Some Thoughts on Modern Reformed Denominations

I have been privileged, I think you can call it that, to have a front-row seat, or at least a behind-the-scenes look, at the inner workings of many Reformed denominations, including the founding of two Presbyterian denominations. The experience has been a mixed bag, but I have certainly learned a lot and benefited from it.

Despite what most people seem to think, I believe we are often most critical of the things we love. That is a hard concept for our current anemic generation, which expects leaders to pander and flatter. Turn the spotlight on the failures of your own tribe rather than its perceived enemies, and you are treated as a traitor.

But lovers are correctors. A loving father corrects and disciplines his children precisely because they bear his name and are precious to him. So it is with faithful church leaders. Yes, they protect their people from real enemies outside the camp. But one of the enemies we must always contend with is the corruption that remains within.

So it is with me and Reformed denominations. What follows is a series of critiques of my people, and therefore, to varying degrees, critiques of myself. No doubt some of this comes from frustration, but it also comes from love. As far as genre goes, I suppose most people would call these hot takes.

These are my everyday takes.

My general assessment of modern Reformed denominations and associations is that they are something like the NBA if the NBA were made up of 95 percent referees and 5 percent players. Very little actual basketball gets played, and when it does, it is constantly interrupted by referees stepping onto the court to enforce increasingly silly procedural rules.

These men think they love basketball, and in a sense they do. They just do not love playing basketball. In many cases, that is because they are not very good at it. But they believe they can protect the game and contribute to its overall good by making sure everyone plays it exactly right.

These are the guys who were first to take their ball home when they got smacked a little too hard going up for a rebound on the courts behind your local middle school. They tell themselves street ball is not real basketball. I beg to differ. I think it is one of the purest forms of the game, which may be why they are so bad at it.

Because they lacked the toughness and aggression to play street ball, they became especially interested in the rules.

And rules matter. Without rules, basketball is not basketball. But at some point, love of the rules replaced love of the game.

One of the recurring mistakes in the Reformed world is the belief that function follows form. Get the form exactly right, nail down every rule, establish the proper procedure, agree on every technicality, and then, finally, we will be ready to play real basketball.

Sure, sure.

I was around for the founding of two of the newer, smaller Presbyterian denominations because I was in a church eager to leave the PCA, and we were considering all our options. I attended meetings, sat in discussions, and had phone calls with many of the men involved.

One thing that stood out was how concerned they were with getting their Book of Church Order exactly right. For the uninitiated, the BCO is essentially the denomination’s governing document. There were long debates about particular sections, procedures, and disputed points. It was interesting. The underlying assumption seemed to be that if they could get the BCO pure enough, the denomination itself would be more pure.

Eventually they finished it. Eventually both denominations were birthed into the world.

And, in my estimation, they ended up with all the same problems.

The glorious function of life was not birthed from getting the form just right.

That is an extremely inconvenient fact for the sort of men who are drawn to modern Reformed denominations. Because eventually, if you are actually going to play the game, you may have to catch an elbow to the mouth and taste a little blood.

And a lot of these men are simply not equipped for that.

Because the Reformed world has become so overwhelmed by referees and their obsessions, a particular type of man is celebrated and able to rise through the ranks. He is precise. He memorizes rules. He can rearticulate policies on command. He knows obscure procedural technicalities and carries himself in a way that assures everyone he would never accidentally foul anyone.

These men often assume their ability to recall minute policies and technical distinctions is an enormous blessing to the church.

Does it surprise anyone that the leadership of the Reformed world is so heavily populated by lawyers, accountants, IT professionals, software guys, and men with similar temperaments?

Again, those gifts have real value. You need rules to play basketball. You need people who understand them. The problem is the overwhelming concentration of this type of man and, too often, his unwillingness to get bloodied and bruised actually playing the game.

I have made my living in the electrical industry for a long time, and I can say with great confidence that electrical engineers tend to have terrible people skills. Their technical knowledge is incredibly valuable, so sometimes you just put up with it. But when you find an electrical engineer who understands the technical side and can actually lead people, you hire that guy and never let him go.

I once sat on a Zoom call with an associate trying to get a deal done. The other side asked us to meet with their electrical engineers. There must have been twelve or fifteen of them on the call.

We explained our issue in about two minutes.

I do not even remember what the technical point was anymore, but the engineers then spent the next twenty or thirty minutes arguing among themselves over some finer point of electrical theory. We just sat there silently while they disappeared down the rabbit hole.

That is what a great many elder-board meetings, presbytery meetings, general assemblies, and synods feel like.

A room full of electrical engineers getting distracted by issues tangential to the actual problem sitting in front of them.

And if you are an electrical-engineer type, you know, a board-game nerd, you probably do not like what I am saying.

Which brings me to another problem.

I have played my fair share of board games with people who constantly stop the game to argue about the rules until you can barely play at all. What was supposed to take two hours consumes the entire afternoon.

Worse, I have played with people who do not use the rules to make sure the game is played fairly. They use the rules to cheat.

It is bad enough when no one can play the game because the referees will not stop blowing the whistle. It is worse when the only game being played is rigged by people who selectively enforce the rules, exploit technicalities, and play favorites.

Do that long enough and people stop caring what the referees have to say.

That is a serious problem, because you actually do need referees.

But eventually people would rather play street ball with men who love the game and are willing to work things out on the court than spend their lives bogged down in an association that still thinks it possesses prestige simply because it once did.

Many of the men inside these institutions have spent their entire lives trying to get into the NBA, so to speak. Membership proves something to them. It confirms their legitimacy, their worth, their standing. Naturally, they develop an enormous vested interest in protecting the brand.

But brands can lose their value.

And eventually some men begin to say, “You know what? I no longer care whether you think I am legitimate. Your name is blemished. Your brand is damaged. Your referees have spent years making the game nearly unplayable. And at this point, the fact that your referees do not like the way I play may actually be evidence that I am doing something right.”