Take time to explain unfamiliar movements of Christian worship. Explaining and teaching confession and forgiveness as part of our regular worship will make a striking difference in our churches and in society. When we explain the flow of worship, we also explain patterns that should be part of the rhythm and flow of a Christian’s life.

Reformed pastors love the Reformation—the nailing of 95 theses to the door, the “Here I stand” moment, the wonder of one man facing down the corrupt power of a Pharisaical empire. We love the battle cry of semper reformanda (“always reforming”) and our accompanying daydreams of reenacting Luther’s stand in our day. Yet too often we’re oblivious to lurking dangers that make our churches more like 16-century Rome than the reformers.

Translation was a cardinal virtue of the Reformation before it began. Since the time of Wycliffe and Tyndale, faithful saints have worked to put the Bible into the common language, into the vernacular. The goal of these efforts was to get God’s Word out in such accessible terms that, as Tyndale dreamed, the boy who drives the plow would know the Scriptures better than the scholar.

Does a vision of contextual translation fuel our churches today? Do our sermons and worship services translate in such a way that 20-something Starbucks workers feel as at home in our churches as the university professors? Let’s explore why we still need contextualization and some ways we should embrace it in today’s church.

Need for Translation

Reformed worship is Word-filled and Scripture-directed. We worship God as he commands and not according to our own whims. When we come to worship, we don’t ask “How inventive can we be?” but “What is most consistent with God’s Word?” Having set God’s glory and God’s Word as our aim, we then seek to educate and welcome people in ways that will clearly communicate the historic and biblical truths we profess.

But when Reformed churches, who rightly love history and the Word, refuse to do any contextualizing work, they can develop a class problem. Look around your church community. If you see predominantly educated, well-to-do, white-collar professionals, it may be that your church has failed to translate its Reformed heritage into the common tongue. Educated professionals more easily develop a palate for the beauty of antiquity, but most people today find ancient verbiage to be clunky, awkward, foreign, and cumbersome. In a word, it’s a distraction. 

What’s our objective as church leaders? It’s not to elevate people’s tastes but to elevate Jesus Christ. That doesn’t mean discarding excellence. It means knowing your context. The church in Yale’s backyard should look and sound different from the one off Road 22 in the Kansas wheat fields.

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