This is not your father and mother’s RPCNA. A visitor to this year’s Synod meeting in Pennsylvania would first have noticed that the RPCNA was meeting concurrently with a larger Southern denomination at Geneva College. The growing fellowship and concurrent synods with the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church have proceeded exactly as proposed—with a focus on cooperation and Christian brotherhood. Real church unity has been evidenced even as we maintain our separate identities.

But there was a lot more evidence of change in the reports to Synod. As written in Synod’s State of the Church report, “The 243-member growth (3.4%)…is the largest numerical growth the denomination has seen since the denomination began to reverse the steady numerical decline from the late 19th century into the late 20th century.” Since the RP Church of the 19th Century was growing primarily through immigration, this is likely the denomination’s largest growth ever within the confines of North America. The report goes on to say that “the growth is driven not only by a growing number of people brought in from other denominations, but also by an encouraging increase in recorded professions of faith.”

And there’s something remarkable about this growth. In 2018, in addition to four mission churches being formed, there were two groups that entered the RPCNA as congregations—not individuals. Given that we’ve gone decades, at times, without receiving a single congregation from another denomination, this is an encouraging event. Overall, God has blessed the denomination with 35% more congregations than there were in 2005, largely through the planting of new churches. “It does seem that church planting is becoming more and more part of the DNA of the RPCNA,” the report said.

That planting applies to other countries as well, where the RPCNA is active in many more parts of the world than previously: in some cases planting churches and even fostering denominations, in other cases teaching and encouraging and supporting Reformed and Presbyterian congregations. At home, too, we see more ministry to people coming from other countries and having first languages besides English.

Not all change is easy, and not all change is necessarily good. “In some wide-ranging discussions regarding marital desertion and voting, we observe that the church is not in agreement regarding certain applications of the Testimony and Confession. However, the nature of the disagreements reveals pastoral concerns for the unique needs of members and congregations.” And the old paths of the RPCNA were largely wise and reliable paths, trod by people worth remembering and emulating. In the next issue I’ll talk about some things we don’t want to be swept by the winds of change. But it is a joyful thing to see more people joining that legacy in a world that surely needs the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ the King.