The Burning of the Wooden Shoes

It was a painful decision for my father to leave the Christian Reformed Church of North America (CRC). He was pulled apart over it. He expressed all of his concerns to the new minister. "The direction you're taking," my father said, "is undermining the Great Commission of Jesus." Immediately, the pastor yelled back, "this is what's wrong with you Reformed people." My father retorted, "But aren't you Reformed?" That is a great question.

By being raised in the CRC I learned a lot about what can happen to a church. I have been a pastor in a confessional Reformed church for almost 15 years now. As I watch the shifts and listen to the discussions, this all seems like déjà vu. What took the CRC thirty to forty years to accomplish, in jettisoning her Reformed heritage, seems to be taking some NAPARC churches about a decade. I am particularly concerned for the PCA, but they are not the only one. There are other Reformed denominations following suit, but the PCA, at the moment, appears to be leading the pack.

The most disturbing part is that many seem completely oblivious to the shifts. Among a new generation of Reformed pastors and churchgoers, there seems to be little awareness that the project they are pursuing, and the shifts they are pushing, have already been tried and have ended with catastrophic consequences in the life of a major Reformed denomination. Read More

Also See:
9 Sins the Church Is Surprisingly Okay With

The story Chris Gordan recounts is a familiar one to many Anglicans. The same thing has happened in the Anglican Church at the provincial, diocesan, and local level. There is a discernible connection between the tolerance of a number of the sins listed in Frank Powell's article and the theological drift of denominations like the Christian Reformed Church of North America  and the Anglican Church of Canada, the Episcopal Church in the USA, and now the Church of England. Even a relatively new jurisdiction like the Anglican Church in North America is vulnerable to this drift as I have written elsewhere.