God the Father is sending a wave of the Holy Spirit in the CRC and RCA to advance the gospel of Jesus Christ.
From the Book of Acts until the present, the primary way that God the Father has advanced the Kingdom of God is through successive waves of the Holy Spirit. We are given a glimpse of God’s strategy in Acts 1:8 where after Pentecost the Gospel expands to each location. – from Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth – by new outpourings of the Holy Spirit.
Such moves of the Holy Spirit are sent by the Sovereign God in His own time, but our role in these waves is first and foremost the work of prayer. We discern the wave and then act in obedience.
Presbyterian-Reformed Ministries International has long prayed for this wave of the Holy Spirit in churches starting in the 1980s when we conducted many Spirit Alive missions in RCA and other congregations in the USA and Canada.
Many RCA pastors have been in leadership in PRMI teaching the Dunamis Project as well as serving on the Board of Directors. For instance, The Rev. John Chang served as President of the PRMI Board of Directors from 2002 – 2007 and also served as President of the RCA General Synod in 2003.
In 1991 PRMI began working with the Presbyterian Church of Canada and also with CRC congregations in Ontario, Canada. Primarily we offered weekend events introducing the Dunamis Project teaching.
In Michigan in 1993 we launched the Dunamis Project and had many CRC as well as RCA pastors and laypeople participating. This ignited a move of the Holy Spirit, with hundreds of people participating over many years.
Many of the prayer intercessors in the CRC and RCA in West Michigan were largely raised up from the Dunamis Project tracks. The Christian Reformed Church General Synod approved the majority report of the Committee to Study Third Wave Pentecostalism.
This is an amazing document that affirms this wave of the Holy Spirit. You may read this report here: https://www.crcna.org/sites/default/files/ThirdWavePentecostalismReport.pdf
This is an excellent report that provides a very good summary of this wave and also offers good discernment and some observations of how this wave may best stay on track and be a blessing to the church.
Other Reformed denominations have written such reports affirming the validity of the charismatic movement and the third wave of the Holy Spirit.
The PC(USA) was one such denomination, producing “The Work of the Holy Spirit” in 1970.
Unfortunately , over time as many denominations departed from their biblical foundations in actual practice, the doors were shut on this move of the Holy Spirit. They rejected those who embodied this movement. They chose to embrace cultural movements, that they have often themselves named as “liberal progressivism”, that were profound departures from our biblical faith.
Over the last three decades the debates have often focused on issues is sexuality.
While that has certainly been important, the deeper issue is whether or not a denomination has been faithful to the basic biblical and universal creedal affirmation that “Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life and the Only Way to God the Father.”
Both the Christian Reformed Church and the Reformed Church in America, indeed all mainline denominations in the Western world are under an insidious attack both from within and from without by the movement of Liberal Progressivism.
This, no doubt, will be a continuing struggle. So far the CRC and many in strategic leadership in the RCA have been faithful to their biblical foundations and are welcoming the empowering working of the Holy Spirit. This openness to the Holy Spirit is enabling Christians to be effective witnesses to Jesus Christ who is the only way of salvation and the head of the Church.
