A Renewed Sense of Mission

The Belhar embodies what I love most about our Reformed sense of mission—that through Christ, God is reclaiming and restoring all of creation, and that we are part of that process! We are active agents in the world—working for God’s glory and spreading God’s good news so that the world, and the people in it, might be transformed!

That good news includes these Biblical and theological themes, identified by Synod 1996:

Creation
1. The world as God created it is rich and God-glorifying in its diversity.

2. The created world with all its diversity has its unity in the one God, who created it through Jesus Christ.

3. The unity and diversity of the human race and of created reality reflect the unity and diversity of the triune God (namely, his oneness and threeness).

Fall
4. A fundamental effect of sin is the breakdown of the community.

New Creation
5. The uniting of all things in Jesus Christ is at the heart of God’s eternal plan for the ages.

6. Reconciliation with God and reconciliation with one another are inseparable in God’s saving work.

7. Already in the old covenant the scope of God’s mission is racially and ethnically inclusive.

8. In Pentecost, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the church, God gives new power to the church, power to break down walls of separation and create a community that transcends divisions of race, ethnicity, and culture.

9. The church is God’s strategic vehicle for embodying, proclaiming, and promoting the unity and diversity of the new creation.

10. God calls Christians to find their deepest identity in union with and in the service of Jesus Christ.

11. Obedience in matters of racial reconciliation calls us, individually and corporately, to continually repent, to strive for justice, and to battle the powers of evil.

12. Christians live and work in the hope that one day the reconciliation of all things will be fully realized.


—From the Acts of Synod 1996, pp. 512-13, posted on the CRC Belhar site, www.crcna.org/belhar, on the History page.

A New Appreciation for Confessions
A confession happens when the church speaks—when there is something so important that it requires a voice. The original letter accompanying the Belhar included these words: “This confession is not aimed at specific people or groups of people or a church or churches. We proclaim it against a false doctrine, against an ideological distortion which threatens the gospel itself in our church and our country.” (From statement number three of the original 1986 accompanying letter.)

The Belgic Confession, the Cannons of Dort, and the Heidelberg Catechism were written a LONG time ago (between 1561 and 1619). That doesn’t make them any less valuable, but it makes the events leading up to their writing a little less familiar in our minds. The Belhar comes to us with a freshness and urgency that challenges us to revisit the confessions with new eyes, to ask questions like,

• Who writes confessions, or decides when one should be written?
• What did these statements of faith mean to the original writers and audience, and what do they mean to us now?
• What do we value in confessions; what do we look to them for?
• How has God used the confessions to shape his people over time?
• What issues is the church struggling with today that the confessions speak to? What issues weren’t anticipated by the authors?

The Belhar brings the past into the present, reminding us that confessions are not simply documents that sit on a shelf and show up in church school—they are evidence of God’s work in the church and in the world. They challenge us to think deeply about our faith so that we might live in a way that reflects God’s goodness and grace.

Visit www.crcna.org/belhar for articles and resources, and consider the RCA Belhar study, Unity, Reconciliation, and Justice, available through Faith Alive.

-- Jolanda Howe, Coit Community CRC in Grand Rapids, MI

What is the buzz in your congregation? What might the Belhar mean for your church?