Greetings from America (again). I am sitting in a room in Westminster Seminary Philadelphia. Actually I should be in a session of this conference I am attending but I thought you were more important and have therefore decided to take a break and get this written. Incidentally the conference is known as the International Conference of Reformed Churches (ICRC). Why am I here? What’s the point of this conference? (Believe me I have asked these questions several times over the past few days). Is it just to give a group of (mainly) ministers the opportunity to do a bit of world travel and to have delusions of grandeur – ‘Hey, look at me I am a world diplomat (or ecclesiastical equivalent)!”

The ICRC certainly has worthy aims. It desires to bring together churches from all over the world who share the ‘reformed’ understanding of the scriptures and the church.

Reformed here meaning adherence to one of the classical reformed confessions such as the Westminster Confession or the Three Forms of Unity. Recognizing the importance of biblical ecumenicity the ICRC wants to unite Christians who share that viewpoint from around the globe. You would think that with people from every part of the world, papers on interesting topics and the beautiful setting of Philadelphia (which by the way is a really ‘cool city) that everything should be hunky dory! And yet there is unease and a disquiet that I feel.

Perhaps it is because there seems to be an awful lot of time wasted. Surely there will be no procedures and constitutions in heaven! Furthermore one gets fed up of being talked at, it would be nice to be talked to and even nicer for opportunities to be given to discuss things in workshops etc. This is even more essential when one considers the diversity of cultures represented here – when a Dutch theologian is speaking are we sure that the Scot, the Indonesian and the Ethiopian are hearing what he thinks he is saying?

Furthermore we waste time on a lot of irrelevancies – sometimes I think the church is not really concerned about or connecting with the real situations which the world is faced with and which the Word addresses. One of the most depressing things about being in the States is the obsession and the civil war over the question of how long God took to create the earth. It has even got to the stage where theologians are exegeting the Westminster Confession of Faith to see what the Divines meant! Did they even deal with the question of day age creation? What does it matter? Especially as nearly all the Presbyterian churches in the US do not have strict subscription anyway. (But this is to stray off my topic; I think I have to return to this one subject at a later date). Thankfully it is not officially a subject up for discussion at this conference although one cannot help but notice that every reformed and Presbyterian assembly in the US seems to have had controversy on the subject this year.

I also find it difficult that the Dutch and the Scots traditions and theologies predominate. There is a good and necessary dialogue between the two traditions but I cannot help but feel that it leaves out the Koreans, the Africans and the Indonesians. We are really going to have to move away from the concept that theology is primarily done by Western Europeans and that the traditions and customs evolved over many centuries in Holland, Scotland and the US are meant to be normative for all cultures at all times. As one Indonesian brother pointed out ‘the way things are done in Holland is Holy’! And please could we stop referring to countries from Africa and Asia as being the ‘Third World’. Let’s have some political correctness or at least some Christian sensitivity and the humility to realize that we are not the First World.

Most embarrassingly for me has been having the debacle of the Free Church split being publicly paraded and discussed on. It was depressing on the day of my arrival to be greeted by a brother from Sri Lanka with the question ‘have you read Iain Murray’s booklet on the Free Church? Apparently our friends from the FCC (Maurice Roberts and John Macleod) were here to claim that they were the true Free Church representatives and were handing out that abominable booklet to all and sundry in order to demonstrate their case. As it happens they were accepted as observers and as de facto a new denomination. But the whole discussion was a waste. How are the brothers from India, the US, Canada, the Netherlands, Kenya et al meant to work out whether yours truly or John the Port is the ‘True Free Church’? And again how relevant is it to them? I contrast the time we spent on that with the time we spent listening and dealing with a very powerful plea from an Indonesian brother whose church is experiencing appalling persecution from Muslims. Our squabbles fade into insignificance compared with this.

Having said all that there are great strengths to this conference – not least being that there are those here who recognize the weaknesses and who are seeking to remedy them in time for the next one in South Africa in 2005. Other strong points include the fact that there are so many small and weak churches from around the globe. I have found listening to their reports both stimulating and humbling. John Ross gave an excellent paper on reaching the Jews which gave a lot of food for thought and prayer.

Another strength is that the conference is not dominated by, nor dependent upon American money. It is a real conference where there does seem to be a genuine equality of churches – proving that churches from the US, Britain, Indonesia, Korea, Australia, South Africa, Hungary, the Netherlands, etc can work together as partners. My one regret is that there are other churches which could be a valuable part of this but as yet are not involved – the PCA in the US being the obvious one. Still it is no small thing that there are now over 500,000 people who are part of churches that recognize one another in the ICRC. May the growth continue. And may the conference move from being a conference to a real fellowship of brothers and sisters in the Lord who really do work together and really do aim to help each other. It is heartening to report that our Dutch brothers are willing to facilitate more missions co-operation and that a beginning has been made to have more practical help.

Finally let me leave you with another positive thought. The real value of this conference is in the ‘networking’ that goes on. Not the kind of networking which will result in more personal prestige, finance or power but rather that which results in more prayer, knowledge and fellowship. Today I sat down at a table and was quickly joined by Bryce Taho (South Africa), David John (India), Rowland Ward (Australia), and a couple of other men from the Netherlands. We soon forgot the awfulness of the food and just had real pleasure in being able to be together. I then sat down with some Korean friends who proceeded to enlighten me as to why the regulative principle allowed us to sing ‘What a friend we have in Jesus’! A foretaste of heaven. Well worth all the boring stuff and all the pains I mentioned at the beginning of this article. How could the privilege of meeting with these men be a waste of time?

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