Embracing Your Reformed Roots

As our culture and society change, the church does find itself at a crossroads. Do we chase after our market share of the Christians in our community? Do we seek to discover what these people want in church and give it to them? Or, do we seek what God would have us to be as His people? Do we trust God to bless us through the means of grace, even in a changing world?

In the early years of my ministry, people told me that churches like mine would be dead in ten years. I have often been surprised how wrong these folks have been. I know of several churches that left the foundations of their past. They changed their worship, their programs, and got a total style transformation. Over the years, there has been a lot of pressure to change. Yet many of these churches, once the newness of these changes wore off, often shrank back below what they were before the major overhaul. They built on the novelty of innovation rather than the foundation of who they were as reformed churches.

Our churches can flourish if we will embrace our Reformed roots. Now, some want to run back and use our roots as an excuse not to engage with our modern culture. It is more comfortable to live in the past than in the present. Others dismiss our roots as dated, old-fashioned, and even legalistic as we embrace a standard. However, we face the storm winds of a secular America and as we see churches and denominations swept away with the culture and times, it is important to embrace our roots, so that we might not only hold fast but even flourish in our day.

Here are four ways I would suggest we can embrace our Reformed roots:

Embrace our traditions but reject our traditionalism. There have been many over the years who have spoken of this distinction between tradition and traditionalism. Those traditions based on solid biblical and theological teaching are great ways of continuing in the path of our forefathers. Traditionalism is the doing of something the same way because that is how it has always been done. Traditionalism is the doing of what is comfortable and familiar for the sake of making it easy. My former Practical Theology professor used to say that the seven last words of a dying church are, “we’ve never done it that way before.” If you have good traditions, embrace them. If you are stuck in the rut of doing the same things over and over again, then maybe things need to be adjusted. Our traditions should flow from our theological heritage and understanding of Scripture. For example, Psalm singing for my denomination has been a mark of who we were for years, even after we introduced hymns in the 1940s. However, in the late twentieth century, it met with a sharp decline. Psalm singing is making a recovery in our churches as we embrace our understanding of Scripture and our heritage. However, we have not returned to our old Bible Songs book, but rather with the help of the Reformed Presbyterians published our psalter. We have embraced our traditions while rejecting our traditionalism.

Embracing Your Reformed Roots

As we see churches and denominations swept away with the culture and times, it is important to embrace our roots, so that we might not only hold fast but even flourish in our day.

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