Semper Reformanda?

“The reformed church is always reforming.” At least that’s what the motto says, but it is worth some reflection—if the reformed church is indeed always reforming, then what specific areas of the church is this generation of church leaders called to reform?

I asked the co-pastors at my church this question. In full-disclosure, we are not a truly reformed church. We are baptistic evangelicals more than anything else. Nevertheless, we came up with a list of seven areas that churches in our stream of Christianity could set themselves to reforming.

1. Seek to eliminate moral therapeutic deism. It is too easy to buy into the lie that the church’s role is to give people better lives. The reformation was about the recovery of the gospel—the gospel preached and the gospel lived. There are obviously implications to the gospel that affect daily lives, and that is exactly why this is a serious temptation. It becomes too easy to see the connection of the gospel to life, and take that connection as license to labor for the fruit rather than the root. So often our ministry can be focused on dos and don’ts of marriage/parenting/life, and miss the central nature of the gospel.

Lest you fancy your church as immune to this critique, ask yourself: if someone gave a call to worship, or an ABF lesson, or sermon application, or small group discussion that was entirely about being a better dad, would it fit in or stand out? Would it be accepted as part of the church, or recognized as an errant focus?

2. Seek to root-out the influence of psychology.** This is closely related to the first need. Through twists of culture, the seeker church’s attempts to make the church like the mall (something for everyone!s), and the nefarious attacks of secular psychology, psychological thinking has rooted itself in evangelicalism. Church leaders too easily buy the notion that it is their job to help people with psychological issues, and yet simultaneously declare that psychology is out of reach of the Bible student. This creates a paradox—psychology is deemed to have essential information for the church, yet the pastors of the church are deemed to be unequipped for this “essential” task. The result is that psychological terms, concepts, and structures become features of the church yet detached from the pastoral leadership. This ought not to be.

3. Obliterate the perception that being a Christian means voting Republican. In the United States, the more the Democratic Party focuses on so-called “abortion rights,” the more Christians ought to oppose them. But the corollary—that somehow being a Christian compels an elephant voting ticket—just isn’t true. By pushing the extremely misleading and blatantly false statistic that 80% of white evangelicals voted for President Trump, the gospel becomes the victim of voting. It is good for Christians to speak out for the human dignity of the unborn, and it is essential to condemn the murder of innocents. But we do so because of God’s word, not for politics. The church’s job is to promote a spiritual solution to a spiritual problem. The gospel is emasculated when churches pretend that God has called us to direct how people vote for secular offices.

4. Recover the preaching against sin. Christians are called to condemn sin, not “bad choices.” Yet much preaching fails to confront, and instead minimizes the radical nature of sin. Even general indictments—i.e. “everyone sins”—while true, can end up shielding the listener from conviction. For fear of offending, pastors seldom preach against divorce, stealing, worldliness, or other specific sins. Having become averse to the negative connotations of fundamentalism, we wrongly avoid the right part of fundamentalism: namely, the preaching against sin. I grant that this truth is not grammatically correct, but here it is anyway—the gospel preacher cannot only be the bearer of good news. Or at the very least, he must show the danger of the bad news to exalt the nature of the good news. The reality of repentance should be exalted, but instead it is neglected because the identifying of sins that make it necessary are often glossed over.

5. Esteem seminary. Modern evangelicalism has denigrated the concept of seminary. A common scenario is that a man is made a pastor because he has shown some aptitude for it. A worse (and more common) scenario is that a man is made a pastor because he has had some kind of experiential call, is well liked, and the church has a need. Too often training is overlooked. The Spurgeon exception has become the Spurgeon exemption, and results in pastors untrained in languages and systematic theology. Actually, the real result is churches ignorant of basic theological principles, such as the Trinity:

6. Preach and teach the Trinity, particularly the Holy Spirit. Trinitarian theology has fallen on hard times, and the doctrine (and person!) of the Holy Spirit has practically been evicted from many evangelical churches. We pray to Jesus, we sing to Jesus, and occasionally some thoughts or lyrics about the Father might break through. Meanwhile, because we rightly are not charismatics, we wrongly have adopted an attitude of “touch not the Lord’s Spirit.” We are too averse to seeing the Spirit’s leading in providence, in sanctification, and in salvation.

Arminianism is, of course, largely to blame for this. Because many evangelicals view salvation as “me accepting Jesus into my heart,” the most significant New Testament activity of the Holy Spirit (regeneration) is covertly ignored, if not overtly denied. Moreover, because the Trinity is clearly seen in the gospel only when the gospel starts with God’s plan to save, the Father’s will to elect, the Son’s will to die for his elect, and the Spirit’s will to seal his elect, an “ask Jesus into your heart” approach to evangelism essentially removes the Trinity from this whole enterprise! To recover Trinitarian thinking, we must recover Trinitarian salvation, namely the glorious doctrine of regeneration.

7. Kill the desire to alter the gospel to make it “more appealing” to the sinner. How often do we labor under the delusion that a more exciting presentation of the gospel would bring more people to Christ? The holy desire for revival can produce an unholy direction of styling the church for the non-Christian. Churches confuse practicality with evangelism, and the results are dangerous. Obviously we need enough parking spots and chairs; we need kind greeters, engaging preaching and decent music. But those obvious needs can morph into missions, as if once accomplished the gospel would go forth. The truth is, that thinking leads to the need for the previous items on this list. Once appealing to non-believers is accepted motivation for the church, then these other ailments (moral therapeutic deism, psychology, overlooking sin, downplaying theology, ignoring regeneration) all naturally follow.

If ecclesia evangelica est semper reformanda, then perhaps we could start with this list.