The title might sound like a nifty sales trick or at least like the title of a cheap "how-to" guide. However, I am asking a very serious and very difficult question.

We are in the process of starting a Presbyterian&Reformed church in Heidelberg/Germany. As we establish the team (we are also working with Mission to the World, the PCA sendung agency), there are already people (both Americans and Germans) interested in learning from us how to do the same in other cities. Essentially, this is what we had envisioned all along: the beginning of a P&R denomination in Germany.

I would be extremely slow to start a new denomination. That's for sure. But since there is no Reformed denomination in Germany, the decision is not a hard one to make!

So I have started to wrestle with some of the questions about what this means. How do you go about establishing such an entity? Of course, you cannot get a denomination "out of the box". I realize that! At the same time, you need to have foundational structures, documents, etc. at hand BEFORE the second congregation has been planted because AFTER that has happened, it might already be too late. (And who wants a denominational split after the second church plant? I don't!).

So what I am asking is some input by folks who have some wisdom here. Happily, being a confessing church, what we DON'T have to do is establish our own theology. Our theolog yis found in the Westminster Standards and the 3 Forms of Unity. These are binding to us - and will be to any new congregation. But what about the practical questions? How much latitude do you allow, e.g., in terms of worship style? I realize that you cannot regulate and legislate everything, but do you really want to allow the breadth of, say, the PCA with all her internal struggles (e.g. on confessional subscription, regulative principle, women, etc.)? Where do you find the balance and how?

I look forward to hearing your .

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Sebastian Heck
PCA & yet to be founded Reformierte Kirche Deutschland
Ph.D. candidate Westminster Theol. Seminary/Philadelphia
Church Planting in Germany
Reformation2Germany

A quick thought would be you might benefit form corresponding with G. I. Williamson as he served in New Zealand I think that also had the same standards you have and may have some insight into how that works. I'm no expert at all, but I have observed several of small denoms start here. You have to have rock solid bylaws, constitution, bco (book of order/discipline) etc (none of which matters if you have men who will not follow them but that is anther story and hopefully not one that repeats in your case). Several men here on PB might be able to give guidance on those sorts of things. You might also write someone like Dr. Frank J. Smith whose somewhat a jot and tittle man on church constitutional documents and may have a list of do's and don'ts from experience. PM me for his email if that is of interest; he can also put you in touch with Dr. Williamson.

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Chris Coldwell
Lakewood Presbyterian Church (PCA), Member
• Naphtali Press: Presbyterian & Reformed Books
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When heresy rises in an evangelical body, it is never frank and open. It always begins by skulking, and assuming a disguise. Its advocates, when together, boast of great improvements, and congratulate one another on having gone greatly beyond the ‘old dead orthodoxy,’ and on having left behind many of its antiquated errors: but when taxed with deviations from the received faith, they complain of the unreasonableness of their accusers, as they ‘differ from it only in words.’ This has been the standing course of errorists ever since the apostolic age. Samuel Miller, Introductory essay, The Articles of the Synod of Dort (1841).

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*bump*

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Davidius
Husband of Emilia
Member: First Reformed Presbyterian Church of Durham (RPCNA) - Durham, NC
Student: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, German Literature and Classics

This may explain the old adage about Baptists being Methodists with shoes, and Presbyterians being Baptists who can read. To round out the adage, Lutherans might qualify as Presbyterians who drink to excess, and Episcopalians as Lutherans who know when to say when. - D.G. Hart

You say there are no reformed churches in Germany. This seems to be quite incorrect:

Overview of the worldwide reformed church

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Dr. M. St. John, Pastor
Wayside Presbyterian Church (PCA)
Signal Mtn, TN
"Trusting only in the grace of God..."

I'm not going to waste time going through that list, but from what I have read of Reformed churches in Europe, and that from their own websites mind you, it very well may be like saying "Oh yeah, we've got over three million Presbyterians in the U.S.! (but they're all PCUSA...)"

There is a difference between Reformed in name and Reformed in spirit.

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Adam J. Myer
Back to looking for a call...
Evergreen PCA
Salem, Oregon

doctorcello, it's always nice to be corrected by statistics that have absolutely nothing to do with reality!

Archlute, right on! Though, for what it's worth, you might find more life in any average PCUSA church than in any average Reformed state church congregation...