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Reformed Church Order: Law of Christ

The life and labor of the Protestant Reformed Churches are regulated by a church order. This is the church order adopted for Reformed churches by the Synod of Dordt, 1618-19.

The church order is law for the churches. It is the authoritative standard to which both consistories and church members must conform. There are sanctions for the unruly and disobedient. The member who handles sin in the congregation by broadcasting it from the housetop, or over the telephone, rather than following the way prescribed in Articles 71-74 of the church order, will himself be disciplined. The minister who publicly agitates against the decision of his consistory will be censured for schism. The elder who is “captious and . . . vehement in speaking” at classis will be silenced and, if need require, disciplined by the president of the assembly. The consistory that refuses to submit to a decision of synod will be set outside the union of the churches of Christ.

The Reformed Baptism Form: A History from Dordt to today

Throughout the history of the baptism form, there have always been officebearers who attempted to omit parts of the form. These omissions happened in different ways. First, book publishers printed the forms in any way which they saw fit and not according to synodical decisions. Second, ministers regularly skipped parts of the form during the sacrament so that later church printings followed suit (often by placing the “undesirable” section in parentheses and then deleting it altogether without approval). Third, the modern church world has approved a brand-new set of liturgical inventions that have not come from Dordt.

In his book, The Reformed Baptism Form: A Commentary, Bastiaan Wielenga lists several instances where the original form has not been followed. The examples show how violence has been inflicted upon the form.

Now available: For God's Glory and the Church's Consolation

The History of the Reformed Baptism Form (2)

For God's Glory and the Church's Consolation

For God's Glory and the Church's Consolation400 Years of the Synod of Dordt Coming October 2019! Among Reformed Christians, the celebration of the anniversary of the Synod of Dordt (1618–1619) is second only to the commemoration of the Reformation of the sixteenth century. Indeed, marking the anniversary of the “great synod,” as it soon was called, is commemoration of the Reformation. For mainly Dordt’s accomplishment was the preservation of the gospel of God’s sovereign grace, which was restored to the church through the Reformation....

September 15, 2019 Standard Bearer preview article

The covenant and Dordt: Election, the foundation

The doctrine of election is the foundation of the Reformed truth of salvation by grace alone. The first head of the Canons of Dordt establishes the doctrine of double predestination in answer to the first point of the Remonstrants. The Arminians placed this doctrine first in their five objections (remonstrances), knowing that if they could successfully change the Reformed teaching of election to a conditional election, the rest of their teaching (errors) would follow logically. If election (and therefore, salvation) depended on man’s choosing it, then Christ died for all to make that choice a possibility, and fallen man is not dead, and grace is resistible, and perseverance unto eternal life depends on man.

Dordt’s aftermath: Did orthodoxy win the battle but lose the war?

Sometimes an army has won a major battle during a war, but lost the war in the end. The Synod of Dordt marked a decisive victory for Reformed orthodoxy and a blow to Arminianism. But Dordt’s victory appears to have been short-lived. Did Reformed orthodoxy win the battle at Dordt, only to lose the war? In answering that question, this article surveys the history of the Remonstrants and of Arminianism after the Synod of Dordt.