Minutes of General Synod, 2023, 58.

Creation: Care, Communion, and Consummation, Part 3

April 18 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

A Third Colloquy to Wrap Up This Creation Discussion

In October of 2022, the Reformed Church Center began a discussion of Creation Care as Eschatology, as work of fulfilling the Reign of God. This was also an experiment in working with the Reformed Journal blog, as authors from that blog led the discussion here and in posts over there, creating a bibliography that is linked to this page.

Now it is time for the third and final colloquy in this particular series. You’re invited to join us for “Creation: Care, Communion, and Consummation, Part 3” on Thursday, April 18, 2024, 12:00 noon to 1:30 pm Eastern Daylight Time, via Zoom.

Creation care is a huge topic, encompassing multiple disciplines and touching almost every corner of society. It can be easy to feel overwhelmed by the scale and apathetic about how to respond. How can Christians acknowledge the immensity of the problem while at the same time not be swallowed up by despair? In this session, we will explore one critical response to the threats of biodiversity loss, ecosystem decline, pollution, and climate change: advocacy. We will explore how advocacy is portrayed throughout Scripture, examine the lives of some of the church’s patron saints of advocacy, and even practice a bit of advocacy ourselves. Through it all, we will discover that, far from virtue signaling or performative “wokeism,” Christian advocacy for justice is the heritage of each and every follower of Jesus.

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap is the Executive Director of the Association for a More Just Society-US. He holds an degrees from Calvin University and Western Theological Seminary (M.Div. ’16), and is a minister in the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRCNA). For the last ten years, he has educated and mobilized Christians around the world to address the climate crisis as an act of discipleship and neighbor-love. Kyle has been named to Midwest Energy Group’s 40 Under 40, the American Conservation Coalition’s 30 Under 30, and the Grist 50 Fixers cohorts for his work on climate change education and advocacy. In 2020, he was named a Yale Public Voices Fellow on the Climate Crisis. His work has been featured in national and international news outlets such as PBS, NPR, CNN, NBC News, New York Times, Reuters, and U.S. News and World Report. His first book, Following Jesus in a Warming World: A Christian Call to Climate Action, was published by InterVarsity Press in February 2023.

Josh Parks is a PhD student in religious studies at the University of Virginia. He holds degrees from Calvin University, Western Michigan University, and Princeton Theological Seminary. His current research is on religion and the Walt Disney Company, and he is also interested in the role of medievalism, fantasy, and wonder in American religion. His religious biography of Walt Disney is under contract with Eerdmans for the Library of Religious Biography series. He is also a violinist and has played frequently in worship services, chamber groups, and orchestras.

Debra Rienstra is professor of English at Calvin University, specializing in early British literature and creative writing. She is the author of four books—on motherhood, spirituality, worship, and ecotheology/climate change—as well as numerous academic essays, literary essays, and poems. Her most recent book is Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth (Fortress, 2022), a book that combines theology, nature writing, and biological principles to consider how Christians must adapt our faith and practice for a climate-altered planet.

Tim Van Deelen is a professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and has taught at the Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies for nearly two decades. Tim’s degrees include Michigan State University (Ph.D.), University of Montana (M.S.) and Calvin University (B.S.). Tim’s academic specialties include the population dynamics of large mammals and predator-prey interactions, and he is a frequent contributor to the Reformed Journal Blog.

Thomas Boogaart, Dennis and Betty Lou Voskuil Chair of Old Testament emeritus at Western Theological Seminary (WTS) and General Synod Professor of Theology emeritus, will moderate the conversation. During his thirty-two years at WTS, he helped start The Bridge (a third world store seeking to relieve hunger by offering third world artisans a fair price for their crafts) and the Community Kitchen (offering a hot noon meal to the food insecure). He also worked with Jeff Barker, a theater professor at Northwestern College, to stage the biblical dramas of the Old Testament, and with Travis West and Pam Bush to launch an interactive Hebrew curriculum.

Renée House, a member of the Reformed Church Center Committee, recently retired from her full-time ministry at the Old Dutch Church in Kingston, New York, where she served for nine years. Prior to accepting the call to Old Dutch, she served on the faculty of NBTS for twenty-five years as Director of the Library, Academic Dean, and Professor of Practical Theology, and as a General Synod Professor of Theology. In retirement, her ministry continues in local congregations, Mid-Hudson Classis, the Regional Synod of New York, Kingston Interfaith Council, and the Kingston Coalition for Housing Justice, which she helped to create.

Resources:

Click here to download a pdf of the Creation Care Bibliography & Twelve Blog Writings.

Click here to download a pdf of the essay by Tom Boogaart, “Rebuilding the Ladder Between Heaven and Earth”.

Advocacy Resources and Links Mentioned during the event:

“How much can you get in electrification incentives?” Calculator: https://homes.rewiringamerica.org/calculator

Contacting your congressional representatives: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative

Sample script for contacting your representative:

“Hi, I have a message for the Representative. My name is _(name) and I am a constituent from _(city). As a Christian, I believe that some of our greatest responsibilities are to love God and to love our neighbors. Acting to address climate change and to care for creation is a chance to do both better. I urge the Representative to do everything s/he can to address the challenges posed by climate change.”

Citizens Climate Lobby is another great group to follow: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/

Climate Vigil Album: https://open.spotify.com/album/2WHh6TmX4BFuPLBsPwaWff?si=42uJ-u55RNSZfs3tvl8vUw

Deb Rienstra’s climate care newsletter: https://refugianewsletter.substack.com/

Women’s Stories Day 2024

March 9 @ 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm

The Reformed Church Center Examines the Challenges Women Face

While recent church history often discusses the process that led to all of the offices of the RCA being opened to women in the 1970s, we need to remember that this work was so heroic precisely because of opposition and abuse that has happened and continues to happen to try to keep women out of RCA ministry. On Saturday, 9 March, from 1:00 to 3:00 pm Eastern Time, as part of our annual Women’s Stories Day, co-hosted by RCA Women’s Transformation and Leadership. We will look at resistance that has been faced by RCA women in ministry and discuss ways to address the abuse and move toward acceptance and healing as a church with the annual Gnade presentation “Women in Ministry—Still Speaking: Supporting Women Clergy Into the Next Century.” This is a discussion for both women and men.

Our discussion leader is Lisa A. Hansen, the 2023-2024 Hazel B. Gnade Fellow in RCA Women’s Studies at NBTS. She holds an EdD in Organizational Change and Leadership from the University of Southern California, an MS in National Security Strategy from the National War College, a DMin in Pastoral Care and Counseling from Oblate School of Theology, ThM and MDiv degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary, and a BA in Economics from the University of California in Los Angeles. A retired chaplain in the US Air Force, she currently serves as Senior Pastor of Pasadena, California, Presbyterian Church.

Click here to read Rev. Hansen’s presentation.

The response to Dr. Hansen’s presentation was given by Denise Kingdom, Pastor of Mobilization and Renewal at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville Michigan, and an RCA Missionary to South Africa where she works with the local church and community to secure loving families for orphaned and vulnerable children in the village of Botshabelo. She has a BA in Psychology from Shaw University and an MDiv and DMin from Western Theological Seminary. She ‘s a former member of the NBTS Board of Trustees and a mother to many, especially her two biological children, Gezelle and Chris.

Devotions for the day were led by Pamela Pater-Ennis, Executive Director of Hudson River Care & Counseling, and Lynn Min, a licensed mental health counselor in New York. Both of them will also be available at the Zoom after-party to help people process their feelings about the presentation.

Hidden Stories of RCA Women – the 2023-2024 Albert A Smith Presentation

February 15 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

2023-2024 Albert A Smith Presentation Looks for Hidden Women’s Stories

All too often, when we look for people’s stories in the Reformed Church in America (RCA), we end up telling stories of men. This is because the obvious places to look for RCA history focus on ministers and sometimes elders and, for almost 350 of our nearly 400 years in America, those offices were exclusively held by men. The few women’s stories that have risen to our notice—stories of people like Dina Van Berg, Sojourner Truth, Ida Scudder, and Frances Beardslee—are overused, because their source material is easily found.

Mary Risseeuw, the 2023-2024 Albert A Smith fellow at NBTS, wants us to look beyond all that:

“There are, obviously, a great many women’s stories yet to be uncovered and each one has some significance to our history; our individual church communities as well as the broader story of the RCA. As time goes by it will become more difficult to uncover the stories if there is little to no documentation being done. I cannot tell every woman’s story, but I can help facilitate the stories that need to be expanded and help develop an initiative to locate and preserve the source material.”

Risseeuw, a genealogist and conference organizer, seeks to do just this in her fellowship work, and will share her progress as well as what else remains to be done in the 2023-2024 Albert A Smith lecture. Titled “Hidden Stories of RCA Women,” it was presented on Thursday, February 15, 2024, from 12:00 noon to 1:30 pm Eastern Time. She hopes to have identified and discussed materials in the RCA Archives that could facilitate continued research into women’s stories in the RCA, and perhaps identify materials that could be digitized. She writes, “I think far too many people aren’t aware of how many stories there are to pursue – much less where to begin the pursuit.”

After Risseeuw’s presentation, there was a response by Anna M. Jackson. Anna is co-pastor, with her husband, Dwayne, of Second Reformed Church in Hackensack, New Jersey. She was the 2020-2021 Hazel B. Gnade Fellow in RCA Women’s Studies at New Brunswick Theological Seminary, where she studied the phenomenon of matriarchs in Black RCA congregations and the larger church in the 1970s and 80s. She was also one of the Gnade lecturers in 2023. Prior to going to Hackensack, Jackson was pastor of Queens Reformed Church in Queens Village, New York, and has served as a member of various denominational committees and commissions as well as the General Synod Council.

Following Jackson’s response, we opened the floor to questions and comments by all the participants.

Missions in a Post-Colonial World

January 17 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

What Do Missions Look Like in a Post-Colonial World?

Once upon a time, White European and American Christians sang hymns like “From Greenland’s icy mountains” and “O Zion haste, thy mission high fulfilling” and taught about missionaries as brave explorers taking the gospel to exotic-looking and ignorant savages in dark jungles around the world. Once upon a time, Christian missionaries followed trails blazed by their colonizing American and European nations, planting their flags and spreading their dominance around the world while securing paths for businesses to bring back wealth.

For an entire host of reasons, the era of colonization by White powers is over. Missions are now moving in all directions, from south to north and west to east as well as vice-versa. So what should we expect of Christian missions and how should we conceive of them in a world without colonization? On Wednesday, January 17, from 12:00 noon to 1:30 pm, the Reformed Church Center explored that question with two expert missiologists in “Missions in a Post-Colonial World.”

JP Sundararajan is an ordained minister and Director of Global Mission for the Reformed Church in America. Prior to this role, JP had the joy and privilege of ministering for fifteen years back in Bangalore, and all throughout India, as an RCA missionary in partnership with the ministry his parents nurtured when he was a boy. Together, they were able to record the Bible in almost 100 Indian languages. They have also been able to work in over 13,000 villages in India and finished a project that provided audio Bibles to more than 30,000 families in their heart languages. His most recent project involved the creation of the HUM Audio Bible smartphone app (joinhum.org) which launched during the COVID-19 pandemic.

James Jinhong Kim, who holds the Horace G. Underwood Chair in Global Christianity at NBTS, is a pioneer in Global Missiology, approaching the field from the intellectual and pragmatic synthesis of four very different disciplines: history of religion, history of East Asian intellectual traditions, issues in “global core” curricular teaching and programs, and decades of missiological fieldwork experience in the Pauline legacy of “tentmaker mission.” He holds degrees from Columbia and William Jessup Universities and Princeton Theological Seminary, and his most recent book is Global Christianity and the Early Letters of Horace G. Underwood (Pickwick Publications, 2022).

Please Register:

As with all Reformed Church Center programs, this is free for all participants, but all participants must register by clicking here.

2023-2024 Poppen-Young Lecture – Worship that Dismantles Power and Privilege

December 14, 2023 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

The Reformed Church Center is pleased to announce that the 2023-2024 Poppen-Young Presentation in Reformed Worship will be on Thursday, December 14, 2023, from 12:00 noon to 1:30 pm, and that the presenter will be Adrienne Thorne. After her presentation, we will hear a response from Neal D. Presa, Associate Professor of Preaching and Worship, and Vice President of Student Affairs and Vocational Outreach here at NBTS.

The Reverend Adriene Thorne is the eighth senior minister of the historic Riverside Church in the City of New York and the first African American woman to hold the position. She received her Master of Divinity degree from The Pacific School of Religion and completed post-graduate studies in pastoral care and counseling at The Blanton-Peale Institute.

Adriene is a healer, Presbyterian minister, and classically trained dancer who uses movement to heal bodies in the church and community. When she is feeling open, though, Adriene will tell you that she has learned more about God from nature, art, and her child than from any classroom or book.

Adriene’s background in the performing arts includes credits with The Dance Theatre of Harlem, The Metropolitan Opera, and the world-famous Radio City Rockettes among others. When she is not parenting, pastoring, creating, or mentoring, Adriene is probably SCUBA diving a coral reef, on the squash court, or in the dance studio, fantasizing about what is newly possible. Adriene grounds her Christian practice and leadership in an appreciation for imperfection and leads with an understanding that even the resurrected Christ came back in a flawed body – what hopeful news for us!

Rev. Thorne’s topic will be ways in which we can use worship to dismantle systems of power and privilege in society.

The Rev. Neal D. Presa, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Preaching and Worship and Vice President of Student Affairs and Vocational Outreach at NBTS. He is an ordained minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), was Moderator of the 220^th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and presently serves on the World Council of Churches Central Committee and Executive Committee, Moderator of the WCC’s Finance Policy Committee, a member of the Strategy Planning Working Group, a member of the Green Village Steering Committee, and as Co-Vice Chair of the Third Round of Bilateral Dialogues between the Episcopal Church and the PC(USA). He holds degrees from the University of California, Davis; San Francisco Theological Seminary; Princeton Theological Seminary, and Drew University.

The lecture will be take place via Zoom.

Please Register:

The event is free, but registration is required. Please click here to register.

Creation: Care, Communion, and Consummation

November 15, 2023 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

In November of 2022, the Reformed Church Center hosted authors from the Reformed Journal blog in a discussion of Creation care, in a Reformed sense, looking at it as an aspect of eschatology. That program, “Coming to Our Senses: Creation Care, Communion, and Consummation,” was the beginning of a conversation, which has continued over the last several months in the Reformed Journal.

Please join us Wednesday, November 15, 12:00-1:30 p.m. for a second colloquy in the series on “Creation: Care, Communion, and Consummation.” Tom Boogaart will present a reconstruction of cosmology, creation, humanity, and the Creator in the Hebrew Scriptures that challenges interpretations of these Scriptures that sharply divide spiritual and material realities. Renée House will discuss the ways in which specific Christian doctrines, particularly during the Enlightenment, developed to erode our sense of the relationalities between ourselves, the larger creation, and God as Creator, and in contrast, will consider how these relationalities are preserved in Native American spirituality. Responses to these presentations will be given by Kyle Meyaard-Schaap, Joshua Parks, Debra Reinstra, and Tim Van Deelen, followed by discussion with all the colloquy participants. All of this will look toward a third Reformed Church Center program in April 2024.

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap serves as the Vice President for the Evangelical Environmental Network. Kyle was a Yale Public Voices on the Climate Crisis Fellow in 2020 and was named a Grist Fixer for 2022. His writing and work have been featured in national and international news outlets such as CNN, PBS, NPR, NBC News, Grist, Reuters, and U.S. News and World Report. He is married to Allison and lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan with their sons, Simon and Amos.

Josh Parks is a graduate student in church history at Princeton Theological Seminary. He graduated from Calvin College with a BA in English and music in 2018, and he earned an MA in medieval studies from Western Michigan University in 2020. His research interests include medievalism, fantasy, and American Christianity as well as ecocriticism, ecomusicology, and ecotheology. He is currently writing a religious biography of Walt Disney for Eerdmans’s Library of Religious Biography series. He is also a violinist and plays regularly in worship services and other settings

Please Register:

This colloquy is free and open to everyone, but all participants must register in advance. Click here to register

Click here to download a pdf of the Creation Care Bibliography & Twelve Blog Writings.

Click here to download a pdf of the essay by Tom Boogaart, “Rebuilding the Ladder Between Heaven and Earth”.

Chasing Windmills: Tearing down the Giants of Church Growth Movement

October 5, 2023 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

The Reformed Church Center Looks at a New Vision for Church Growth

Because we are called to “make disciples of all nations, and yet we realize that growth for the sake of numbers is an idolatry, issues of church planting and church growth are often problematic for Reformed Christians. We feel called to grow the church, but the goals and even the language used regarding church planting often seems contrary to a Reformed understanding of the church.

On Thursday, October 5, from 12:00 noon to 1:30 pm Eastern Time, the Reformed Church Center will host a webinar presentation by Chad Farrand, Executive, Classis de las Naciones, RCA and a Doctor of Ministry Candidate at NBTS, in which he proposes new ways of speaking and thinking about this issue. In “Chasing Windmills: Tearing down the Giants of Church Growth Movement,” Chad will give a brief overview of the Church Growth Movement (CGM) and its beginnings in the RCA, review some mental models that have created harmful spaces, and sketch out a process for dismantling CGM and replacing it with a holistic Spiritual Growth Movement centered on Christ, strengthening RCA churches for the flourishing of our world, including these steps:

1. Restrengthening What Is and Remembering What Has Been
2. Spiritual Disciplines and the Inner Journey
3. Reclaiming the Reformed Identity in Multiplication
4. Tending the Garden before Bearing the Fruit
5. Welcoming the Stranger in Hospitality
6. Empowering the Next Gen Leader
7. Drawing Closer to Jesus Forever

There will be a response by Mashona Walston, senior pastor of First Church (Reformed) in Albany, New York, who holds a Doctor of Ministry degree from NBTS. She is a proponent of neuroscience and prayer as means of providing resilience, and works with individuals, faith groups, and community partners for stronger and more positive relationships locally, nationally, and globally. followed by time for everyone participating to ask questions or comment on what they have heard.

RCA General Synod 2023 Recap

June 21, 2023 @ 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm

The Reformed Church Center Debriefs General Synod 2023

The RCA’s General Synod 2023 is in the books and, while many things were discussed and decided, one of the big movements in the room was the Synod figuring out how to talk with each other – about restructure and other difficult and hopeful things.

So for this year’s General Synod Recap we’ll get some varied perspectives at how the Synod did at communicating and deliberating, and how it might help or hinder us going forward.

And, we have a great panel:

Pedro Agudelo, pastor of Iglesia de Cristo la Roca in Queens, New York
Beth Carroll, pastor of Oakland, California, City Church
Judy Devic Nelson, president of General Synod 2024
Al Platt, pastor of Athabasca Reformed Church in Alberta, Canada, former GSC member, and new trustee at NBTS
Riana Shaw Robinson is a pastor starting a new congregation and pursuing social justice in Oakland, California
Kendra Van Houten, pastor of Fair Street Reformed Church, Kingston, New York
Cameron Van Kooten Laughead, director of Room for All and moderator of the Christian Action Commission

Click here to download a PDF of the live Chat from the event.

Redeeming Confession in Reformed Worship – Poppen-Young Lecture 2022-2023

April 19, 2023 @ 11:00 am - 12:30 pm

Click here to download the resources document prepared by Rev. Mel Van Hattem.

This year’s Poppen-Young Lecture Looks at Confession, Assurance, and Law

The RCA Directory for Worship tells us that “Worship is the acknowledgment of God’s superior worth: God is righteous, we are unrighteous; God is sinless, we are sinners.” And 1 John 1:8 says: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” The corporate prayer of confession in worship is meant to allow us to leave the burden of our sins at God’s feet; the Assurance of God’s Pardon intends to remind us that we go forth free and forgiven; and the Law of God is meant to be our thankful response: we can live a better way, so that we don’t fall into the same traps.

Yet not all congregations find the grace and mercy of God in this liturgy. As our 2022-2023 Poppen-Young fellow, Mel Van Hattem, has observed, “The Prayer of Confession time in worship services feels uneasy in some church settings and welcoming in other churches.” Many congregations feel that this makes people feel guilty, that the Law is negative to our twenty-first-century ears, and so they minimize this portion of worship or leave it out altogether. But there may be better ways to approach this.

On Wednesday, April 19^th, at 11:00 am Eastern Time, our 2022-2023 Poppen Young Lecture in Reformed Worship explored Redeeming Confession in Reformed Worship. We will take a new look at the theology behind confession and assurance and at ways different Reformed pastors are trying to make this a more redeeming time for modern worshipers.

Mel Van Hattem, our 2022-2023 Poppen-Young Fellow, is an RCA pastor with degrees from Hope College, Western Theological Seminary, and Princeton Theological Seminary. Over six decades, he served a variety of parishes in Northern New Jersey, and brings those experiences to his current work with liturgy.

Liz Testa, coordinator for RCA Women’s Transformation and Leadership, minister in New York Classis, and DMin candidate in Transformational Preaching at NBTS, will give a response to Mel’s presentation, and then everyone will be invited to join in the discussion.

The Alvin J. Poppen-John R. Young Fellowship provides a modest stipend of and the possibility of a two-week residency at New Brunswick Theological Seminary to support in Reformed Worship, particularly as it pertains to the Reformed Church in America (RCA). It was established by gifts from friends of Alvin J. Poppen and the late John R. Young, long-time members of the RCA denominational staff. The resources of the Seminary, as well as the wide variety of worship resources and experiences in the New York metropolitan area, are at the Fellow’s disposal. Each Poppen-Young Fellow provides an experience of the results of the work, through a lecture, a convocation on the theme chosen, or some other public expression shared with the Seminary community.

Women’s Stories Day 2023: These Are Ministries, Too!

March 18, 2023 @ 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm

CELEBRATING HALF A CENTURY OF ORDAINED WOMEN IN THE RCA!

When we talk about ordained ministry in the Reformed tradition, we often think only of the ministers of the Word and Sacrament. But our theology, our liturgy, and our order tell us that deacons and elders are every bit as much ministers, with different functions and amenabilities, but callings and ordinations just as valid as those in the third office. What’s more, the first women ordained to serve as elders and deacons were elected and ordained in 1973, meaning 2023 marks half a century of ordained women’s ministry in the RCA.

On March 18^th, 1:00-3:00 pm Eastern Time, the Reformed Church Center, working with the RCA Office of Women’s Transformation and Leadership, will kick off the RCA’s celebration of half a century of this vital ministry with “Women’s Stories Day 2023: These Are Ministries, Too!” There will be a time of devotions, a time for stories of the work of women elders and deacons around the RCA, a time for sharing, and the 2023 Hazel B. Gnade Lectures in RCA Women’s Studies, giving context to this change and its special impact on Black churches.

This program will be virtual, so that women and men from across the denomination and around the world may take part, but the Reformed Church Center will be premiering a new Zoom Event Space, where participants will be able to visit and learn outside of the main webinar.

Anna M. Jackson is co-pastor, with her husband, Dwayne, of Second Reformed Church in Hackensack, New Jersey. She was the 2020-2021 Hazel B. Gnade Fellow in RCA Women’s Studies at New Brunswick Theological Seminary, where she studied the phenomenon of matriarchs in Black RCA congregations and the larger church in the 1970s and 80s. Prior to going to Hackensack, Jackson was pastor of Queens Reformed Church in Queens Village, New York, and has served as a member of various denominational committees and commissions as well as the General Synod Council.

Lynn Japinga is professor of religion at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, and a minister of the Word and Sacrament in the RCA. She was the 2019-2020 Hazel B. Gnade Fellow in RCA Women’s Studies at NBTS. A prominent teacher, lecturer, and author in the RCA, Dr. Japinga is the author of Loyalty and Loss: The Reformed Church in America, 1945-1994 and Preaching the Women of the Old Testament: Who They Were and Why They Matter.

Smith Lecture – 2022-2023 – Slavery and Social Power in the Dutch Reformed Church

February 23, 2023 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

A LOOK AT THE RCA AND SLAVERY

One of the growing edges in RCA historical studies is the relationship between the RCA and slavery. Thirty years ago, this was not addressed at all in most historical work, but the book An RCA Reader, published in 2022 as a principal textbook for students of RCA history, devotes eleven percent of its pages to the topic. Even so, more needs to be done.

One of the leading scholars in the area of slavery in the Dutch North American colonies is Andrea Mosterman, associate professor in Atlantic History and Joseph Tregle Professor in Early American History at the University of New Orleans. In her work, she explores the multi-faceted dimensions of slavery, slave trade, and cross-cultural contact in the Dutch Atlantic and Early America with special emphasis on Early New York. She has published her work in, among others, the Journal of African History and Early American Studies, and she curated the digital exhibit “Slavery in New Netherland” for the New Netherland Institute. Her book Spaces of Enslavement: A History of Slavery and Resistance in Dutch New York (Cornell University Press 2021), which has won the 2020 Hendricks Award for best book-length manuscript related to New Netherland and the Dutch colonial experience, explores slavery and space in Dutch New York. She is currently working on a project that re-examines the seventeenth-century Dutch slave trade. Click here for more information about Dr. Mosterman.

In 2009, Dr. Mosterman was the Albert A Smith Fellow in Reformed Church History at NBTS, studying materials on this topic in the RCA Archives. On Thursday, February 23, 12:00 noon to 1:30 pm Eastern Time, she will return to the Reformed Church Center to present the 2023 Albert A Smith Lecture: “Slavery and Social Power in the Dutch Reformed Church.” She will talk about how her research and her understanding of the topic have evolved in the fourteen years since her last presentation at the Center.

Responding to Dr. Mosterman will be Janice McLean-Farrell, Dirck Romeyn Assistant Professor of Metro-Urban Ministry and Assistant Dean of Doctoral Studies at NBTS. McLean-Farrell holds theology degrees from the University of Edinburgh, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, as well as a degree in chemistry from the University of Delaware. Part of her area of specialization includes Religion and Public Life, Migration, and Urban Immigrant Youth and Religion.

After the presentation and the response, all participants will be invited to join in a time of discussion and questions with the two scholars.

Land Acknowledgment, Truth, and Reconciliation: A Place to Begin

January 18, 2023 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

Reformed Church Center Begins to Look at Reconciliation with Native Peoples

The RCA General Synod of 2021, I response to a report from its Commission on Christian Action, voted “To . . . acknowledge our failure to speak out about the concerns of our indigenous congregations and tribal communities, and express remorse at this inaction; and further, . . . (t)o instruct the General Synod Council to annually state a land acknowledgement for any location in which General Synod meets.”

The need for reconciliation with people who arrived in North America millennia before White Europeans—people once called “Indians” but now more commonly referred to as “First Nations” people in Canada and “Native Americans” in the US—has become more and more clear in recent years as both nations have faced up to the mistreatment and attempted genocide these peoples suffered at the hands of White settlers, our governments, and even Christian church groups. Leroy Koopmans’s book Taking the Jesus Road: The Ministry of the Reformed Church in America Among Native Americans (2005), part of The Historical Series of the Reformed Church in America, acknowledges some of the problematic work of RCA missionaries along with the good work being done.

The choice of the 2021 General Synod to acknowledge the original inhabitants of land where the Synod meets is one that is duplicated in more and more congregations and is even a regular part of chapel worship at New Brunswick Theological Seminary. It is not, however, a solution to the problem all by itself. As part of its ongoing series of programs meant to help local congregations and the whole church confront and dismantle racism, the Reformed Church Center will host “Land Acknowledgment, Truth, and Reconciliation: A Place to Begin” on Wednesday, 18 January 2023, 12:00 noon to 1:30 pm Eastern Standard Time. This online program, led by Nathan Gullion, First Nations Pastor of Athabasca Reformed Church in Alberta, Canada, and Suzanne Wenonah Duchesne, Visiting Assistant Professor of Worship and Preaching and Director of the Chapel at NBTS, will focus on the need for sharing truth between native peoples and the church as part of a committed, ongoing act of reconciliation and healing.

Nathan Gullion has lived in Edmonton, Alberta, for twenty-three years with his wife, Kim, and their four children. Since 2019, he has been First Nations Pastor at the Athabasca Reformed Church, with a particular ministry to the First Nations congregation at Calling Lake, part of the Big Cree Nation of which Nathan is also a member. With the people at Calling Lake, Nathan works to live out the Truth and Reconciliation that the Canadian government has advocated. He writes, “The Truth and Reconciliation is going to be a hard road but we will succeed only when the two cultures embrace what it really means to forgive and accept each other’s truth.”

Suzanne Wenonah Duchesne holds degrees from Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, Palmer Theological Seminary in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, and Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. She has taught worship and preaching not only at NBTS but also at Moravian Theological Seminary in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; Lexington Theological Seminary in Lexington, Kentucky; and Union Theological Seminary in New York as well as at Drew and Palmer. An important part of her work and scholarship has been around issues of reconciliation and justice with native peoples, and she has created several worship resources for this, especially for the United Methodist Church.

RCA International Church Planting

December 8, 2022 @ 11:00 am - 12:30 pm

Looking at a New Kind of Church Multiplication

For the last few years, RCA Church Multiplication and RCA Global Mission have been reporting on new cooperative efforts to help start churches outside of the US and Canada. While there are great and inspiring stories of the work being done, the church is left to discern how this is consistent with the historic RCA mission policy of starting indigenous churches that become self-sustaining rather than branch offices of the RCA. While there have been various reports and explanations, there still seems to be confusion across the denomination about just what this means.

That’s why the Reformed Church Center is hosting a conversation around the question “Is the RCA Planting International Churches, and What Does that Mean?” on Thursday, December 8, from 11:00 am to 12:30 pm Eastern Time via Zoom. Staff from Global Missions and Church Multiplication along with local pastors and a commissioned missionary, will explain the plan and ask questions about it, followed by a time for everyone present to join in the discussion.

	Luis Ruiz is an ordained minister and RCA Global Mission Supervisor in North America, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Additionally, he serves as the International Missions Executive for the Classis de las Naciones. Luis attended Western Theological Seminary and graduated from Fuller Theological Seminary with an MA in Intercultural and Global Leadership.
	Aleta Shepler served as an RCA missionary in Venezuela from 1989 to 1999 and continues to be a commissioned missionary. She currently serves on the Church Multiplication Committee and coordinates Church Multiplication for the Synod of the Mid-Atlantics. She is on a mission to help Christians find their fresh expression of church.
	Chad M. Farrand is a pastor with the RCA who serves as Classis Executive for Classis de las Naciones and Assc. Director of Church Multiplication for the RCA. A DMin candidate in Missiology and Global Christianity at NBTS, Chad and his wife live in Orlando, Florida.
	Liz Estes in an RCA minister and the twenty-third pastor of Readington Reformed Church in Hunterdon County, NJ. Her MA in Philosophy is from Catholic University and her MDiv is from Union Theological Seminary in NYC. Now she is a candidate for a DMin degree in Prophetic Urban Ministry at NBTS. Liz serves as moderator of the RCA’s Commission on Theology.
	Dale Assink has been an RCA Minister of the Word and Sacrament for forty years. He is committed to family and cultivating healthy leaders and churches. Dale pastored local RCA churches for nineteen years, and for the last twenty-two years has worked for the Regional Synod of the Heartland as a coach, a consultant, and a visionary leader with a focus on church multiplication. Dale and his wife Dawn together have four children and eleven grandchildren.

Creation Care as Eschatology

November 16, 2022 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

The Reformed Church Center Looks at Creation Care with Reformed Journal Authors

The Reformed Journal is the descendent of two distinguished journals, published since 1951, and the blog presence of one of those, called “The Twelve” and appearing since 201i. It is now a daily digital publication, featuring a regular rotating group of twelve authors with various guests. It seems natural that the Reformed Church Center, called to help people think about being Reformed in the twenty-first century, would work with Reformed Journal authors.

One of the most pressing issues of our time is climate change and what theologically gets called Creation care. How do we talk about this leaning more into theology than politics? What if a Reformed view of eschatology referred not so much to a time as to a place, and what if that place is God’s world, created to be good? How do we think of environmentalism as an eschatological issue, and what is our responsibility? What are the implications for local church ministries?

These are the kind of questions which have led the Reformed Church Center to invite a group of Reformed Journal authors who write regularly about Creation care issues into a conversation. The first round of that conversation will take place on Wednesday, 16 November, 12 noon to 1:30 pm, in the program “Coming to Our Senses: Creation Care, Communion, and Consummation.” Participants will be invited into the conversation. After this, the authors will spend time writing and thinking, coming back together at the Reformed Church Center over the next couple of years to talk about where their thinking is taking them and us.

Confession Then & Now: Thinking with Belhar in North America

October 13, 2022 @ 10:00 am - 3:00 pm

Hosted by:
The Reformed Church Center at New Brunswick Theological Seminary
The Barth Center at Princeton Theological Seminary
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

The Belhar Confession was first adopted by a South African synod in 1982, and Christian confessional responses to white-supremacist political and social structures remain an important subject forty years later. During that time, the Confession has traveled around the world and is used by a number of Reformed churches years after Apartheid ended in the 1990s.

Considering Belhar’s influence, the Reformed Church Center at New Brunswick Theological Seminary, the Center for Barth Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary gathered an international panel of scholars to discuss what it means to be a confessing church in twenty-first century North America.

“Confession Then & Now: Thinking With Belhar in North America” was a free online webinar, held on Thursday, October 13, 2022.

The webinar is presented in two parts:

• Part One: “Witnessing to Belhar.” Hanna Reichel discussed the background of Belhar with Rachel Baard and Derek Woodard-Lehmen; then Nathan Jérémie-Brink had a conversation with Belhar authors Alan Boesak and Dirk Smit and South African theologian Rothney Tshaka.

• Part Two: “Witnessing with Belhar.” These scholars were joined by pastors and theologians from across North America (Lisa Vander Wal, Morgan Bell, Riana Shaw Robinson, Stephanie Kaper-Dale, John Marc Sianghio, Matthew van Maastricht, and Lydia Tembo) as they each explore what it means to be a confessing church in their particular context.

Witnessing to Belhar Panel
	Rachel S. Baard is Assistant Professor of Theology and Ethics, and Director of the Master of Arts in Public Theology Program, at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. A South African by birth, she studied theology at the University of Stellenbosch and later earned her Ph.D. in Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey. Her first book, Sexism and Sin-Talk: Feminist Conversations on the Human Condition, was published in 2019 by Westminster John Knox Press, and received the 2020 Andrew Murray / Desmond Tutu Book Prize in South Africa.
	Allan Boesak is Professor of Black Liberation Theology and Ethics at the University of Pretoria and a global human rights activist. He is the author of twenty-four books, the most recent being Selfless Revolutionaries: Biko, Black Consciousness, Black Theology, and a Global Ethic of Solidarity and Resistance.
	Nathan Jérémie-Brink is L. Russell Feakes Assistant Professor of Global Christianity at New Brunswick Theological Seminary, and a historian who specializes in Christianity, slavery, and abolitionism. He directs projects that center Black history and issues of social justice, including the Slavery + Freedom Studies Working Group, GospelMaterialities.com, and The SHELTER Project. He is also a Presbyterian minister engaged with faith communities on issues of antiracism and reparations.
	Hanna Reichel is associate professor of Reformed theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. Their research interests include theological method, epistemic justice, political theology, digital theology, and queer theology. Reichel is co-editor of Routledge’s Karl Barth Studies series, chair of Princeton Seminary’s Center for Barth Studies Advisory Board, and a member of the steering committees of the International Karl Barth Conference (Leuenberg, CH), AAR’s Reformed History and Theology unit as well as the Gesellschaft für Evangelische Theologie.
	Dirk Smit is the Rimmer and Ruth de Vries Professor of Reformed Theology and Public Life at Princeton Theological Seminary. He is from South Africa, where he was a member of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church when the Confession of Belhar was drafted and adopted (1982/1986). He is a systematic theologian and has been active in both the local and ecumenical church, including the Reformed world.
	Rothney Stok Tshaka is a theologian and currently Director of the School of Humanities at the University of South Africa. He has published articles on the intersections of Black and African theologies, race and politics in South Africa, and has a particular interest in reformed theology in conversation with Black and African theologies as these continue to shape life and confession today.
	Derek Woodard-Lehman is Lecturer in Theology and Ethics at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. His research and teaching ask how the theological question, “How shall we live as Christians?” informs and transforms the political question “How shall we live with other citizens?” in increasingly pluralistic and polarized communities. He is especially interested in how Christian commitments mobilize political resistance to racial injustice in cases like the American Civil Rights Movement (1940s-1970s), the German Church Struggle (1930s), the South African Anti-Apartheid Movement (1970s-1990s) and the Movements for Black Lives.

Black & Reformed Theology

September 14, 2022 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

The Reformed Church Center Explores Black & Reformed Theology

Say the words “Black Theology” to many people—especially people who aren’t Black—and they become confused, maybe even nervous. They know a little bit about what it is, or more likely what others have said it is, but not enough to relate it to their everyday lives. They assume it has something to do with Black Power as that was expressed in the 1960s, and they might worry that it’s anti-White.

Say the words “Reformed Theology” to many people—including people who are Reformed—and they become dismissive, maybe even nervous. They may know a little about what it is, or more likely what others have said it is, but not enough to relate it to their everyday lives. They assume it has to do with Zwingli and Calvin and other sixteenth-century White men, and they assume it is stuffy and stagnant, and they might worry that it’s racist and sexist.

Neither of those analyses is completely true, of course. What if we were to consider how each of these theologies might speak to contemporary congregations of various races? What is we were to consider how they might speak to one another, and especially how Black Theology might inform the work of Reformed congregations, even those that aren’t Black? What if we imagine a theology that is Black & Reformed, and what we can learn from it?

For the first discussion of the 2022-2023 academic year the Reformed Church Center will consider Black & Reformed Theology. We’ll have this conversation on Wednesday, September 14, 2022, 12:00 noon to 1:30 pm, via Zoom. And we have a great leader and respondent for our discussion.

Peter Watts is pastor at The Rock Church in Los Angeles, California, and coordinator for the RCA African American Black Council (AABC). He is a doctoral candidate (2023) at Fuller Seminary whose focus is on racial justice initiatives that build bridges between suburban and urban churches. His work is centered around creating spaces for lament, repentance and the ongoing work liberating all people from the tyranny of inequality and racism.

Gregory Dunlap is pastor of Woodcliff Community Reformed Church in North Bergen, New Jersey, where he has served for the last twenty years. Previously, he was active in ministries in two Baptist congregations and worked in the energy industry for thirty-four years, retiring as Vice President-Consumer Operations for Public Service Electric and Gas in 2019. He is currently a doctoral candidate in Prophetic Urban Ministry at NBTS, where he also is a member of the Board of Trustees and where he was the first student to participate in the NBTS Presidential Scholars Program.

After a presentation by Peter and a response by Gregory, we will welcome everyone into the discussion.

This Zoom webinar will be free for everyone, but registration is required. Go to https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Tml5VVfnSrSk0hbiylgF1w to sign up.

RCA General Synod 2022 Recap

June 22, 2022 @ 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm

REFORMED CHURCH CENTER DEBRIEFS GENERAL SYNOD 2022

You’re invited to join people from across the RCA—those who were there and those who weren’t—to discuss and debrief what happened at General Synod, and to reflect on the promise and challenges facing the denomination as we move forward, on Wednesday, June 22, 2022, 12 noon to 2:00 pm EDT.

Here are some folks who will be leading the discussion:

Eddy Alemán, General Secretary of the RCA General Synod

Dwayne Jackson, co-pastor of Second Reformed Church, Hackensack, New Jersey, and new president of the General Synod

Micah McCreary, president of NBTS and RCA General Synod Professor

Sheila Moses, president of the Regional Synod of New York

Nate Pyle, pastor of Christ’s Community Church, Fishers, Indiana, and a member of the Council on Race and Ethnicity

Jillissa Teitsma, treasurer and chief financial officer of the RCA General Synod

Felix Theonugraha, president of Western Theological Seminary

Cameron Van Kooten-Laughead, executive director of Room for All and moderator of the Christian Action Commission

Have We Been Here Before? The Impact of the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic on Church Life

April 20, 2022 @ 11:00 am - 12:30 pm

Reformed Church Center Examines How The Church Has Addressed A Pandemic Before

The years 2020 and 2021 have been marked by the global struggle against the COVID pandemic—which now looks like it may have a major impact on the beginning of 2022, as well. We know that worship and meetings and ministries have been disrupted, that we are coping with various spiritual and psychological traumas, and that there have been a staggering number of deaths. We often believe nothing like this has ever happened before, but it has. The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 to 1920 infected over 500 million people, thirty-three percent of the world’s population at the time. Yet very little is said or taught about that pandemic or its effects on society or the church.

On Wednesday, April 20, 2022, from 11:00 am to 12:30 pm EDT, the Reformed Church Center will look at that phenomenon of over a century ago to see what we might learn about today and about future pandemics. The program “Have We Been Here Before? The Impact of the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic on Church Life” will be presented by Benjamin Doolittle, MD, MDiv, FAAP, FACP, the 2021-2022 Albert A Smith Fellow in RCA History at NBTS. An RCA minister who is active in a local UCC parish in New Haven Connecticut, Doolittle is Professor of Internal Medicine & Pediatrics at Yale University School of Medicine, Program Director of the Combined Internal Medicine & Pediatrics Residency Program at Yale, and Medical Director of the Yale Medicine-Pediatrics Practice. He was also one of two infectious disease specialists who advised the 2021 RCA General Synod on safe meeting practices.

Responding to Dr. Doolittle’s presentation will be Janice McLean-Farrell, Dirck Romeyn Assistant Professor of Metro-Urban Ministry and Assistant Dean of Doctoral Studies at NBTS. McLean-Farrell holds theology degrees from the University of Edinburgh, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, as well as a degree in chemistry from the University of Delaware. Part of her area of specialization includes Religion and Public Life, Migration, and Urban Immigrant Youth and Religion.

After the presentation and the response, all participants will be invited to join in a time of discussion and questions with the two scholars.

Women’s Stories Day 2022

March 26, 2022 @ 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm

WOMEN’S STORIES DAY 2022 LOOKS AT SINGLE WOMEN IN MISSION IN THE 1800s

American Church History tells us that one of the primary ways women answered the Spirit’s call to ministry in the nineteenth century was to enter the mission field. Women who were discouraged from preaching, teaching, medical work, and many other professional endeavors in North American congregations were welcomed in foreign fields and supported by those same churches that didn’t think this was their place back home.

The featured presentation for the Reformed Church Center’s annual Women’s Stories Day, hosted with the RCA Office for Women’s Transformation and Leadership for the sixth year, is “Bustin’ Lintels, Bursting Doors: Molly Talmage and Single Women in RCA Mission in China.” This presentation, by David Alexander, this year’s Hazel B. Gnade Fellow in RCA Women’s Studies, was on Saturday, 26 March 2022, 1:00 to 3:00 pm via Zoom. Following his presentation were two respondents: Laura Osborne, Reformed Church in America coordinator for Interreligious Relations and a candidate for the Doctor of Ministry in Missiology and Global Christianity at NBTS. Tracie Alston, Assistant Director of Foreign Institutes for the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), and a candidate for the Doctor of Ministry in Missiology and Global Christianity at NBTS. She has served as a missionary in several countries in South America, Asia, and the Caribbean; and is also a member of the board of Bible League International as a Scripture Engagement Advocate.

Afterward, there was a time for questions and discussion among all the participants.

Deepika Srivastava was our devotional leader. Born at Christian Medical College (CMC) and Hospital in Vellore, India—the hospital and school founded by RCA missionary doctor Ida Scudder—Deepika is Director for Church Relations at the Vellore CMC Foundation in New York City and a deacon at Bethany Memorial Reformed Church. She has a Master’s in Public Health from the University of Rochester along with a passion for sharing the healing ministry of Christ and building spiritual families.

David Alexander is a retired RCA missionary who served for most of his career with his wife, Char, in Taiwan. They currently live in Holland, Michigan. An NBTS graduate (Class of 1980), David was awarded the Global Ministry Alumni Award by NBTS in 2019. He is our Hazel B. Gnade Fellow in Reformed Church Women’s Studies for 2021-2022. This fellowship, created through the diligent work of Mary Kansfield, historian and wife of former president Norman Kansfield, is named for the longtime secretary of the RCA Women’s Board of Foreign Missions.

What We Still Owe Erik Routley

March 10, 2022 @ 11:00 am - 1:00 pm

Reformed Church Center Examines Routley’s Legacy In Reformed Worship

At various times in the history of the Reformed Church in America, the denomination has been profoundly influenced by people from outside our church community, often without even realizing it. One of these people was Erik Routley (1917-1982) a minister of the United Reformed Church of England and Wales who was considered one of the great hymnologists of the twentieth century. Late in his life, he immigrated to the United States to teach at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey, where he met Howard Hageman and became involved with the RCA hymnal project that would be Rejoice in the Lord.

Nancy Graham, the 2021-2022 Poppen-Young Fellow in Reformed Worship at the Reformed Church Center, is writing a biography on Routley and his massive work in the fields of Biblical studies, liturgics, theology, and hymnody. Her work on the fellowship is a small piece of that, looking at the Englishman’s involvement with the RCA hymnal, one of his last large projects, and his impact on congregational song in the US. She will present results of her research on Thursday, March 10, 2022, at 11:00 am in the program “What We Still Owe Erik Routley.” A response to her presentation will be given by James Hart Brumm, Director of the Reformed Church Center and General Editor of the Historical Series of the Reformed Church in America, who has written and presented extensively on Reformed hymnody and Routley’s work.

Nancy L. Graham is a hymnologist, author, musician, and teacher, with a Ph.D. from the Graduate Theological Foundation, Foundation House in Oxford, United Kingdom, and a Doctor of Sacred Music from The Graduate Theological Foundation, as well as a Master of Music from Westminster Choir College.

The Alvin J. Poppen-John R. Young Fellowship in Reformed Worship was established by members and friends of the RCA denominational staff in honor of these two long-time staff members, who each assisted and mentored countless RCA pastors and congregations. It provides a stipend and the possibility of a two-week residency at New Brunswick Theological Seminary, along with the wide variety of worship resources and experiences in the New York and Philadelphia metropolitan area, to support research in Reformed worship, particularly as it pertains to the RCA.

Looking at the General Synod Professorate

February 22, 2022 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

“Understanding Theological Education in the RCA” Examines the General Synod Professorate

While no less a figure than John Calvin called for a fourth ministerial office, the professorate, in addition to the offices of deacon, elder, and minister, the Reformed Church in America is one of the few to maintain this office of “teacher of the church” into modern times. Indeed, it is the appointment of the first General Synod Professor, John Henry Livingston in 1784, that is seen to constitute the founding of what would become New Brunswick Theological Seminary. Yet, even in the RCA, the professorate has been subject to changing fortunes and changing understandings, and there are, currently, only five actively-serving professors.

The final session of the “Understanding Theological Education in the RCA” colloquy for 2021-2022 will look at The General Synod Professorate on Tuesday, February 22, 2022 at 12:00 noon on Zoom, examining the problems and the possibilities of the office with one current occupant and two others who held the office recently.

Carol Bechtel is Professor of Old Testament at Western Theological Seminary and a graduate of Hope College and WTS with a Ph.D. from Yale University. She has published extensively, served as president of the General Synod of the RCA in 2009 and moderator of the General Synod Council in 2010, and was the first woman ordained by the Classis of Illinois in 1988. In 1998, she became the first woman professor of theology, and is now the senior member of the professorate.

Renée House is retiring at the end of December as Minister of the Old Dutch Church in Kingston, New York where she has served since March of 2013 to begin work with a non-profit organization tackling issues of affordable housing in that city. Prior to accepting the call to Old Dutch, she served on the faculty of NBTS for twenty-five years as Director of the Library, Academic Dean, and Professor of Practical Theology, and as a General Synod Professor of Theology. Renée received her M.L.S. from the University of Arizona, M.Div. from NBTS, and Ph. D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. As a minister in the RCA, she has been engaged in ministry throughout the U.S. as well as Taiwan. She is a writer, poet, singer, wife, step-mom, and grandmother to six rambunctious kids.

Leanne Van Dyk holds degrees from Calvin College (BA), Western Michigan University (MA), Calvin Theological Seminary (MDiv) and Princeton Theological Seminary (PhD). Before assuming the presidency of Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, in 2015, she taught at San Francisco Theological Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and then at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan, where she held the office of General Synod Professor. Her other professional experience includes serving as a member of the Board of Commissioners of the Association of Theological Schools (ATS); as a member of the Committee on Theological Education for the PC(USA); as a member of the Wabash Center’s Consultation on Theological Education; and on various projects with the Office of Theology and Worship for the Presbyterian Church (USA). She has served on the editorial boards of Perspectives, a Journal of Reformed Thought, and the Scottish Journal of Theology and has published several books.

Asian American Experiences of Racism and Anti-Racism

February 3, 2022 @ 11:00 am - 1:00 pm

Reformed Church Center Looks At Anti-Racism For Asian Americans

When we discuss anti-racism, it is important to remember that the experience isn’t that same for all minority groups. In fact, assuming that was so would, itself, be racist. While we have had discussions of anti-racism from Black and Latinx perspectives, hearing multiple viewpoints is necessary in order for all of us to get a complete picture and begin to transcend barriers.

This is why the next anti-racism program from the Reformed Church Center will be “Asian American Experiences of Racism and Anti-Racism.” This program, to be held on Thursday, February 3, 2022, at 11:00 am via Zoom, also acknowledges that there is more than one Asin American experience. We will hear from three people of different nationalities, ages, and experiences.

Gerri Yoshida is a member of the Japanese American United Church in New York City. She serves on the Pastoral Formation Committee of the Classis of New York and on the Executive Committee of the Council of Pacific and Asian American Ministries. She served on the Commission on Race and Ethnicity and on the R-89 Task Force for Understanding White Privilege. She is active with RCA Disability Concerns.

Thomas Song is a minister in Queens Classis of Korean descent. He has served on the General Synod Council and the Commission on Christian Unity and was a staff member for the Regional Synod of New York. He is co-pastor of Steinway Reformed Church in Astoria, New York, with his wife, Ock Kee Byun.

Tiffany Fan was born in Taiwan and immigrated to the U.S. when she was sixteen. She graduated from New Brunswick Theological Seminary with distinction in May 2021. She has worked as a part of the church planting team in the Bronx since 2017. Fan is called to work with the multicultural ministry and wishes to continue working with the currently-planted ministry after ordination.

Training for Other Ministries

January 19, 2022 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Understanding Theological Education in the RCA Looks at Training for Other Ministries

There was a time, not terribly long ago, when everyone trained by a theological seminary was preparing to be a Minister of the Word and Sacrament. Even those not planning for the parish pastorate were in some form of that ministry. Then came the rise of congregations multiple professional staff members; while some, like youth pastors, often still trained in the traditional way, there were others serving as Christian educators and in similar roles, with different training.

In the modern era, the church grapples more and more with non-traditional paths of educating people serving as pastors, and an explosion of other kinds of ministries outside of the traditional mold. On January 19, 2022, at 12:00 noon, the “Understanding Theological Education in the RCA” colloquy will have an online session looking at “Training Other Ministers.” Our discussion will be led by Terry Ann Smith, Associate Dean of Institutional Assessment and Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at NBTS, and Sung Kim, Chief Operating Officer and Associate General Secretary of the Reformed Church in America. Smith, who holds degrees from Roosevelt University, NBTS, and Drew University, is director of the Certificate Program at New Brunswick, which offers theological and ministry training to students not enrolled in traditional graduate programs. Prior to his current role with the RCA, Kim—who also serves and founder and senior pastor of Grace Churches, a multi-site church centered in Ann Arbor, Michigan—served as the RCA’s Director for Leadership Development.

After presentations by Kim, on the needs of the twenty-first century church, and Smith, on the educational possibilities at New Brunswick, we will open up for questions and discussion from everyone present. This program offered via Zoom will be free and open to everyone, but participants must register at https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEodOurqjstGd0ypez2z60wrMYxjSnSEWpX.

Samuel Zwemer’s Mission Motivations: The Relationship of Medical Care And Evangelism

December 8, 2021 @ 11:00 am - 12:30 pm

The Reformed Church Center Looks at Early Choices in Middle-Eastern Missions

When we think of missionaries, we think of people going out to proclaim the Gospel to all the world. So, why are so many Christian missions doing medical work? How did that begin?

William Ruggles Church, the 2020-2021 Albert A Smith Fellow in Reformed Church History, will present the results of his own exploration of that question in “Samuel Zwemer’s Mission Motivations: The Relationship of Medical Care And Evangelism” on Wednesday, December 8, from 11:00 am to 12:30 pm on Zoom. Church is a physician specializing in radiology who spent much of his career doing medical mission work, bringing diagnostic ultrasound machines to mission hospitals. In 2018, he received an MA degree from Western Theological Seminary, and he continues to study the work of RCA missionaries and especially medical missions as part of his Ph.D. candidacy at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His fellowship project—postponed from last academic year by the pandemic—is looking at the question of why medical missions are so often chosen as an evangelism tool, and why, in particular, Samuel Zwemer and James Cantine chose this emphasis for the Middle Eastern missions begun in 1889.

Church’s presentation will be followed by a response from James Jinhong Kim, the Horace G. Underwood Chair in Global Christianity and Associate Professor of Missiology and Global Christianity at NBTS. Kim holds degrees from William Jessup University, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Columbia University, and directs the Doctor of Ministry cohort in Missiology and Global Christianity. His book, Global Christianity and the Early Letters of Horace G. Underwood, is due to be published soon by Pickwick Publications/Wipf & Stock.

The response will be followed by a time of open questions and discussion by all participants.

Understanding Theological Education in the RCA: Ministerial Formation in a Zoom World

December 1, 2021 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Understanding Theological Education in the RCA: Ministerial Formation in a Zoom World from New Brunswick Seminary on Vimeo.

“Understanding Theological Education” Colloquy Looks at Ministerial Formation in a Zoom World

The core definition of “seminary” has nothing to do with theological education; it is, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, “an environment in which something originates and from which it is propagated.” Indeed, the word once referred to many kinds of secondary and finishing schools, usually where young women or men went off to live a rather cloistered existence while being “formed.” In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, theological seminaries expected students to spend most if not all their lives there for the time in which they were pursuing their education, which often did not involve a degree. Yet, in the present day, no one lives on the NBTS campus, and students are raising families, working in other jobs, even pastoring churches while students. During the recent COVID pandemic, no classes met on campus at all, and all classes are planned to be hybrid and online for the 2021-22 academic year.

Given this change, what does it mean to be a “seminary,” and just how does “formation” take place? This is the question that will be explored in our third Understanding Theological Education in the RCA colloquy on Wednesday, December 1, 12 noon to 1:00 pm. We will be led in this discussion by Faye Taylor and Daniel Meeter. After their opening presentation, everyone will have an opportunity to join in with questions and discussion.

Faye Banks Taylor is a native of Virginia, with degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University, NBTS, and Drew University. A minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, she serves NBTS as Director of the New York program and Director of Field Education.

Daniel James Meeter is a minister of the Reformed Church in America, with degrees from Calvin College, NBTS, and Drew University—when at NBTS, he and his wife, Melody, also a minister, lived in married student housing on campus. In addition to his pastoral work in New Jersey, Ontario, Michigan, and New York, he has served as adjunct faculty at NBTS and has published extensively. He currently enjoys retirement with his wife, Melody, an RCA minister and chaplain, in New Patltz, New York.

RCA General Synod 2021 Recap

November 17, 2021 @ 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm

REFORMED CHURCH CENTER DEBRIEFS GENERAL SYNOD 2021

The 2021 General Synod of the Reformed Church in America was exciting and productive. After three years’ of discussions, and with pain and prayers, the Synod approved a way forward from some of its battles over human sexuality. There were also discussions over education, race, missions, anti-racism, and other aspects of being church together.

You’re invited to join people from across the RCA—those who were there and those who weren’t—to discuss and debrief what happened at this important General Synod, and to reflect on the promise and challenges facing the denomination as we move forward, on Wednesday, 17 November, 12:00 noon to 2:00 pm EST. We will be gathering via Zoom, and will be led by a panel of people who were there and will share various perspectives. There will also be plenty of time for everyone to discuss.

Panelists:

Philip Assink
Pastor, First Reformed Church, Oak Harbor, Washington
General Synod President, 2021-22

Carol Bechtel
Professor of Old Testament, Western Theological Seminary
General Synod Professor

Vivian Campbell
Student delegate from New Brunswick Theological Seminary

Grace Jeeyoon Rim
Co-Pastor, The Lamb of God Reformed Ministries, Nanuet, New York

Kelvin Spooner
Pastor, Cambria Heights Community Church, Queens, New York
Moderator, Commission on Race and Ethnicity

Cameron Van Kooten Laughead
Executive Director, Room for All
Moderator, Commission on Christian Action

The History of WTS and Its Role in RCA Theological Education

November 3, 2021 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Understanding Theological Education Colloquies Begin a New Year by Looking Back

In order to understand fully what we are doing and where we are going, we need to understand where we have been. A significant portion of the history of theological education in the RCA is wrapped up in the history of the denomination’s two seminaries: New Brunswick and Western. And so our first two Understanding Theological Education in the RCA colloquies, continuing last year’s successful series, will focus on those histories.

On Wednesday, November 3, 12:00 noon to 1:00 pm, we look at the history of Western Theological Seminary and theological education in the midwestern RCA, presented by Dennis Voskuil, president emeritus of Western Seminary and a Senior Research Fellow at the Van Raalte Institute of Hope College in Holland, Michigan. Dennis began his ministry pastoring several congregations in Michigan and Massachusetts, then served as professor of religion at Hope from 1977 to 1994, when he became president of Western. Retiring from the presidency in 2008, he returned to teaching church history full-time, then as an adjunct at WTS from 2014 to 2017, when he began two years of service as interim president of Hope College. His presentation to us will be followed by a response from John Coakley, and then a time of questions and discussion for everyone.

The History of NBTS and Its Role in RCA Theological Education

September 29, 2021 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Understanding Theological Education Colloquies Begin a New Year by Looking Back

On Wednesday, September 29, 12:00 noon to 1:00 pm, we will learn about the history of NBTS and its role in RCA theological education from John W. Coakley, L. Russell Feakes Memorial Professor of Church History, emeritus, at NBTS and General Synod Professor emeritus of the Reformed Church in America. A widely published author of medieval and American Christianity, John, who holds degrees from Wesleyan, Rutgers, and Harvard Universities, is the author of thirty-one articles or essays and twenty-seven book reviews, and the editor or author of six books, including New Brunswick Theological Seminary: An Illustrated History, 1784-2014 (Eerdmans, 2014). After a response by Dennis Voskuil, we will open up for questions and discussion by the entire group.

The second part will come on Wednesday, November 3, 12:00 noon to 1:00 pm, as we look at the history of Western Theological Seminary and theological education in the midwestern RCA, presented by Dennis Voskuil, president emeritus of Western Seminary and a Senior Research Fellow at the Van Raalte Institute of Hope College in Holland, Michigan. Dennis began his ministry pastoring several congregations in Michigan and Massachusetts, then served as professor of religion at Hope from 1977 to 1994, when he became president of Western. Retiring from the presidency in 2008, he returned to teaching church history full-time, then as an adjunct at WTS from 2014 to 2017, when he began two years of service as interim president of Hope College. His presentation to us will be followed by a response from John Coakley, and then a time of questions and discussion for everyone.

White Christian Nationalism, Liberation Theology, and Being Reformed

September 10, 2021 @ 11:00 am - 12:00 pm

Looking at White Christian Nationalism, Liberation Theology, and Being Reformed

After the riots at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley linked White Christian Nationalism to the theology of Abraham Kuyper, a prominent Dutch Reformed theologian whose teachings were used to justify South African Apartheid. While we remember that not everyone in the Reformed tradition necessarily follows Kuyper too closely, it still leaves us, and the world wondering whether being Reformed should somehow be linked with being racist, or can we do better?

On Friday, September 10, at 11:00 am, Dr. Juan A. Carmona will lead our first Reformed Church Center conversation of the new academic year, with a discussion of “White Christian Nationalism, Liberation Theology, and Being Reformed.” This is another installment in the series of discussions begun in 2020, seeking to help congregations be more anti-racist. Dr. Carmona will examine the connections between Calvinism and White Christian Nationalism, and suggest equally strong, and more biblical, connections to much more expansive and inclusive theologies. After his presentation and some response by James Brumm, Director of the Reformed Church Center, we will open up the gathering to everyone for questions and discussion.

Juan Carmona is a retired prison chaplain, parish pastor, and teacher at various institutions of higher education. He served as a Visting Scholar/Professor of Theology for several years at the Tainan Theological College/Seminary in Taiwan, teaching courses on Liberation Theology and Prison Ministry. An ordained minister in the Reformed Church in America since 1978, he holds degrees from the State University of New York, New Brunswick Theological Seminary, and Colgate-Rochester Crozer Divnity School.

How COVID-19 Has Impacted the Role of Sacred Musicians – The 2020-2021 Poppen-Young Lecture in Reformed Worship

April 12, 2021 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

Looking at How the Current Pandemic May Be Changing Reformed Worship

As the Church moves through a time of unusual social and economic turmoil related to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an opportunity to evaluate and discover the ways in which the familiar roles of sacred musicians have changed. While the liturgical arts have long been at the center of vital worship, the ways in which music directors, instrumentalists, and choristers have assisted in leading worship, interacted with one another, or found community during the pandemic has led to seismic shifts in understanding the pastoral role of music ministry.

These shifts will be examined by Justan Foster in “’Now the Silence, Now the Peace’: How COVID-19 Has Impacted the Role of Sacred Musicians”, an online webinar on Monday, April 12, 2021, at 7:00 pm.

Justan J. Foster is Music Director at the Greenbush Reformed Church in East Greenbush, New York, and the Alvin J. Poppen-John R. Young Fellow in Reformed Worship for 2020-2021. He has served as Dean of both the Hudson-Catskill and Eastern New York Chapters of the American Guild of Organists, and specializes in the organ works of American composers. In addition to his musical and liturgical pursuits, Justan serves as a Senior Administrative Analyst for the State of New York. His research looks into ways in which liturgical arts and music have been impacted and ways those serving to lead these parts of worship have responded during the 2020-21 COVID-19 pandemic.

There is no charge for attending this webinar, but all participants must register here.

2021 Women’s Stories Day

March 13, 2021 @ 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Anna M. Jackson, co-pastor of Second Reformed Church in Hackensack, New Jersey, was the featured speaker at the 2021 Women’s Stories Day, held on Saturday, March 13, 2021, from 1:00 to 3:00 pm. Jackson, who is the 2020-2021 Hazel B. Gnade Fellow in RCA Women’s Studies at New Brunswick Theological Seminary, presented “Like Trees Planted By the Water: RCA New York City Black Women Lay Leaders of the 1950s-1970s,” her study of matriarchs in Black RCA congregations and the larger church in the 1970s and 80s. There were a large number of Black women, even more so than in other RCA congregations, who were not ministers of the Word and Sacrament but who took leadership for their congregations, in denominational settings, and even on the world stage—with the struggle against Apartheid—during these pivotal years. Jackson plans to look at the work they did, and conducting oral interviews with several of the woman and people who knew them.

Sharon Atkins, pastor of Bethany Memorial Reformed Church in New York City and the new president of the RCA African-American Black Council, was our devotional leader. A native of Montego Bay, Jamaica, she was raised in Brooklyn and has been an active member of the RCA since her youth.

There was also information about other storytelling projects going on in the RCA and how participants from this conference can help make those reality.

Women’s Stories Day has been hosted by the Reformed Church Center at NBTS and the RCA Office of Women’s Transformation and Leadership annually since 2016.

Certifying Fitness for Ministry

March 2, 2021 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

“Understanding Theological Education” Colloquy Looks at the Certificate of Fitness

On Tuesday, March 2, at 12:00 noon, the Reformed Church Center will host its fifth and final colloquy in the “Understanding Theological Education in the RCA” series for the 2020-21 academic year.

One of the central features of RCA theological education since the appointment of John Henry Livingston as professor of theology in 1784 has been a certificate: a formal letter from the professors of theology to a candidate’s classis—prior to 1800, it went to the Provisional Synod as the examining body—testifying that, in the opinion of the professors, the candidate has completed the necessary requirements to be examined for licensure and ordination. Indeed, neither theological seminary granted academic degrees until relatively recently; the certificate was the indication that the student had done the work.

Since the 1980s, that certificate has been called the “Certificate of Fitness for Ministry.” The question then becomes one of just what that means. Is fitness for ministry uniform across the various RCA classes? If Jesus is the pattern for ministry, and if we still believe in the doctrine of total depravity, can any human truly be fit for ministry? Or is the certificate merely to indicate that the student has satisfactorily completed the requirements listed in the Book of Church Order, with everything else to be determined by the licensing classis?

We will examine all of these questions as we discuss “Certifying Fitness for Ministry”. One of the people holding the office of Professor of Theology and the presidents of New Brunswick and Western Theological Seminaries will make the opening presentations before we all enter into discussion.

James Brownson is the James and Jean Cook Professor of New Testament at Western Theological Seminary, and a General Synod Professor of Theology. He is the longest-tenured faculty person currently serving at WTS, having come in 1989. He served as Dean from 1996 to 2004, but left when the demands of the job became too much to allow continued teaching. He is the author of a variety of books, including a book on “Difficult Questions” which is due out from Eerdmans in several months, as well as Bible, Gender, Sexuality: Reframing the Church’s Debate on Same-Sex Relationships, which came out in 2013.

Felix Theonugraha is President and Professor of Educational Leadership at Western Theological Seminary. He last served as Vice President for Student Life and University Services at Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois. A pastor’s son who first felt a call to ministry at age nine, Felix Theonugraha was born in Indonesia to Chinese Christian parents. When Felix was 12, his father accepted a call to pastor a Mandarin-speaking congregation in the San Francisco Bay area, and the family immigrated to the United States. He majored in Psychology and English at the University of California, Berkeley, and has an M.Div. and a Ph.D. in Educational Stuides Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

Micah L. McCreary is President and John Henry Livingston Professor of Theology at New Brunswick Theological Seminary. He comes to NBTS from Richmond, Virginia, where he was President and CEO of McCreary and Madison Associates, Inc., a psychological and human resources consulting firm, and Associate Professor of Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). Dr. McCreary holds a BS degree in engineering from the University of Michigan, an M.Div. from the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology, Virginia Union University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in counseling psychology from VCU. He has also received a number of fellowships, including the American Psychological Association Minority Fellowship, State Council of Higher Education in Virginia Fellowship, and the American Council on Education Presidential Fellowship.

We will begin our session with presentations by all three of our guests, followed by questions and discussion, planning to wrap up about 1:00 pm.

There is no charge for attending this colloquy, but participants need to register by clicking here.

Forward with Grace

February 13, 2021 @ 10:00 am - 11:30 am

The Reformed Church Center Discusses Going Forward with Grace

The Reformed Church Center has been hosting a three-part series on Planning and Preparing for the 2020 Vision, looking at this report to the RCA and its recommendation for moving forward. In each of these gatherings, our goal has been not to take sides in favor or against the report, but simply to report what is different, to give participants a chance to make up their own minds. You can see recordings of the first two discussions: Together, Yet Changed and Preserving Our Shared History.

The final session, looking at the third part of the report, Forward with Grace, will be held on Saturday, February 13, at 10:00 am EST via Zoom. Again, the goal will not be to identify things as good or bad, but to discuss how this plan would be different from what the church has done before and the implications of such changes. We will be led in that discussion by three people with unique and valuable perspectives.

Linda Burlew Gold is pastor of the Fonda Reformed Church (Fonda, NY), after having served as pastor of the First Reformed Church of College Point in Queens, New York, for many years. She served as the Stated Clerk of Queens Classis for five years and is currently a member of the Commission on Church Order.

Brian Keepers is the lead pastor of Trinity Reformed Church in Orange City, IA. He has served as an ordained pastor in the RCA for twenty years and is married with two daughters and a new granddaughter. He loves reading, being outdoors, and is passionate about the intersection of faith and art. He was a member of the 2020 Vision Team that prepared this report.

Micheal Edwards is an ordained minister of the word and sacrament in the Reformed Church in America. Reared in the Baptist, Methodist, AME, and Reformed traditions, his culture and faith roots are firmly planted in the African American Christian community, Harlem, USA. Currently, he is the Senior Minister at the DeWitt Reformed Church and Executive Minister for the Regional Synod of New York.

There is no charge for attending this event, but participants need to register by clicking here.

Ministerial Formation Certification Agency

January 19, 2021 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Ministerial Formation Certification Agency is the Topic for the Fourth Theological Education Colloquy

The Reformed Church Center’s ongoing Understanding Theological Education in the RCA colloquies reflect on what theological education has been in the RCA and what it could be. The fourth session, on Tuesday, January 19, at 12:00 noon will consider the work of the Ministerial Formation Certification Agency (MFCA), the agency with the slightly different acronym and the same name that came before it, and the Theological Education Agency which came before that and started thirty-five years ago. Leading us through this consideration will be the man who arguably knows the MFCA better than anyone else in the church.

Cornelis (Cor) Kors is a General Synod Professor and the Executive Director Emeritus of the Ministerial Formation Certification Agency (MFCA). Cor has served as the Director of the MFCA and Assistant Professor on the faculty of Fuller Theological Seminary for twenty-nine years. Prior to that, he served for seven years as the Dean of Students at Redeemer University in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada, and five years as the Director of Counseling at Central College in Pella, Iowa. He has MDiv and MA degrees from New Brunswick Theological Seminary (NBTS) and a DMin from Fuller Theological Seminary.

We will begin our session with a presentation by Dr. Kors, followed by questions and discussion, all wrapping up by abut 1:00 pm.

There is no charge for attending this colloquy, but participants need to register by clicking here.

There will be one more program in this series during 2020-21:

March 2, on Certifying Fitness for Ministry, with Carol Bechtel, Micah McCreary, and Felix Theonugraha.

Things You Can Do to Make Your Congregation Anti-Racist

January 16, 2021 @ 10:00 am - 11:30 am

In July of 2020, the Reformed Church Center began a discussion on the subject of race and systemic racism in the United States, which has been pushed to the forefront of our consciousness, reminding Christians are being that people of faith, and especially people of Reformed faith, have a gift and an obligation to stand against racism and work for justice. We are called to be at the center of this conversation. As we discussed the need and possibilities for facilitating such a conversation, prophetically and pastorally, in our congregations, there was fruitful discussion, but it only began to scratch the surface. Most of the participants said the conversation needed to continue.

Recognizing that need, the Center has scheduled a second webinar, on “Things You Can Do to Make Your Congregation Anti-Racist” for Saturday, January 16, 2021, at 10:00 am Eastern Time. The program, which will last sixty to ninety minutes, will feature a presentation by Earl James, retired Coordinator for the African America/Black Council of the Reformed Church in America as well as retired Coordinator for Advocacy in the RCA. In this work, he has assisted RCA African American congregations and people, and others as well, find and walk pathways to living more fully into the Biblical vision of shalom and the human hope of the beloved community. His previous denominational roles involved increasing cultural agility, multiracial initiatives, and justice. An elder in the RCA, Earl is married to Norma Coleman-James, and has two adult daughters, a son-in-law, and three grandchildren.

There is no charge for this webinar, but participants must register in advance by clicking here.

Preserving Our Shared History

December 12, 2020 @ 10:00 am - 11:30 am

Looking Objectively at the 2020 Vision, We Continue with Missions

The Reformed Church Center will continue our series Planning and Preparing for the 2020 Vision on Saturday, December 12, at 10:00 am. As with our first program, our plan is to continue helping the church reflect on what the 2020 Vision Report proposes as objectively as possible, defining what is different about the report’s proposals from what the RCA is currently doing. These will not be sessions for deciding what is right or wrong—everyone will do that in other venues—or for strategizing about how to respond, but simply to help all participants better understand what the report says and why

The second program will deal with Part Two of the report, Preserving Our Shared History, which discusses the denominational missions program. On Saturday, December 12, at 10:00 am, we will begin with brief presentations, then continue with questions and discussion.

JP Sundararajan is director of RCA Global Mission. A native of Bangalore, India, a city of twelve million people, he attended Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa, a city of about 6,000. After starting as a biology major with the hopes of returning to India as a medical missionary, he felt his calling change. He graduated with a degree in psychology in 2000, then moved to Holland, Michigan, where he received his M.Div. from Western Theological Seminary and met his wife, Katy. For twelve years, Sundararajan has served as an RCA missionary with Audio Scripture Ministries and recorded the Bible in almost 100 languages. He will be reflecting on how the 2020 Vision proposal will change what RCA Global Mission is doing.

Prior to seminary, Bethany Devos served for three years as the mission-supported staff person at the Mescalero (Apache) Reformed Church in New Mexico.  Currently, she and her husband, Corstian, co-pastor the North & Southampton Reformed Church in Pennsylvania. Bethany’s perspective will be as a former missionary who has been in the field, and the effects this might have on those active in these ministries.

Thomas C. Goodhart is the Minister at Trinity Reformed Church of Brooklyn in Ridgewood, NY where he has served since 2008. Prior to that he pastored a congregation in New York’s Hudson Valley. A graduate of Hope College and Western Theological Seminary, Tom has functioned in various roles at all levels of the RCA including classis president, moderator of the Commission on Christian Action, and vice moderator of General Synod Council. He is also a past board member and former co-president of Room for All. He is a member of the Vision 2020 Team. Tom is a passionate advocate for Christ’s work of reconciliation and a lover of ecology. He lives in Queens with his bullmastiff, Hildegard.

Recordings of all of these programs will be available on the Reformed Church Center page.

There is no charge for attending this event, but participants need to register by clicking here.

Webinars to look at the two other sections of the report are scheduled for October 3, 2020, and February 13, 2021.

Black, Not Dutch: The Reformed Church in America’s Response to the Black Manifesto

December 7, 2020 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

Reformed Church Center Looks at Black, Not Dutch

In October of 2019, the Reformed Church Center hosted “UNFINISHED BUSINESS: Fifty Years Since the Black Manifesto”, a time to re-learn some of the history of the Black Manifesto issued by James Forman and members of the Black Economic Development Conference in 1969 and its effects on the RCA and whole of the mainline Protestant church in the US. One of the results in the RCA was the formation of the Black Council, now called the African American Black Council (AABC), and a slow but steady shift in the place of people of color in the denomination. At the center of a lot of this in the early years was M. William Howard, who served as executive director of the AABC from 1972 to 1992.

Howard is the author of Black, Not Dutch: The Reformed Church in America’s Response to the Black Manifesto (Africa World Press, 2020), and will join us as we discuss this book in a webinar on Monday, December 7, at 7:00 pm. Following a brief presentation by Dr. Howard, there will be a response by Nathan Jérémie-Brink, L. Russell Feakes Assistant Professor of Global Christianity at NBTS, whose own scholarship has focused, in part, on the Atlantic trade in enslaved African peoples in the United States. He will then interview Howard, followed by an opportunity for questions and discussion.

M. William Howard is an American cleric, former college president, community and business leader. He is known for his involvement in ecumenical organizations domestically and internationally and in international affairs, especially within the Middle East and Southern Africa. A graduate of Morehouse College and Princeton Theological Seminary, he followed his service in the RCA by serving as president of New York Theological Seminary and pastor of Bethany Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey. He was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a trustee of the National Urban League and the Children’s Defense Fund. He has chaires the Rutgers University Board of Governors and the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission of 2007, which led to the abolition of the death penalty in the state. He is currently a member of the board of directors of New Jersey Resources.

There is no charge for attending this event, but participants need to register by clicking here.

Women in Theological Education

November 17, 2020 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Third Reformed Church Center Colloquy Looks at Women in Theological Education

Our ongoing Understanding Theological Education in the RCA colloquies reflect on what theological education has been in the RCA and what it could be. For our third session, on Tuesday, November 17, we will discuss women in RCA theological education. Until the 1970s, women were not ordained to offices in the Reformed Church in America. It has only been the last forty-one years that the idea of women ministers of the Word and Sacrament have been acknowledged in the church order. But that doesn’t mean women weren’t involved in theological education before that, nor does it address how such an idea has been accepted since then. Our discussion will reflect on the past and present of women in RCA theological education, and maybe speculate on what the future could be and how it could happen.

Lynn Japinga is a professor of religion at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, and was the 2019-2020 Hazel B. Gnade Fellow in RCA Women’s Studies at NBTS. An RCA minister of the Word and Sacrament, she holds degrees from Hope, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Union Theological Seminary in New York. In addition to her teaching at Hope, Lynn has been a prolific author of books, articles and resources for the church, and a busy preacher, teacher, and workshop leader. Most recently, she is the author of Loyalty and Loss: The Reformed Church in America, 1945-1994 and Preaching the Women of the Old Testament: Who They Were and Why They Matter.

Elizabeth (Liz) Testa is a pastor, visionary leader, community builder, and sister in Christ. A minister of Word & Sacrament in the RCA, she currently leads RCA Women’s Transformation and Leadership, a ministry that encourages, equips and empowers women to embrace their gifts, honor their stories and live into their God-given callings. Prior to joining the RCA staff in 2014, she spent 12 years on staff at Marble Collegiate Church in NYC. Raised bi-culturally in New York and Spain, with degrees from Syracuse University and Drew Theological School, Liz is passionate about building bridges between diverse cultures and contexts and is certified in Unconscious Bias Training through the Cultural Intelligence Center (CIC). She lives with her husband, Nick, a NYC high school teacher, and their two teenage daughters in South Orange, NJ.

Liz and Lynn will each present, briefly, looking at the history of women in RCA theological education and where we are now, after which we will have time for questions and discussion.

There is no charge for attending this event, but participants need to register by clicking here.

There will be two more programs in this series during 2020-21:

2019-2020 Poppen-Young Lecture in Reformed Worship

November 7, 2020 @ 10:00 am - 1:30 pm

Liturgy & Justice: the 2019-2020 Alvin J. Poppen & John R. Young Lecture in Reformed Worship

John Bell Visited the Reformed Church Center!

The Reformed Church Center at New Brunswick Theological Seminary is thrilled to be able to share that John L. Bell, internationally renowned author, teacher, worship leader, and congregational song enlivener from the Iona Community in Scotland, was the 2019-2020 Poppen-Young Lecture in Reformed Worship on Saturday, November 7.

John Bell is a Resource Worker with The Iona Community, who lectures, preaches and conducts seminars across the denominations. He is a hymn writer, author and occasional broadcaster, but retains a primary passion for congregational song. John is based in Glasgow and works with his colleagues in the areas of music, worship and spirituality.

John writes is about his plans for the afternoon and evening:

My initial thoughts regarding the session are:

1) A Biblical background to Justice being at the heart of God’s purposes, noting the gradually evolving realisation that justice was not just the prerogative of the chosen race but for all.

2) An exploration of how, within the developing world (particularly nations like El Salvador and South Africa) the call for justice has been incorporated into their worship life, and the relevance of texts such as the psalms of lament has become very real.

3) A reflection on how justice ultimately is a threat to those who misuse power, in the church as much as anywhere else.

4) A questioning of why some western Christians balk at the mention of justice and see it as synonymous with left-wing politics.

5) The implications of all this for life and liturgy.

I would envisage interactive participation and group conversations.

For more information please contact James Brumm, Director of the Reformed Church Center at jbrumm@nbts.edu.

Changing Challenges at New Brunswick Theological Seminary

October 20, 2020 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Second Theological Education Colloquy Looks at Changing NBTS

In our second Understanding Theological Education in the RCA colloquy, reflecting on what theological education has been in the RCA and what it could be, we look inward, at this, the oldest Protestant theological seminary in North America. Forty-five years ago, NBTS had a mostly white, almost exclusively male student body, with a white, male faculty. Thirty-five years ago, it was still a majority white school, and the main educational program occurring during bankers’ hours. Twenty-five years ago, it was still a school that taught RCA ministers and welcomed people from other traditions. Today, the vast majority of students are people of color, most classes meet at night or on weekends, and the RCA is a minority denominational group among students studying in several different programs.

New Brunswick Theological Seminary has been on the growing edge of theological education ever since its founding in 1784. Life on the growing edge comes with challenges, even though those challenges may change from time to time. The theme for our colloquy on October 20 at 12:00 noon will be Changing Challenges at New Brunswick Theological Seminary. We will begin with presentations by two former presidents of NBTS and one former dean, and spend the rest of the hour in questions and discussion.

Robert A. White served as NBTS President, 1985-92. Prior to that he served Reformed churches in Clover Hill, New Jersey, and North Syracuse, New York. In 1980, he was appointed RCA Minister for Social Witness, directing denominational programs in peacemaking, US-Soviet church relations and global justice. He was called to be Senior Minister of the First Reformed Church of Schenectady, NY in 1992 and designated Minister Emeritus in 2006. He then served as Interfaith Chaplain at Bethesda House of Schenectady, an inner-city ministry to the homeless and working poor, and as Interim Executive Director of the NY State Council of Churches. A graduate of Hope College and Western Theological Seminary who pursued graduate studies at Union Seminary in New York, Columbia University, and Rutgers University, Dr. White and his wife JoAnne now enjoy retirement in a log cabin on Peck Lake in the southern Adirondack Mountains of New York.

A native of South Holland, Illinois, Norman Kansfield, president of NBTS from 1993 to 2005, holds degrees from Hope College, Western Theological Seminary, Union Theological Seminary in New York, and the University of Chicago. Norm began his ministry within the RCA in Astoria, Queens, New York, and continued in the Chicago suburbs of Berwyn and Riverdale, Illinois. He was the seminary librarian and a faculty member at Western Theological Seminary and at the Colgate Rochester Divinity School/Bexley Hall/Crozer Theological Seminary and St. Bernard’s Institute in Rochester, New York, before coming to NBTS. Since 2005, he has served first as Senior Scholar in Residence at the Theological School of Drew University and currently as Theologian for the Zion United Church of Christ in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. He and his wife, Mary Klein Kansfield, live in East Stroudsburg,

Renée House is the Minister of the Old Dutch Church in Kingston, New York where she has served since March of 2013. Prior to accepting the call to Old Dutch, she served on the faculty of NBTS for twenty-five years as Director of the Library, Academic Dean, and Professor of Practical Theology, and as a General Synod Professor of Theology. Renée received her M.L.S. from the University of Arizona, M.Div. from NBTS, and Ph. D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. As a minister in the RCA, she has been engaged in ministry throughout the U.S. as well as Taiwan. She is a writer, poet, singer, wife, step-mom, and grandmother to six rambunctious kids.

There is no charge for attending this colloquy, but participants need to register by clicking here.

There will be three more programs in this series during 2020-21:

Together, Yet Changed

October 3, 2020 @ 10:00 am - 11:30 am

Looking Objectively at the 2020 Vision, Starting with Structures

The Reformed Church in America’s 2020 Vision Team put in two years of dedicated and difficult work looking for a way forward for the denomination, ready to report to the General Synod in June. The unforeseen pandemic, however, left us with no Synod to whom to report, and a year to reflect upon the report as we get ready to discern God’s will and pray for the 2021 Synod.

The Reformed Church Center, as part of its mission to help the church reflect on what it means to be Reformed in the twenty-first century, is planning a series of three webinars to help the church reflect on what the 2020 Vision Report proposes. The goal is to be as completely objective as possible: each program will seek to define what is different about the report’s proposals from the current polity of the church. These will not be sessions for deciding what is right or wrong—everyone will do that in other venues—or for strategizing about how to respond, but simply to help all participants better understand what the report says and why.

The first program in our Planning and Preparing for the 2020 Vision series will deal with Part One of the report, Together, Yet Changed, which discusses the denominational structure. On Saturday, October 3, 2020, at 10:00 am, we will begin with brief presentations, and then continue with questions and discussion. Stephen Mathonnet-VanderWell, co-pastor of Second Reformed Church in Pella, Iowa, with his wife, Sophie, holds a Ph.D. from Boston College and teaches for both Central College and Western Theological Seminary. John Messer, executive for the Regional Synod of the Great Lakes, is a former strategic intelligence officer for the US Army and a member of the 2020 Vision Team.

There is no charge for participating in this webinar, but all participants need to register at https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_hsrFo–FRXOkei-yPImHHw.

Webinars to look at the two other sections of the report are scheduled for December 12, 2020, and February 13, 2021, respectively.

Reformed Theological Education in the Twenty-first Century

September 22, 2020 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

The 2020-2021 academic marks the anniversary of important events for theological education in the RCA: the fiftieth year since the start of the Bi-Level Multi-Site program—an innovative but short-lived attempt to yoke the denomination’s two seminaries—and the thirty-fifth anniversary of the start of the Theological Education Agency (TEA), the precursor to the Ministerial Formation Certification Agency (MFCA). This year is also seeing potential major changes in theological education, as the General Synod Council has taken steps to eliminate the MFCA, and the role of the Certificate of Fitness for Ministry is being re-examined.

In a time such as this, it is appropriate to reflect upon what theological education has been in the RCA as well as what it could be. So the Reformed Church Center at NBTS is hosting a series of noontime colloquies around the theme Understanding Theological Education in the RCA. The five programs planned for this year will all be webinars on Zoom, beginning at 12:00 pm with a presentation followed by open discussion, intended to be done in an hour.

The premiere program will examine Reformed Theological Education in the Twenty-first Century on Tuesday, September 22, at 12 noon. It will be led by Richard Mouw, past president of Fuller Theological Seminary. Raised in an RCA pastor’s family, Mouw earned a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Chicago before teaching for seventeen years at Calvin College and thirty-five years—twenty as president—at Fuller. He served a term as president of the Association of Theological Schools, and in 2007 was awarded the Abraham Kuyper Prize for Excellence in Reformed Theology and Public Life, by Princeton Theological Seminary.

There will be four more programs in this series during 2020-21:

How Can We Talk About Racism in Church?

July 18, 2020 @ 10:00 am - 11:30 am

Click here to download a PDF of the text chat from the event.

Reformed Church Center to Explore How We Talk About Racism

(R)acism is part of a global system of dominance that is intertwined and embedded with an unjust economic system, ecological violence, and patriarchy. In the Accra Confession we declared, “Therefore we reject any theology that claims that God is only with the rich, and that poverty is the fault of the poor. We reject any form of injustice which destroys right relations—gender, race, class, disability, or caste. We reject any theology which affirms that human interests dominate nature.”

–from the World Communion of Reformed Churches, June 4, 2020

This is a time for action and not just talk, especially from those who need not fear for their lives or their livelihoods because of their race, colour, or ethnicity . . . International leaders that have spoken out in solidarity with protestors, and with black people in the United States should also take this opportunity to address structural forms of racial and ethnic injustice in their own nations, and within the international system itself.

—from the United Nations Human Rights Commission, June 5, 2020

The subject of race and systemic racism in the United States as been pushed to the forefront of our consciousness in recent weeks, and Christians are being reminded that people of faith, and especially people of Reformed faith, have a gift and an obligation to stand against racism and work for justice. We are called to be at the center of this conversation.

For many of us, this raises the question of how we facilitate such a conversation, prophetically and pastorally, in our congregations?

On Saturday, July 18, at 10:00 am, the Reformed Church Center at New Brunswick Theological Seminary hosted an online program, “How Can We Talk About Racism in Church?” Pastoral theologians will talk about this from their own roles and perspectives, using the World Communion of Reformed Churches statement Condemning Injustice and Racism and the United Nations Human Rights Commission Statement on Protests Against Systemic Racism in the United States as a starting point. Then they answered questions and engaged in discussion with participants.

	Karen Georgia A. Thompson is the Associate General Minister for Wider Church Ministries and Operations in the United Church of Christ and Co-Executive for Global Ministries with the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). She provides strategic visioning and leadership for the programmatic ministries of Global Ministries, Humanitarian Aid and Development, Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations, Events and Scholarships Management and Archives, and for the joint United Church of Canada and United Church of Christ committee working on the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024), as well as working in other ecumenical settings like the World Council of Churches (WCC).
	Lisa Vander Wal is pastor of Lisha’s Kill Reformed Church in Schenectady, New York, and past moderator of the Commission on Christian Unity as well as past president of the General Synod of the Reformed Church in America (RCA). She has served on the Executive Committee of the World Communion of Reformed Churches since 2014, and as a Vice President since 2017, working with the Caribbean and North American Area Council.
	Thomas Song is a minister in Queens Classis, RCA. He has served on the General Synod Council and the Commission on Christian Unity and was a staff member for the Regional Synod of New York. He is co-pastor of Steinway Reformed Church in Astoria, New York, with his wife, Ock Kee Byun.
	Julie Johnson Staples is a Collegiate Senior Minister serving as Executive Director of Intersections International, Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of the City of New York, an organization devoted to uniting disparate groups in global justice and global peacemaking. Throughout her career as a journalist, Wall Street executive, and Christian minister, social justice has been her passion and a unifying thread in her work and philanthropy.

This program is free and open to anyone who would like to take part, especially leaders in Reformed congregations—not just RCA, but any Reformed tradition. All participants must register by clicking here. Those who register will then receive a link for the Zoom meeting. Feel free to contact the Reformed Church Center at jbrumm@nbts.edu if you have any other questions.

Come, Let Us Worship- Thoughts for ALL Congregations

May 16, 2020 @ 10:00 am - 11:00 am

A Free Webinar for Everyone thinking About Going Back to Church

We’ve all been socially distanced for a long time. Our congregations have found ways to minister around the barriers, making the most of technology and growing in their skills weeks by week. Even so, we’re all feeling anxious to “go back to normal,” and, slowly but surely, the restrictions are being lifted around the world. This leads to a whole new set of anxieties, as we worry about how to be safe and feel safe in a very different normal than before we heard of COVID-19.

On Saturday, May 16^th, from 10:00 to 11:00 am, the Reformed Church Center at New Brunswick Theological Seminary will host “Come, Let Us Worship”: Thoughts for ALL (Not Just Reformed) Congregations. A set of short presentations will each be followed by brief discussions.

	Donna Field is a graduate of NBTS and a DMin candidate at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan. An RCA minister and a registered nurse certified in Bio-Ethics, Humanities, and Law, she works as a Clinical Medical Ethics Consultant for Northwell Health and is an associate professor at the Donald and Barbara Zucker/Northwell School of Medicine. She will present on the public health considerations of returning to gathered worship.
	The twelfth president of NBTS, Micah McCreary was President and CEO of McCreary and Madison Associates, Incorporated, a psychological and human resources consulting firm, and Associate Professor of Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) for 21 years. He and his wife, Jacqueline E. Madison-McCreary, pastored the Spring Creek Baptist Church in Moseley, Virginia for 16 years. He will be looking at the psychological considerations for a congregation returning to gathered worship.
	Amanda Bruehl will help us review organizational considerations about returning to gathered worship. She is the Chief of Staff at NBTS, where she also leads the COVID-19 Re-Open Task Force. 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.
	What about singing together and music as we gather for worship again? CJ Kingdom-Grier will lead this module. He is Chief Musician at Maple Avenue Ministries in Holland, Michigan; President of the Board of Directors of the Alliance for Cultural and Ethnic Harmony in Holland; a member of the Board of Trustees at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan; and the Associate Director of Admissions at Western Theological Seminary.
	Daniel Meeter is pastor of the Old First Reformed Church of Brooklyn, New York, with degrees from New Brunswick Theological Seminary and Drew University. He has published extensively, and his book Meeting Each Other in Doctrine, Liturgy, and Government (Eerdmans, 1993) is considered one of the most important modern works on the Constitution of the Reformed Church in America. He will guide us in reflecting theologically about worship in our new situation.

To Register for the event:

This program, scheduled to take place via Zoom, is FREE and open to congregational leaders from all denominations. To take part online or by phone, register in advance at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwpf-iqrDMvHtaK3MShbBEQMAVGBI1w5fE6 (only 100 computers or phones will be able to be in the Zoom meeting).

Social Distancing and the Supper—Thoughts to Consider for Reformed Congregations

March 31, 2020 @ 7:00 pm - 7:45 pm

Click here to read a PDF of the Chat from the event – with helpful links, resources, and insights discussed.

As the world shelters in place in the face of the COVID-19 virus, congregations everywhere scramble to find new ways to be the church in the current reality. But what happens to the Lord’s Supper? How do Reformed Christians (not just RCA folks, but Presbyterians, UCC members, Christian Reformed worshipers, too) celebrate the feast? Or do we? And what could that mean?

The Reformed Church Center at New Brunswick Theological Seminary, working with the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and Western Theological Seminary, is hosting Social Distancing and the Supper—Thoughts to Consider, a free, on-line webinar available via Zoom on Tuesday, March 31, at 7:00 pm EDT. The program, which is open to all, will run between 30 and 45 minutes.

	Mashona Walston, senior pastor of First Church (Reformed) in Albany, NY, is a graduate of New Brunswick Theological Seminary. She is a proponent of neuroscience and prayer as means of providing resilience, and works with individuals, faith groups, and community partners for stronger and more positive relationships on local, national, and global scenes. She will speak on the challenge facing pastors as they try to navigate the current situation.
	Matthew van Maastricht, pastor of the Altamont, NY, Reformed Church, doctoral candidate at the Free University of Amsterdam, and adjunct faculty member teaching Reformed polity and standards at both Western and New Brunswick Seminaries, will address what Reformed theology and church order says about celebrating the Sacrament remotely. Matthew also serves as General Editor for the Congregational History Series of The Historical Series of the Reformed Church in America and a founding leader of the Society for Protestant Church Polity.
	John Witvliet is director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and professor of worship, theology, & congregational and ministry studies at Calvin University and Calvin Theological Seminary. The author of several books on worship and congregational song, his areas of interest include the history of Christian worship, worship practices in various denominations, biblical and systematic theology of worship, the role of music and the arts in worship, choral and congregational song and consulting with churches on worship renewal. John will speak on how congregations might “fast” frohe m the Lord’s Supper.
	Ron Rienstra is Professor of Preachng and Worship Arts at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan. Since his ordination in the RCA in 1993, he has lived and ministered at educational institutions in Iowa, Michigan, and California, pursuing his primary interest: helping preachers, congregations, worship teams, and individuals learn to deepen and enliven their gatherings with God. He will look at how we might celebrate Maundy Thursday without the Supper.

There is no cost for this Zoom gathering, and everybody is welcome, but all participants must register in advance at https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIvdeupqj8ttnZ2ls4JLQEGpFnu6L8c9w to receive an invitation and a link to join the meeting. If the Zoom Meeting is full, we will stream the event on YouTube and on this page.

Women’s Stories Day 2020: The Courage to Be Honest

March 21, 2020 @ 10:00 am - 2:30 pm

Due to the Coronavirus outbreak, this event was held as a Zoom Meeting.

The Courage to Be Honest

Life in the modern world is stressful; nobody doubts that. Paying the bills, caring for family, getting along with neighbors, climate crises, political crises, keeping a job, being a person of faith and so much more weighs on each of us, every day. Since, in this modern world, there are still disparities of pay, or expectations, and of needs, life is often more stressful for women, even when the women are in ministry, even when women cannot talk about it.

That’s why “The Courage to Be Honest” is the theme of the 2020 Women’s Stories Day, on Saturday, 21 March, 10:00 am to 2:30 pm at New Brunswick Theological Seminary.

The keynote speaker will be Lynn Japinga, professor of religion at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, and the 2019-2020 Hazel B. Gnade Fellow in RCA Women’s Studies at NBTS. She is the author of Loyalty and Loss: The Reformed Church in America, 1945-1994 and Preaching the Women of the Old Testament: Who They Were and Why They Matter. Her topic is The Courage to Be Honest About Divorce, examining how divorce has been dealt with in the RCA. What has General Synod said about divorce? How did churches handle it? In particular, she would like to explore what seems to be a larger than average divorce rate among RCA clergy women, particularly those ordained in the first ten decade after 1979. Many of them have entered into quite happy second marriages.

Irma V. Williams is an Elder and VP of the Consistory at DeWitt Reformed Church in New York, ad she serves as Director of Social Services at Barrier Free Living Apartments, located in the Bronx. Barrier Free Living is dedicated to helping New Yorkers with disabilities live independently in the community, and provides a range of services and linkages to other community resources, enabling individuals to overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of their living dignified secure lives. She will be discussing “The Courage to Be Honest About Domestic Violence.”

A licensed mental health counselor in New York and a mother of three, Lynn Min is also a seminary graduate discerning her ordination process with the RCA while working to provide a tangible sense of the Divine, walking with people on their journeys and creating spaces where people can connect with the God within. Her topic is “The Courage to Be Honest About Where We Fit”—bringing insight and perspective to the idea that each of us must define ourselves and what is good for herself or himself, and that doesn’t always fit the expectations of those around us, but it does honor God.

“The Courage to Be Honest About Mental Health” will be led by Pamela Pater Ennis, Executive Director of Hudson River Care & Counseling, LLC, in Hudson and Bergen Counties I New Jersey, and adjunct faculty member in Pastoral Care and Counseling at NBTS. She will talk about the need for self-care in the area of mental health, especially for those in vocational ministry, and to point toward avenues for all of us to find help.

Damaris D. Whittaker, pastor of Fort Washington Collegiate Church, will be leading us in worship at the beginning and end of our program. Rev. Dr. Damaris D. Whittaker is a United Church of Christ (UCC) minister. She is the first woman to serve Fort Washington Collegiate Church and the first Latina to serve The Collegiate Churches of New York in their 400 year history. Her personal faith journey has been diverse. She has a spirit-led style of preaching and leads worship services that are reflective of the cultural diversity of her congregations. She preaches in English and Spanish. Dr. Whittaker is a public theologian deeply passionate about social justice advocating for racial justice, LGBTQ equality, immigration reform, women’s leadership, universal healthcare, and affordable housing. Dr. Whittaker believes she has been called to break down silos and sees intersectionality of faith as a place she can affect change. When not in church, she loves reading, dancing, gardening, kayaking and walking/jogging. Dr. Whittaker is originally from Humacao, Puerto Rico and is married to Sabas Whittaker.

Women’s Stories Day is hosted by the Reformed Church Center at NBTS in cooperation with the RCA Office of Women’s Transformation and Leadership.

2019-2020 Poppen-Young Lecture in Reformed Worship

February 12, 2020 @ 2:00 pm - 7:30 pm

Postponed to November 12, 2020.

Please click here for information about the rescheduled event.

Colloquy: “Demanding a King? An Inquiry Into the Permanence of the General Synod”

January 21, 2020 @ 5:30 pm - 8:00 pm

The Reformed Church Center Asks: Should the General Synod Be a Perpetual Body?

The word “synod” comes from Latin, and means “walking together.” For church bodies, it traditionally referred to representatives of various assemblies of the church who would meet together to discuss items of common concern, reach a consensus, and then go their separate ways. When everyone left, the synod no longer existed.

In 1884, the General Synod of the Reformed Church in America, after some deliberation, declared itself to be an ongoing, perpetual assembly. For mostly administrative reasons—such as creating a corporate entity that could hold real property—the General Synod would be an ongoing entity, where the delegates would change at each stated session, but the staff and administration would go on. It would be “in charge” of the corporate entity called the Reformed Church in America, which might or might not be distinct from the church of the same name. Over time, some have argued, this has changed how local congregations and classes have related to the church. One twenty-first century US court ruling even said the RCA is a hierarchical, not a relational, church.

On Tuesday, January 21, 2020, at 5:30 pm, Matthew J. van Maastricht, the newest Fellow of the Reformed Church Center at NBTS, will present the paper “Demanding a King? An Inquiry Into the Permanence of General Synod” as part of a special colloquy celebrating his appointment to the fellowship. Responses will follow from Douglas Banks, Allan Janssen, Daniel Meeter, and Kathy Smith, and then everyone present will be invited to engage in discussion over dinner. We plan to conclude by about 8:00 pm.

Fellows of the Reformed Church Center are scholars who have made recognized contributions to the study of the RCA and its traditions, but who don’t have institutional academic affiliation. They are recommended for appointment by the Reformed Church Center committee and are then expected to be in regular contact with the Center and to make annual reports to the director about the nature and status of their research, and encouraged to visit the seminary during their terms of appointment. There is no stipend with this fellowship, but it can be helpful to scholars for access to research collections and for self-identification in scholarly communication. Anyone interested in applying or nominating someone else to be a Fellow may do so at https://nbts.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/RCC-Fellowship_application-nomination.pdf.

Everyone is welcome to attend this special colloquy, The suggested donation for dinner will be $15.00, but everyone is welcome to attend regardless of ability to pay. There is no donation required from students enrolled at theological seminaries or from NBTS faculty and staff. RSVP by Thursday, 16 January. at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/colloquy-demanding-a-king-an-inquiry-into-the-permanence-of-general-synod-tickets-79062418823.

Participants:

Douglas Banks is the retired senior pastor of Grace Reformed Church of Brooklyn, New York, and a former stated clerk of the Classis of Brooklyn, RCA. He is dedicated to teaching the whole Word of God and committed to shepherding individuals to the love of God in Christ Jesus. His wife of forty-five years is Sheila; they have two daughters, one grand-daughter and one great grand-daughter. He is co-author of the soon-to-be-released book, Hear Me Now!

Allan Janssen is emeritus professor of Theological Studies at New Brunswick Theological Seminary and a General Synod professor emeritus of the Reformed Church in America. He has taught and spoken internationally on Reformed polity and doctrine, and is the author, editor, and translator of several books, most recently A Ministry of Reconcilliation: Essays in Honor of Gregg Mast (Eerdmans, 2017) and Constitutional Theology, second edition (Reformed Church Press, 2019).

Daniel Meeter is pastor of the Old First Reformed Church of Brooklyn, New York, with degrees from New Brunswick Theological Seminary and Drew University. He has published extensively, and his book Meeting Each Other in Doctrine, Liturgy, and Government (Eerdmans, 1993) is considered one of the most important modern works on the Constitution of the Reformed Church in America.

Kathy Smith teaches church polity at Calvin Theological Seminary, directs programs at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, and teaches Christian leadership courses at Calvin University, all in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Kathy is a graduate of Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary and is an ordained minister in the Christian Reformed Church. She is the author of Stilling the Storm: Worship and Congregational Leadership in Difficult Times (Alban, 2006).

Matthew J. van Maastricht is the pastor at Altamont, New York, and teaches Reformed standards and church polity for Western and New Brunswick Theological Seminaries. He is the newest Fellow of the Reformed Church Center at NBTS, and is a doctoral candidate at the Free University of Amsterdam. He also serves as General Editor of The Congregational History Series of the Reformed Church in America.

Ecumenical Discussion of Chaplaincy

December 9, 2019 @ 4:30 pm - 7:00 pm

Chaplains: How Do They Fit?

An Ecumenical Discussion Hosted by the Reformed Church Center

NBTS has been sending ministers into professional chaplaincy since 1812. Two centuries later, there are, arguably, more chaplains serving in more fields—including hospitals, hospice care, schools, prisons, military postings, and among first responders—than ever before. Falling into what many denominations call “specialized ministry,” the question of how chaplains fit into the life of their denominations and their professional settings is an important one.

On Monday, December 9, from 4:30-7:00 pm, the Reformed Church Center will host “Chaplains: How Do They Fit?” Chaplains from Reformed, Baptist, Pentecostal, and Church of God in Christ faith traditions, with experience in hospital, hospice, prison, and military settings, will each address those questions of how they fit in day-to-day ministry and in relating to their sponsoring faith groups, and then we will all join in discussion over dinner.

	Alan T. “Blues” Baker is an RCA minister who served as a military chaplain—from Dean of the Chapel at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis to Rear Admiral. Dr. Baker is the only graduate of the Naval Academy selected to serve as a Chaplain Corps Flag Officer. In retirement from the Navy, he Strategic Foundations, where he consults with public, private, academic and not-for-profit organizations as educator, catalyst, and strategist, and serves the RCA as Supervisor of Chaplain Ministries, where he provides ecclesiastical endorsements for RCA chaplains in health care, industrial, educational, military and correctional organizations throughout and beyond the United States. He is an Adjunct Professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and Wesley Theological Seminary, and Senior Fellow at the U.S. Naval Academy’s Stockdale Center of Ethical Leadership.
	John W. Redic, II, is Founder and Director of Pastoral Services at Isabella, a 705-bed long-term-care facility with a plethora of community services, in Washington Heights (northern Manhattan). A native of Florida, he is a COGIC minister and a member of the NBTS adjunct faculty.
	Rita Milburn-Dobson is the Executive Director of Precious Gems Supportive Services; a non profit that provides grief counseling and support for children and teens. She is a Palliative Care Chaplain and Thanatologist. Rita received her degree in nursing from LaSalle University, Master’s of Divinity from Palmer Theological Seminary and her Doctorate in Ministry from New Brunswick Theological Seminary in 2018.
	Myung Han is a a certified Pastoral Counselor and Pastoral counselor through College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy (CPSP). He serves as a hospice chaplain in Nassau County, New York, and has been appointed to be the convener of chaplains of Oceanside, Long Island.
	Raynard Smith is the Associate Professor of Pastoral Care/Pastoral Theology at NBTS, where he chairs the Ministry Studies Department and oversees the Master of Arts in Pastoral Care and Counseling program. He has several years of experience as a certified chaplain and pastoral counselor working in the hospital, hospice, and medical clinic contexts. He is also an associate minister in the Church of God in Christ (COGIC); co-founder and coordinator of the COGIC Scholars Fellowship—a network of seminarians and academics within the COGIC and other Pentecostal denominations—and member of the COGIC Board of Education.

Everyone is welcome to attend this event. There is a suggested donation of $15.00, payable at the event, which includes dinner, but everyone is welcome, regardless of ability to pay. Students at theological seminaries may come for free, as well as NBTS faculty and staff. RSVP by Thursday, 5 December, to https://www.eventbrite.com/e/chaplains-how-do-they-fit-an-ecumenical-discussion-tickets-80393219283.

Sent On Ahead: Looking at Groundbreaking Missions to India, Japan, and the Middle East

November 18, 2019 @ 9:30 am - 3:30 pm

Co-sponsored by RCA Global Missions and the Center for Cultural Analysis at Rutgers University

The Reformed Church Center Looks at Groundbreaking RCA Missions

The years 2019-2020 provide significant anniversaries for important Reformed Church in America (RCA) mission programs. It will have been 130 years since James Cantine left to start the RCA mission program in the Middle East in 1889 and was joined by Samuel Zwemer in 1890. The mission to Japan was started 160 years ago, in 1859, while Ferris Seminary began in Yokohama in 1870. And 2020 celebrates the 200^th anniversary of John and Harriet Scudder setting sail from New York; they would settle in India and start medical missions that continue to this day, including the Christian Medical College & Hospital in Vellore, started by their granddaughter, Ida. This also marked the beginning of an unbroken line of Scudder family missionaries that continued to the twenty-first century and encompassed over 1,000 years’ worth of missionary activity.

In recognition of these noteworthy mission milestones, the Reformed Church Center at New Brunswick Theological Seminary is partnering with RCA Global Missions and the Center for Cultural Analysis at Rutgers University to host “Sent On Ahead: Looking at Groundbreaking Missions to India, Japan, and the Middle East” on Monday, November 18, from 9:30 am to 3:30 pm.

	Anderson H.M. Jeremiah, lecturer in World Christianity and Religious Studies in the department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University, United Kingdom, is a theologian and priest from the Church of South India, who does research into the lived facets of global Christianity and its theological and missional engagement with other faith communities. He will speak on the impact of Christian missions in India.
	Eugene Heideman served as a Presbyter in the Madras Diocese of the Church of South India while a missionary of the Reformed Church in America, 1960-1970, then taught religion and Bible at Central College, Pella, Iowa, and then was on the faculty of Western Theological Seminary. From 1982 to his retirement in 1994, he was on the World Mission staff of the RCA, and has authored three books in The Historical Series of the Reformed Church in America, including From Mission to Church: The Reformed Church in America Mission to India. He will give background on the Indian mission.
	Fred Mueller is pastor of Hillsborough Reformed Church in Millstone, New Jersey, and the 2019-2020 Albert A Smith Fellow in Reformed Church History at NBTS. He will be looking at the role of his congregation and its then-pastor, Edward T. Corwin, in bringing Japanese students to Rutgers, NBTS, and Princeton Theological Seminary in the late nineteenth century.
	Haruko Wakabyashi is Assistant Teaching Professor in the Asian Languages and Cultures Department at Rutgers. Her interest lies in the social, cultural, and intellectual development of medieval Japan (12^th~16^th c.), and the use of visual sources in the study of history. Next spring, she will be offering an Honors Seminar, “Rutgers Meets Japan: Revisiting Early U.S.-Japan Encounters.” She will be speaking on the effects of Christian missions on Japanese culture.
	Gordon D. Laman served as a missionary in Japan for forty-three years, working in partnership with the Japanese church. Subsequently, he served for twenty-one years as a member of the faculty of Tokyo Union Theological Seminary as director of field education, and teaching courses in Asian mission and communication, while traveling throughout Japan as an itinerant evangelist on weekends. He will be speaking on the history and background of the RCA’s Japan mission.
	Rev. Justin Meyers, Associate Director, Al Amana Centre
	En Young Kim, coordinator for the RCA Council of Pacific and Asian-American Ministries and RCA mission programs in the Pacific, will reflect on current mission programs in Japan and how western Christianity and eastern society interact.
	Douglas Leonard is the former director of the Al Amana Centre and of RCA Global Missions and current coordinator of the Ecumenical United Nations Office (EUNO), a joint working space of the World Council of Churches (WCC) and ACT Alliance in New York City. He will address the impact of RCA missions in the Middle East and globally.

Everyone is welcome to attend this event. There is a suggested donation of $15.00, payable at the event, which includes lunch, but everyone is welcome, regardless of ability to pay. Students at theological seminaries may come for free, as well as NBTS faculty and staff. RSVP by Wednesday, 13 November, by clicking here.

Unfinished Business: Fifty Years After the Black Manifesto

October 3, 2019 @ 9:30 am - 2:30 pm

In May of 1969, Black activist James Forman, meeting with members of the Black Economic Development Conference in Detroit, Michigan, issued a “Black Manifesto,” calling on mainline White denominations to pay reparations and work actively in a restructuring to dismantle institutional racism and white privilege in the United States. The very next month, Forman and others staged a sit-in protest in several denominational offices housed at the Interchurch Center at 475 Riverside Drive in New York, including the offices of the Reformed Church in America (RCA), which happened to be holding its General Synod meeting in New Brunswick at the time. The RCA formed a small committee of Synod delegates and a few others and, by the time the Synod was concluded, issued a “Response to the Black Manifesto.”

It has been half a century since the Manifesto and the responses from the RCA and other church bodies. On Thursday, October 3, from 9:30 am to 2:30 pm, the Reformed Church Center will host “UNFINISHED BUSINESS: Fifty Years Since the Black Manifesto”, a time to re-learn some of that history and the effects on the whole of the mainline Protestant church in the US, as well as the specific response of the RCA and how this denomination has done living up to the promise and addressing the possibility, as well as examining the possibilities and challenges that still lie ahead.

The program will include:

	Moderator for today’s program: Nathan Jérémie-Brink, L. Russell Feakes Assistant Professor of Global Christianity, NBTS
	Leonard L. Bethel, Professor Emeritus of Africana Studies at Rutgers University and a PC(USA) pastor, who will speak on “Predestination and Slavery,” a background analysis and description of the Black Manifesto.
	James Hart Brumm, Director of the Reformed Church Center, who will look at the RCA’s “Response” document from 1969 in the context of the church at the time and what the Manifesto itself demanded.
	Earl James, Coordinator for the RCA’s African American/Black Council (AABC) and Coordinator for Advocacy in the RCA, who will look at the Council and other denominational responses and how they have both succeeded and failed.
	Dwayne Jackson, co-pastor of Second Reformed Church in Hackensack, New Jersey, and Kelvin Spooner, pastor of Cambria Heights Reformed Church in Queens, New York, both members of the AABC, who will discuss the potential futures for Blacks in the RCA and for a multicultural future for the denomination.

	Denise Kingdom Grier, pastor of Maple Avenue Ministries in Holland, Michigan, RCA mission partner to Setshabelo Child and Family Services in Botshabelo, South Africa, and member of the NBTS Board of Trustees. Dr. Grier’s presentation will be “Disrupting Church: It’s Still Time.” In 2015, Tom Devries, then the General Secretary of the RCA, called the church to listen to learn from the voices of ethnic minorities in the RCA. Those stories, like the fifty-year effort to decentralize the experience of the white majority, have disappeared into the fabric of the church. Dr. Grier will invite us to listen again, in order to learn and leverage the power of the Spirit to disrupt the church as we know it.

400 Years After Dort: Owning It & Letting It Go

May 9, 2019 @ 9:00 am - 3:30 pm

The Great Synod of Dort was convened in the city of Dordrecht, the Netherlands, in response to a national crisis precipitated in the young republic over the question of human free will. Meeting in 180 sessions between November, 1618, and May, 1619, the Synod not only addressed that question, but touched on issues of liturgy and government as well, and not only involved the Dutch, but also brought in theologians from across Europe. And the effects of wat happened at Dort and how the world understood Reformed thought have echoed through the Reformed world to this very day—and not always in positive ways.

On Thursday, May 9, from 9:30 to 3:00, the Reformed Church Center at New Brunswick Theological Seminary will celebrate the anniversary of the end of the Great Synod of Dort by hosting a discussion: 400 Years After Dort: Owning It and Letting It Go. We will be led in our discussion by some leading Reformed thinkers as we look at the effects od the Synod and discuss which aspects of Dort should be kept, refreshed, and built upon, and which we might well let go of as we enter a new century.

	Daniel Meeter is pastor of the Old First Reformed Church of Brooklyn, New York, with degrees from New Brunswick Theological Seminary and Drew University. He has published extensively, and his book Meeting Each Other in Doctrine, Liturgy, and Government (Eerdmans, 1993) is considered one of the most important modern works on the Constitution of the Reformed Church in America. One area of his concern is the texts and contexts of Reformed baptismal liturgies. And he will be looking at what Dort said about baptism.
	David D. Daniels III is the Henry Winters Luce Professor of World Christianity at McCormick Theological Seminary, having joined the faculty in 1987. He is the author of over 50 essays, academic articles, and book chapters on topics related to African Christians in early modern Europe, Black Church history, Pentecostal Studies, and World Christianity. He has served as a member of research projects funded by various foundations, including the Eli Lilly Endowment, the Luce Foundation, Pew Charitable Trust, and the Institute of Classical Christianity. His presentation will be “Prelude to a “Post-Racial” Future: Interrogating the Baptism Debate at the Synod of Dort.”
	Allan Janssen is emeritus professor of Theological Studies at New Brunswick Theological Seminary and a General Synod professor emeritus of the Reformed Church in America. He has taught and spoken internationally on Reformed polity and doctrine, and is the author, editor, and translator of several books, most recently Confessing the Faith Today: A Fresh Look at the Belgic Confession (Wipf and Stock, 2017) and A Ministry of Reconciliation: Essays ion Honor of Gregg Mast (Eerdmans, 2017) as well as the upcoming revised edition of his classic work on RCA church order, Constitutional Theology. He will speak on Dort’s effects on public theology in the Reformed world.
	Suzanne McDonald is professor of Systematic and Historical Theology at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan. She is ordained in the Christian Reformed Church, and has written books and essays on a range of subjects, including the doctrine of election, John Knox, and the theology of John Owen. In her presentation, “The Canons of Dort for the Church Today: Polemics, Pastoring, and Pulling up TULIPs,” she will argue that, once we have recognized the limits of what the Canons set out to do, and why they take their particular form, the theology of the Canons still matters deeply, and that they have a strong pastoral polemic.
	Matthew van Maastricht is the pastor at Altamont, New York and teaches Reformed standards and church polity for Western and New Brunswick Theological Seminaries. He is a doctoral candidate at the Free University of Amsterdam and General Editor of The Congregational History Series of the Reformed Church in America. He will be speaking about the impact of Dort on Reformed polity.

In addition to our presenters, we will have respondents who come from various non-Dutch backgrounds, yet who represent peoples who, by becoming part of the RCA, have been adopted into the legacy of Dort, including RCA pastors, Alfred Correa, Kent McHeard, Young Aie Na, and Imos Wu, and Janice McLean-Farrell, the Dirck Romeyn Assistant Professor of Metro-Urban Ministry at NBTS.

The suggested donation for the day is $10.00, but seminarians are welcome for free and everyone else is welcome regardless of the ability to pay. RSVP to jbrumm@nbts.edu by Monday, May 6.

Preaching in a Period of Polarization

April 25, 2019 @ 10:00 am - 4:00 pm

Come join us for a Preaching Workshop at NBTS!

Preaching the Word, and doing so pastorally and prophetically, week in and week out, is one of the central callings for ministers. This becomes even more challenging in this politically polarized era, when so many listeners are looking for a subtext in support of one secular position or another, and will only listen to those that support them. On top of those weekly tasks, we have the duty of presenting the gift and the dare that comes with Christ laying down his life for our sake and how we present that to congregations in the charged climate.

To help ministers proclaim the Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost and move into a new electoral cycle under these circumstances, the Reformed Church Center at New Brunswick Theological Seminary, along with the school’s department of worship and preaching, will offer the workshop “Preaching in a Period of Polarization” on Thursday, the 25th of April, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. Gifted preachers and instructors representing the Episcopal, Baptist, ad Reformed traditions will discuss the challenges before us, then participants will each be able to take part in two small-group sessions on topics including “Justice and Lament: Unlikely Partners”, “Preaching the Liturgical Year”, and more!

	The Rev. Dr. Kara Slade serves as Associate Chaplain at the Episcopal Church at Princeton University and Associate Rector at Trinity Church, Princeton. A native of Pensacola, Florida and lifelong Southerner, Kara holds degrees in Christian Theology and Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science from Duke University. Before entering ministry, she was a research engineer for NASA. She serves on the Committee for the Priesthood of the Diocese of New Jersey and the General Board of Examining Chaplains, and is also the chair of the Society of Scholar-Priests. She will speak on “What Is Preaching Today?”
	Anna Jackson is a native New Yorker who grew up at New Lots Community (Reformed) Church in Brooklyn and has served several RCA commissions, task forces, councils, and congregations, and is a past moderator for the Board of Trustees of New Brunswick Theological Seminary, her alma mater. She and her husband, Dwayne, are the co-pastors of Second Reformed Church in Hackensack, NJ. She is an avid reader, loves jigsaw puzzles, social media, animals, traveling and playing her cello. She will speak on “What Does Polarization Look Like Today?”
	The Reverend Jes Kast is the Senior Pastor to Faith United Church of Christ in State College, PA. Before moving to Pennsylvania, she was a minister at West End Collegiate Church in NYC for 8 years, and she is a graduate of Western Theological Seminary. Her understanding of prophetic justice is rooted in Reformed theology guided by black liberation and feminist theologies. She and her wife enjoy finding the perfect cup of coffee at unique coffee shops across the country. She is active on social media believing the congregation is more than who is just in the pews. Her topic for the morning session will be “Exegeting the Congregation.”
	Andrew Wymer is Assistant Professor of Preaching and Worship, Director of Chapel, and Assistant Dean of Doctoral Studies at New Brunswick Theological Seminary. He has taught in the Association of Chicago Theological Schools Doctor of Ministry in Preaching Program and at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, and serves as a board member for The Liturgical Conference. He is author of numerous papers and journal articles, and lives in New Brunswick with his wife and children. He will be speaking on “Exegeting the Scriptures.”

This day-long workshop is open to everyone. The suggested donation for lunch will be $10.00; but everyone is welcome regardless of ability to pay. Lunch is free for all seminarians. NBTS is also able to offer .5 CEU to anyone who completes this program, at a cost of $25.00. Register via e-mail to jbrumm@nbts.edu by Monday, April 22^nd. Please include your name, postal address, and telephone number; those applying for the .5 CEU must indicate the same in the e-mail.

Reformed Worship and the Liturgical Revival

April 11, 2019 @ 10:00 am - 2:30 pm

In the 1950s and ‘60s, both the Reformed Church in America (RCA) and the Christian Reformed Church in North America undertook liturgical revisions that represented substantial shifts in how they lived out their liturgical and sacramental lives. While some of this was, no doubt, influenced by the work of Vatican II, nevertheless, two denominations that had historically leaned toward liturgical minimalism and Zwinglian memorialism in their sacramental understandings shifted towards much more Calvinian liturgies. They also engaged the growing ecumenical consensus on eucharistic celebrations and even suggested—at least in the RCA—that the Supper should be celebrated as often as the word is preached. What is even more remarkable is that both denominations found themselves with capable scholars to spark this revival when their life before then would not exactly have nurtured this sort of sensibility.

How did this come to pass? What are the continuing fruits of this liturgical revival, especially as both the CRC and the RCA become increasingly multicultural? These are questions which we explore in “Reformed Worship and the Liturgical Revival,” a program recorded on Thursday, April 11, 10:00-2:30 at New Brunswick Theological Seminary.
 <!–<iframe loading="lazy" id="ls_embed_1554842656" src="https://livestream.com/accounts/19084978/events/8634377/player?width=640&height=360&enableInfoAndActivity=true&defaultDrawer=&autoPlay=true&mute=false" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"> –>

Emily R. Brink, internationally-known liturgical and hymnological scholar and Senior Research Fellow at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship in Grand Rapids, Michigan, will share findings from her work at the 2018-19 Alvin J. Poppen & John R. Young Fellow in Reformed Worship at NBTS as part of her keynote address. She’ll be looking, in particular, at CRC and RCA parallel influences in liturgical renewal in the 1960s.

Gregg A. Mast is president emeritus of NBTS, and in his forty-year ministry served as a congregational pastor in Johannesburg, South Africa, Irvington, New Jersey, and Albany, New York; as Minister of Social Witness and the Director of Ministry Services in the RCA; and as President of the RCA General Synod. A well-known liturgical scholar, he will address the development of what became the 1968 Liturgy for the Lord’s Supper in the RCA and its surprising sources.

Three pastors shared stories of adapting the RCA liturgy in their own varied contexts.

	Benjamín Alicea-Lugo is the Pastor of the St. Paul’s Evangelical Reformed Church in Perth Amboy, NJ, since 1986, and a Spanish teacher at Old Bridge High School since 2002. He and his wife, Irma, are Co-Editors of Praise y Adoración BilingualHymnal / Himnario bilingue.
	Ursula Cargill, a minister and educational administrator, serves Agape House, a new RCA ministry in North Plainfield, NJ, as pastor, planter, and ministries leader.
	Dan Joo is the lead pastor of Willow Grove, PA, Korean Reformed Church and current president of the Classis of Delaware-Raritan. His pastoral focus is on building a stronger community of disciples radically following Christ, bridging between the generations of Korean immigrants and raising the next generation leaders.

Women’s Stories Day 2019

February 2, 2019 @ 9:00 am - 3:00 pm

The third annual Women’s Stories Day at New Brunswick Theological Seminary, co-hosted by the Reformed Church Center and the RCA Office for Women’s Transformation and Leadership, will be held on Saturday, 2 February 2019 (snow date 9 February 2019). This year’s theme will be: “Taking a Stand,” featuring stories of RCA women advocating to change their world.

The day will feature the 2018-2019 Hazel B. Gnade presentation in RCA Women’s Studies.

	Elizabeth Colmant Estes, the 2018-2019 Hazel B. Gnade Fellow, is a graduate of Union Theological Seminary in New York, where she won the Hitchcock Prize in Church History, the Muilenberg Prize in Biblical Studies, and the Union Traveling Fellowship. A chaplaincy resident at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, NJ, and an elder at the Reformed Church of Highland Park, she serves on the RCA Commission on Theology. Her presentation—part of her larger work on persons, office, and the local church—will focus on those who took part in a retreat at Stony Point, New York, in the early 1970s, committing to work together to open the office of Minister of the Word and Sacrament to women.
	Patricia Sealy is a graduate of New Brunswick Theological Seminary and pastor of Mott Haven Reformed Church in the Bronx. She is director of Children’s Haven: A Place of Healing and Hope, and will be speaking about ministry to and advocacy for children whose parents are incarcerated.
	Karen Jackson is a specialized RCA minister who serves as the Director of Recovery and Community Initiatives at Project Hospitality, an interfaith social service agency committed to feeding the hungry and housing the homeless. She also administers the Staten Island Long Term Recovery Organization, founded in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, and leads the Staten Island Inter-Religious Leadership coalition, organizing local clergy to respond to the social justice issues of our times. She will share her work with Project Hospitality in her address “Here I Am, Lord: The Call to Local Advocacy.”
	Liz Testa serves as the RCA’s denominational leader for Women’s Transformation and Leadership. She is a pastor, creative innovator, visionary leader and community builder who is passionate about biblical hospitality, the importance of story sharing, encouraging, and equipping others to live into their God-given gifts and callings, and she will be leading all of the participants in a process of sharing their own stories.
	Anna Jackson, a native New Yorker who grew up at New Lots Community (Reformed) Church in Brooklyn and has served several RCA commissions, task forces, councils, and congregations, will be the worship leader for the day. Anna and her husband, Dwayne, are the co-pastors of Second Reformed Church in Hackensack, NJ. She is an avid reader, loves jigsaw puzzles, social media, animals, travelling and playing her cello.

Everyone is welcome at the Women’s Stories Day event. There is a suggested donation of $10.00 for lunch, but everyone is welcome to join in regardless of ability to pay—all seminarians will be served for free. Reservations are extremely helpful, however: please respond to jbrumm@nbts.edu by Tuesday, 29 January if you plan to attend.

How Can We Respond to the Refugee Crisis?

January 30, 2019 @ 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm

New Date:

Wednesday, January 30, 5:00 pm at St. John’s University, Marillac Hall, Room 226A

As the number of displaced people worldwide grows every day, and as more and more governments shrink from responsibility, Christian—followers of a refugee—are left wondering how to take up the challenge. The Reformed Church Center invites you to join JJ TenClay, Refugee Ministries Coordinator for RCA Global Mission, for Dinner & Discussion on Wednesday, January 30, 5:00 pm at St. John’s University, as she shares stories of trauma, resilience and hope related to her work with migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in Italy, and why Christians should do more to care for those seeking refuge.

JJ TenClay spent four years in Italy as a missionary for the Reformed Church in America, providing for the social, emotional and spiritual needs of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. She returned to the United States in July 2018 and is now the Refugee Ministries Coordinator for RCA Global Missions.

Everyone is welcome to come and be part of this event. The suggested donation for dinner is $15.00 (it is free for seminary students and RCA staff and faculty), but everyone may share in the meal regardless of ability to pay. RSVP to jbrumm@nbts.edu by Thursday, January 24, 2019.

Looking at the Great Lakes Catechism

January 15, 2019 @ 9:30 am - 3:00 pm

Reformed Church Center Looks at the Great Lakes Catechism

The RCA General Synod of 2018 voted “To commend the Great Lakes Catechism on Marriage and Sexuality for reflection, study, and response by the Commission on Theology and RCA churches and classes as a means of deepening our understanding of the biblical teaching on human sexuality and finding a pathway forward toward unity in mission and ministry” (OV 18-21, MGS 2018, p. 148). This action raises issues for the church and its assemblies, not only in the area of human sexuality, but over the theological and biblical integrity of this catechism as well as how and when we amend the Standards of the Reformed Church in America, which have only been changed once in the last 400 years.

On Tuesday, 15 January 2019, from 9:30 am to 3:00 pm, the Reformed Church Center will host “Looking at the Great Lakes Catechism”, a time to help office-bearers and congregations review this document and consider their responses to the General Synod in its ongoing discussions. We will have five presentations on the Catechism from experts within the RCA, looking at it from their own disciplines:

	Tricia Sheffield holds degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary and Drew University, and currently serves as pastor and teacher of Middletown (New Jersey) Reformed Church. She has taught religion and gender theory at the college level, and most recently was the Lilly Visiting Scholar in Religious and Gender Studies at Austin College in Sherman, Texas.
	Matthew van Maastricht is the pastor at Altamont, New York and teaches the Reformed standards and church polity for Western and New Brunswick Theological Seminaries. He is a doctoral candidate at the Free University of Amsterdam and General Editor of The Congregational History Series of the Reformed Church in America.
	Dwayne Jackson, Co-pastor, Second Reformed Church, Hackensack, NJ
	Christopher Dorn is a biblical and liturgical scholar who resides in Holland, Michigan. He currently serves as chair of Christians Uniting in Song and Prayer, an interdenominational organization in Holland dedicated to promoting and practicing worship that embodies the best of the catholic tradition. He preaches regularly at First Presbyterian Church in Ionia and Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Holland.
	Micah McCreary is President of New Brunswick Theological Seminary, and holds degrees from the University of Michigan, Virginia Union University, and Virginia Commonwealth University. A pastor and pastoral counselor, his areas of specialization include the intergration of spirituality and psychology and the influence of culture upon health.

The rest of our time will be spent in conversation around the Catechism and issues raised by our presenters. Participants may prepare by reviewing the Catechism, which is found at http://images.rca.org/docs/synod/GLCatechism.pdf.

Everyone is welcome to attend this day-long program. The suggested donation for lunch (which is free for all seminarians) is $10.00, but all will be fed regardless of their ability to pay. RSVP to jbrumm@nbts.edu by Wednesday, 9 January.

Remembering Who We Are: How Congregations Commemorate and Celebrate Their Heritages

December 6, 2018 @ 10:00 am - 2:30 pm

The Reformed Church Center Looks at How and Why Congregations Celebrate Their History

After the first Sunday, every congregation has a past. What we do with those pasts, how we remember and celebrate, is significant to understanding how we live out our faith, according to David Zwart, Associate Professor of History at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, and 2018-19 Albert A Smith fellow in Reformed Church History at New Brunswick Theological Seminary.

Zwart will be the keynote presenter for “Remembering Who We Are: How Congregations Commemorate and Celebrate Their Heritages”, a program hosted by the Reformed Church Center at NBTS on Thursday, 6 December, from 10:00 am to 2:30 pm. His address—“An Obligation to the Past? RCA Congregations and History after World War II”—examines the ways Reformed Church in America congregations conceptualized and used the past in the second half of the twentieth century. By surveying congregational anniversary books, certain patterns and exceptions emerge in how congregations conceptualized and used the past. Congregations showed they felt some obligation to their history by commemorating anniversaries. They generally emphasized faithful forbearers and pastors. However, some seemed to use the past to constrain any innovations while others did the opposite. Historical variables may account for these differences. Studying the ways congregations in the RCA conceptualized and used the past sheds light on the historical process of memory formation. It also helps us understand how congregations navigate contentious issues by appealing to the past.

Other presenters will look at ways in which RCA congregations which are not ethnically Dutch remember and celebrate their identities.

Patricia Singletary holds Master of Divinity and Doctor of Ministry degrees from NBTS, and serves as pastor of Elmendorf Reformed Church in New York. She will share the story of how that congregation is leading its community in rediscovering an African Burial Ground in East Harlem and using it to strengthen the neighborhood’s knowledge of its roots.
Gerri Igarashi Yoshida is a member of the Japanese American United Church, also in New York City, and serves on the Pastoral Formation & Transitions Committee of the Classis of New York and the Executive Committee of the RCA Council for Pacific and Asian American Ministries. She will lead a discussion of how her congregation celebrates its identity.
Regina Robles Brannock, a mother, grandmother, and member of the Comanche Nation, has been part of the Apache Reformed Church in Oklahoma since 1971, and has served as Sunday School teacher, Deacon, and Elder, as well as serving on the RCA Council for Christian Education, General Synod Council, and Native American Council. A current candidate for ministry as a commissioned pastor, Ms. Brannock will examine the ways the Apache congregation remembers its history.
Russell L. Gasero, a graduate of Hope College and Rutgers University who established the RCA Archives in 1978 and continues as Archivist of the Reformed Church in America, will help us consider the importance of congregational histories for the ministries of local churches and denominations.

Everyone is welcome to be part of this event. There will be a suggested donation of $10.00 for lunch, but all will be fed regardless of ability to pay. Lunch is free for all seminary students and members of the NBTS faculty and staff. RSVP to James Brumm at jbrumm@nbts.edu by Monday, 3 December.

Schism – and Reformed theology?

November 5, 2018 @ 4:00 pm - 7:00 pm

The Reformed Church Center Presents:

Schism – and Reformed theology?

A Lecture and Panel Discussion on the issue of Schism.

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Dirk Smit, Rimmer and Ruth deVries Professor of Reformed Theology and Public Life at Princeton Theological Seminary and principal author of the Belhar Confession

Struggles over maintaining a Christian witness in a society where our understandings of inclusion and personhood keep changing have driven many denominations, including the Reformed Church in America, to consider the idea of splitting apart. For Reformed Christians, however, there are fundamental ideas about the unity of the Church that are at the core of our ecclesiology and out theology.

On Monday, November 5, 2018, 4:00-6:30 pm, the Reformed Church Center will host a discussion on the New Brunswick Campus. Dirk Smit, Rimmer and Ruth DeVries Professor of Reformed Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary and former Professor of Systematic Theology at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, will be the principal presenter. He is a pastor from the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa, and was primary author of the Belhar Confession, adopted by the Dutch Reformed Mission Church in South Africa in 1982 and the Reformed Church in America in 2009.

Dr. Smit’s presentation will be responded to by Jaeseung Cha, Associate Professor of Foundational and Constructive Theology at NBTS and a General Synod Professor of the Reformed Church in America;

Janice McLean-Farrell

Janice McLean-Farrell, Dirk Romeyn Assistant Professor of Metro-Urban Ministry at NBTS and author of West-Indian Pentecostals: Living Their Faith in New York and London (New York: Bloomsbury, 2016); and

Jonathan Vanderbeck, pastor of Trinity Reformed Church in Schenectady, New York, a licensed psychotherapist at Samaritan Counseling Center in Scotia, New York, and a dedicated advocate for those on the margins, particularly at the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality.

After the formal presentation and responses, everyone will be invited into a discussion with the leaders over dinner.

Everyone is welcome to attend this program. The suggested donation for dinner will be $15.00, but everyone is welcome regardless of ability to pay. There will be no charge for students of any theological seminary. RSVP to jbrumm@nbts.edu by Wednesday, October 31.

Being a Reformed Church When the Church is Under Stress: A Conversation

June 21, 2018 @ 10:00 am - 2:30 pm

A few weeks ago, in the midst of a Facebook discussion over the state of the RCA and concerns over the coming General Synod, a side conversation opened up. It was about how some of us, while we are unsure of what is going to happen to the current denominational structure, are quite confident in local churches and classes and even a few regional synods, who, no matter where they are in the discussions of human sexuality—and many of them are mixed—are continuing to do good Reformed ministry. While the future of the RCA is in doubt, there are lots of Reformed churches in local communities who maintain a vibrant Reformed witness, and they need help and support doing that—help and support the denomination is having difficulty providing right now.

That led to the plan for this special conversation, which the Reformed Church Center will host at New Brunswick Theological Seminary on June 21^st. This event will not be live-streamed, because placing us in an informal setting where we can all share freely makes that much more difficult. Still, I hope many of us can be here, and the Center will do what it can to find low-cost (or free) accommodations for those who need to stay the night.

As our denominational structures in the RCA face conflict, stress, and uncertainty, local congregations still have the challenge of being Reformed and bringing a witness to their communities. This time of conversation will focus on how every congregation can keep doing that, no matter what happens at General Synod. Following a state-of-the-church presentation by Al Janssen (a General Synod Professor at NBTS), we will launch into informal conversations around four topics:

We can be church together even when we don’t entirely agree—led by Abby Norton-Levering (Albany Synod Ministries Coordinator) and Thomas Song (pastor of Steinway Reformed Church, Queens, NY).
We can be church no matter what happens denominationally—led by Rett Zabriskie (specialized transition minister) and Matthew van Maastricht (pastor, Altamont Reformed Church).
We can be a non-anxious presence for our own congregations and the RCA—led by Linda Burlew Gold (pastor, First Reformed Church, College Point, NY) and Dwayne Jackson (pastor, second Reformed Church, Hackensack, NJ).
We can be ecumenical on our own . . . and often are—led by Patricia Singletary (Pastor, Elmendorf Reformed Church, New York, NY) and Amy Nyland (New York Synod Executive Minister).

Everyone who cares about the lives of their congregations and about our call to bring a Reformed understanding of God’s Reign to our communities is welcome, no matter what your theological understanding of human sexuality might be. There is a suggested donation of $15.00 to cover lunch and snacks, but all are welcome;* please just give what you can. Students from any seminary are welcome to attend for free. RSVP to jbrumm@nbts.edu by Monday, June 18.

*This is an over-and-above program for the Center at the end of the budget year. Anyone who has the means to give a little extra toward food, etc., is welcome to do so.

Second Annual Women’s Stories Day Celebrates Those Who Came First

May 12, 2018 @ 10:00 am - 2:30 pm

The year 2018 celebrates the confluence of important anniversaries for women in ministry in the Reformed Church in America. A century ago, the first overtures were sent to General Synod calling for all the offices of the church to be open to women. That same year, Ida Scudder opened Velore Women’s Medical College. The first woman was ordained to ministry of the Word and Sacrament 45 years ago, and, five years later, women were examined by classes for ordination for the first time. Three decades ago, the first African-American woman to be a minister of Word and Sacrament in the RCA was ordained, and this is the twentieth anniversary if the installation of the first woman professor of theology.

In celebration of this special year when the General Synod will be thanking God for the gifts and ministries of women in the church, the Reformed Church Center’s Women’s Stories Day, co-hosted by the RCA Office of Women’s Transformation & Leadership, will be sharing the stories of “First Women.” On Saturday, May 12, 2018, from 10:00 am to 2:30 pm, the Center will have its second annual Hazel Gnade presentation, with four of the first women sharing their stories.

Bernita Babb, the retired pastor of Mott Haven Reformed Church in the Bronx and the first African-American woman ordained in the RCA, is a graduate of Hunter College and NBTS, with a DMin from Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary. She taught for 27 years in New York City Public Schools and, in retirement taught in the public schools of Prince George’s County, Maryland, while preaching and teaching in congregations in the DC metropolitan area.	Bernita W. Babb
Carol Bechtel is Professor of Old Testament at Western Theological Seminary and a graduate of Hope College and WTS with a Ph.D. from Yale University. She has published extensively, served as president of the General Synod of the RCA in 2009 and moderator of the General Synod Council in 2010, and was the first woman ordained by the Classis of Illinois in 1988. In 1998, she became the first woman professor of theology.	Carol Bechtel
The first woman full-time faculty member at New Brunswick Theological Seminary, E. Elizabeth Johnson holds degrees from Ohio University, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Yale University. She returned to Princeton to earn her Ph.D, was ordained by the Presbytery of Greenbrier (PCUS) in 1977, and taught at Queens College (now Queens University) in Charlotte, NC, from 1979-83. From 1986 to 1998 she was on the faculty at NBTS, and, since 1998, she has served as J. Davison Philips Professor of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA.	Elizabeth Johnson
Joyce Borgman DeVelder has spent her life in the RCA. A native of Fremont, MI, she attended Hope College and Western and New Brunswick Seminaries, then served at the Delmar, NY, Reformed Church 1977-80, being examined by the Classis of Albany in 1978 and then, after spending a year at the center of a General Synod controversy, was ordained in 1979. For the last 37 years, she has been pastor of Old Saratoga Reformed Church in Schuylerville, NY. She and her husband, Davd, have two sons, Nathaniel and Mikael.	Joyce Borgman DeVelder
Young Na is the first woman of Korean heritage ordained as a minister of the Word & Sacrament in RCA history, and the first to earn a Master of Divinity degree at NBTS (1989). She earned her DMin at NBTS in 2002, and is the senior pastor of Forest Park Church in Queens, NY, and an adjunct professor of basic biblical language courses.	Young Na

In addition to hearing those stories, we hope to hear from women who were the first to serve as deacons and elders in their local congregations. Go to http://nbts.edu/student-life/reformed-church-center/rca-first-stories-project/ to find out how your congregation can take part in the RCA First Stories Project.

The only cost for the day is a suggested donation of $10.00 to help cover the cost for lunch. Lunch is free for seminary students and NBTS staff and faculty. Others for whom the cost is a problem should feel free to give what they are able. We do need everybody to please RSVP to jbrumm@nbts.edu by Tuesday, 8 May, if you plan to attend.

ISHMAEL AND ISAAC: Examining Interfaith Relationships

April 19, 2018 @ 10:00 am - 1:00 pm

April 19, 2018 at 10:00 am at the New Brunswick campus (35 Seminary Place, New Brunswick, New Jersey)

This day-long program looked at the past, present, and future of interfaith relationships for Reformed Christians. Four Reformed Church leaders will share their thoughts and experiences in this crucial area of our common life.

Rev. Harold “Hank” Lay, the 2017-18 Albert A. Smith Fellow in Reformed Church History, presented “Lessons Learned: RCA Mission Work Among Arab Muslims.”	Rev. Harold Lay
Norma Coleman James, an RCA elder, shared the progress of a working group preparing “An Interfaith Mandate for the RCA.”	Norma Coleman James
John Hubers (NBTS 1982) is a professor of religion and director of the Global Education department of Northwestern College, an RCA college in Orange City, Iowa. He received his PhD in the area of World Christianity and Global Mission from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago in 2013. Prior to that he served with the RCA mission in Bahrain and Oman and as supervisor of the RCA global mission program in the Middle East and South Asia. His book on the first Protestant missionary to the Middle East was published by Wiph and Stock Publishers in 2016.	Dr. John Hubers
Rev. Vicky Eastland, pastor at The Brookville Reformed Church on Long Island, shared their unique ministry as a multi-faith campus.	Rev. Vicky Eastland

There Is a Balm in Gilead: Worship as a Tool for Healing

March 15, 2018 @ 10:00 am

There is a growing body of empirical evidence confirming something that people of faith have known for a long time: our spiritual health has a profound effect upon our physical health. Worship, ritual, prayer, and singing can be physically as well as socially healing.

On Thursday, March 15, from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm at the New Brunswick campus (35 Seminary Place, New Brunswick, New Jersey), the Reformed Church Center will host a conference examining this connection and how local congregations can use it as a force for greater good, featuring four leaders who are both scholars and practitioners.

Paul Janssen is the Alvin J. Poppen and John R. Young Fellow in Reformed Worship for the 2017-2018 academic year and pastor of United Reformed Church in Somerville, New Jersey, and holds degrees from Central College in Palla, Iowa (1981) and New Brunswick Theological Seminary (1985). During his seminary years he met and married Annette Giles, a daughter of First Reformed Church in Astoria, Queens. They have two grown children, Samuel and Emma. An occasional writer of hymns and composer of tunes, he has always had a keen interest in the liturgical life and renewal of the church, and finds deep value in both the historic reformed tradition and more contemporary influences like Taizé and Iona. Paul’s keynote address, “Reformed Worship: Not Enough ‘From the Neck Up,’” will examine information on recent studies of how worship effects the human brain—an interest that was sparked for him by an elder in one of the congregations he served—and what that might mean for our worship leadership and planning.

Jes Kast is the Associate Pastor at West End Collegiate Church in New York City and Lead Pastor of A Taste of Heaven Soup Kitchen Church. Under her leadership she revitalized a soup kitchen and created a worshiping congregation with some of New York City’s economically poor. She is a sought after preacher and writer. Her public theological work includes serving with Governor Cuomo’s Interfaith Advisory Committee. She writes for The 12. Reformed. Done Daily. She will share the story of “A Taste of Heaven: How worship heals wounds in the sanctuary of the City.”

Holly Phares, a professional singer, conductor, educator, composer and private voice teacher & coach, has guided singers from all walks of life and levels of experience for over 30 years, while helping them discover or recover their authentic voices. Holly is presently the Director of Music at Old First Reformed UCC Church in Philadelphia, Founder & Artistic Director of The Healing Presence Singers, a local Philadelphia-based community healing choir, Music Director of ParkinSingers, a choir comprised of people living with Parkinson’s Disease, their care partners and friends, and recently has started a homeless choir at Old First, serving the community of people experiencing homelessness on the streets of Philadelphia. She will talk about the healing power of choral singing.

Micah McCreary is President of New Brunswick Theological Seminary. He will be presenting on the topic of worship as pastoral care.

Video:
Part 1 – There Is a Balm in Gilead: Worship as a Tool for Healing

Part 2 – There Is a Balm in Gilead: Worship as a Tool for Healing

Called to Communion, Committed to Justice

February 15, 2018 @ 4:30 pm - 6:30 pm

Reflections on the 2017 WCRC General Conference

The World Communion of Reformed Churches, representing Christians of the Reformed tradition from across the globe, held its most recent General Conference last July, meeting in Leipzig, Germany, in celebration of the 500^th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. While they were there, the WCRC signed onto the Joint Declaration of the Doctrine of Justification with Lutherans and Roman Catholics from around the world. What does this mean for the RCA? What does involvement in such worldwide ecumenical gatherings mean for local congregations and even denominational bodies in the United States?

On Thursday, February 15, the Reformed Church Center at New Brunswick Theological Seminary hosted “Called to Communion, Committed to Justice.” Lisa VanderWal, pastor of the Lisha’s Kill Reformed Church in Schenectady, New York, and a vice president of the World Communion of Reformed Churches, and Monica Schaap Pierce, RCA Associate for Ecumenical Relations, spoke about the major issues and reasons why they matter. Monsignor John A. Radano, Adjunct Professor of Systematic Theology in the School of Theology at Seton Hall University and a world-renowned Roman Catholic ecumenist, responded to their presentations.

VanderWal Rev. Dr. Lisa Vander Wal, Pastor of Lisha’s Kill Reformed Church and Moderator of the RCA’s Commission on Christian Unity, has served on the Executive Committee of the World Communion of Reformed Churches since 2014 and was elected one of its Vice Presidents at the WCRC General Council in July, 2017.

MonicaPierce_cropped

Monica Schaap Pierce is Associate for Ecumenical Relations for the Reformed Church in America and a doctoral candidate at Fordham University. She lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with her husband, Steve, and her children.

Monsignor John A. Radano, Adjunct Professor of Systematic Theology in the School of Theology at Seton Hall University

A Conversation Around Baptism

December 7, 2017 @ 4:00 pm - 6:15 pm

All Christians get baptized; it is one of the central realities of our faith, an act upon which we can all agree. Except that some of us baptize infants and some of us only baptize adult believers. In a world where people of different denominations and even faith traditions interact, and especially in a seminary where people of many different denominations interact, the subject of when people should be baptized can lead to spirited discussions.

On Thursday, December 7, at 4:00 pm, the Reformed Church Center at New Brunswick Theological Seminary will host a “Conversation Around Baptism,” particularly around when we believe people should be baptized and why. Theologians representing both infant and believer baptism traditions will present their understandings, and then we will all participate in discussion over dinner, wrapping up around 6:00. The suggested donation for dinner is $15.00, but it is free for NBTS students, faculty, and staff. RSVP to jbrumm@nbts.edu by Monday, December 4.

Danielle L. Brown is the Pastor of Church Life at Cathedral International in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and serves as the Moderator of the Raritan Association of the American Baptist Churches of New Jersey. In addition to her work in the local church and denomination, she is an increasingly sought after preacher and workshop facilitator. Dr. Brown is also a member of the Board of Trustees at New Brunswick Theological Seminary and the Mayor’s Strategic Planning Committee in the City of Perth Amboy. Rev. Dr. Brown holds an MEd from Virginia State University; MDiv and MA degrees from New Brunswick Theological Seminary; and a DMin from Palmer Theological Seminary, where she studied Leadership and Church Renewal.

Daniel Meeter is pastor of the Old First Reformed Church of Brooklyn, NY, with an MDiv degree from New Brunswick Theological Seminary and a PhD from Drew University. He has published extensively, and his book Meeting Each Other in Doctrine, Liturgy, and Government (Eerdmans, 1993) is considered one of the most important modern works on the Constitution of the Reformed Church in America. One area of his concern is the texts and contexts of Reformed baptismal liturgies.

John A. Radano served in the Department of Religious Studies at Seton Hall University from 1965-1984, and was its chairman from 1977-1984, specializing in ecumenical studies. He continues there as Adjunct Professor of Systematic Theology in the School of Theology. He has participated in the North American Academy of Ecumenists, in two international assemblies of the World Conference on Religion and Peace (Princeton, New Jersey, 1979, and Nairobi, Kenya, 1984), and as member of the Pax Romana (a Catholic NGO) delegation at the United Nations (1975-79), and head of the delegation (1977-79). From 1984-2008, he served in the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity(PCPCU), Vatican City, and in 1985, Pope John Paul II appointed him as head of that Pontifical Council’s Western Section. He is the author of several books and numerous articles.

Dinner & Discussion about human trafficking and sexual exploitation

October 23, 2017 @ 4:45 pm - 6:00 pm

On Monday, October 23, 4:45-6:00 pm, the Reformed Church Center will host a Dinner & Discussion with Jennifer Lucking, who serves the RCA by raising awareness and mobilizing advocacy about human trafficking and sexual exploitation, primarily in the Synod of Canada. Because this is a topic that reaches far beyond the RCA, all students, faculty, staff, alumni, and others are welcome and encouraged to take part.

jennifer_lucking Jennifer is the RCA representative to the Canadian Council of Churches’ Commission on Justice and Peace where she serves as the Vice Chair as well as the Chair for the Working Group on Sexual Exploitation in Canada. Over the coming year, Jennifer will be transitioning from her role with the Regional Synod of Canada—raising awareness and mobilizing advocacy—into her new role as inaugural Executive Director of Restorations Second Stage Homes, a charity working to open a long-term home in southern Ontario for survivors of commercial sexual exploitation, working directly with women and girls affected by sexual exploitation and providing them with long term housing and programming to help them overcome trauma and flourish in their new lives apart from exploitation and abuse.

Prior to her role with the Regional Synod of Canada, Jennifer worked for Walk With Me Canada, a victim services agency which provided support and services to victims and survivors of both labour and sex trafficking. There, she responded to crisis calls from law enforcement, victim services and other social agencies regarding victims of human trafficking, and she coordinated first-response care, support and services to accommodate immediate needs.

Dinner is free for all NBTS students, faculty, and staff. For everyone else, there is a suggested donation of $15.00, but any donations are welcome. RSVP to jbrumm@nbts.edu by Thursday, October 19.

A Discussion of Slavery at the Roots of NBTS History

October 17, 2017 @ 4:30 pm - 6:15 pm

Especially in the events of recent days, we are reminded of Edmund Burke’s words: “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” As Christians, we are called again and again to remember all we have gotten wrong—both as individuals and as a society—so that we may be forgiven and move forward working toward justice and wholeness.

Black slavery is part of the history of New Brunswick Seminary and Rutgers University. Slaves and slaveholders were involved in the start of both the schools. The “Scarlet and Black” project at Rutgers has been studying this history, and Dr. John Coakley, professor emeritus of Church History at NBTS, has been representing the Seminary.

Kendra_Boyd_Hi On Tuesday, October 17, beginning at 4:30 pm, Dr. Kendra Boyd, the Postdoctoral Associate for the Scarlet and Black Project, will present “Scarlet and Black: Slavery and Dispossession in Rutgers History,” sharing the work the project has done to date and the direction of its future work, followed by questions and discussion over dinner.
Kendra Boyd holds a Ph.D. in African American History and United States History from Rutgers University-New Brunswick, and previously received a B.S. in Business Administration from Wayne State University. She is currently working on a book manuscript based on her dissertation, “The Great Migration and Black Entrepreneurship in Detroit.” As the Postdoctoral Associate for Rutgers’s Scarlet and Black Project, Boyd administers and supervises research on the history of African Americans in Rutgers History.

The entire Seminary community, along with people from Rutgers and area congregations, is invited to this program hosted by the Anti-Racism Transformation Team and the Reformed Church Center. There is a suggested donation of $15.00 for dinner, but it is free for NBTS students, faculty, and staff. RSVP to jbrumm@nbts.edu by Thursday, October 12.

RCA History Day

September 23, 2017 @ 10:00 am - 2:00 pm

Open to the Whole Community

The Reformed Church Center and the Archives of the Reformed Church in America will be hosting the first-ever “RCA History Day” on Saturday, September 23, 10:00-2:00 at New Brunswick Theological Seminary.

The day will celebrate history in both formal and informal ways. RCA History day is for the whole community–not just the RCA and not just church. It’s an opportunity to learn about digitization of materials (records, video, photos, etc.), meet with a representative of a digitization vendor who can help with the preservation of family items, hear about stained glass windows and how to care for them, meet with a stained glass professional to ask about your own glass work (bring pictures), visit the seminary and Sage Library (acknowledged as the most beautiful library in the state), hear two prominent scholars talk about the Reformation from both a Protestant and a Roman Catholic perspective, and enjoy a variety of other historical fun.

Through the morning—10:00 am to 12:00 noon—participants may rotate through a variety of presentations;

Preserve Your Memories: Digital Memory Media will be present to provide their services with scanning videos, photos, papers, and any other material for attendees. People may bring the materials with them to drop off with DMM or talk with the representatives to get estimates and suggestions for the best procedure to move precious memories from paper or video tape to digital formats.. To be better informed, attendees may view their website at https://dmmem.com/.
Stained Glass Care & Handling: Representatives from J & R Lamb Studios, Inc., will review the history of stained glass from the early centuries to today, and discuss why stained glass has been used in religious edifices then and now. Then there will be a discussion of the responsibilities of stewards of these beautiful sacred arts. A checklist for examining windows will be distributed, highlighting how to look for signs of needed repairs and what should be done to make corrections.
Rutgers Oral History Archives: the director of the oral history archive at Rutgers University will be here to talk about their work and how they document New Jersey history through their extensive program. The director will explain how more than 800 life stories and over 32,000 pages of transcripts offer excellent resources for history. This Archive has also started collecting oral histories of NBTS faculty. See more about them at: http://oralhistory.rutgers.edu/
What to Do With Records: Russell Gasero, RCA Archivist, will be available to answer questions and offer guidance about how to care for local church records as well as personal papers.
Look Around Historic Sage Library: Gardner A. Sage Library, identified by Tech Insider as the most architecturally beautiful in New Jersey as part of a national survey, will be open for tours through the morning.

At noon, a buffet lunch will be served. This is free for all visitors, although donations to defray the cost will be accepted.

After lunch Dennis Tamburello and Allan Janssen will present “True Confessions: Reformed and Roman Catholic Reflections on the Reformation on its 500th Anniversary.”

Fr. Dennis Tamburello is Professor of Religious Studies at Siena College in Loudonville, New York, where he teaches courses in theology and the history of Christianity. A part-time prison chaplain for the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, he holds a Ph.D. in Historical Theology from the University of Chicago, and is the author of Union with Christ: John Calvin and the Mysticism of St. Bernard (Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), Ordinary Mysticism (Paulist Press, 1996), and Bernard of Clairvaux: Essential Writings (Crossroad Publishing Co., 2000). He is currently working on a new book for Paulist Press, 101 Questions and Answers on the Reformation.

Allan-Janssen-IMG_0463 The Rev. Allan Janssen is Affiliate Professor of Theological Studies at New Brunswick Theological Seminary, where he teaches RCA polity and doctrinal standards as well as “Theology in Traditions and Contexts.” He is the author, editor, and translator of several books, most recently Confessing the Faith Today: A Fresh Look at the Belgic Confession (Wipf and Stock, 2017) and A Ministry of Reconciliation: Essays ion Honor of Gregg Mast (Eerdmans, 2017).

Both Tamburello and Janssen are members of the current (eighth) round of the national Reformed-Roman Catholic Ecumenical Dialogue, which is focused on ministry and episcopacy.

Reservations for the day are not required, and the entire day is open to everyone, but we would appreciate responses from those who think they may be attending the lunch, in order to allow for a proper headcount. Just respond by e-mail to jbrumm@nbts.edu.

RCA Women’s Stories Day at NBTS

May 11, 2017 @ 10:00 am - 2:30 pm

RCA Women’s Stories Day at NBTS – Part 1 – Livestream video

RCA Women’s Stories Day at NBTS – Part 2 – Livestream video

9:30am registration and welcome, coffee/tea and light refreshments
10:00 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.

Women have been part of the life of the Church as long as there has been a church, and the stories of what women have been doing in the church is an integral part of our history. On Thursday, May 11, at New Brunswick Theological Seminary, the Reformed Church Center at New Brunswick Theological Seminary will host its first Women’s Stories Day, in partnership with RCA Women’s Transformation and Leadership.

Jennifer Reece will give the Hazel Gnade lecture: “Women’s Work for Creation: Reformed Church Women’s Missions and the Beginnings of the Environmental Movement.” Monica Schaap Pierce, RCA Ecumenical Associate, reflects on what the Accra Confession means for women, justice and creation care. Clara Woodson will share her story of breaking barriers in the church. Liz Testa, RCA leader for Women’s Transformation and Leadership will lead an interactive session that encourages us all to honor our stories. Lynn Min, ministry associate at Middle Collegiate Church will be our preacher of the day.

The day begins at 10:00 and ends about 2:30–there will be coffee, tea and fellowship for folks as they arrive, beginning at 9:30.

Staff members from the RCA Archives will be available all through the day (beginning at 9:00 am) to record stories of women’s lives in the church, to be included in the Archives’ growing oral history resource. Anyone who is interested in recording such an interview should mention that in the RSVP to jbrumm@nbts.edu.

Registration is free, but there is a suggested donation of $15.00 for lunch (free for seminarians).

RSVP to jbrumm@nbts.edu by Monday, May 8.

Jennifer Reece, the first-ever Hazel Gnade fellow, is a native of Aberdeen, Scotland, with degrees from Union College, New Brunswick Theological Seminary, and Princeton Theological Seminary, where she was awarded the Ph.D. in American Church History in 2002. She has pastored RCA and Episcopal congregations in New Jersey, New York, and Maine, and taught at Bangor Theological Seminary and the University of Maine at Machias. She currently serves asPriest-in-Charge of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Rangeley Maine, where she lives with her dog, Beatrix.
Monica Schaap Pierce is the Ecumenical Associate of the Reformed Church in America and a Ph.D. Candidate in Systematic Theology at Fordham University. She is an adjunct professor, teaching in the areas of Women and Religion and the Reformation. When she is not teaching, writing, or serving the church, Monica loves to garden, hike, and explore the wild beauty of the East Coast with her husband and her two young daughters.
Lynn Min is the minister of care and community life at Middle Collegiate Church in New York and a mental health counselor in private practice. Most of her free time is spent enjoying her most significant creations: Isabella, Isaiah, and Ilyana, all of whom are age five and under.
Clara Woodson is a retired RCA minister in Brooklyn, New York, and a former Synod Area Minister on the staff of New York Synod. Prior to her ordination as a Minister of the Word & Sacrament, Clara served the church as elder, deacon, and Sunday School teacher, and, during her career, she has been active in assemblies at every level of the RCA.
Liz Testa is the RCA leader for Women’s Transformation and Leadership. Prior to her work for the RCA, Liz served as minister for hospitality at Marble Collegiate Church in New York, and, prior to that was a professional actress.

Multi-Cultural Workshop

March 16, 2017 @ 9:30 am - 2:00 pm

Our world is a wonderful mix of cultures, languages, abilities, and orientations. Travel up and down any city street and you will see all sorts of people and shops, hear voices in different languages, and smell an array of fragrant foods from a world’s worth of restaurants. Our differing backgrounds and abilities and perspectives, melded together, make us stronger.

For generations, churches have been the one place that has been homogenous. It has been said that eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week. But even that is changing in more and more congregations. People of different races, languages, and abilities are getting together for worship as they do for all of life.

On Thursday, March 16, the Reformed Church Center at New Brunswick Theological Seminary will celebrate this blending in “Everybody at the Table,” a workshop looking at how we are joining together, and how we can cross even more cultural barriers.

The Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, Senior Minister at Middle Collegiate Church, a 900-member multiracial, welcoming, and inclusive congregation in New York City, and the first African American and first woman to serve as a senior minister in the Collegiate Church, will present the 2017-18 Poppen-Young Fellowship lecture: “For the Healing of the Nations: Love, multicultural worship, and Creating a New American Story.” There is no question that something is broken in America: our hearts, our dreams, our sense of civility. Worship “stories” God’s plan for a healthy and whole world. Worship puts love, period, on the line as a balm in Gilead. This practical talk will show and tell how multicultural worship can change the story from broken to whole.
The Rev. Jill Fenske, child of God, pastor of the Franklin Reformed Church in Nutley, New Jersey, poet, wife and mother, life-long learner, volunteer chaplain at Camp Sunrise, promoter of dialogue and committed follower of Jesus, will share her experiences of including differently-abled people in worship.
The Rev. Vicente Martinez, pastor of the Reformed Church of North Brunswick—the Sanctuary in North Brunswick, New Jersey, chaplain for the Port Authority Police of New York and New Jersey and the New Brunswick Police Department, and lecturer on urban ministry and non-profit initiatives in the US and the Caribbean, will share the story of helping a primarily mono-cultural suburban, Caucasian congregation become bi-lingual and multi-cultural.
The Rev. James Hart Brumm, director of the Reformed Church Center, moderator of the Commission on History of the Reformed Church in America, and a teacher on worship and congregational song known across North America, will lead us in worship and a discussion of the theology behind using songs from all cultures.

The workshop will begin at 10:00 am on Thursday, March 16—registration, coffee, and tea will be available beginning at 9:30 am—and everyone should be on their way home by about 2:00 pm. Registration is free for everyone, and lunch is free for NBTS students, faculty, and staff. RSVP to jbrumm@nbts.edu by Monday, 13 March.

For more information about the Reformed Church Center at NBTS, please click here.

Finding a Hermeneutic Voice in a Pluralistic World

December 1, 2016 @ 3:30 pm - 6:00 pm

An ecumenical discussion led by a panel of theologians from the Church of God in Christ, and the American Baptist, African American Episcopal, and Reformed traditions will look at this issue, then discuss the implications with all participants over dinner.

There was a time when almost all ministers grew up in the denominations in which they served and were trained by those denominations. Everyone worked from a common hermeneutic–a common understanding of Scripture, because they all studied Scripture together. But that isn’t always the case anymore. So, in an age of denominational fluidity and pluralism, where ministers may not have grown up in or even been trained in the tradition where they are serving, how do we develop and maintain a common hermeneutic in the church? Do we even need to?

On Thursday, 1 December, beginning at 3:30 pm, we will discuss possible answers to those questions in a forum called Finding a Hermeneutic Voice in a Pluralistic World. A panel of four scholars will look present on the questions from their own traditions, then we will all share in the discussion over dinner, ending about 6:00.

Melvin E. Wilson, MDiv, Presiding Elder of the Brooklyn-Westchester District of the New York Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, will represent that tradition.

Lorena M. Parrish, Ph.D., Dirk Romeyn Professor of Metro-Urban Ministry at NBTS, will represent the American Baptist tradition.

Leonard Lovett, Ph.D., of Washington, DC, will represent the Church of God in Christ, for whom he serves as senior theologian, ethicist, and ecumenist.

Allan Janssen, Ph.D., Affiliate Associate Professor of Theological Studies at NBTS, will represent the Reformed Church in America, for whom he is a General Synod Professor.

The suggested donation for dinner is $20.00 (free for NBTS students, faculty, and staff). Please RSVP to jbrumm@nbts.edu by Monday, 28 November.

About the panelists:

Allan Janssen, Ph.D., Affiliate Associate Professor of Theological Studies at NBTS
Reverend Dr. Leonard Lovett is a native of Florida as well as a distinguished graduate of Morehouse College, Crozer Theological Seminary with the *Doctor of Philosophy Degree* from Emory University in Ethics and Society. He has spent over three decades in the Academy and Faith Community. Currently senior theologian, ethicist and ecumenist for the Church of God in Christ, residing in the Washington metro area.
Lorena M. Parrish, Ph.D., Dirk Romeyn Professor of Metro-Urban Ministry at NBTS
Rev. Melvin E. Wilson is an ordained Itinerant Elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He has a Master of Divinity degree from Boston University School of Theology, has done post-graduate work at Regent’s Park College, Oxford University in Oxford, England, and is presently a student in the Doctor of Ministry degree program at New York Theological Seminary. He currently serves as Presiding Elder of the Brooklyn – Westchester District of the New York Annual Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Reformed Church Center Events

Upcoming Events

Finding John Henry Livingston

January 29, 2025 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

Registration

Being Reformed in the Twenty-first Century: A Gift or a Challenge? – Celebrating a Quarter Century of the Reformed Church Center

April 24, 2025 @ 4:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Registration

Past Events

Examining Mental and Spiritual Trauma for Religious Leaders

December 11 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

Talk About the WCRC and Reformed Ecumenism

November 14 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

A Proposed New Look for RCA Polity

September 19 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

Registration:

2024 General Synod Recap

June 26 @ 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm

Racism in Reformed Church Order?

May 1 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

Creation: Care, Communion, and Consummation, Part 3

April 18 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

Resources:

Advocacy Resources and Links Mentioned during the event:

Women’s Stories Day 2024

March 9 @ 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Hidden Stories of RCA Women – the 2023-2024 Albert A Smith Presentation

February 15 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

Missions in a Post-Colonial World

January 17 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

Please Register:

2023-2024 Poppen-Young Lecture – Worship that Dismantles Power and Privilege

December 14, 2023 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

Please Register:

Creation: Care, Communion, and Consummation

November 15, 2023 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

Please Register:

Chasing Windmills: Tearing down the Giants of Church Growth Movement

October 5, 2023 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

RCA General Synod 2023 Recap

June 21, 2023 @ 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm

Redeeming Confession in Reformed Worship – Poppen-Young Lecture 2022-2023

April 19, 2023 @ 11:00 am - 12:30 pm

Women’s Stories Day 2023: These Are Ministries, Too!

March 18, 2023 @ 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Smith Lecture – 2022-2023 – Slavery and Social Power in the Dutch Reformed Church

February 23, 2023 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

Land Acknowledgment, Truth, and Reconciliation: A Place to Begin

January 18, 2023 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

RCA International Church Planting

December 8, 2022 @ 11:00 am - 12:30 pm

Creation Care as Eschatology

November 16, 2022 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

Confession Then & Now: Thinking with Belhar in North America

October 13, 2022 @ 10:00 am - 3:00 pm

The webinar is presented in two parts:

Witnessing to Belhar Panel

Black & Reformed Theology

September 14, 2022 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

RCA General Synod 2022 Recap

June 22, 2022 @ 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm

Have We Been Here Before? The Impact of the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic on Church Life

April 20, 2022 @ 11:00 am - 12:30 pm

Women’s Stories Day 2022

March 26, 2022 @ 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm

WOMEN’S STORIES DAY 2022 LOOKS AT SINGLE WOMEN IN MISSION IN THE 1800s

What We Still Owe Erik Routley

March 10, 2022 @ 11:00 am - 1:00 pm

Looking at the General Synod Professorate

February 22, 2022 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Asian American Experiences of Racism and Anti-Racism

February 3, 2022 @ 11:00 am - 1:00 pm

Training for Other Ministries

January 19, 2022 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Samuel Zwemer’s Mission Motivations: The Relationship of Medical Care And Evangelism

December 8, 2021 @ 11:00 am - 12:30 pm

Understanding Theological Education in the RCA: Ministerial Formation in a Zoom World

December 1, 2021 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

RCA General Synod 2021 Recap

November 17, 2021 @ 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm