Here’s something you all can help us spread the word on. I spent today in the gallery of the CREC Council meeting in Minneapolis. Yesterday all seven presbyteries met, and today two delegates from each presbytery formed our tri-annual seating of Council.
One of the more significant items up for a decision today was a proposed name change. After due deliberation, the decision was made to change our name from the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches to the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. I will no doubt be writing more about this later, but there are two things to note about it right away.
The first thing is that this does not constitute a change in our polity. We still function as a confederation or federation of churches — it is simply that our continuing polity will no longer be reflected in our name. The second thing is that what we are always up against are the connotations of whatever name it is, not the denotation. The reason for this change is that a number of our churches encountered significant road blocks in their evangelistic and outreach efforts because people routinely thought there must be some connection between confederation and the Confederacy. We know that the name Communion will encounter similar misunderstandings, but we trust they will not be as seriously skewed. Our intended denotation here is more in the arena of creedal and confessional language (communion of saints) than it is eucharistic (e.g. weekly communion).
Anyway, there you have it. The CREC.