Who is the Reformed Church in America?

by Toni Macon

edited by Bob Terwilliger, summer 2023

Who is the Reformed Church in America?

I joined the Reformed Church in America in 1983 at New Life Community Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, while I was teaching high school with the Dominican Sisters. I had grown up in Reformation churches: Congregational, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and United Methodist. It was the tag end of Robert Schuller’s “Hour of Power” that pointed me to New Life Community Church. There, I found a home for worship, for study, for community. It was there that I learned of the Dutch heritage and its part in the Reformation of Western Europe. It was there I was ordained a deacon. And it was in this congregation that I heard the call to the ministry of Word and sacrament.

I chose to go to a multi-denominational, multicultural seminary for my studies. Since I had chosen the RCA, I needed to be able to express our history, theology, and worship amongst other denominations and thought I would have the best opportunity at Colgate-Rochester Divinity School in Rochester, New York. And I was right! At the time of my MDiv studies, there was one faculty person and one other student from the RCA among many. I loved learning from others, but could hold my own as an RCA-er in discussion, worship, theology. The Classis of Rochester gave me experiences and guidance. I was part of the first class of General Synod Seminarian Seminar participants at Fordham University in 1988. Later, I was able to lead the General Synod Seminarian Seminar from 1993 through 2006 and also served on the General Synod Council for four terms. I was given the opportunity to serve as the “educator” for the denomination from 2004-2012 in the area of power, clergy, and sexual abuse in the church, and continued to help classes and churches until my retirement in these areas. I was also active in the Regional Synod of New York and in every classis within which I was fortunate to live.

In recent years with the ever-growing division in the RCA, I want to share a wonderful statement that was adopted, I believe, at the 1988 General Synod, which I have used numerous times in ministry and discussions. This RCA identity statement celebrates our biblical understanding, our historic creeds and theology, and it allows the Spirit to continue to work and re-form those called to this part of the reformation family. I will also say, this statement embodies the Reformed Church in America that I joined way back in 1983 and the one I still identify with today. It starts off like this:

We who are members of the Reformed Church in America are not our own, but belong to Jesus Christ, our faithful Savior, God, our faithful Creator, and the Holy Spirit, our faithful Counselor.

(Sound familiar? Catechism and creed, biblical theology. What’s not to affirm?!)

When the Holy Spirit placed us in the Reformed Church in America we entered a communion begun in 1628. We have been given the fruits of the Reformation. The revelation of God through the Scriptures is our norm for faith and life.

(I was called to be in this family of history, of community that grappled with theological and biblical fights during the Reformation and came through understanding more about God and God’s continued revelation through Scripture in scholarship, discoveries in archeology, and always in discussion with the present. For our God and our Church is not static!)

We are members of the church catholic. The great creeds express our faith. The great liturgies guide our worship. We gather together with other believers in congregations, classes, synods, and ecumenical councils, hearing from each other what the Holy Spirit teaches.

(The breadth of Reformed thought and worship is quite spacious. This part of the statement reminds me of this— that we are part of a larger group, yet in the Reformed part of the church catholic. There are boundaries at either end. I believe this is what we, as the RCA, have been bumping up against for many years now. For those who do not believe in infant baptism, well, you have now ventured on the other side of the RCA boundary. For those who do not believe in an open table or that elders invite children to partake of the table, then you are on the other side of the RCA boundary. You can still be Reformed, just not RCA. Yet to achieve being a thousand churches doing one thing—following Christ in ministry to a lost a broken world, so loved by God—we stretched the boundary and it broke, and hence division began to grow stronger.)

We who live together in the Reformed Church in America have been called by God to security in Christ and chosen for service in God’s mission. We who had been enslaved to sin became free to live for others in gratitude to God. We know ourselves to be justified by grace through faith alone and summoned to establish justice for others.

(I LOVE THIS! It is not about me or you, but all about God! How refreshing!)

We are baptized into Christ as a sign and seal of our entry into the covenant. We are called to eat at the one Table of the Lord with people of every church and race and nation; and share in the task of evangelism in which God invites every person to feast at the Table of the Lord.

(DITTO!!)

With the whole church, we await the Great Day of the Lord, when Jesus Christ will judge all things and banish all evil, suffering, and death; in our time, Christ works through us to replace war with peace, oppression with deliverance, poverty with sufficiency, and bigotry with love.

(I look forward to the Day of the Lord, but until that time, we are called to serve God and one another with Christ, and are given the marching orders above.)

We are a church living by prayer and obedience, for God is sovereign over all, whose will must be done on earth as in heaven. We celebrate God’s love for all creation!

(Amen! Amen!)

I am so glad I chose and was adopted into the Reformed Church in America because of its unique witness in the Reformation churches. I am sorry for those who are leaving, and yet, they will be happier in another section of the “Reformed” family than they have been. I always remember my vows at ordination and installation in which I promised “that I believe the gospel of the grace of God in Jesus Christ as revealed in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments and as expressed in the Standards of the Reformed Church in America. I accept the Scriptures as the only rule of faith and life. I accept the Standards as historic and faithful witnesses to the Word of God. … I will conduct the work of the church in an orderly way and in accordance with the Liturgy and the Book of Church Order.

I was able to uphold those vows and to find my home in the RCA. I hope others will perhaps remind themselves of whose we are and who we are together. Thanks for welcoming me into the family, and may the family continue for the glory of God.

Toni received her BA in theater arts, English, and secondary education from Marquette University, and her MDiv from Colgate Rochester Divinity School. She served Hope Church in Holland, Michigan; Marbletown Reformed in Stone Ridge, New York; Church of the Saviour in Coopersville, Michigan; and Wallkill Reformed in Wallkill, New York. Toni was also the RCA trainer/educator in the area of clergy sexual abuse and power, and a specialized minister-at-large. Toni lives with her husband, the Rev. Gary DeWitt, in Miami, Florida, where she is an active member at the Coral Gables Congregational United Church of Christ. Talk about herding cats, she enjoys traveling, her great family and friends, playing pickleball, supporting her local library, and reading banned books. tonimacon@yahoo.com