Next Steps

One of the key reasons that churches are disaffiliating, is the doubling down of the structures of the CRCNA on decisions that rightly belong at the local council level, rather than at the Synodical level. In recent years, denominational governance has grown increasingly centralized and removed from local congregations, effected through changes to filing and keeping gravamina. The churches that make up the network of TC, affirm the historic Reformed conviction that Christ rules his church primarily through local office bearers, and that broader assemblies exist to equip and serve—not direct and dominate—the original authority of the church council.

There are church councils in Canada that believe the denomination is trending theologically toward a form of fundamentalist evangelicalism. This departs from the Reformed vision of redemptive cultural engagement, which rests confidently in the knowledge and assurance of God’s sovereignty.  The departure of some of the churches from the CRCNA is not therefore a departure from the marvellous heritage that these churches have inherited from and in the CRC. They most certainly remain committed to the authority of Scripture, the Ecumenical Creeds, the Reformed Confessions, and the God-given calling to be a faithful, confessing Reformed church in Canada.

Increasingly, churches' voices are saying that they believe that God has placed them in this land, at this time, to bear witness to Christ.  When in 2025, Synod turned down the overture to separate the two parts of the CRCNA into a Canadian and American CRC, they believed that the structures of the CRCNA no longer served them nor the wider Canadian church effectively.  Dominant leadership voices in the denomination are outside and unfamiliar with our context.

The CRCNA’s recent declaration regarding unchastity, and that that interpretation of the confession itself has confessional status—created a widening gap between denominational policy and many churches' understanding of gospel hospitality. They believe they are called to welcome and disciple all who love and follow Jesus, extending grace and truth together in community.

So these churches that are disaffiliating do so not so much split the CRC, but to say that that the CRC has changed to the point that they can no longer stay within it, because the CRC has moved to a place that it is no longer familiar. In other words, these churches feel expelled ("limited suspension" being one example...that is a rather new concept that is a most recent interpretation of The Church Order).

CRC churches have, ever since the first one was established in southern Alberta in 1905, through the huge immigration from Netherlands into Canada in the 50's (during which time more than 150 CRCs were birthed), have wanted to be and stay together, given their shared history and belief, and having a dynamic curiosity about what God is calling them to be and to do in Canada. That being the case, what TC is doing is not encouraging churches to disaffiliate (because that would be schismatic, and we certainly do not want to be or do that), but helping individual councils and congregations to build a new network of churches in which to find and live in community, holding the reformed traditions dear, holding the love and grace of God dear, and living in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

All of that being that case, we are not trying/I am not trying to destroy the CRC in Canada. The denomination will continue to thrive as God gives it strength and wisdom. What we are doing is, as you say, "joining another church that does"; in fact, helping to form that church out of individual churches who feel that the denomination in which they have worked for generations, has changed to the point where it has become somewhat unrecognizable. Jesus is calling us to humble service, to grace, to careful, thoughtful and constant grappling of Scripture, to prayerful submission to His will.

As Pastor Norm Visser has said: “I see a movement of churches that are Biblically rooted, theologically curious, culturally engaged and missionally creative”.