REFORMATION - 2006

Reformation does not take place in an arena of certainty! The reformers of each and every age were fully aware that great risk was involved in institutional change. Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, Knox, Zwingle, Cranmer - all were maligned by their contemporaries and chastised by their superiors. Each risked personal well being and professional integrity in the cause of reform. Ostracized at times by friends and alienated from colleagues, they nevertheless pursued the course of their convictions with relentless faith.

Yet following each chapter of the Church's continual reformation comes a time of settling-in, of institutional stability, and of personal security. The anguish of reformation is replaced by the process of growth and new relationships.

While we appreciate the risks taken by the reformers, we also covet the stability of the institutions they created. We pray for security, protection, and stability. We do not welcome the anxieties of turbulence of change - even necessary change.

And this is where we find ourselves this Reformation 2006 - between confronting those areas of our life that call for reform and maintaining the stability of our congregation, between calling for renewal and claiming God's saving peace.

We dare not tamper with this tension. Our hymns, prayers, liturgy, and thoughts need to embrace both the righteous cause and the calming peace, both the necessity of speaking out and the need to maintain a loving quietude, both the call to right what is wrong and the call to preserve what is good, both the confrontation and the reconciliation, and through our worship there is always going to be a need for reformation.

Pastor Merle Bolte