Monday Ministerial Musings
By Rev. Mark William Ennis
2023 Blog #24
June 12, 2023
Reflections on General Synod of the Reformed Church in America
As I write this blog I am listening to the live-stream of the General Synod of the Reformed Church of America, my home denomination. In my life-time it has always met in June but it was interrupted recently for COVID. I am grateful for technology which enables me to be part of the Synod even though I am not a delegate and am not able to attend in person.
There is business to do at Synod and sometimes it gets a bit cantankerous. I have been embarrassed at times when I have seen delegates behaving badly toward one another. Sometimes, I think, Satan is laughing when he sees how delegates behave. It is not such events that make Synods memorable for me. The two things that I love about Synod are interacting with friends and colleagues and seeing the video mission stories that the Reformed Church participates in. We can always read mission reports but seeing the videos and meeting the missionaries is a real treat.
This year, while watching Synod I heard about:
A man whose family fled Medellin to keep him from drug gangs. He later became a major drug dealer in Chicago but found faith and is now doing evangelism work in Columbia.
Reformed Church missionaries who have been caring for and re-settling refugees from Ukraine.
Reformed Church missions that protect the vulnerable street children in the Philippines.
Vulnerable black youths in New York City finding their lives turned around by Reformed Churches in the City.
A movement to fund-raise to buy uniforms for students in South Africa. Although school is free, one must have the money to buy a uniform in order to attend. Many poor families cannot afford these uniforms.
Twenty years ago, missionaries of the Reformed Church helped rescue 315 refugees fleeing from the rise of the Taliban.
Most of us grew up in larger, exclusively white, Reformed Churches and we lament our shrinking over the past fifty years. We might get the impression that our church that the Reformed Church is in a free-fall toward extinction. If you feel this way then I challenge you to watch the General Synod proceedings on You Tube and get inspired by these stories. Many of those who were helped by our missions overseas are now in the United States, part of the Reformed Church, and doing mission activities in our hometowns. We are getting blessed at home by the missions that we have funded elsewhere and that is beginning to turn the tide of our decline.
I am excited to be a part of the decades to come. Yes, I believe we will start numerical growth. Yes, I believe that we will have a new excitement among us. Yes, I believe that we will be even more mission minded than we have ever been before, and that is a high goal.
We will be ethnically and culturally different but we will be the growing and spiritually energized church of Christ and I look forward to experiencing that.
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#Transformation #Re-vitalization
To read more of Pastor Mark’s writings, please look at his website:
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