WARC - Reformation Sunday

Reformation Sunday

A MESSAGE TO CHURCHES

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ:

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One of the great treasures we share in the World Alliance of Reformed Churches is a common heritage in the Protestant Reformation. Reformation Sunday each year is a time to reclaim that heritage and draw upon its strengths for our contemporary witness.

Reformation Sunday is the last Sunday in October because that Sunday is the one closest to October 31, when Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the church door in Wittenberg. That dramatic event marked the beginning of a movement of reformation in the churches and set forth a spirit of reform that is at the heart of the gospel. Some in our family will relate to even earlier Reformed movements (such as the Waldensians and the Czech Brethren), who date the reform impulses that gave rise to their churches to an even earlier time in history. In fact, all of us find the true source of those impulses in a much earlier time – in the New Testament Church!

Whenever the origins, Reformation Sunday is an important time for Reformed churches to reclaim the great motto of the Reformation, Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda (“a church reformed and always being reformed”) for the challenges of our life and witness today. While Reformation Sunday is indeed a time to look back to the great truths and insights articulated by the Reformers almost 500 years ago, it is much more importantly a time to look forward.

The spirit of the Reformation calls us in each new age to look forward towards the renewal and reformation to which God is calling our churches today and into the future. That is why we are hoping that “renewal” will be the central theme which will be shared by Reformed churches in every part of the world as they commemorate Reformation Sunday. We also hope that Reformation Sunday will become in your churches a day to lift up the global fellowship of churches of the Reformation that we find in the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and to be in some important way a “WARC Sunday”.

We are pleased to share with you this packet of resources to help you and your churches make Reformation Sunday come alive in a life-giving way on October 29, 2006. We hope these materials will help Reformed Christians all over the world to re-appropriate the great themes of our tradition:

- “faith alone, grace alone, scripture alone”

- “the priesthood of all believers”

- the sovereignty of God over the whole creation

- the Church as a covenant community

We are also sharing with you materials on how through the World Alliance of Reformed Churches we are able to give contemporary expression to the motto of our movement, Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda, and to these great themes. The efforts of the Alliance to connect us all together on behalf of justice in the economy and the earth, expanding the priesthood of all believers to eliminate all gender barriers in our churches, and interpreting and re-interpreting the Reformed tradition for our day grow directly out of these impulses of the Reformation. We believe these callings are at the core of what it means for Reformed churches to live out reformation in our day and hope that they are finding vital expression in your church.

The Alliance is seeking to serve as an agent for renewal and reformation in our member churches, not as an end in itself, but to enable our churches to be God’s agents of renewal and reconciliation in a world that is hungry for the gospel and for the justice and mercy of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Through our own renewal and our active commitment to the inclusion of youth, to gender justice, to spiritual renewal, and to our common covenant for justice in the economy and the earth, our churches can become a visible demonstration of what God intends for the whole human family. We hope that Reformation Sunday will be an important step in that pilgrimage and that these resources will contribute to that renewal in your churches.

Because we know that “God so loved the world…” (John 3.16), we are called to transform this world according to the purposes of God, and that is why we seek renewal and reformation in our churches. The Church is a missionary society! In some sense we are chosen by God to be God’s agents to reconcile and transform the world. God was indeed in Christ reconciling the world and giving to us the ministry of reconciliation. (II Cor 5.19) It is at the core of who we are called to be as Reformed Christians.

I hope you will find these materials helpful, and more importantly, I hope that Reformation Day will be a real time of renewal and reformation in your churches and in the global movement in which we share through the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.

Yours in Christ,

Clifton Kirkpatrick

WARC President