Rare As a White Crow (1)
Barry Gritters examines Abraham Kuyper's observation that church discipline was rare in 19th-century Netherlands and reflects on whether this danger threatens the Protestant Reformed Churches today. The article affirms that discipline remains actively practiced in the PRC through consistory action and classis oversight, while exploring the historical and practical factors that can lead to its neglect in Reformed churches.
"Rare as a white crow" is Abraham Kuyper's description of how scarce discipline was in the church of his day. It was as rare as a white crow. I have seen a lot of crows in my life. We used to hunt crows once in a while in the orange groves outside of town. Waves of crows -- "murders" of them, as they say -- flew out of the foothills in the evenings to scavenge in the landfills at night. Never saw a white crow. And that was Kuyper's point. In the Netherlands of his day (1837-1920), Kuyper...
Full article available on sb.rfpa.org