Rev Bill

David over at Jolly Blogger has a great post on what he considers to be "the difficulty of being always reformed."

I am not sure who is reading my blog, so if anyone needs some information about what this whole "reformed" thing is you can click here for an article from WikiPedia.

As Daved sees it, when we say "the reformed church is always reforming," or, as David notes the more "highbrow" say:"ecclesia semper reformans, semper reformanda", we come upon something that is easy to talk about — but hard to put into practice.

This is how he puts it:

This is one of those things that sounds like a great idea until someone actually tries to do it.

Why is it hard to put into practice?

David has many fine points in his post that I am not going to go over here — I hope you go to his post and read it. For me, the problem is that:

1. Reforming is not always a good thing 2. Not reforming is not always a good thing.

In other words, reforming just for the sake of reforming is wrong. There need to be reasons — Scriptural reasons — for the change. Reforming simply to "appeal to a new generation" is not a valid reason for reform. However, saying we will never reform and never even considering change might be refusing to go in new directions God truly wants us to go. If we always reformed with every new idea that came along we might lose our particular identity and witness as a the church. But if we always refused to reform we might not be listening to God’s will. Without reform all Christians might still be worshipping in the same way and doing the same things — or — to take it even further — without reform we might not be Christians in the first place!

Reform definately has it’s place. But it has to be done carefully — and prayerfully. And — in my opinion — each reform does not have to be for everyone. Not everyone followed the original reformers (Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Knox, etc.) — and not everyone has to follow each reform. In fact, David at Jolly Blogger and I will not agree on everything — we represent 2 different branches of the Presbyterian Church — but we can still get along — learn from each other — read each other’s blogs — and give the message of Christ to the world.

So — reforming has it’s place. But reforming is not the answer at all times — and neither is not reforming. On matters of reform, we need to pray for God to lead us — study scripture — listen to what God is saying — and listen to each other.

Until next time — Peace! Bill

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