23 Aug GS 2022 art 110

GS 2022 Article 110 – Appeals against GS 2019 Art. 142 (Application of CO Art. 55)

1.   Material

• 1.1    Appeals against GS 2019 Art. 142 from the Fergus-Maranatha CanRC (8.6.8.1) and the Calgary CanRC (8.6.8.2) asking GS 2022 to judge that GS 2019 “erred in giving the SCBP the mandate to provide the churches with a list of songs for immediate testing, in the worship services” and to “re-affirm the principle that CO Article 55 limits the use of psalms and hymns in the worship services to those approved by General Synod.”

2.   Admissibility

The appeals were declared admissible.

3.   Decisions

Synod decided:

• 3.1    To deal with the appeals together.
• 3.2    To sustain the appeals of the Fergus-Maranatha CanRC and the Calgary CanRC that GS 2019 (Art. 142) erred, because it had approved sight unseen the songs for use in worship.

4.   Grounds

• 4.1    Re 3.1: Both appeals request the same judgments.
• 4.2    Re 3.2: In CO Art. 55, the churches agreed that “The metrical Psalms adopted by general synods as well as hymns approved by general synod shall be sung in the worship services.”  While GS 2010 recognized that CO Art. 55 clearly limits “the churches’ singing to synodically-adopted songs” (Acts GS 2010 Art. 171 Cons. 3.5), it also recognized that a general synod may provisionally approve songs for use in worship in order to test them (Acts GS 2010 Art. 161 Cons. 3.3, Rec. 4).  However, in “giving the SCBP the mandate to provide the churches with a list of songs for immediate testing, in the worship services,” GS 2019 exceeded the limits imposed by CO Art. 55 by approving songs for use in the worship services sight unseen.

The following synod member abstained from voting as per CO Art. 32: Lyndon Kok.