At the inaugural General Assembly of the World Reformed Fellowship (Orlando, Florida, 2000), it was determined that the WRF could serve the Church by preparing a new Statement of Faith for the 21st Century. The Board established the Commission on Theology as a permanent body that would carry out the task of developing such statement. The World Reformed Fellowship Statement of Faith was adopted at the Fourth General Assembly (São Paulo, Brazil, 2015) with as one of the confessions to which applicants for membership in the WRF may subscribe as part of the application process.

In 2011 the Board of Directors, meeting in Bethesda, Maryland, decided to set a new task for the Commission on Theology: to address the meaning and use of the word “Reformed” and the scope and meaning of the term “Reformed Theology.” The Commission on Theology completed this second task and presented the World Reformed Fellowship Statement of Reformed Theological Identity at the Fifth General Assembly of the WRF in Jakarta, in August 2019, where it was received and approved.

The Sixth General Assembly of the WRF (Orlando, 2022) received and approved the third major work produced by the Commission on Theology: the World Reformed Fellowship Statement on Ecclesiology. The WRF Statement of Faith had one chapter on ecclesiology (see Appendix 1). It was not possible, however, to cover in a short confessional statement the needed contours of all that is necessary about ecclesiology. The Statement on Ecclesiology goes on to spell out our understanding of ecclesiology in much greater detail.

All three of these documents stand together as examples of true Reformed ecumenicity. They are faithful to the Reformed confessions, truly global in origin and nature and very actual and current within the context of the global Reformed community within the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ.