A Note on the Reforming and Reformish

As one who has lived in a mixed full-gospel/Pentecostal/charismatic environment from grade school up until my late 30s, I’ve never had a shortage of weird and funny stories to tell from my experiences. There was that time we pursued the “manifestations” of the Holy Spirit, when during the service I jumped and laughed hysterically for a quarter of an hour across the room in the middle of my churchmates who were either howling, shaking, acting drunk, rolling on the floor, or laughing hard themselves. In another time, we had a deliverance session in a hall which involved “vomiting” out the devil from our abdomen. I remember being late from this session. On my way to the hall I came across one of our “pastoras” who was on her way to the restroom. Turns out she got “slain” by the Holy Spirit during the deliverance session only to fall on a puddle of vomit on the floor. When I got to the hall, one of our pastors was helplessly working with a mop to get rid of the vomit, but to no avail. I had my turn with the “deliverance”. It wasn’t a pretty sight. I just had hot chocolate an hour before.

I was in college when we left the first church I grew up in. There was a huge financial scandal involving the pastor couple leading the church which prompted us to leave. My dad, who was already an ordained pastor then, decided to plant a church with some friends. We avoided the financial improprieties of the church we left. But apart from that we carried the prosperity gospel and hyper-charismatic practices in our new church. We loved fads. When the seeker-sensitive movement became popular we dabbled and made many changes to our services to make them more sensitive for seekers. When the G12 movement came in, we started our own Encounter-God-Retreats and small groups. When spiritual warfare became vogue we went out on prayer marches. One time, a visiting pastora taught us to “reclaim the land” by the blood of Christ. We would have communion at church and prepare several extra pitchers of the blood (grape juice) to bring to our march. We would then form teams and walk around our neighborhood while pouring the “blood” around, in hopes that these will drive away demonic spirits and pave the way for opening to the gospel. I was in a team with some other young people. One of them pointed to a house occupied by INC members. Needless to say, we grape-juiced their fence.

Our shift to an evangelical, reformed faith wasn’t sudden and was not easy. We resisted in the beginning. My personal gateway to Calvinism was through John Piper and DesiringGod. My dad, who was our then senior pastor, was invited and joined a fellowship of reformed pastors where he eventually turned to the reformed faith. We started transitioning in 2015, but much of the focus was on soteriology. We studied and taught on the Solas, on God’s sovereignty and the doctrines of grace. After the lockdowns of the pandemic we found an opportunity to “reboot” the church. We were exposed to the books of 9Marks. We re-did our membership class starting from the pastors, the ministry leaders and our (all-women) deacons. We thought we were all set and our transition was done. Little did we know that we were just scratching the surface.

The next thing we did was to get rid of our leadership structure and establish a plurality of elders. At some point, the local reformed organization we were in started talks in joining a global reformed denomination. We were given a set of questions we didn’t even think about before. Foremost was our confession of faith. We had to settle what confession to follow and after much study and discussions decided on the Westminster standards. Our elders started studying and catechizing our members. Later on, we realized we have to take steps to follow the confession. We worked on our liturgy, deciding to adopt the regulative principle of worship. We also studied and embraced covenant theology and explicitly rejected dispensationalism. It seems like we made a lot of progress and it is now almost ten years since we started transitioning, but even after these changes, we know we are still not yet done. We know that we are not yet fully conformed to the standards we pledged to follow. There is still much to study and adjust. By God’s grace we will move forward.

I am sharing our experience for several reasons.

First of course is to give glory to God. We were very steeped in the Pentecostal/charismatic movement for more than 25 years. It is not easy to change the church culture you have grown up in. Our transition was not smooth. I would even say it was bloody. We lost people when we changed soteriology. We lost people even when we adjusted our liturgy. We went through a lot of heated discussions with people who disagreed. There were many instances when we thought we knew what we were doing but were actually clueless. We were only able to learn, to transition and persevere in our transition by God’s grace.

Second is to explain why we maintain fellowship with our friends who are still in full-gospel churches. We still get involved with churches and church associations that include a wide spectrum of denominations. When given a chance to preach or teach, we take the opportunity and through these try to promote the reformed faith. We are doing this in the hope that some of these pastors and churches might get interested, study further, and at some point transition just as we did.

Third is to show why we are patient with those “reforming” and “reformish” who have not yet transitioned fully. It was through God’s providence that we “discovered” the reformed faith. We have been encountering many other pastors and churches who are experiencing the same, especially during the pandemic. A great majority of these are currently either not subscribing to a reformed confession (something they probably are not even aware of yet) or may have one but not yet following fully. We went through the same, so we understand. As a church we would still fellowship with pastors who are still grappling to understand and apply the doctrines of grace. We would still mix in and fellowship with other churches who have not embraced the regulative principle of worship. We actually had a former pastor who was opposed to us fellowshipping with “unreformed” pastors. Our response was that this fellowship might help them reform or encourage those who are already in transition. God has been patient with us throughout our pre-reformed years, during our transition and even now while we are not yet done; shouldn’t we be patient with them?

We celebrate when the “reformish” churches adopt “small” changes, such as rejecting the prosperity gospel, or embracing cessationism of the apostolic gifts, or doing expository preaching, or in adopting the five solas, or even in starting to have a culture of reading and studying. In looking back, we see how spiritually impoverished we were in our pre-transition years. Even if these reforming/reformish churches have not yet transition fully, we celebrate with them every step they take in that transition, no matter how small. Any improvement from an impoverished state is cause for rejoicing.

This is also the reason why we love and support organizations such as the Philippine Gospel Network. The PGN meetings, in our experience, have become a haven for reforming pastors, which could help guide and encourage them in their transitions. We also celebrate the variety of “reformed” conferences, seminars and workshops all over the country. These conferences might not turn a reforming church into a WCF-adhering church overnight, but they might help provide a little push to these same churches to take small steps, again something that causes us to rejoice.

We at our church are looking forward to the time when we would have adhered totally to the Westminster Standards. At the moment, we are taking steps and working on following the WCF with regards to the Lord’s day. The change is coming slowly and painfully. But by God’s grace we will get there. And by God’s grace, we will love and be patient with and help our brothers and sisters in other churches who are still where we were before. We will celebrate when the “unreformed” starts reforming. We will celebrate also when the reforming keeps taking even small steps towards becoming a fully reformed church. All through God's grace, so to God be all the glory.