City Church, a strategic Reformed congregation located in San Francisco, whose leaders announced last summer that the church was leaving the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) because its elders had embraced an egalitarian view of women in ministry, has found a new denominational home.
City Church, a strategic Reformed congregation located in San Francisco, whose leaders announced last summer that the church was leaving the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) because its elders had embraced an egalitarian view of women in ministry, has found a new denominational home.
The moderate Reformed Church in America (RCA) last month announced that City Church has officially become a member of its denomination. The Central California Classis of the RCA accepted a transfer request from City Church and three of its ordained pastors at its fall meeting.
According to senior pastor Fred Harrell, City Church's biblical convictions regarding women in ministry became incompatible with remaining in the conservative PCA, a denomination that does not ordain women. The elders at City Church disagree with chapters 8 and 9 of the PCA’s Book of Church Order (BCO) that limit the role of deacon and elder to men.
The leaders of City Church were "careful and exhaustive in their search for a new denomination," Harrell said in a RCA press release.
"We had three major guidelines," he said. "We sought a denomination that was missionally engaged, theologically rooted in the Reformed tradition, and one that built bridges instead of walls to other Christians."
City Church is a 10-year-old congregation that includes some 250 members and attracts approximately 700 worshipers each Sunday.
The RCA was born in 1628 in a small colonial town named New Amsterdam. In 1970, it became one of the first Reformed denominations to officially sanction the ordination of women to the office of elder. In 1979, the RCA’s General Synod approved the ordination of women as "ministers of Word and Sacrament." Today, the denomination includes 21 ordained female pastors.
Since the late-1970s, the RCA has also wrangled with the biblical propriety of homosexuality. While the RCA continues to affirm heterosexual marriage as the biblical teaching, the denomination reinitiated "an honest and intentional dialogue on homosexuality." The RCA website admits that "deep divisions" exist within the denomination over homosexuality.
The Revs. Mike Hays and Scot Sherman, also part of the City Church staff, come with Harrell to the RCA, the denomination announced. Harrell said that the pastors and congregation remain in good relationships with their former presbytery in northern California.
"These brothers and sisters have been very good to us in our short, ten-year history," Harrell said.
The RCA's missions and church planting emphasis, its tradition of theological reflection, and its work in Christian unity were telling factors in the decision, Harrell said.
"We are thankful to be part of the RCA and look forward to its continued renewal and growth."
Gender-News first reported on this development last spring.
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