Alliance of Reformed Churches

Heritage

The Alliance of Reformed Churches launched in 2021, formed largely by congregations departing the Reformed Church in America amid its long dispute over sexuality and governance. Rather than constitute another denomination with graded assemblies, the founders built a network: congregations affiliate relationally, organized around shared theological commitments and mission rather than judicial structure. It drew RCA congregations of evangelical conviction, along with churches from adjacent Reformed streams, in the same 2021-2023 parting that also produced the Kingdom Network.

Theological family

Evangelical Reformed: historic Reformed theology and the authority of Scripture, with the traditional position on marriage and sexuality among its defining commitments; the network frame leaves room for varied Reformed confessional accents among member churches.

Who decides what

A relational network by design: light central staffing, affiliation by covenant rather than by court, and congregational property and governance kept local — the deliberate opposite of the assembly structure its founders left.

What a first-time visitor would find

Worship varies by congregation — many arrive from RCA backgrounds spanning traditional Reformed services to contemporary evangelical styles — and the network prescribes none of it.

What it has always cared about

Mission over machinery; theological clarity on the questions that occasioned its founding; and the bet that relationships can do the connective work denominations built courts for.

Its gift to the wider church

Along with its sibling networks, the ARC is a live test of whether the Reformed tradition's connectional instinct can survive translation into network form — an experiment the whole denominational world is watching.

Commonly confused with

Most confusingly, with the Association of Related Churches — a large, unrelated evangelical church-planting network that also uses the initials ARC, as our data note warns; and with the Kingdom Network, the other post-RCA network of the same era, a distinct organization.

Range of views inside it

A young network of varied congregations; range in worship, size and Reformed accent is expected, and the network's own shape is still settling.

Where Alliance of Reformed Churches churches are on the map

1 Alliance of Reformed Churches congregations appear on The Church Map, across 1 states.

• Michigan — 1

Moments this body was part of

• 2021–2023 — The Reformed Church in America parts

  The Reformed Church in America — planted in New Amsterdam in 1628, the oldest Protestant body in continuous ministry in North America — saw more than two hundred congregations depart between 2021 and 2023 over sexuality and governance, many joining the newly formed Alliance of Reformed Churches or the Kingdom Network. The 2021 General Synod adopted recommendations for regulated, "gracious" separation, releasing churches with their property.

  The oldest Protestant body on the continent chose to let congregations go with their buildings and its blessing — a parting conducted as neighbors rather than as litigants, and both streams still confess the same catechism.