We often grow discouraged when we allow sin to put down deep roots in our hearts rather than committing ourselves to proving good soil for the work of the Spirit. We often grow discouraged when we interpret God through our negative circumstances rather than interpreting our difficult circumstances in light of our glorious God. 

“I offer two pieces of wisdom,” he told me, “two commitments you can make: Never be discouraged and never be a discourager.” I have thought deeply about this counsel and have decided it is good—mostly good.
I say “mostly good” because there are times when we cannot help but be discouraged, times when we are deflated and demoralized, when we lose confidence or enthusiasm. After all, this world is messy and this life is difficult. We have friends that hurt us, bodies that fail us, minds that betray us. We wage war against fierce and persistent enemies and endure the toughest of circumstances. So there are times when discouragement is unavoidable and neither sinful nor wrong.
Similarly, there are times when we cannot help but be discouragers, times when we need to take the wind out of another person’s sails by speaking firmly or warning soberly. We may have to deliver difficult news or announce just consequences. There are times when, for a higher purpose, it falls to us to express disapproval and, in that way, cause someone else to become downcast or dispirited. So too, there are times when being a discourager is unavoidable and neither sinful nor wrong.
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Recognizing that some separation is inevitable, we believe the RCA has an opportunity to act in an exemplary way by providing a generous exit path for those churches which decide to leave and by inviting those churches to also act generously. While the process currently outlined in the RCA Book of Church Order (BCO)…allows a classis to be generous with a church petitioning for withdrawal from the denomination, it also allows a classis to deny a church’s petition for withdrawal or to be less than generous in granting the withdrawal. Given that we are entering a period when there will likely be more petitions being put forth than has been typical, we believe it is the right time to provide more guidance for this process so that generosity is prescribed rather than simply permitted.

After spending hours in discernment groups related to the Vision 2020 Team’s recommendations on Thursday and Friday, delegates considered those recommendations in plenary session on Saturday afternoon and evening.
Marijke Strong, a member of the Vision 2020 Team, began the report by leading the synod in singing “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus.” She and fellow Vision 2020 Team members Thomas Goodhart and Brian Keepers presented the team’s three recommendations.
Following the conclusion of the Vision 2020 Team report on Saturday evening, the team was given a standing ovation in appreciation for their work.
Vision 2020 restructuring team approved
The Vision 2020 Team’s first recommendation, calling for a team to develop a restructuring plan for the denomination with a view to optimizing the RCA’s sustained spiritual and organizational health, was adopted after two hours of debate. Though six amendments were considered by the synod, in the end, only two words changed from the original recommendation. Read the full Vision 2020 Team report.
Read the full story. 
Mission agency recommendation denied
After nearly an hour of discussion that spoke volumes to the centrality of mission within the Reformed Church in America, the General Synod voted against the Vision 2020 Team’s recommendation to create a separate 501(c)(3) mission agency. As a result, RCA Global Mission will continue to exist with the RCA label.
Read the full story.
New regulations adopted for departing churches
The Vision 2020 Team recommended new rules and regulations for departing churches that would allow for mutually generous separation. The rules and regulations, spelled out in a ten-page recommendation, were adopted as proposed. They allow a local church to retain its property and other assets while being solely responsible for any liabilities. Read the new rules and regulations.
Read the full story.
Synod supports anti-racism work in the church
After the 2020 global reckoning with racism, General Synod 2021 approved five anti-racism recommendations on Saturday morning. These included a recommendation urging RCA assemblies to hold an annual one-day event dedicated to racism. For accountability, another recommendation, which came as a motion from the floor, adds a question to the Consistorial Report Form (CRF) about anti-racism training. The recommendations came from the African American Black Council, by way of the General Synod Council.
Related: RCA resources for dismantling racism
Committee on Emergencies will provide direction if General Synod can’t meet in the future
In a change prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, General Synod approved a new committee on emergencies. When the pandemic repeatedly delayed General Synod, the RCA had been stretching its church order to make decisions. (On Friday, delegates ratified some of those decisions.) The Commission on Church Order proposed the new emergency provisions. Other recommendations adopted from the Commission on Church Order clarified the process of transferring RCA ministers to another denomination.
Other business
The synod heard reports from its three racial/ethnic councils: the Council for Hispanic Ministries, the Council for Pacific and Asian American Ministries, and the African American Black Council. These racial/ethnic councils “express the collective vision and voice of racial and ethnic congregants and congregations as they develop ministries and advocate for policies of racial and ethnic inclusion, economic, social, and racial justice, both within the Reformed Church in America and ecumenically,” as outlined in the Book of Church Order. Synod approved four anti-racism recommendations that came to the synod from the African American Black Council, by way of the General Synod Council.
Seven of the 11 General Synod commissions gave reports on Saturday morning: Race and Ethnicity, Christian Worship, Christian Discipleship and Education, Women, Church Order, History, and Nominations.
The Commission on Christian Unity reported on Friday; other commissions will report Saturday night and Monday.
Source
Other articles on the RCA Synod:
LGBTQ inclusion disagreements threaten Reformed Church in America split
America’s Oldest Denomination Faces Split Over LGBT Issues

The church (regenerate persons) is, in the new covenant, the people of God. One biblical image or metaphor for the church, or the people of God, is that we are the “temple”—the “temple of the holy spirit” (1 Cor. 6:19). Would not then pastoral ministry—whether in Toone, Tennessee, or in Willow, Alaska, or in Manhattan, be equally concerned—as a part of the ministry, in taking care of the temple? The location is not particularly important—in terms of worth or value. Pastoral ministry at least includes the task of shepherding a flock, of helping the temple be all that it can be, of engaging in that kind of ministry that will prepare the bride to be “holy and without blemish,” one day to be presented back to the bridegroom (Ephesians 5:25ff).

Editor’s note: This message was originally given to the Cornerstone Network Conference on October 7, 2023 in Jackson, TN.
I have long had an interest in Francis Schaeffer. I am 58, which means I was a college freshman in Monroe, Louisiana, in the fall of 1983. I have distinct memories of going to the Christian bookstores (there was more than one) in Monroe and seeing various books by Schaeffer. He was one of InterVarsity Press’s key authors during those years—especially when it came to books on social issues and worldview and the pro-life movement.
Schaeffer was born in the Philadelphia area on January 30, 1912, and died in Rochester, Minnesota, on May 15, 1984. Many of us may have become aware of Schaeffer as a sporty looking older man with a goatee, wearing lederhosen, and lecturing in the Swiss Alps at L’Abri (“L’Abri” is French for “shelter”). But Schaeffer was quite American. He attended Westminster Theological Seminary for a year (founded in 1929), where he studied with Cornelius Van Til. He transferred after a year to Faith Theological Seminary (founded in 1937), a newly formed seminary closely aligned with, but not controlled by, the Bible Presbyterian Church. Schaeffer was the first graduate of Faith Theological Seminary. I will not go into further detail on that era of Schaeffer’s life except to note one interesting item: Schaeffer himself was a kind of “presuppositionalist,” though Van Til offered significant criticisms of Schaeffer’s method. One time Van Til and Schaeffer were brought together to try and discuss their differences. In the midst of that meeting, Van Til was asked to summarize his own approach to apologetics. Van Til apparently gave a particularly insightful and short summary of his own position. After he was done, Schaeffer commented that he wished it had been recorded, for what Van Til had said was in fact Schaeffer’s own position exactly, and Schaeffer said he would not disagree with a single thing Van Til had said.
But though Schaeffer was a very American man, he is known to many of us through his work at L’Abri in southwestern Switzerland, about 55 miles east of Geneva. He and his wife Edith moved to Switzerland in 1947 or 1948 (I have seen both dates) to start L’Abri, something of a Christian community, study center, or place of respite. Schaeffer and others at L’Abri would lecture, and there was plenty of time for discussion. Through word of mouth, many persons heard of L’Abri and found their way to this Swiss outpost. At one point, the Schaeffers were receiving around 31 visitors a week. Luminaries such as Os Guinness and Hans Rookmaaker would make their way to L’Abri and would be influenced by Schaeffer.
Many of us who came of age in the 1980s came to know of Schaeffer through a number of key works dealing with fundamental questions of apologetics:

The God Who is There
Escape from Reason
He is There and He is Not Silent

Or perhaps we came to know of Schaeffer through certain works dealing with general challenges in Evangelicalism. For example:

The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century
The Church Before the Watching World
The Great Evangelical Disaster

Or perhaps we came to know Schaeffer through his interest in certain culture issues, especially the moral question of abortion and the question of the role of civil government:

Pollution and the Death of Man
How Should We Then Live?
Whatever Happened to the Human Race?
A Christian Manifesto

But Schaeffer was also intensely interested in what we often call “spirituality.” Thus, he wrote such works as:

Two Contents, Two Realities
The New Super-Spirituality
True Spirituality
The Mark of the Christian
No Little People

I want to draw a few insights from that last book: No Little People, first published in 1974. This book is a collection of sixteen sermons. The first chapter is “No Little People, No Little Places”—the title of this talk.
No Little People
The initial theme of this chapter is Moses’s “rod.” In Exodus, Moses was called to go to Egypt and tell Pharaoh to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. You know this story. Moses engages in a conversation with the LORD concerning what he is to say when the Israelites doubt that the LORD has really spoken to Moses.
Exodus 4:2 reads: “The LORD said to him, ‘What is that in your hand?’ He said, ‘A [rod] staff.’” You know the story:

(4:2–4) The LORD tells Moses to throw his rod on the ground. He does, and it turns into a serpent. The LORD commands Moses to put out his hand and catch the serpent by the tail. He does so, and it turns back into a rod.
(4:5–7) The LORD then tells Moses to put his hand insides his cloak. He puts his hand inside his cloak, takes it out, and it has turned leprous “like snow.” God commands Moses to put his hand back in his cloak. He does, then takes it out, and it has returned to normal.
(4:8–9) For the third sign, the LORD tells Moses that he (Moses) will take some water from the Nile and pour it on the ground. It will turn to blood on dry ground.

Moses proceeds (4:10–12.) to express concern about his own speaking abilities. The LORD’s promise is straightforward: “Go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”
Moses still doubts (4:13), the LORD’s anger is kindled, and the LORD says that Aaron, Moses’s brother, will accompany Moses. The LORD promises to speak through them both, and Aaron—at least at this point of the story—will be the one to speak to the people on behalf of Moses (4:14–16).
4:17: Moses is reminded to take his rod.
Moses will depart from Jethro, his father-in-law (4:18), and when he departs he takes with him what is now called “the rod of God.” As Schaeffer sees it, the “rod of Moses” has become the “rod of God” (p. 6).
This rod shows up again in Exodus 7:15–17 where the LORD again gives Moses a certain command. Moses has gone to Pharoah more than once since his original call in Exodus 3. At this point in the story, the LORD says:
“15 Go to Pharaoh in the morning, as he is going out to the water. Stand on the bank of the Nile to meet him, and take in your hand the [rod] staff that turned into a serpent. 16 And you shall say to him, ‘The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, sent me to you, saying, “Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness.” But so far, you have not obeyed. 17 Thus says the LORD, “By this you shall know that I am the LORD: behold, with the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water that is in the Nile, and it shall turn into blood.’”
A couple verses later (4:17), we read:
“Thus says the LORD, “By this you shall know that I am the LORD: behold, with the [rod] staff that is in my hand I will strike the water that is in the Nile, and it shall turn into blood.”
The LORD says to Moses (4:19):
“Say to Aaron, ‘Take your [rod] staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over their rivers, their canals, and their ponds, and all their pools of water, so that they may become blood, and there shall be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, even in vessels of wood and in vessels of stone.’”
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