What is Reformed?
The word “Reformed” comes from a historical event called the Reformation that happened in the 16th century. Several theologians, called “Reformers,” felt that the dominant church, the Roman Catholic church, had become corrupt and no longer reflected Jesus’ teachings. They led people to protest (hence, “Protestants”) against the Roman Catholic church. They first tried to “re-form” the church by changing it, but it ended up they formed new churches when the Roman Catholic church refused to change. Here is an excellent article from our denomination, the CRCNA–Christian Reformed Church is North America–with details and the history of the Reformed churches. At the bottom of that article is a link to a full book on the subject.
We cannot cover all the aspects of the answer to the question “What is Reformed?” on this web page, but we try to live and worship in the framework of the Reformed tradition. Among other things, this means that at San Jose CRC:
We try to preach, sing, and worship using words and ways that emphasize grace. God’s love is a gift, a free gift, that he gives us because he loves us, not because of anything we have done. One of the basic Reformed principles is that we humans do not deserve and cannot earn God’s love. This means we talk about serving God because we are grateful for his gift, not in order to somehow do enough good works to earn a ticket to heaven.
Another basic Reformed principle is “sola Scriptura,” a Latin phrase used in the history of the Reformation meaning “Scripture alone,” not relying only on what authorities may tell us the Bible says. We try to learn God’s will for us from the Bible, the whole Bible, not pulling verses to “prove” whatever point we want to make. We try to study the Bible as a whole and look for his divine message rather than take every word of the Bible literally and only from our own, limited, usually Westernized perspective. We value scholarship that looks at the context of the words in the Bible–things like what we can learn from the stories, letters, poems and other narratives; who were these narratives written for and to, what was going on in the world and culture that the writers and receivers of the narratives were living in that affect what they are trying to say. We realize we are human and may not always interpret God’s message with the certainty that our way of thinking is always “right,” but we prayerfully and thoughtfully do our best.
A third Reformed principle is God’s sovereignty (his rule / kingship / ownership / lordship) over the whole world. We try to prepare ourselves to reflect God’s love in the world, in all aspects of our lives, trying not to separate ourselves from the world but find a path to live, work, and act in ways that will help restore the world to God’s “shalom,” the harmony and goodness of the entire world and all its inhabitants that God declared was good when he created it (“And God saw that it was good.” Genesis 1.)
John Calvin is the Reformer that our church followed in its origins. He, along with others, believed God gave us two sacraments, baptism and communion, which are signs and seals of God’s promises. We have communion on the first Sunday of every month and practice infant baptism.