file: /pub/resources/text/reformed: nr94-044.txt
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For Immediate Release
September 3, 1994
Release #1994-44
For Further Information Contact:
Darrell Todd Maurina, Press Officer
Reformed Believers Press Service
Voice: (616) 674-8446
FAX: (616) 674-8454
E-Mail: Darrell128@AOL.com
PO Box 691, Lawrence, MI 49064-0691

Protestant Reformed Reach Highest Membership in History - 1994 
statistics indicate that the last group of churches to secede from 
Christian Reformed denomination has broken all prior growth 
records 

by Darrell Todd Maurina, Press Officer
Reformed Believers Press Service

(September 3, 1994) RBPS - The Christian Reformed denomination has 
dropped from 316,415 to 300,320 members in the last two years, but 
not all the seceders have joined the Alliance of Reformed 
Churches. At 11,000 members, the Alliance stands as the largest of 
the secession groups, but other secession groups include the 
6,000-member Christian Presbyterian Church, a primarily Korean 
denomination led by Dr. John E. Kim, and the 1200-member 
Federation of Orthodox Christian Reformed Churches. However, the 
new denominations and fellowships are not the only groups to be 
growing. The last major group to pull out of the CRC prior to the 
current controversies over women in office and theistic evolution, 
the Protestant Reformed Churches, have also experienced dramatic 
growth over the last decade averaging almost three percent per 
year. Founded in 1925 following the deposition of Rev. Herman 
Hoeksema and two other ministers from the Christian Reformed 
denomination, the primary distinctives of the Protestant Reformed 
Churches are denial of common grace and denial that synods and 
classes have the right to depose ministers and elders of local 
churches. Instead of deposing offending consistories, the 
Protestant Reformed set churches outside the denomination if they 
will not comply with synodical decisions.

As the pastor of Eastern Avenue CRC in Grand Rapids, Hoeksema had 
been a key leader in the termination of Dr. Ralph Janssen from 
Calvin Seminary in 1922 for teaching higher critical views of 
Scripture. Supporters of Janssen then accused Hoeksema of denying 
common grace. Synod 1924 received a number of protests against 
Hoeksema and in response drew up the so-called "Three Points of 
Common Grace," setting forth the view that although special grace 
is necessary for salvation, God has a favorable attitude toward 
reprobate people as well as the elect in that God offers salvation 
to all men, that he prevents the world from becoming as wicked as 
it could be, and that he enables all men to do certain civil good. 
Hoeksema refused to accept the "Three Points of Common Grace" and 
as a result both he and the consistory of his church were deposed 
by Classis Grand Rapids East.

The Protestant Reformed denomination reached a high point in 1953 
when the denomination totalled 6063 members. However, a split 
occurred the following year between Rev. Herman Hoeksema and Rev. 
Hubert De Wolf, co-pastors of the denomination's largest church, 
First PRC in Grand Rapids. The highly technical conflict centered 
on whether to tolerate the position of the Dr. Klaas Schlilder, a 
prominent professor in the Netherlands whose supporters were among 
the massive post-World War II Dutch immigration to North America, 
that the covenant of grace is conditional upon maintaining the 
responsibilities of the covenant. The Protestant Reformed synod 
ruptured that year and over sixty percent of the members formed a 
synod which eventually joined the CRC in 1959. The remaining forty 
percent continued as the Protestant Reformed Churches with 2353 
members. The current statistics represent the first time the 
Protestant Reformed denomination has surpassed its membership 
totals prior to the 1953 split. Growth over the last forty years 
has been fairly steady, but the recent turmoil in the Christian 
Reformed denomination has resulted in a number of former CRC 
members joining local Protestant Reformed congregations. No CRC 
congregations have switched affiliations to become Protestant 
Reformed, but one pastor, former Alliance stated clerk Rev. Audred 
Spriensma, joined the Protestant Reformed Churches in 1993 and a 
number of families in the isolated mountain community of Alamosa, 
Colorado, have left the local CRC and become a Protestant Reformed 
home mission work.

"Size is not a mark of the true church; faithfulness to the Word 
is," said Rev. David Engelsma, rector of the Protestant Reformed 
Seminary and editor of the denomination's periodical.

Although pleased by the growth, Engelsma cautioned against 
evaluating denominational faithfulness by numerical standards. 
"God sees to it, by the smallness of the PRC in comparison with 
most of the other Reformed churches, that there is little danger 
of this, but still the members of the PRC must be warned about it 
in view of their good, continuing growth." 

Contact List:
Rev. David Engelsma, Editor
The Standard Bearer
4949 Ivanrest SW
Grandville, MI 49418
O: (616) 531-1490