My Reformation Proposal

For the past twenty five years my life has been shaped by the reformation. The great reformers such as Luther and Calvin have shaped my faith and given me the tools to frame life within the basic teaching of scripture. I consider them heroes; particularly Martin Luther, who risked his life in taking on the only known expression of Christianity and the most powerful entity in the world. His words, "Here I stand; I can do no other. God help me." still echo within my soul. Not as words of defiance, but as words of resolve and commitment to the truth of scripture in the face of church practice.

What were the conditions existing in the church of his day that brought out such heroic actions and such powerful words? I suggest that several prominent themes were behind the wayward activity of the church needing this kind of radical reform. Among these themes were several of note:

1. Church leaders who left the radical call of Jesus to serve their churches by making disciples for the promise of power, influence, and prestige that lay waiting for them. They became infatuated with big, infatuated with wealth, infatuated with privilege, and infatuated with the influence they could wield in the world of political power.
2. A prevailing theme of heaven and hell that crowded out the more prominent matters of faith and obedience established in the first covenant with Israel, confirmed by Jesus in his call to the Kingdom, and fleshed out by the apostles in the Epistles. Ultimately heaven became a commodity that was bought and sold with the proceeds going to the church. The church became the only official means in which heaven was attainable. The Great Commission of the church to go and make disciples was supplanted with an obsession to transport the masses to heaven regardless of the spiritual condition of their lives.
3. A process that transformed the rich tradition of the biblical text into an organizational and missional manual to support church practices, structures, activities, and dogma. The richness of the Story of God was contorted into a slice and dice compilation of principles that were used to build a faith empire. The result was an empowered church to which people owed their allegiance, service, money, and talents.

These three themes along with numerous others all worked to produce a church that needed awakening. That awakening came in the form of a call to return to the simplicity and discipline of scripture. The question we must ask today is are we now in need of another awakening? It seems to me that we are dangerously close to many of the very things that evoked that historic protest years ago.

Though no one is asking me, here are my suggestions for a new reformation:

1. Restore the radical call to make disciples. This is hard tedious work in which church leaders are transformed from corporate CEO's or privileged clergy into servants who impart the faith, the whole faith, to others. This will require a transition from organizational power and clergy privilege to relational servanthood.
2. Restore the rich Jewish heritage of the faith. The church's departure from Judaism begun by Constantine has radically altered the faith. In replacing the Hebrew mindset for a Greek mindset we have become a faith of assent rather than transformation. Mix in the values of the Enlightenment and Modernity and you see a faith that has become little more than moralism on the one side or transcendentalism on the other.
3. Restore the importance of the whole of scripture. Rather than starting with where we are and using the Bible as handbook for a better life, we need to move into the story of scripture. For most people, the Bible goes from Genesis 3 straight to the Cross and then to Revelation. This has resulted in an ongoing tragic unfolding of misinformation and an unfortunate rewriting of faith history.
4. Restore the preeminence of the biblical theme of Kingdom. The Kingdom of God was the message of Jesus and his words were directed to life in that Kingdom. Replacing Kingdom with heaven has caused churches to rewrite their mission statements from making disciples to issuing travel tickets to the other world.
5. Restore the importance of spiritual communities of believers who live missionally together in order to impact their world. Take back the ideas of salt and light from the clutches of institutional program and restore it to the tough work of loving one another and our neighbors. By this will all men know we are his disciples.
6. Restore the idea that Christianity is hard work and only advances through the hard fought efforts of people paying the price to be holy. While grace was at the heart of the first reformation, obedience needs to be at the heart of this one. Because of the grace that is ours, we can be different and being different makes the ultimate difference.

Well...that's my list. To add another would make seven and that would imply that it is perfect. Six will do for now. I feel so much better now that I have fixed the church. Now....if I can only figure out how to love my enemies...