The General Secretary of the RCA, Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, has served in the office for 16 years. (General Secretary is similar to Stated Clerk in a Presbyterian context.)

The following letter was posted on the RCA website on Tuesday:

Dear friends,

After much discernment and prayer, it has become clear to me that I should conclude my service as general secretary in the coming year. To facilitate a smooth transition, I expect to serve until the fall of 2011, following the approval of a new general secretary at our next General Synod.

My service as general secretary of the Reformed Church in America, which began in 1994, has been rooted in a strong experience of God’s calling. Now I believe that I have completed the particular contributions I was called by God to make in the life of the RCA. As we are now in the last phase of Our Call, and begin to discern the RCA’s mission and vision beyond 2013, it seems timely to seek a new general secretary who will serve and lead the RCA into the future.

It has been a joy to serve the RCA and witness God’s power as we follow Christ in mission. I will be forever grateful for God’s call on my life over these 17 years. Together, we can expect and trust the Spirit’s ongoing work to shape our future witness and mission.

The General Synod Council will begin the process of establishing a search committee, according to the provisions of its bylaws. We will keep you updated as this process continues in the coming months.

With a grateful heart,
Wes Granberg-Michaelson

Prior to becoming General Secretary of the RCA, Granberg-Michaelson served for six years on the staff of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva, Switzerland where his responsibilities included serving as director of Church and Society and serving as moderator of the task force on relations with evangelicals.

A graduate of Hope College he served for eight years on the staff of U.S. Senator Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon and from 1976 to 1980 served as managing editor of Sojourners Magazine. (In fact, he was one of the ‘founders’ of the self-described progressive Christian commentary on faith, politics and culture.)

Granberg-Michaelson was a proponent for the RCA adoption of the Belhar Confession during its 2010 General Synod. In March, two-thirds of the RCA’s 46 regional bodies voted to officially add Belhar as their fourth foundational statement of belief, and June’s General Synod ratified the earlier action with a 163-41 vote.

“This is a way to ground our commitment to justice and to reconciliation and to unity,” said the RCA’s general secretary, Wes Granberg-Michaelson. “This means that every theological student will be shaping their faith in light of not only the Heidelberg, the Belgic and the Canons of Dort but also the Belhar Confession.”

With a little more than 150,000 members in the United States, the RCA is the oldest Protestant denomination (founded in 1628) with a continuous ministry in North America, according to the 2010 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches.

Granberg-Michaelson, in his report to the 2010 Synod meeting, said the most critical challenge facing the Reformed Church in America is making the transition from being a settled denomination to becoming a missional church. The denomination has seen an overall membership decline of 8 percent since 2003, he noted.

Granberg-Michaelson was also a leader in the early years of “The Greening of Protestant Thought,” according to Robert Booth Fowler, author of a book by that title. Fowler writes that Granberg-Michaelson “is a radical Christian environmentalist.”

It is clear that the choice of a new General Secretary will be a major effect on the future of the RCA. That choice will point either to maintaining the policies and positions of the past 16 years under Granberg-Michaelson or to returning to a more evangelical point of view for the future.