REFORMATION.

As I write this, America is going to the voting booth.

Regardless of one’s political leanings, I suspect that most of us are anxious to have the election over with. We’ve been bombarded from all sides with the need for reformation in our country – change, out with the old, in with the new. I don’t know of any candidate who is running on a “status quo, no change” platform. Everyone seems to want things to be reformed. We just don’t all agree on what and how.

Is it possible that the church of Jesus Christ must continually be reformed? Ultimately we are or should be being reformed into the image of Christ. That calls for a lot of change. In about 30 A.D. Jesus burst on the scene in Israel with a message of reform. The New Testament letters were virtually all targeting specific ways in which the church needed reform. Jesus’ seven letters to the seven churches of Asia (Revelation 2 and 3) near the end of the first century were nearly all calls for reformation.

The famous Protestant Reformation in the 16th century is famous for the radical change it brought about in the church as is the consequent and subsequent reformation in the Roman Catholic church.

Do we need reformation? Does our church need reformation? Or do we think the church as it is and as it does is a perfect reflection of what Jesus desires? Is Calvary Church passionately and effective carrying out Jesus’ mission in West Michigan and around the world? If Jesus wrote us a letter would He simply congratulate us for having our act all together, or would He call us to reformation with the kind of strong language we see in Revelation 2 and 3?

Status quo or reformation -- what do we need? What will be the result of keeping things as they are? What will be the result of reformation? What price will we pay if everything stays pretty much the same? What price will we pay if we follow the path of reformation?

What is the standard by which we determine if reformation is needed and how it should take place?