I’ve considered myself Reformed for my entire life, which is really just to say, I have never considered myself anything else.

This is a low bar, I know. For much of my life my “being Reformed” was fairly casual—I attended a Reformed-minded church, and when I was exposed to other doctrines I appreciated them while still knowing they smelled funny to my Reformed sniffer.

Yet when I decided to attend Calvin Seminary, I wasn’t sure how to respond when a friend asked what made me “Reformed.” I could give a lot of facts, I could tell her what it meant to me. However, providing a cohesive answer to “why are you Reformed” wasn’t something I’d ever had to do. Throughout seminary, I developed a robust understanding of Reformed theology, creeds, and history. I thought I could have answered the “why are you Reformed?” question with ease. But in reality, spewing information about the Reformed tradition was nothing like knowing what my heritage meant to me.

I am a member of one of the 30+ formerly-CRCNA (Christian Reformed Church in North America) churches who have recently disaffiliated from our denomination. Now my church is independent, or as we prefer to say “disaffiliated.” The idea of being an “independent” church is unfamiliar and ill-fitting after belonging to the CRCNA since our inception.

We’re wrestling with our history, our identity, and our hopes for the future. The idea of being Reformed has become complicated in ways it never was before—for some, it’s simply who they’ve always been. For others, it’s a crucial part of their faith. And for another group, it’s a tricky piece of baggage that now represents a forced exile. 

The “Reformed” label had become a comfortable garment, one that could easily be taken for granted. Being Reformed, in many ways, involves being part of a shared tradition or denominational structure. But it’s more than that, too—it’s a shared theological accent that ties us together, even when our labels shift and change. If we don’t carry the “Reformed” label as a church for some amount of time, how do we articulate this belief? And as individuals, how does “being Reformed” shape our own faith? 

As we’ve thought about the new details of our church, it wasn’t long before someone suggested a tagline that began with, “belong.” “It’s the Heidelberg Catechism,” someone else was quick to say. It’s perfect, we agreed. Regardless of our denomination, the letters following our church name, or how explicit we are in our language about the creeds or confessions, our identity as a Reformed church begins with the belief that we belong to God. 

Last week, I told my four year old son that we would be seeing a baptism in church. I reminded him of his and his sister’s baptism, and shared with him again what baptism means in the only words I know how: “baptism reminds us that we belong to God,” I told him.

It wasn’t much different from a conversation we’d had six months or so ago, when he was afraid and I told him something that comforts me when I’m upset: “I belong, my body and soul, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.” The Heidelberg Catechism might not be the first thing that comes to mind for comforting a four year old, but in the moment of being asked a hard question as a parent, it spilled out of me like a familiar tongue. “What does that mean, Mommy? That we belong to God?” 

I’ve never been confronted with this question so starkly as I have these past few years, nor have I known its answer so deeply. I’ve never been so thankful, either, that when the question came from someone so important, I knew how to answer it—because I am Reformed.

To belong to God means that I am not my own, that my identity lies not in my name in the roll book of a denomination, but to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. To belong to God means that I am free from the tyranny of the devil and the slavery of my sin and in the hands of my Savior. To belong to God means that I am held by the one who watches over me so closely that not even a hair can fall from my head without his knowledge of it, even if my name is lost to my former community. To belong to God means that I am sure of my place in a heavenly kingdom, even if my place in my denominational home is lost. 

I know all of this because I am Reformed—because the tradition shaped my theological formation in ways that placed God as the initial actor, the instigator, of my salvation. Why am I Reformed? My answer can be summarized so sweetly and simply that even my four year old can begin to understand it: because, first and foremost, I know that I belong to God.