Unfinished…

Semper Reformanda! and the American Dream

There are strange parallels in life.  For several decades now, life has called upon me to study worship from the Scriptures and from history while carefully observing current practice.  Starting decades before that, I began my writer’s task of observing life in search of truths to guide me and those whom I may contact. The most visible aspect of the life we lived was racial inequity.  All these years later, it has taken me until today to see the parallel between True Worship of Jesus, the Christ and true equality for all American citizens.  What is that parallel?  It is contained within the Latin term Semper Reformanda!, meaning, “Always Reforming.”

A Christian Southerner
In the summer of 1963, at age 13, the centennial of a Civil War battle was celebrated in my hometown, Helena, AR.  At the same time, the Civil Rights movement was gaining ground and headlines just across the river in Mississippi.  This convergence of history and current events initiated my examination of how life was lived around me.  I knew enough of the Bible to sense that something was very wrong.  Like everyone I went to church and school with, I was steeped in a culture featuring a strange mixture of truth and falsehood, love and hate, as well as opportunity and oppression.  A writer is first of all an observer of life and then, a reporter of what he has observed.  I came to believe that we needed a source of objective truth as a touchstone, a dependable source of trans-generational, trans-cultural truth so that the gold of life can be found.  At age 13 the Civil War and Civil Rights merged into one issue for me.  I could see that the war had started a work that was still unfinished.  It would be up to my generation to make our contribution toward the completion of that unfinished work.

A Pentecostal Believer
In the summer of 1964, I was baptized in the Holy Spirit according to the tenets of the faith handed down to me.  That faith was demonstrably real; it worked, delivering what it promised in my life.  I saw things to question in the practice of that valid religion.  To sort the real from the not-so-real, the real gold from the fool’s gold, I turned to the touchstone—the Bible.  This practice has served me well all these years.  With a two-faceted calling from God, to preach and to make the music of the church, I have spent these decades in an ever-growing faith and ever-deepening walk with God, His people, and His world.   I pursued bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music education and found continued success in these endeavors.  At age 51, I switched disciplines at the doctoral level to earn a doctorate in Worship Studies.  In last phase of my formal education that I discovered Semper Reformanda!

The Protestant Reformation
Before my doctoral studies I possessed a sketchy understanding of the Protestant Reformation.  I knew about the three cardinal principals:

1. The Authority of Scripture,
2. Salvation by faith and not by works, and
3. The Priesthood of all believers.

I could see that these things were not only the well-springs of my faith, but they were also formed the glue that bound all Protestant believers together in sweet fellowship.  I learned that brothers and sisters of different doctrinal slants could fellowship, worship and witness together because of this “like, precious, faith.”  I did not know there was a fourth great principle of the Protestant Reformation: Semper Reformanda! (“Always Reforming”) This means that the work of reforming the church by the Word of God is an unfinished work.  This work has never been and will never be completed by a single generation or a single worshiping culture.  The inroads of human thought into worship are ever present and so must the work of returning to the pristine truth of God.  The Prophet Isaiah, quoted by John the Baptist, gives us a never-ending task—”to prepare the way for the Lord.”  This is done by bringing down hindering mountains, smoothing out careless passages, filling in dangerous depressions and straightening out the twists and turns of human meddling so that the Glory of the Lord will be revealed.  Semper Reformanda! was simply the most Pentecostal idea I had every encountered.  This was exactly what the first generation—my grandfather’s generation—did in the early years of the 20^th century.  They found biblical elements missing from their worship and restored them.  This has always been my mission.  Toward this ongoing reformation of worship, I have ministered, taught, made music and written.

Every generation has taken its turn at the reformation of public worship and when they finished they proclaimed the work was finally done.  They got worship right—just the way they liked it.  However, their children made their own music, structured services by their own thinking, and used the tools of their generation and no one could stop them.  Over the past 50 years the rapidity of these generational shifts has gone into high gear.  Increased technology and a profitable music marketplace have seen to that.  I see my role in this reformation as one who seeks out the pleasure of the Lord as it is expressed in the Bible.  I teach the unchanging things so that perhaps the generations can actually work together toward this reformation.  Jesus prayed that we would be ONE while the world keeps dividing us, weakening us, and robbing us of the beauty and joy of worship.  Can anyone doubt that the biblical reformation of worship is an unfinished work?

Civil Rights Is an Unfinished Work.
Younger Americans tend to see the unfinished work and call for change.  This is right and proper. We Baby Boomers remember how it used to be and take joy in the progress we have seen.  It hurts us that this progress seems to be invisible to our children and grandchildren.  The danger for us is the illusion that the job is finished.  It isn’t at all finished.  There is so much yet to do to achieve Superman’s promise: “truth and justice in the American way.”

The American Way
No serious person thinks that the USA is a finished work.  In the beginning all the racial strife bred in Europe for centuries immigrated to these shores with the founders.  The difference between “the American Way” and that of Europe was the concept of God-given freedoms rather than state-granted favors.  The heart of American freedom was opportunity for all, or at least, the promise of it.  This wonderful idea has fought its way through prejudice and hatred and corruption and still calls out to each of us.  The work is far from finished but it will require a mutual respect and shared responsibility we have yet to fully realize.

CALL TO REPENTANCE
In the Book of Common Prayer, the prayer of repentance needs to graduate from the sanctuary into the marketplace, the halls of government, and into the mills of industry.   This ancient prayer invites application to both church life and civil life.

“Most merciful Father, I confess that I have sinned against You in thought, word, deed, and by what I have done and what I have left undone.  I have not loved You with my whole heart; I have not loved my neighbor s myself.  I am truly sorry and humbly repent.  For the sake of Your Son Jesus Christ have mercy on me and forgive me; that I may delight in Your will, and walk in Your ways, to the glory of Your name. Amen.”

Conversion
It is a well-known truth that repentance leads to conversion.  To repent means to reverse course, to turn around and go a different way.  My chronical of my progress out of the society that gave me birth is a story of constant conversion.  Such conversion is necessary if another step toward the finished work is to be made.

Young people and old people need each other in this ongoing work of reformation.

Semper Reformanda!

Stephen Phifer