Would you like to spend two weeks in study and sharing, and have somebody pay you (a little) instead of you paying them?

Then maybe you should send in a brief proposal for the 2023-2024 Poppen-Young Fellowship in Reformed Worship! The Reformed Church Center is looking for those proposals, to be submitted by April 21, 2023.

What do you need to get this fellowship? You need a good understanding of Reformed worship and liturgy, and a question you think is worth discussing or a creative approach to something—it could be prayers, music, liturgical dance, drama, visual arts, or a study into the theology, science, psychology, or personalities behind what we do in worship. You also need to demonstrate that you have done some preliminary work on your idea and can define a project that you can significantly complete within a couple of weeks of intense work.

What DON’T you need to get this fellowship? You don’t need to be a pastor or a professor. You don’t need specialized theological training . . . just some familiarity with the subject matter.

You can write a proposal for . . .

The Alvin J. Poppen and John R. Young Fellowship
An opportunity for research and/or presentation in Reformed Worship and Liturgy
The Alvin J. Poppen and John R. Young Fellowship provides a $500.00 stipend and the possibility a two-week residency at Â鶹ÊÓƵ to support research in Reformed Worship, particularly as it pertains to the RCA. The resources of the Seminary and the RCA Archives, as well as the wide variety of worship resources and experiences in the New York and Philadelphia metropolitan areas, are at the Fellow’s disposal. The Fellow will provide an experience of the results of the work, through a lecture, a convocation on the theme chosen, or some other public expression shared with the Seminary community. This is an opportunity for personal study that can improve the vitality of the worshipping church. Get more information and download an application .

Applications and proposals are due by April 21, 2022. Contact James Hart Brumm, Director of the Reformed Church Center, at jbrumm@nbts.edu, if you would like to discuss your idea or get suggestions for your proposal.

Note: Due to issues with the availability of the RCA Archives during the 2022-2023 academic year, we are not seeking proposals for new Smith or Gnade fellowships for 2023-2024. We will search for these for the 2024-2025 year.

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Sharon Atkins, pastor of Bethany Memorial Reformed Church in New York City and the new president of the RCA African-American Black Council, was our devotional leader. A native of Montego Bay, Jamaica, she was raised in Brooklyn and has been an active member of the RCA since her youth.

There was also information about other storytelling projects going on in the RCA and how participants from this conference can help make those reality.

Women’s Stories Day has been hosted by the Reformed Church Center at Â鶹ÊÓƵ and the RCA Office of Women’s Transformation and Leadership annually since 2016.

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Third Reformed Church Center Colloquy Looks at Women in Theological Education

Our ongoingÌýUnderstanding Theological Education in the RCAÌýcolloquies reflect on what theological education has been in the RCA and what it could be. For our third session, on Tuesday, November 17, we will discuss women in RCA theological education. Until the 1970s, women were not ordained to offices in the Reformed Church in America. It has only been the last forty-one years that the idea of women ministers of the Word and Sacrament have been acknowledged in the church order. But that doesn’t mean women weren’t involved in theological education before that, nor does it address how such an idea has been accepted since then. Our discussion will reflect on the past and present of women in RCA theological education, and maybe speculate on what the future could be and how it could happen.

Lynn Japinga is a professor of religion at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, and was the 2019-2020 Hazel B.ÌýGnadeÌýFellow in RCA Women’s Studies at Â鶹ÊÓƵ.ÌýAn RCA minister of the Word and Sacrament, she holds degrees from Hope, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Union Theological Seminary in New York. In addition to her teaching at Hope, Lynn has been a prolific author of books, articles and resources for the church, and a busy preacher, teacher, and workshop leader. Most recently, she is the author ofÌýLoyalty and Loss: The Reformed Church in America, 1945-1994Ìý²¹²Ô»åÌýPreaching the Women of the Old Testament: Who They Were and Why They Matter.

Elizabeth (Liz) Testa is a pastor, visionary leader, community builder, and sister in Christ. A minister of Word & Sacrament in the RCA, she currently leads RCA Women’s Transformation and Leadership, a ministry that encourages, equips and empowersÌýwomen to embrace their gifts, honor their stories and live into their God-given callings. Prior to joining the RCA staff in 2014, she spent 12 years on staff at Marble Collegiate Church in NYC. Raised bi-culturally in New York and Spain, with degrees from Syracuse University and Drew Theological School, Liz is passionate about building bridges between diverse cultures and contexts and is certified in Unconscious Bias Training through the Cultural Intelligence Center (CIC). She lives with her husband, Nick, a NYC high school teacher, and their two teenage daughters in South Orange, NJ.

Liz and Lynn will each present, briefly, looking at the history of women in RCA theological education and where we are now, after which we will have time for questions and discussion.

There will be two more programs in this series during 2020-21:

• January 19, on the Ministerial Formation Certification Agency, with Cor Kors.
• February 23, on Certifying Fitness for Ministry, with Carol Bechtel, Micah McCreary, and Felix Theonugraha.

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The Reformed Church in America’sÌý 2020 Vision Team put in two years of dedicated and difficult work looking for a way forward for the denomination, ready to report to the General Synod in June. The unforeseen pandemic, however, left us with no Synod to whom to report, and a year to reflect upon the report as we get ready to discern God’s will and pray for the 2021 Synod.Ìý

The Reformed Church Center, as part of its mission to help the church reflect on what it means to be Reformed in the twenty-first century, is planning a series of three webinars to help the church reflect on what the 2020 Vision Report proposes. The goal is to be as completely objective as possible: each program will seek to define what is different about the report’s proposals from the current polity of the church. These will not be sessions for deciding what is right or wrong—everyone will do that in other venues—or for strategizing about how to respond, but simply to help all participants better understand what the report says and why.

The first program in our Planning and Preparing for the 2020 Vision series will deal with Part One of the report, Together, Yet Changed, which discusses the denominational structure. On Saturday, October 3, 2020, at 10:00 am, we will begin with brief presentations, and then continue with questions and discussion. Stephen Mathonnet-VanderWell, co-pastor of Second Reformed Church in Pella, Iowa, with his wife, Sophie, holds a Ph.D. from Boston College and teaches for both Central College and Western Theological Seminary. John Messer, executive for the Regional Synod of the Great Lakes, is a former strategic intelligence officer for the US Army and a member of the 2020 Vision Team.

There is no charge for participating in this webinar, but all participants need to register at .

Webinars to look at the two other sections of the report are scheduled for December 12, 2020, and February 13, 2021, respectively.

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