General Synod Daily Recap: Saturday, June 7, 2025

General Synod in person or virtually: delegates approve changes

A major change about how General Synod meets has been adopted and will be sent to the classes for approval. On Saturday morning, delegates adopted a proposed change to the Book of Church Order that allows for annual meetings of the General Synod to be held either in-person or electronically—with the requirement that an in-person gathering be held at least once every three years. One proposed amendment shaped the final outcome.

Read more on the final outcome

The recommendation now moves on to be considered by classes and, if approved by two-thirds of classes, also needs a declarative vote at the next General Synod.

Changes adopted to synod delegation size, process for approving constitutional changes

While much of the energy around the Restructuring Team recommendations has been focused on the consolidation of classes and regional synods into middle assemblies, other significant recommendations from the team are being considered by General Synod 2025. 

Changes to the General Synod delegation

On Saturday, General Synod voted to reduce the size of the General Synod delegation in the future. Last year, the Restructuring Team recommended to “change the method of calculation for middle assembly [classis] delegations to the General Synod … so that each middle assembly [classis] receives one minister delegate and one elder delegate for each 2,000 confessing members or fraction thereof.” The General Synod voted to instruct the Commission on Church Order to propose amendments to the Book of Church Order for report to the General Synod in 2025. Today, the commission brought that recommendation to reduce the size of the delegation, acknowledging both the reduced size of denominational membership, as well as budgetary constraints that necessitate a reduction in General Synod participants. That recommendation was adopted 163 to 12. This will now go to classes to be considered, and if approved, will need to be declared effective by the General Synod in 2026. If those steps take place, the new delegation size would first be reflected at General Synod 2027, which is also the first General Synod that will include delegates from middle assemblies.

Approval process for constitutional changes

In addition to how the delegation is calculated, the restructuring team also proposed a system and structure for weighting approval for changes to the RCA constitution according to the membership of middle assemblies. Currently, when the General Synod adopts a constitutional change (which includes changes to the Liturgy, the doctrinal standards, and most of the Book of Church Order), two-thirds of classes must then approve that change, and in a final step, the change goes before the General Synod again the following year to be declared effective. 

This year, the Commission on Church Order recommendation CO 25-3 proposed language to the Book of Church Order that would equate the voting power of the classis to the number of delegates it was eligible to seat at the General Synod in which the amendment was adopted. Stated simply, if a classis seated four delegates, they would be able to cast four votes in favor or against the amendment. Instead of requiring two-thirds approval of all the classis, the amendment would need two-thirds of the eligible votes to pass. 

The rationale given by the restructuring team was to more accurately represent larger classes, while also protecting the voice of smaller classes. Additionally, the restructuring team believes this change will create equity and trust in the system, as ratification of significant change is correlated to membership in the RCA. 

After brief discussion, which mostly considered the tension between shifting the voting weight to reflect membership numbers while also preserving the voice of the minority, the recommendation passed 130 to 49. This motion adopted the proposed changes to weight the votes of each middle assembly according to size. 

As constitutional changes, these two recommendations will now go before each classis to be considered.

Synod: Fight stigma surrounding mental health and mental illness

On Saturday afternoon, personal stories of mental health and mental illness shaped a recommendation presented by the Commission on Christian Action. After significant discussion, delegates voted to encourage RCA congregations to adopt statements against stigmas targeting mental health and mental illness, and to connect with local churches and nonprofits that are engaged in this work. 

Delegates shared experiences from their personal lives and expressed concern over using the term “mental illness.” President Rev. Joshua Scheid requested a moment of silence in gratitude for holding that space for each other, and to honor the stories and experiences shared in the room. 

“I want to commend everybody for your authenticity and vulnerability for the grace we’ve had in this conversation, for holding this space for each other,” said Scheid.

Following an additional amendment, which added language of “stigmas surrounding mental health and mental illness,” the amended recommendation passed nearly unanimously at 169 to 3.

Task force to study racially- or ethnically-based RCA middle assemblies

General Synod called for a task force to examine the implications of racially- or ethnically-based classes or middle assemblies. The Commission on Race and Ethnicity (CORE) believes that racially- or ethnically-based classes or middle assemblies would be in conflict with the RCA’s stated goal of being a multicultural and multiethnic denomination, and that it would violate the RCA’s anti-racism policy’s confession that “our sin has led us to erect religious, cultural, economic, and political barriers along racial and ethnic lines and that these barriers have separated us from one another and deprived many of us the right to develop our personal and corporate identities.”

“The values of the kingdom mean that we, the church, have these conversations differently than the rest of culture,” Rev. Nate Pyle, moderator of CORE, said. “These values anchor us against any cultural winds that threaten to blow us down.”

As the Reformed Church in America experiences structural changes with the consolidation of classes and regional synods into middle assemblies, CORE has been made aware of some conversations about potentially forming middle assemblies based on an affinity of race or ethnicity. This led them to call for study of this idea in light of the anti-racism policy.

“I love the fact that we all are a family, that we get together and we enjoy each other, we support one another,” Rev. Corinne Ellis, a delegate from the Classis of the Southwest, said of her  diverse classis. 

Ellis expressed concern that having racially- and ethnically-based middle assemblies would be against the RCA’s Revelation 7:9 vision.

Perspectives from other points of view were shared.

“The foregone conclusion that was reflected is that we are allowing people to choose their affinity, and yet, if a racial, ethnic minority group decided it was empowering for them to be together as a body, who are we to decide whether or not that is allowed,” Rev. Bethany Popkes, advisory committee member and delegate from the Classis of Albany, said.

CORE recommended that the General Synod Council (GSC) form a task force to study whether the formation of middle assemblies on the basis of race or ethnicity is in conflict with the RCA’s anti-racism policy adopted by General Synod 2022.

Rev. Drew Yamamoto, delegate from the Classis of Central California, encouraged the delegation to reflect on other areas of the RCA, as well. “If this is a question about classes, is this potentially something that says that monoethnic churches are also not appropriate within our context toward an anti-racist feature?”