Saturday, January 12, 2008

Session 1 Questions For Discussion

1. What has surprised you in this history?

2. What do you like? What do you wish was different?

3. What would you have done differently if you were in charge?

4. What issues and problems that confront the RCA today do you see already in our early history, and how did they attempt to either solve or manage them?

5. What in this history would you like to tell to your first batch of new members? What would you be tempted not to mention?

6. Take a good look at the Declaration for Licensed Candidates that you will make before your classes, and also the Declaration for Ministers that you will make at your Ordination. These are very solemn vows. What phrases in these declarations require you to be familiar with this history? And what loyalty is required of you?

7. What do you see in this history as the strengths of the RCA? What are its weaknesses? Are its weaknesses the obverse of its strengths?

8. The Reformed Church in America is the only surviving mainline denomination to carry the tradition of the Reformed Churches on the European continent. How are we different from the UCC and the Presbyterians, which come from the somewhat different Reformed tradition of the British Isles? Is our tradition worth preserving?

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