Reformation

The the­ol­ogy of Chris­tian­ity has needed fine tun­ing on numer­ous occa­sions. The Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans, for exam­ple, believed that they had missed the Sec­ond Com­ing, result­ing in a cor­rec­tion from Paul. The early churches dealt with fine-tuning issues such as whether or not Jesus was divine, who the Holy Spirit was, and even which doc­u­ments were to bib­li­cal canon and which were not.

Per­haps most famous, though, is the period of his­tory which is itself called the Ref­or­ma­tion, dur­ing which a vari­ety of men stood against the Roman Catholic Church by declar­ing such things as sal­va­tion by grace through faith alone.

This process has not ceased.

Churches today are just as they have always been: Filled with gen­er­ally well-intentioned folks who, rather than apply­ing the time-tested, God-blessed activ­ity of the Bere­ans, accept what their church lead­ers tell them with­out much ques­tion­ing at all.

Yet all the while, any­one from with­out their gath­er­ing is fair game for crit­i­cism & rebuke, espe­cially if such a person’s home church bears a label even slightly dif­fer­ent than theirs.

We need to start test­ing things. We need to stoke the fires of ref­or­ma­tion, purg­ing what is wrong from the church so that what is right may shine ever brighter.

Are you say­ing you know how to make a church perfect?

No, but I wish I could say that. I wish I knew what it would look like to live in true ortho­doxy & ortho­praxis. But I don’t.

What I intend to offer here are dif­fer­ent areas of ref­or­ma­tion which I believe need to occur. Some of them may not apply to your church; per­haps you’ve already embraced the right beliefs or prac­tices, and if that’s the case, keep it up!

There’s always room for ref­or­ma­tion toward bib­li­cal cor­rect­ness, and I trust that together we can progress toward that goal.