Frustration with the process led to a number of overtures to Synod 1993 calling for immediate ratification without a one year delay and despite the rejection of the proposals by the previous synod. Synod president Rev. Peter Brouwer ruled such proposals out of order at Synod 1993, but similar proposals are again being forwarded by a number of classes to Synod 1995. Of all the request for immediate ratification, Classis Lake Erie's is the most detailed. In eight pages of documentation, the classis tracked 88 changes and attempted changes made to items governed by Article 47 by 26 synods during the years following adoption of the 1965 revised church order to the present. In its summary of the data, the classis notes that the first case of ratification occurred in 1974 and the process only became standard in 1982.
Ratification is a common term in the secular world.
In United States constitutional law an amendment adopted by Congress must be ratified by state legislatures. The ecclesiastical equivalent of this procedure has been proposed and defeated frequently. As a result, Classis Lake Erie proposed to synod that the Article 47 supplement be revised to allow synod to immediately adopt any change in the church order made on the basis of a study committee report which is received by November 1 of the year before synod meets, but to submit all changes made on the basis of an overture or standing committee report in the synodical agenda to a following synod which will consider its advisability. Terrace CRC in East Lansing, Michigan, made a brief presentation on its merits. But the idea has sort of snuck in by the back door that you have to have one synod ratify the decisions of a previous synod.