Classis exams for ministerial candidates in the RCA can produce some anxiety. I am preparing for mine now. But rather than feeling dominated by anxiety, I’m rather stimulated by many thoughtful and beautiful questions that the examiners pose to us ahead of time to get us thinking. Take this one, for example:
“Share with us about a doctrine or theological accent in the Reformed tradition that makes your heart sing.”
I love that the Reformed tradition celebrates God’s Spirit and Word in all places and facets of life. This is expressed quite beautifully in a stanza from the RCA’s 1978 statement of faith, Our Song of Hope:
God’s Spirit speaks in the world
According to God’s ultimate word in Christ
In every time and place
In technology and business
In art and education
God has not been left without a witness
The Word has entered
Where we have failed to go
We do not bring Christ to the world. Christ, as Spirit and Word has been here since the beginning, and goes before us in every place and person and gifting. God is pleased that we are witnesses—attentive to where our spirit testifies with Christ’s and ready to confirm God’s work wherever we find it.
The mystery of God’s powerful Word already present, the Spirit at work, brings me to praise, and wonder, and humility. And I find it an instructive theological accent as we begin to examine our strategic questions as a church in the coming months. Which prompt their own questions in me:
“In what surprising or unlikely places could we ‘do church’ – or meet Christ?”
Come, Lord Jesus
We are open to your Spirit[1]
Peace,
Andrew
[1] Taken from Our Prayer, from Our Song of Hope