Yes, I know it is almost Spring and not that season. But this has been on my mind, so here we go. It is about a strange situation that I have puzzled about for years – the non-starter of Reformation Day in almost all Protestant denominations and churches.
Fact -> If the pivotal event of Reformation Day had not occurred (by God’s grace, of course), then each and every single person in all Protestant denominational churches would today be a Roman Catholic or a non-believer, or both. In the majority of cases, they would not be saved.
Fact -> Not only does Reformation Day and the events thereof it go largely unnoticed and uncelebrated in most churches today, but those churches seems much more concerned with Halloween silliness than with any awareness of the events that shaped (and still does) their own denominational history.
What does this mean? What does it say about the church today?
I have, over the years, attended a number of churches – mostly Baptist and mostly Reformed to one degree or another. With one exception, they have proceeded to ignore the Reformation almost completely, as if the work of the Reformers of the 1500 and 1600s was largely unrelated to their freedom from Rome and their beliefs. The historic martyrs are simply lost.
I have no explanation other than intellectual hubris and entitlement of the first order, and I just don’t understand it. I see it as a failure of the congregation but much more a huge pastoral failure.
They look hither and yon for alternatives to Halloween, running about in many case with great angst over things are for the most part meaningless. At the same time, they ignore that which formed the foundation of their beliefs and which would provide something to celebrate in the Lord.
I can only attribute the phenomena to a subtle man centered philosophy that will concentrate on almost anything of flesh rather than celebrate the reality of the sovereign Spirit of God that has shaped their Christian reality.
What can I say but WAKE UP!