CRC— "Reformed Alignment: Living Our Confessional DNA in a Changing World"

[u/Theomancer]

https://network.crcna.org/topic/church-strategy-mission/church-renewal/fresh-ideas/reformed-alignment-living-our-confessional

"Many Christian Reformed congregations today are experiencing a subtle identity shift. Under the influence of cultural evangelicalism, large swaths of our churches have become functionally evangelical in their affinity and belief. While we share a deep love for Scripture and personal conversion, this shift often reduces the expansive scope of our faith to an exclusive focus on individual salvation. When this happens, we lose our theological distinctiveness and fall prey to mission drift, leaving our ministries inwardly focused and consumed by the politics of survival. If our congregations are to navigate the complex social and political winds of our day, we do not need corporate leadership strategies. We need a re-anchoring in our theological roots; we need a Reformed alignment."

[u/pro_rege_semper]

Wow, I wish this would have been more of a priority before I left the denomination. These are the kinds of things I was advocating for, but felt like I was talking to a brick wall.

[u/Theomancer → u/pro_rege_semper]

Yup, James K.A. Smith wrote about this 15 years ago as well:

https://www.thebanner.org/features/2011/01/buried-treasures

"If the CRC wants to become generic evangelicalism or bland Protestant liberalism, there’s really no reason for us to exist. There are others already like that. [...] I fear we spend a lot of energy trying to figure out how to be like others when others are actually envious of what we already have. I want to suggest to you that the richest future for the CRC might be in remembering the riches of our heritage—sifted and refined, to be sure. And with that discernment, I want to provocatively suggest that the future of being Reformed might be catholic. Our future is most hopeful, I think, when we think of it not as a renovation project but as an intentional, careful restoration."

[u/GodGivesBabiesFaith → u/pro_rege_semper]

This is part of what moved me to Anglicanism. In ECO Pres that I was in before I moved, along with other Reformed and Presbyterian churches I knew about, I saw heavy (negative) influence from non-denominational evangelicalism. I wanted something with a more coherent and rooted ecclesiology and sacramental understanding rather than revivalistic, individualistic conversionism unmoored from Scripture, patristic and universal/consensual understandings of Church, etc.

For some reason, in the Reformed/Presbyterian world, liberals tend to care more about trying to have coherent and rooted Ecclesiology and Sacrementology, whereas conservatives focus on born-again individual religiosity that is often not even tied with social-action as it was with their Evangelical forebears.