Memorials are intended to state the
position of the CRE on issues which cannot be addressed effectively
in constitutional language, but on which some sort of constitutional
statement is desired. Memorials are intended to state the
position of the CRE on issues which do not rise to a confessional
level, or on issues concerning which a confessional statement
has not yet been made.
- A local congregation within the CRE is
not excluded from membership if it is incorporated, but
churches are strongly urged to avoid such status. The Lord
Jesus Christ is the only rightful Head of the church (Eph.
1:22), and incorporation blurs that truth in that a corporation
is judicially a creation of the state (Matt. 22:21).
- In questions about candidates for ordination, the local
session is not judicially bound by the recommendation of
presbytery. But when the local church has sought the wisdom
of the broader church, agreement with such recommendations
is strongly encouraged.
- While a formal seminary education may prepare a candidate
for ordination, our confederation strongly prefers ministerial
training, under the oversight of local church elders, which
maintains high academic and theological standards (including
training in the original languages of Scripture), and yet
at the same time incorporates an apprentice or internship
approach within the context of the local congregation.
- Our process of confessional revision is established so
that the differences between our churches may be resolved
over time by a careful striving for like mindedness. The
process is established to work in a slow and deliberate
fashion so that we will be less susceptible to various fads
and winds of doctrine (Eph. 4:14).
- All things are to be considered and conducted under the
Lordship of Jesus Christ, including education, and especially
the education of our covenant children. God has neither
charged nor authorized the state to educate children within
its civil jurisdiction. God has commanded parents to bring
up their children in the education and admonition of the
Lord (Eph. 6:4, Deu. 6:7). Given the importance and enormity
of the task (Ps. 127:3-5, Deut. 6:7-9), and the impossibility
of neutrality in education (Prov. 1:7, Matt. 12:30, Lk.
6:40, Col. 2:1-10, 2 Cor. 10:3-5), we do heartily affirm
the necessity of educating our children in a manner that
is explicitly Christian in content and rigor.
Government schools are, by decree and design, explicitly
godless, and therefore cannot be considered a legitimate
means of inculcating true faith, holy living and a decidedly
Christian worldview in the children of Christian parents.
Parents who do not fully understand the indispensability
of Christian education should be warmly received into membership.
However, the leaders of Christ's church must thoroughly
understand and plainly teach the divine imperative to disciple
our children, the divine prohibition of rendering unto Caesar
those who bear God's image (Matt. 22:20-21), the divine
warning to those who cause their little ones to stumble
(Matt. 18:6) and the divine promises to those who raise
their children in faith (Deut. 7:9, Ps.102:28 Ps. 103:17-18,
Prov. 22:6, Lk. 1:48-50, Acts 2:39).
- The doctrine of creation lies at the heart of Christian
living, deeply embedded within our assumptions about worship,
knowledge, faith, celebration, beauty, and redemption. In
recent decades, many conservative evangelicals have been
moved by the science of the day to oppose the historic view
of creation in six sequential days of common length, several
millennia in the past. Instead, they hold that the bare
ideas of creation presented in Genesis have little to do
with the actualities of creation. Falsely pitting poetry
and symbolism against history, they distort the text of
Scripture and divorce ideas from the created order in ancient
gnostic fashion.
Science changes like the wind, and therefore its authority
ought to pale beside the Spirit-led, traditional exegesis
of creation in six days of common length. Intimidation by
apparently more sophisticated non-Christian knowledge-priesthoods
is not new. Over the centuries, God has regularly tested
the Church's courage to stand loyal to His revelation over
against the ever-changing sciences of the day, those "profane
and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely
called knowledge."
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