Reformation Lutheran Church

OUR REFORMATION MOMENT
Speaking and Living the Gospel for a New Day

By Tom Lyberg

Lutherans aren’t usually considered to be cutting edge. Like author Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, our stereotype is that of quiet Christians who don’t like change and inhabit the small towns of both geography and faith. Something of a throwback to the early 20th century, we are portrayed as humble people who preserved a 17th century tradition of liturgy and theology but are best known for choral singing and potlucks. Imagine the surprise when church futurist Leonard Sweet says that Lutherans are best equipped to reach postmodern generations—they just don’t realize it. As he points out, Lutherans have reformation built into their DNA.

And our Lutheran theology pivots on a doctrine of radical, unconditional grace—a crying need of the postmodern faith journey. The problem is that we have forgotten our heritage or have made it unbelievably boring. Words like transformational, emergent and postmodern are often treated as simply the latest fads in church and theology. Such movements come and go, usually without much Lutheran participation. Many of us aren’t sure what these words even mean (see listing elsewhere in this newsletter). However, I would suggest that we are looking at a reformation moment, that the streams of ministry represented by words like these are really all about the same thing—learning the cultural context of the 21st century world and being able to speak and live the gospel within it relationally. In that sense, it’s no different being the church in any other time or place. We are to incarnate Christ in individual people, in the gathering of the saints and in the communities we are called to serve. The change is the movement away from constantly recycling lapsed Lutherans to making new disciples of generations that are disconnected with any faith journey with Jesus.

As with Martin Luther when he popularized the power of the printing press to bring the Bible to people in their own language (in a time when that was punishable by death), Lutherans in a postmodern world need to embrace the digital technologies of communication of this world if they hope to speak the gospel to it. It’s more than just a generational shift: We live in a time when human communication itself is reforming.

But postmodern communication is just part of the shift. The message is key, and it goes beyond knowing Luther’s explanations from his Small Catechism. The postmodern world isn’t a hopeful one: It is marked by disrupted families, uncertain employment transitions, global terrorism and scientific/technological change at a quantum rate. Amid this whirling world, personal significance dwindles. There is cry heard in the literature, art and music of recent decades for personal relationships that matter, for forgiveness, for love. What is more clear and meaningful than a gospel of “justification by grace through faith,” of unconditional love in Jesus Christ? What could be more Lutheran? It’s a Spirit opportunity that is being laid at the doorstep of each of our congregations.

“Postmodern Lutherans” does not need to be an oxymoron. There are an ever-increasing number of congregations in the ELCA that prove it, congregations that could be labeled “traditional” and “contemporary,”
“emergent” and “transformational.” These Lutheran congregations are not defined by worship styles, geographic location or age of their members. Rather, they all are continuing the journey of Paul at Mars Hill, proclaiming the unknown god to a searching society. They are following Luther in setting the Scripture free into the language of the people. They are walking the road with Jesus into the 21st century with the gifts of gospel
and heritage—gifts to a world hungry for what we have experienced.
 
Lyberg is pastor of Lutheran Church of the Master in Carol Stream, IL.
Reprinted in part from The Lutheran, June 2006

*May I encourage you to consider the information in this article as a way reflecting on the festival of the Reformation at “Reformation”, whose mission it is to be a HOME FOR WORSHIP and a CENTER FOR MISSION.

Pastor Barb