Always Reforming

To lose money, Unfortunate. To lose belongings, Disappointing. To lose a job, Manageable. To lose an opportunity, Defeating. To lose your way, Confusing. To lose a person, Irretrievable.

It's been almost a year, It feels like yesterday. It's been almost a year now, It feels like a lifetime ago.   It's been almost a year, And still, I dream of you, Back at school, Baseball games, Unfinished goals, I'm just a stupid kid again. It's been almost a year, And yet, I pull out my phone to text you Things I think you'd want to know, Meatloaf died, Faith Church closed, Michigan finally beat OSU. It's been almost a year, And how! The longest year of my life, And the quickest, too, Too much change, Yet not enough, Many, too many early graves. It's been almost a year? Wasn't it yesterday? It's been almost a year now? Are you sure it wasn't a lifetime ago?

When a church becomes nothing more than a therapeutic self-help institution, it loses the very thing for which it strives-- relevance .  If people want therapy, they have plenty of options--friends, lovers, counsellors, even the bottle--many of which are more fun and/or less expensive.  What people need from the Church is not therapy, but the Gospel.   Now, there may be instances where this life-altering Gospel alleviates the need for therapy.  When people are taught to seek first the Kingdom of Christ, other benefits--mental, physical, emotional, and financial--often accrue.  Nevertheless, that is not the primary role the Church has been called to fill.  The Gospel may occasionally replace therapy, but therapy can never replace the Gospel.

One of the most common exhortations throughout the Scriptures is to  stand firm, endure, etc .  The letters of Paul are particularly replete with this clarion call to hold fast to the Faith in the face of heresy and persecution.  One of the most famous, and perhaps most controversial, of these passages is found in 2 Thessalonians 2:15 : So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter. Hmm... I think this is one of those passages that many people have read over time and time again without really comprehending what is being said.  As a member of a denomination that is historically tied to the Protestant Reformation, I am forced to ask:  How do Protestants account for this? The Reformers, disenchanted with the endless traditions of the Roman Catholic Church, established the Scriptures as their exclusive foundation for doctrine, practice, and worship.  They viewed themselves not as revolutionaries, but as rest