The Great Reformation of the 16th Century, which we tend to commemorate each 31st October in thankfulness to the Lord, involved reformers making a radical break with the Roman Catholic Church. Lately there’s been a push to “heal the break” and to reunite. A key date in this push...

"Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, as far as the terebinth tree of Moreh.  And the Canaanites were then in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” And there he built an altar to...

I could wish that those who trouble you would even cut themselves off! (Galatians 5:12) (What follows is an approximate translation of a meditation of Klaas Schilder – approximate because it is difficult to do justice, in a translation, to the prose style and flavour of the original, particularly as...

Recently I received an article from G M Boogert, member of the DGK in The Netherlands, titled “Church pluralism and blindness to first sin. Br Boogert begins by saying: “Ask any Reformed church member if he or she is opposed to unity of reformed churches and the answer will...

The following is a skit between an imaginary primary school boy and his 98-year-old grandmother. I publish it here for the sake of the younger readers who may know little about the Church Liberation of 1944. The skit was acted out at the Kelmscott John Calvin School to celebrate...

11th August eighty years ago the Lord graciously liberated His church in the Netherlands. We Free Reformed Churches of Australia trace our linage, the linage of Christ’s church, back through that Liberation, then further back through the Union of 1892, the Second Secession of 1886, the First Secession of...

What is it that compels representatives from overseas sister churches, in addressing FRCA Synod 2024, to take sides in a divisive issue in our churches by putting pressure on the FRCA to join the ICRC? First it was Rev C van Dam of the CanRC (see my previous article)....

Membership of the ICRC has been a divisive issue in the Free Reformed Churches. It led us to withdraw our membership in the 1990s. At FRCA Synod 2024, presently sitting, it is back on the agenda having earlier been put on Synod 2021’s agenda by Classis North following a...

The concept of 'identity' is currently receiving much attention because of gender ideology. But does what you feel and experience as a person (e.g. gender ideology) determine who you really are? An identity concerns your personality: who am I, what do I live for. We are Reformed; it’s part...

This article, published here with the writer’s kind permission, is from Clarion, May 17 2024. Reading Rev Bouwman’s article we might ask ourselves: Are we today as determined to uphold what we confess about Christ’s church, and as concerned about the danger of church pluriformity thinking, as the CanRC (and...