The moment I realized that the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America (RPCNA) is a denomination with a special culture came last year when I had the sad privilege of preaching at the funeral of the wife of my dear friend, Pastor Jeff Stivason. The service took place in a local Evangelical Presbyterian Church building because of the number of people in attendance, something that witnessed to two important realities, one well-known, the other hidden to the outside world but of far more importance.

The well-known fact is that the RPCNA, rather like my own denomination, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC), does not typically have large congregations. To be a church of, say, 120 people in our world is to be remarkable, with 40–50 being much more typical. That is why we are often the target of friendly leg-pulling by friends in the PCA.

But the hidden fact is powerful and moving: the large sanctuary was necessary because RPs from all over the country had come to honor their departed sister and support their grieving brother and his children. It was there and then that I realized one of the peculiar and attractive qualities of the RPCNA is that it truly is a family, a family that deeply loves and cares for its own. To borrow from John Donne, I had no need that day to ask for whom the bell tolled. It tolled for everyone there; for, in the passing of Tabitha Stivason, a church family member had been taken away. And every RP present felt reduced.

That is an ecclesiastical strength that is not to be taken for granted or treated lightly. We live in a time when the exile nature of the church here in this earthly city is becoming more and more apparent. Cultural pressures to conform to the world can sometimes seem overwhelming. Watching the news or doomscrolling on a phone can cultivate a deep malaise, if not despair, in our hearts. That is where modest-sized congregations and tight-knit denominations can help. They can truly offer a real, supportive community. When the gospel is truly preached and the sacraments properly administered, there is supernatural power. When we know each other as individuals, when we belong to a community marked by hospitality, love, and care for each other—when our church family truly is a family—then there is supernatural power there too, built on the Word and exercised in grace.

And if Tab’s funeral was any indicator, the RPCNA is such a place. It is perhaps not surprising. A denomination with roots among blue-collar immigrants will always tilt toward being a tight-knit, resourceful community. Add to this a history of acting in accordance with its own conscience and not with the standards of the surrounding culture—even the surrounding Christian culture—and the RPCNA is in a good position for thinking through the issues of our own day in a firm, clear, but godly way. That’s how families at their best operate.

Of course, no reflection upon the strengths of the RPCNA would be complete without reference to its worship. While I am not an exclusive psalmodist myself, though still a great lover of psalmody for both private and public devotion, it is obvious that the Psalms are the songs of God’s family. The beautiful scene set forth in Robert Burns’s poem, “The Cotter’s Saturday Night,” where the humble father leads his family in singing the songs of Zion, is a reminder of how these songs have strengthened God’s people through the years, bound families together, and pointed hearts and minds toward heaven. Today they still remind the congregation of the history of God’s people and place contemporary believers in that great company of saints, of spiritual ancestors and loved ones, that constitute the whole of God’s family. And when the family gathers to mourn the loss of a brother or sister, they can use words with which they are familiar to honestly express their grief—and indeed, the hope that lives even in the midst of that grief. We live in times marked by constant global uncertainty that is too often punctuated by individual sadness. A worship that acknowledges this and then subverts it for God’s glory is truly strong worship.

I hope these few words from an outsider are an encouragement: the RPCNA may be small as the world counts size, and weak as the world measures strength, but she has virtues—of being a family and of having a form of worship that addresses the hardy perennials of life in a fallen world but lived in the presence of God. That should be a source of hope for the future and indeed comfort for the present.