Semper Ref

Presbyterians call themselves “Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda.” This is typically translated as “The Church Reformed and Always Reforming.” But for reasons that I’ll explain in a bit, there’s a crucial error in this mis-translation. We recognize that as individuals and as a church, we’re never quite where God wants us to be. For us, the life of faith is an adventurous journey, as we seek to change ourselves into what God wants us to be. Because of the sin that is a part of human nature, the journey starts far from God. And even while we seek to draw closer to Him, we continually swerve off in other directions and need to get our bearings straight over and over again. What this means is that we never sit back on our accomplishments and congratulate ourselves that we’ve “made it” and are all squared away with God. There’s always more work to do, and there’s always errors in our lives that we need to correct. It’s true for us individually, and it’s true for us as a church.

A tremendous change has just taken place at Old Union Church. The character and purpose of our congregation remains the same, but with our new building, the possibilities for what we are able to do in God’s name, and the witness which we carry into the community, is very different. It’s going to take us a while to sort through it all and figure out what we can now do. In the midst of all this newness at Old Union, it would be easy for us to wish for the way things used to be. Change makes us uncomfortable, especially for something as important to us as our church. Weren’t things good enough before? Why do we have to change? The answer is simple: we are the Reformed church that is always reforming. Change, growth, and development is in our very nature. As our motto indicates, we are a future-looking church, eager to discover how we can change to be more faithful to God. Traditions are wonderful, but they are the foundation for our journey, not the final destination.

But what kind of change are we talking about? Not all change is good, and we can all think of plenty of examples in which change made things worse. This is where the accurate translation of our motto makes all the difference. “Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda” does not mean “The Church Reformed, Always Reforming,” but “The Church Reformed, Always Being Reformed.” Change isn’t something we do; it’s something God does to us. We do not undertake our journey of faith blindly. God leads us and works in us to make us the people and the church that He wants. We depend upon the work of His Spirit to reform and change us according to His purposes. From the very beginning, we have sought for this building project to be God’s plan for the direction of our church, and not just something we thought of by ourselves.

It’s exciting to begin a new chapter of our church’s history. Let’s continue to seek God’s guidance to ensure that we are being reformed by Him.