The North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council (NAPARC) met Nov. 13–15 in West Norriton, Pa. This 44th annual meeting was hosted by the Korean American Presbyterian Church (KAPC).

NAPARC is comprised of 13 member churches (denominations or federations), which together represent over 3,000 organized and mission congregations and almost 600,000 members. The RPCNA is a founding denomination. Each member church may send up to four delegates, and they meet annually “to advise, counsel, and cooperate in various matters with one another, and to hold out before each other the desirability and need for organic union of churches that are of like faith and practice.”

Reports from the 13 member churches took up a majority of the time in the joint sessions. Significant news included mention that a joint committee of the Free Reformed Churches of North America and the Heritage Reformed Congregations produced a report assessing the desirability and feasibility of an eventual union between those two federations. A joint church order committee was established to propose a church order for a united federation.

Also, those two federations—along with the Protestant Reformed Churches—are working on a joint psalter to be completed in approximately two years. This is at least the third cooperative psalter project among NAPARC denominations in the past decade. The United Reformed Churches and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church jointly published the Trinity Psalter-Hymnal this year, with sales thus far over $900,000. The Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America and Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church cooperated several years ago on the ARP Psalter.

Six different denominations have established the Fraser Valley Reformed Christian Counselling Centre Steering Committee in British Columbia to discuss options for working together in forming, governing, and supporting a church-governed counseling center for their church members and others.

The interchurch committee of the Canadian Reformed Churches is recommending to its next general synod that they break ties with their mother church, the Reformed Church of the Netherlands, over last year’s opening of ecclesiastical offices to women.

The RPCNA Interchurch Committee met the day before NAPARC to handle its own business. In between sessions of NAPARC, the committee met with delegations from five denominations or federations—the United Reformed Churches of North America, the Reformed Church in the U.S., the Canadian Reformed Churches, the Heritage Reformed Congregations, and the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (ARP). The time with the ARP was focused on plans for the concurrent ARP/RPCNA synod meetings next June at Geneva College.

Since the Korean America Presbyterian Church hosted this meeting, delegates learned more about the history and challenges faced by a multilingual denomination in which each succeeding generation in North America is different from the one before. Wednesday night’s speaker from the KAPC focused on outreach. The speaker also mentioned the great interest in the potential opening of North Korea since many Presbyterians migrated to South Korea during the Communist regime, and those immigrants later comprised most of the group coming to North America to form the KAPC.

The NAPARC meeting finished with a presentation by David Nakhla of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (and International Conference of Reformed Churches) Diaconal Committee. These committees network among Reformed denominations across different regions and countries in diaconal work, projects, relationships, and training materials. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church Diaconal Committee has provided disaster response using monies from NAPARC denominations including the RPCNA. About $670,000 was received overall for the past year’s three hurricane responses. They also help to train missionary-deacons for global mission work and help train deacons in domestic congregations (see opc.org).

Next year’s meeting will be held Nov. 12–14 in Anaheim, Calif., hosted by the other NAPARC denomination with Korean roots: the Korean Presbyterian Church in America (KPCA).

Drew Gordon | RPCNA Interchurch Committee