World Reformed Body Plans Merger Details

Plans to form a new global grouping representing 80 million Reformed Christians worldwide have taken a step forward, following discussions at a meeting in the Dutch city of Utrecht.

Officers from the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Reformed Ecumenical Council met in Utrecht, to work on a draft constitution, by-laws, staffing, and other details for the new World Council of Reformed Churches WCRC).

The uniting council for the WCRC will meet in June 2010 at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., to formally launch the new ecumenical organization. The theme of that meeting will be "Unity of the Spirit in the Bond of Peace."

“This is not a merger or a takeover but the creation of something new,” says Peter Borgdorff, president of REC and executive director emeritus of the Christian Reformed Church in North America, one of the churches that will host the 2010 meeting in Grand Rapids.

“I am very excited that this has come about. At its core Reformed history is a history of separation. This is a global witness that emphasizes the better and more excellent way.”

Since the CRC is helping to host the uniting council, Borgdorff is asking CRC congregations to play a role in bringing some of the delegates to the gathering into their own homes for a short period.

“The hope and intention of the WCRC is to link each of its delegates with a local, congregational expression of Reformed faith and practice mostly within the Great Lakes region," says Borgdorff, who is chairman of the arrangements committee for the 2010 gathering.

Congregations that “sponsor” one or more delegates will benefit from the experience to deepen their awareness of the global church, he says. Participating congregations are also requested to help with the delegate’s travel and accommodation expenses.

“We are at a very significant moment to witness to the reconciliation we find in Christ,” Clifton Kirkpatrick, president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC), told reporters at the meeting in Utrecht.

The meeting is being hosted by the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, which was created in a merger in 2004 of the Netherlands Reformed Church, Reformed Churches in the Netherlands and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. WARC and REC leaders have praised the Netherlands union as one of the inspirations behind the creation of WCRC.

Arjan Plaisiers, general secretary of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, said that as inheritors of a common heritage, Reformed Protestants are not called to merely make space for ecumenical bodies but to respond to Christ’s call to unity.

“We need each other for a common witness and so I am very happy that this union is taking place. And we are very proud to host it,” Plaisiers said at a news conference.

Added REC general secretary Richard van Houten, “I am encouraged by this work of bringing together two important Reformed organizations.”