Dennis Tuuri

I want to read from Psalm 116. I love the Lord because he hath heard my voice in my supplications. Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live. The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell get hold upon me. I found trouble and sorrow. Then called I upon the name of the Lord. Oh Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul. Gracious is the Lord and righteous.

Yea, our God is merciful. The Lord preserves the simple. I was brought low and he helped me. Return unto thy rest, oh my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living. I believe, therefore, have I spoken. I was greatly afflicted. I said in my haste, “All men are liars.”

What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me? I will take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all his people. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. Oh Lord, truly I am thy servant. I am thy servant and the son of thine handmaid. Thou hast loosed my bonds. I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving and will call upon the name of the Lord.

I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all his people in the courts of the Lord’s house in the midst of old Jerusalem. Praise ye the Lord.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the trials and tribulations that you put into our lives knowing that the end result of these is that we come to a sure reliance upon you and a greater joy as a result. We thank you father you do not leave us however in that relationship but rather you cause us to be reconciled and reunited with the brethren as well.

And so to increase our joy we come together in your presence now to consider the impact of your word and what you have in your providence decreed for us these last couple of years that to the end that we might rejoice in the salvation in Jesus Christ our savior might thank you for all these things and might increase in joy continue healing in Jesus name we pray. Amen.

I have a handout I’d like to pass out. Now some of you already have had this but it’ll be helpful. I’ve decided to talk a little bit about the Chicago trip again. We’ve done that somewhat informally several of us and I did share a little bit on church after we had returned. Doug H. and I that is but I thought it’d be good to spend a few minutes now talking about it and the way God specifically has used it in my life, I think in Richard’s life, and in Doug H.’s life as well in relationship to what we just read in Psalm 116.

And we’ll return to Psalm 116. But let’s I just want to use this chart now to explain a little bit of what Doug H. and I did last month, where we went and what we saw, and then what the impact of that has been in our life, and then some of the things we’re doing now at Reformation Covenant Church as a result of some of these meetings.

Now, when we went back there, there were two events within a couple of days of one another. And the first one was on the right hand side of your page. It’s the Confessional Conference for Reformed Unity. They plan on having four or five of these. This was the first one. And that’s on the right hand side of your page at the bottom. The second event is on the left hand side of your page. That was the Reformed Presbyterian Church General Assembly. That is a fairly new denomination, a couple of years old.

It’s kind of a split off from a denomination started by Joe Morcraft. Morcraft was originally back in the early 80s I believe in the PCA split off to form a different denomination that was reconstructionist. So this general assembly Doug H. and I went to the second week we were there was held at Christian Liberty Academy. So those are the two events. And the first event, the Confessional Conference for Reformed Unity, and I’m kind of going backwards up the chart now.

You see right above that it says Association of Reformed Churches, ARC. The name of that is really the Alliance for Reformed Churches. And there’s an arrow from it down to the Confessional Conference. That’s because the people that put on the confessional conference are involved in the alliance of reformed churches. They’re not simultaneous—they’re not the same group. However, not everybody in the alliance certainly took part in the confessional conference or wanted to.

So there’s a relationship there. Now then you follow the chart back upward and who is this association or alliance for reformed churches? They came out of mostly the reformed side of this diagram. You know there’s books out there in Janice’s table published by Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company. And we’re coming out of a Baptist dispensationalist community churches. You don’t these terms don’t mean a whole lot to us.

When we chose the name Reformation Covenant Church instead of Reformed Covenant Church, we did so self-consciously wanting to show a direct link in our name back to the Reformation. The Reformation produced two major schools of reformed churches or schools, trends, waves, whatever you want to call them. The reformed side on the right hand side of your page where it says reformed at the top. Those are people that use what’s known as the three forms of unity.

The Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession, and the Canons of Dort that grew out of the Synod of Dort. And that was what declared Arminianism heresy in the church. These are what some people call continental reformers because the Heidelberg Catechism etc was developed on the continent of Europe. And so you have coming from the continent of Europe the reformed wing, so to speak, of reformed churches.

It’s a little confusing, but out of the reformation and out of churches that are covenantal in their theology, you have this reformed side having heritage back to Europe and the social conditions that existed there and having their doctrinal standards in this three forms of unity that are spelled out for you there. Now, the other side of the coin here are the Presbyterian side, and that’s the side that we’re more familiar with at Reformation Covenant Church.

Well, reconstructionists, R.J. Rushdoony, for instance, came out of the Presbyterian side. So did Jim B. Jordan, David Chilton, ultimately Gary North. These were all Presbyterians as opposed to the reformed side of this. Now, these folks interact and they get along. It’s not that they don’t like each other, but there is a very different group of people. The Presbyterian side, their geographic heritage goes back to the islands, England, Ireland, and Scotland.

And their secondary standards are the Westminster standards—the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Westminster Catechisms, larger and shorter. And so they have a different social and historical heritage than the Reformed side does. They have different secondary standards. That’s what these documents are called. They’re called secondary standards because the primary standard is the Bible, of course. And the Reformed Presbyterian Church General Assembly is over on the Presbyterian side because those guys are Presbyterians.

Okay. So we went to a confession conference that was put on by people who are part of the Alliance of Reformed Churches. The Alliance of Reformed Churches are primarily churches almost exclusively that came out of the Christian Reformed Church. That’s the CRC as you follow this chain back up to on the reformed side. And they’ve come out of the CRC because of the liberalization going on in the Christian Reformed Church or CRC.

They’re allowing their churches now to ordain women. They’re not administering taking disciplinary action against homosexual ministers. They also in the CRC in their seminary they teach theistic evolution and this was the major reformed as opposed to Presbyterian church in the United States that was orthodox for a long time. So you have people coming out of that coming into this alliance of reformed churches which is a very loose-knit organization of churches.

They just come together. This now to put local a local contact with this CRC and the Alliance of Reformed Churches. There is a split off from a CRC church in Salem just south from Portland a little ways. And as we were going through our troubles about a year and a half ago, they were going through a major split within their church. And there it’s a long story. I don’t want to bore you at the details. It wouldn’t be boring to you, but it take too much time.

But the end result was that they, as many churches have, split off from or left the Christian Reformed Church as a denomination. The name of that church. And this is significant. The name of the church in Salem is Independent Reformed Church. Okay? And many of these churches that have joined the alliance have that term independent reformed in the very names of their churches because they were so mistreated within the denomination that’s known as the Christian Reformed Church.

The pastor of the church in Salem is a guy named Jim Graveling. And he’s also been affected by reconstructionist thought, Greg Bahnsen and theonomy, etc. That was part of his problems as well. Now, what’s happening here is churches are leaving these reformed denominations, but they don’t know where to go. So they’re coming together in this alliance. The confessional conference is put together by people who think that over the next few years, there’ll be a major realignment of reformed and Presbyterian churches.

It is the belief of many and a growing belief of people that the denominational model is gone. Is dead. It’s on its way out. In to use Jim B. Jordan’s language of decreation and recreation, God’s judgment has come upon the denominations. He’s scattering the churches out of the denominations. Most of them have gone liberal and that it’s a matter of time before the existing denominations are gone altogether.

And the whole idea of denominations may also be gone. And so some people, and I’ve listed some names for you under the confessional conference with people that we talked with, they believe there’ll be this realignment and they want to try to provide a vehicle for churches leaving these Presbyterian reformed denominations to realign together. This is a very significant moment in history is what I’m trying to get you to see here.

For 200 years, denominations have been the primary model whereby reformed people that is who hold to the theology of the reformation have found unity together institutionally and that model is going away because the denominations are one by one sliding into apostasy in liberalism. So we’re at the beginning of a major turning point. And to use Jim B. Jordan’s language, we’re primarily in a period of decreation where these denominational structures are coming under judgment from God and splintering apart.

And the confessional conference and the Alliance of Reformed Churches are the glimmering, the very faint beginning signs of new institutional structures the churches can band together in as they come out of these two schools. Now, I think that this is a good thing. The Presbyterian tradition, in my estimation, has stressed judicial procedures. The reformed tradition has stressed pastoral concerns.

Now, what does all this have to do with Reformation Covenant Church in Psalm 116? Well, you know, we went through a lot of trials and tribulations in the providence of God the last two years. And as Richard was saying last night, a lot of the attack was a direct attack on my character and actually the veracity or truthfulness of some statements I had made over the years. One of the things that people would want to say, some that have left, is that we’re not a legitimate church because we’re not in a denomination.

And that Dennis has told you we’re reformed or reformation our theology for a number of years, but he’s lied to you because you’re not in a denomination. And by definition, if you’re not a denomination, you’re not reformed. Well, I’ve given you a little bit of a picture here of how ludicrous that is because the denominational structures that these people that are saying these things are familiar with are Presbyterian.

And in their way of thinking, most of the people that are reformed, and there are a lot many more reformed people than there are Presbyterian people in this country, would not be seen as legitimate either because their whole model is not built upon a judicial structure of courts of appeals as much as it is built upon the autonomy of local churches. And they’ll actually use that word. You know, Jim B. Jordan gave us some unique interpretations of the book of Esther.

And I asked him where he got some of that stuff originally, if he just thought it up or what. No, he said, “I got a lot of it out of a study guide put out by the Canadian Reformed Churches. When you hear a denomination that ends in churches as opposed to church, that tells you something. In the reformed tradition, the pastor or ministers are members of the local church. But in most of the Presbyterian denominations, the ministers are members not of the local church, but of presbytery, the body of ministers, and they constitute their own church.

And that’s why it’s the Orthodox Presbyterian Church singular as opposed to for instance the Protestant Reformed Churches. You see the difference? Well, in this I bring up the Canadian Reformed Churches because here’s another thing that’s happened to me in the last month. I got an issue of the Reformed Herald. That’s the denominational newsletter of the Reformed Church of the United States, the denomination that Reverend Norman Jones is part of, and most of you know him.

And they had a greeting in there from the Canadian Reformed Churches, this group that Jim B. Jordan was talking about. And in this there’s sort of in a sister church relationship between the RCUs and the Canadian Reformed Churches. In this greeting, the man was explaining a little bit about their church, their denomination rather. He said, “One thing you have to realize is that we believe in the autonomy,” he used that word “of local churches.

And while we have bigger structures governmentally above us, they call them synods and classes as opposed to presbyteries or general assemblies. While we have those structures, there’s really no inherent authority beyond the local church. And the man in this article, which I passed out to some of you last week, said this, of course gives us a problem when we’re dealing with Presbyterians cuz they don’t like that.

Now, so we have Doug H. and I going to Chicago, coming in contact with a group of people, a large number of them, the people that we would be like-minded with in spirit and in doctrine, who themselves are coming out of denominations. Becoming independent and some of them actually using the term independent in their church name and then we have information given to us a couple of weeks ago from the Canadian Reformed Churches.

There’s a whole denomination that’s composed of autonomous local churches. One of the things another thing indication along this same line is that in the confessional conference there were several men there who are involved in trying to figure out what we do about judicial cases and we don’t have a denomination. Now this is a problem we’ve had to deal with for 10 years. For these people, it’s new to them because they’re leaving denominations.

And one of the models that we saw for resolving this problem is that local churches of like mind, reformed people in a particular area would informally agree amongst themselves that when a disciplinary case came up and there was a problem, they would call in ministers from local churches to help resolve the dispute. And that’s the model we’re looking at now down here. And Doug H. is up in Seattle as well.

I share all this because one of the major attacks, as I said, is whether or not Reformation Covenant Church is actually reformed and reformation its theology with the mere fact of it’s not being involved in a Presbyterian denomination. And if you assert that, you lose most of good reformed people in the country because most of them do not apply to this Presbyterian model. In terms of numbers, the Christian Reformed Church is much larger and many people now are starting to come out of it and form these independent churches.

Now, I didn’t know all this a year ago. And Doug H. didn’t know all this a year ago. And Richard didn’t know all this a year ago. What we knew was we were being attacked. We were trying to be true to the theology of the scriptures, which we think is best reflected historically by the reformers in the 15 and 1600s. And as we went through the trials and tribulations, we didn’t have all this supporting information to defend ourselves with.

I’ve talked before on Psalm 116 that God takes you through dark hours. Psalm 23 is another one. I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. But I fear no evil because my friends are with me. No, because my wife is with me. No, because my denomination. No, because God is with me. Psalm 23, as many of the psalms are, is intensely personal. And at the core of our faith must be an understanding that all men are liars.

All men are unable to give us stability as we go through a conflict or a trial or tribulation in our lives that is deep and that God has brought into our lives to try our dependence not upon our friends or our church or our mates or our children or our parents but rather upon God. So I went through a very dark period a year a year and a half ago. We tried to stay consistent to the scriptures to guide us through that.

Doug H. went through his difficulties for the last year trying to figure out how to make sense of all these things. And as Richard shared last night, he went through his individual dark trail so to speak of how do I work through this stuff? Should I quit? What do I do? And we all stayed the course. And after we stayed the course and after we demonstrated in our words and our deeds a reliance upon God and his scriptures ultimately and not upon the traditions of men, then God this last couple of months has given us evidence upon evidence upon evidence that there are people just like us across this country, probably across the world, and that we’re not crazy.

Not alone. We have confirmation upon confirmation showered upon our heads by God as we went through that dark hour. But it came on the other side as it does with the psalmist in Psalm 116. You reduce God reduces our dependence upon men that we might be more dependent upon him. And then what does he do at the end of Psalm 116? He gives you evidence, the cup of salvation. He gives you the church again. He restores those horizontal relationships once our vertical relationship to him has been firmed up by him.

And that’s what God has done here in our lives. Now, so one thing I want you to see from this trip to Chicago, and it’s very brief. We’ll give you time for questions here in a couple of minutes, but one thing I want you to see is the way that God used this in his providence to give encouragement to my heart, to Doug H.’s heart, to Richard’s heart, blessing upon blessing. And he continues now, as I said at the article about the Canadian Reformed Churches that I got just two weeks ago, here’s a whole denomination filled with churches like ours to give us this kind of encouragement and strength.

Now, in terms of what the followup to all this is, I remember a family camp 3 or 4 years ago and I came back from Placerville in David Chilton’s church and I shared there the beginnings of a group and how we got together and they’re going to try to start a denomination. And I caution people then in private conversations and in my talk here at family camp, don’t get real enthused about this particular group of people in Placerville.

They’re good people, but we’re primarily still, again, to use Jordan’s model, in a time of decreation where the denominational structures are being broken down. We don’t see what’s going to happen in the future. This confessional conference was a great thing for the personal encouragement, for the personal contacts, for some ideas we got from it. But don’t think this is the answer. It may not happen after another year.

The Alliance for Reformed Churches may completely split apart in the next year. Probably will the next few years. Probably all these things will come not to the full gloring or or blossoming of what’s going to happen institutionally with people that are committed to reformational theology and bringing that reformation into our lives. What I’m saying is these are encouraging things, but don’t pin your hopes on some institution.

That’s not what’s going to happen here. What God is doing is he’s bringing Presbyterian people with their traditions sociologically, doctrinal standards together now with reformed people in the Alliance for Reformed Churches with different cultural backgrounds, different secondary standards, but a shared really belief. And then he’s bringing into this whole mix as well people like us coming out of Baptist, dispensationalist, community, Bible churches, etc.

This is an odd mix of people and it’s going to take a while for us all to blend together and grow as an organism and then finally become some sort of institution. It’s a great thing because each of these groups of people have their own particular strengths. The Presbyterians have a strong judicial tradition that’s good. The reformed people have a strong pastoral tradition. Christ is shepherd as opposed to Christ as king.

Both those things must come together. And the Baptist churches and community churches and Bible churches have a strong sense of the local community and the importance of the local church and body life, if you want to use that term. So all these things come together and what God is going to do in the future is more glorious than what he’s done in the past. The whole model that Reverend Jordan talks about with decreation and recreation is not a static circular thing.

That’s the way God causes advance in our lives. He tears us apart. He rebuilds us and we’re stronger and then he does it again and we keep going up the ladder glory to glory. And institutionally the church is going glory to glory. And so these things should be an encouragement to you for what God’s doing.

Now specifically I thought I ought to mention here as well that some of the impact on this in immediate future for Reformation Covenant Church is I’ve now written letters since our return to Reverend Graveling in the Independent Reformed Church in Salem to Reverend Poundstone and Reverend Maffy. They’re two Orthodox Presbyterian ministers in our area. And I passed by the our statement on prayer from the bylaws to them. I’m going to get together and talk to them about that. I’ve passed to them a draft of the golden rule agreement we’ve talked about and have handouts here if you haven’t seen it yet. And I’ve also asked them to get together and we’ll talk individually about whether they be willing to sit on some sort of group or council of pastors who could advise us when we get into formal disciplinary matters.

It’s a good model we saw at work at the confessional conference and churches represented there and I think it will be fairly easy to implement here. Reverend Graveling also expressed a concern that we would be able to do that with them because they’re as we are completely unaffiliated institutionally in terms of a denomination and they want that extended witness of the church as well through other ministers in formal disciplinary cases.

So that’s one of the specific things that we’re doing is trying now to get together this council so to speak of local area pastors. And then as well to get from them also comments on this golden rule agreement to begin to build that institutional catholicity we’ve talked about in a local sphere. In other words, we’re going to take an agreement that says when people move from one church to another, there should be contact between the pastors relative to counseling, relative to disciplinary matters, etc.

Before members are received in. We’ve talked about doing this for several years. We’ve got the draft now. We’re going to run it by these reformed fellows first for input before we take it then to the wider body of Christ in Portland. These are some of the specific fruits of the Chicago conference. Additionally, we made contact a number of churches there and I’m beginning to receive bylaws from them hopefully on disc.

I’m getting some in on paper already and we’ll be able to use that as we develop our bylaws at Reformation Covenant Church as well. And as a result, they’ll be stronger and more using the fruits and labors of these men that have done these things in their other churches. By the way, one of the ones I got was from a church in Michigan called Dutton Independent Reformed Church. Okay, so that model independent and reformed is a good one.

One last thing I’ll mention then I think what we’ll do is I want to mention make a couple of comments and maybe Doug H. could come up and share with us a meeting he had with Reverend Raburn. Would that be okay, Doug? And one more evidence of this Psalm 116, God taking us through the trial and then giving us evidences the other side that his blessing is upon us. Doug H. will share a little bit of meeting he had with Reverend Rob Raburn.

But one other thing I wanted to mention here was a guy named David Cole and he was the last one that I talked with on a Chicago trip. He is in an interesting position. He’s an Orthodox Presbyterian Church ordained minister, but he presently attends Christian Liberty Academy Church, which is like us, completely unaffiliated denominationally. He’s the chaplain for the school. He’s the vice president for their college.

And every time that Doug H. and I would meet one of these fellas, we’d ask them, “Do you think that we’re schismatic? Are we independent?” And consistently they would say, “Well, no, think it through. Get to know the men. Don’t do anything rapidly.” And no, we don’t think you could be have a bad spirit, but you don’t seem to. You seem to be out here asking people what you’re doing, if it’s right or not, and you want interaction with people.

Well, David Cole used the term interdependent in our conversation that last night we were there in Chicago relative to Christian Liberty Academy and he said, “It sounds like your church is the same way. You’re not independent really. You’re interdependent. You’re not part of a denomination, but you have contacts, regular contacts with people coming from covenantal theology and reformational theology, and you utilize those contacts to continue to mature what you’re doing.” And so, you’re interdependent, not independent.

That’s a good term. We never thought of it that way. But, you know, probably a lot of you don’t know this, but 10 years ago, 12 years ago, when we started, we self-consciously had three external points of reference. R.J. Rushdoony at Chalcedon, Greg Bahnsen and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Southern California at that point in time, and then Jim B. Jordan and the other folks at Tyler, Texas. And we kept those fellas as external reference points cuz we didn’t want to be independent.

We didn’t think of it in this term, but we were interdependent even then. And you know, each of those three groups didn’t like each other, still don’t for the most part, and won’t talk to each other. But we gleaned their insights and guidance walking down the road that we began Reformation Covenant Church with. And now God has widened that circle of contacts, that interdependency to a much wider and more diverse group.

Doesn’t mean we’re changing any distinctives, but it does mean those distinctives of Christian reconstruction, what they began as, are percolating out into the reformed community, into the Presbyterian tradition, into more Bible and Baptist people are coming out of Bible and Baptist churches. And as a result, it’s leavening the whole reformed community now and so our context can be much more diverse and this is a great thing.

This should be an encouraging thing to you. And one other thing I want to mention before Doug H. mentions Rob Raburn. You know what Richard was talking about last night wanting to quit and I think we all went through that last the last year and a half. I know Roy did I did not wanting to but wondering if this is what we should be doing. You know you hear us talk about this in terms of the church and it sounds rather traumatic but you know You can apply it to your own personal life as well.

I mean, most of you, I’m getting to know you better and better. Those of you who have been at RCC for a while, I know you real well. I know you each have struggles, trials that you go through. I don’t know hardly any head of a household, for instance, who feels equipped to deal with what that means as we continue to understand the broadness of that and the importance of it in terms of leading a family.

Most men feel completely unequipped. That’s good because they are. You got to be reliant on God and upon his calling and putting you in that place to continue. And much of what Richard said last night is very easily transferable into your household or mothers with you working with your children. You don’t feel like you know how to do that either for the most part you do a lot of it. At the end of the day, you got to pray to God and express your interdependence upon him and the extended body of Christ for assistance.

But you continue walking down the paths of which God has called you to do. And I want to encourage you in knowing that goes on at every level of the institutions God has given us in the family, in the church, in the state. I know good Christian men in the Oregon legislature. They don’t know what they’re doing. They’d probably be the first to say they don’t know what they’re doing, but they’ve been called by God and they have some degree of gifting to perform that task.

We should support them in that even when they don’t know what they’re doing. At the end of the day, it’s only as a reliance. If I have a household, for instance, who’s really convinced he’s fully equipped, he knows that he should be doing in the family. He’s probably in trouble or he’s a real young father or a young husband and he’ll realize as the years go on, no, he doesn’t know really what to do. God’s going to build that knowledge in, but he’s going to do it through making us dependent upon him.

And that’s what he’s done at the leadership of Reformation Covenant Church and with Doug H. up in Seattle. And as a result, we’re stronger. We’ve got the scar tissue that Roy talked about and we’re going to be more actual leaders for you, able to guard you better, minister to you better as a result of that very shaking that God put each of us through and taking us through the valley of the shadow of death causing us to rely upon his presence with us and then strengthening us the knowledge that there are many people who affirm what we’re doing who are doing the same thing we’re doing in their local areas and communities and as a result we’re all encouraging to one another to the end that we continue to think that way.

Doug H., could you come up and talk a little bit about Reverend Raburn and you’re meeting with him and then we’ll take questions.

While we were at the meetings, we talked to so many people. In fact, in my case, the very first day we had meetings, we went to register a little bit early so that we could maybe find somebody to talk to. And right after we registered, we met two or three guys and we sat for hours and talked with them.

I stood up and said the whole price of the ticket was worth it just already because these guys were saying steer the course. Keep going. You’re not in sin. Not only that, you guys are right on. We kind of like you. And this was so odd. I mean, all these years, as Dennis was pointing out, you know, we thought we were inside of the Reformation. We didn’t have any clue that we were really in any kind of sin until the last year, year and a half or so.

And then people are telling us, well, you guys aren’t reformed at all people that we all know and we haven’t heard this and where’s this coming from and then we you know hear quotes from John Murray and all kinds of other people and it brings doubt but then hearing all from such a wide variety Steve Wilkins you’ll see on your sheet there he’s a PCA guy you know on that left hand column that Presbyterian side he’s saying we’re doing already what you guys are talking about getting involved with having local churches involved with one another and committed to one another.

And he talked about the fact they had a judicial case in one of the churches and he came in and helped it mediate that dispute. We found out yesterday what it was. And it was really interesting to see that God would bring Steve Wilkins into our midst and say, “You guys are okay.” And then George Grant that you all have heard of he was the same way. We had lunch for a couple hours with him. Very encouraging.

And on and on it went. Well, we still have this Presbyterian We have these people that we know that are saying, “You guys are out to lunch.” And when we went to the Reformed Presbyterian Church, we thought, “We’re going to hear this. We’re going to hear that we’re really out to lunch somewhat.” The opposite was the case. We had Dr. Ken Talbot and his brother Randy Talbot and Samuel Brown, and they listened to our story.

They listened to who we were and said, “No, we understand who you are. We’d like to see you come in. In fact, we’ll make you your own presbytery if you want too. They were real anxious to see us come in and be a part of what they’re doing, but they also understood us and they understood why we were where we’re at and they weren’t ready to say you guys are out to lunch.

Well, when I came back, well, here’s another thing. You know, the night before we went to the Presbyterian meeting, the reformed Presbyterian church, Dennis says, “Doug, you know, the more I hear all these people, you know, being so encouraging to us, you know, there’s got to be lots of churches out there just like us.” I said, “Tuuri, there’s no way. Where are they? We would have heard about it. You know, one of them we would have heard somewhere. And I said, I don’t think so.

I think we’re just, you know, just because the combinations of the things that we’ve read and the people we’ve come into contact with were really unique. Next day, we met three guys, the California guys there and then the Reformed Presbyterian Church from Grace Covenant Church. Met these guys and they were going to they had gone through much of the same kind of trials that we had over the last year or so.

And as it turns out, they’re almost exactly like us. Undistinguishably different, you know, you can’t distinguish many differences from us except for they came out a more charismatic background. But beyond that, they’re much like us. And they were coming into this reformed Presbyterian church because they don’t know where else to go or don’t know what else to do. And it was an encouragement to see God, we’re not alone here in a big in in just all kinds of dimensions.

We’re okay.

Well, so I was comfortable when we came back and excited and talked to my the people at my church. We went through and showed all this stuff and we have Reverend Jim B. Jordan going to be coming up this weekend for a conference and Raburn wanted to have him speak on Sunday night at his church. So I called him up and said, “Okay, well let’s get together. You want to?” He says, “Well, great.

Let’s do it.” And I and so we got together for lunch a week ago this last Friday. And before that, I contacted Okay. Rob Raburn is the pastor of Faith Presbyterian Church in Tacoma and Westminster Presbyterian Church in Vancouver was formed as a mission church under Rob Raburn’s church originally. In fact, I think I’m correct to say that the members of Westminster originally were members of Faith Presbyterian in Tacoma before they brought on their own minister and the session was formalized.

Once that happened, they became a separate church. But until that time, they were a mission church. And so through the time that they were forming and the time that some of the disciplinary situations were going on over here at RCC, Rob Raburn at least in part was involved with all this and Dennis was in correspondence both in telephone and in written correspondence with Reverend Raburn and had made a number of appeals to him to help us by coming in and mediating this situation.

And he didn’t do as much of that as we had hoped to. And also Dennis made an appeal. I think you know it was the two of you. That’s right. Made an appeal to the denomination or the presbytery to come in and mediate as well. And the response that was given was that you’re not a part of the PCA and so you don’t have any grounds to ask us for any help. You know, and so we respond to the session, you know, or that we’ll let the session do what they want to do.

And so there wasn’t a whole lot of help from that standpoint. And so when I made the appointment with Reverend Raburn to get together with him, it made me a little nervous. And so I called Dennis. I said, “What do you want? What would you like? What do you think I ought to say?” And about 500 fact pages later, you know, I was able it took all afternoon just to figure out and staple the right pages together.

But uh He had a list of concerns that were on his mind and he wanted me to if it came up somehow maybe to address certain things. Well, as it when we got together, we had lunch together and just talked real generally at first and then he wanted to know what’s your relationship with RCC still. That was it was time to get down to business. That was his first question. And I said, “Well, our tie with them is now officially broken.

We don’t have an official covenantal relationship any longer.” And I know I from one other conversation I had with him before that he was anxious that we be in a denomination somewhere that was important to him. And so if we weren’t going to do that, you know, what’s at least my connection with RCC and so I explained to him some of the things that Dennis has been talking about today in terms of trying to develop local connections.

We’re not committed to independency, but because of who we are, there’s no one out there. No denomination that we can immediately find that is going to say, “Yeah, we like you guys. Come on in just as you are. We like the fact that you’re a paedocommunist or at least we’ll tolerate you and we’re comfortable with the fact that you don’t agree with our church government and the fact that you believe in only one kind of elder as opposed to two kinds of elders.”

Yeah. And we talked about that. I said, “Wherever we would go, we’re going to have problems.” He said, “That’s agreed.” And I said, “That being the case, if we’re going to have problems, why would we want to jump in? Into this thing. And he says, “You’re right.” He says, “Any point if you know that you’re going to have troubles, there’s no reason to get involved.” That really took me off guard at that point.

So I pulled out this golden rule agreement that Dennis was talking about earlier where we’re going to try and develop connections between churches. And he looked at that, he says, “That’s the very thing I want to be doing.” Having a committed relationship with other churches to if you have transfer of members or a member of another church that comes in that is under discipline. We want to respond correctly to that.

He says that’s the very thing I want to do. And he wanted to know how he was doing cuz one of the members of my church had recently transferred over to his church. So he wanted to he wanted me to evaluate him on the basis of this sheet. So I was able to put the sheet I said let’s let’s put that question away. We’ll come back to it which we did. But what one of the things I want to talk to you about since you’re open to it is how things went at Westminster and at RCC relative to this sheet.

This is where I think we’ve dropped the ball with one another. We didn’t commit ourselves to communicating and to receiving men members and sending members in a way that is real judicious and careful and has a concern long term. And so we had a chance to talk about that and he had substantial agreement that there were failures in this whole situation. And I even told him I said I was disappointed and I know Dennis was that you didn’t come and become more involved in this whole process because you were in a position to help us maybe affect some of this stuff that we’re seeing on this sheet and we didn’t see that.

And he says I understand that and you know he was real quiet at that point and he says what I’m in a pickle as it were. In terms of the Presbyterian form of government it’s pretty highly structured and you’re going to get involved with churches on the basis of them making an appeal to you to come in and help. You don’t invite yourself in. It’s not this pastoral kind of concern. It’s more of a judicial sort of a group and so there they’re the lines are more clearly drawn and the walls are a little bit higher than they would be in a say the reform side where you have local autonomous churches that are connected on a pastoral level.

He says, “I wasn’t invited by these fellows to come in and help out and I was it was a difficult situation for me to be involved with this whole deal because I would have had to answer to presbytery for getting involved at that point and I think he would like to have seen things go considerably different. In any rate, his concern by the end of the meeting that we had together was that I want you to know, Doug, that I want to operate the way that we’re talking about here with mutual cooperation.

And I even brought up to him the fact that maybe we could even have him be one of those local pastors that I could appeal to in disciplinary matters that he can come and help me. And he says, “Well, write it up. I’m real anxious to get started on that. Put something in writing and we’ll we’ll work on it.” And I don’t know how quickly I want to move towards that because, you know, I well anyway, we’ll work on it, but you know, but it’s really a blessing for him to say, “Yeah, I’m anxious to work together.”

As he was getting ready to get out of the car, he stopped. He says, “Let’s go back. I just want you to know I see you as legitimate as a church. I see your ordination as legitimate and I’m committed to working together with you. See, now in our minds, here’s the we have heard from a number of fellas over the last year and a half out of this same denomination, you are not reformed or Presbyterian, RCC and CCC. And he says, he told me that is not correct biblically nor consistent with traditional Presbyterianism that can’t be asserted correctly and when you hear that you shouldn’t listen to it and we even talked about the issue partly because it’s you know what my situation is about single elders whether a single elder can legitimately serve in a church and he even agreed with me that is possible biblically in certain types of times and based on the size of a congregation see and these are the some of the contentions that we’ve heard as a result of this.

I’m able to stand in the midst of my people at our at CSCC with great strength and courage, not in myself, but because God in his great providence has come in and said, “You, I know you’re weak. Come on, let me strengthen you. You can have confidence in the fact that you’re still walking according to my word.” That you don’t have to be insecure about your relationship with other Presbyterian ministers or reformed guys. We can walk with an understanding that we’re part of the greater body of Christ in a way that is consistent with the scriptures. And Rob Raburn is another piece to that puzzle, probably one of the more significant pieces in reality because he was a part in our minds to the piece of the puzzle that says that we’re out of we’re out of sync.

And in fact, that’s not the case anymore. And so we say all I say all this stuff. I hope you guys are encouraged, strong, without this insecurity that some of these things could have brought on in your own lives and hearts. I would imagine that, you know, these things could have affected you. You know, make you concerned about the church government that we have, but God is showing you as well as us that RCC and CSCC are churches of Jesus Christ that you can remain in confidence, remain with confidence in.

And one of one other thing is I don’t know how much some of you have known about some of this or how many discussions you’ve had with some of the folks that have left. He wanted to make it clear that when the presbytery met last year that there were discussions about Reformation Covenant Church and some of the things that were going on there. Particularly in a special committee that was there to decide upon baptisms and those sorts of things and he indicated that the presbytery in no way was indicating that RCC is not a church.

That wasn’t even a question that came up. And I know that some folks have had it in their mind that you have this big monolithic unit called the PCA over here. You got this other little squatty thing, you know, quirky church over here. And there’s it’s like it’s David and Goliath, but in this case, David’s the giant and Goliath the bad guys, the little tiny pee out here. And he indicated that wasn’t the case at all.

When in fact what you have is a presbytery and a denomination that’s way off over here saying we don’t want to get involved basically then you and so what you do have is two churches that are kind of trying to work this thing out and that in his mind what’s the minister he probably would say too we haven’t done everything exactly correctly there’s some things that we could have done better but he but he for the most part say you know he’s convinced that Westminster has not followed through and done all that it could to try and resolve these conflicts and that we should not think of ourselves as just being in opposition to this big giant unit called Presbyterian Church of America.

And so, I don’t know if that’s been on your mind or if you’ve heard that, but that’s not the case. And so, God is blessing us. We should be of good cheer. He’s strong and courageous because we need to be during this time. You know, there we may find other types of criticisms in the day ahead. But if God if we take seriously these encouragements that God’s given us, then we can stand in the day of trial.