When the Church Really Changed
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When you think of the beginning of contemporary approaches to ministry – evangelism and outreach, music and structure – what comes to mind?
The camp meetings of the Second Great Awakening?
The Azusa Street revivals of the early 1900s?
The Jesus Movement of the late 1960s and early ’70s?
The megachurch movement, with the birth of Willow Creek in 1975 or Saddleback in 1980?
No, it began long before that.
Martin Luther was born in Saxony in 1483. Schooled in Erfurt, he later fled to an Augustinian monastery. Literally. Caught in a thunderstorm, in terror before the lightning, he cried out, “Help, St. Anne, I will become a monk!”
Despite this less than auspicious beginning, from that point on Martin Luther was a man of the church. So much so that his passion for the church would spark one of the most defining moments in the history of the church—the Protestant Reformation.
The Reformation was more than theological; it was ecclesiastical. It was a reformation of the church. Even the famed 95 Theses nailed onto the Wittenberg door say nothing about justification by faith, the authority of the Bible, the priesthood of all believers or any of the other well-known Reformation doctrines. Instead, they look like a treatise on church practice.
Luther’s ultimate vision for reformation was for a church where each member could play an active and decisive part, the distinction between clergy and laity could be dissolved, and every believer be seen as a priest and thus be able to powerfully “espouse the cause of the faith” to a lost and dying world.
As a result, Luther encouraged his fellow monks to break out of the monasteries and walk among those in the world. He encouraged those in the world to see their place in life as deeply “called” as those of the monks, and to take their place in the church’s enterprise as fellow ministers.
As to the church itself, Luther translated the Scriptures into the native language of the German people so that they could read, hear and understand their plain meaning. “You have to ask the housewife, the children in the street and the ordinary man at the market, see how they respond, and then translate accordingly,” Luther maintained.
He believed that preaching should be crafted with the simple, the uneducated in mind. His working motto was to keep it simple for the simple.
He restored congregational singing; at the time, only priests and monastic choirs would sing during worship, and then in Latin. Luther invited all to sing and then wrote hymns that they would actually enjoy, such as “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” crafting tunes that had much in common with what would have been heard in the taverns. In writing to Spalatin, asking for help about the hymnbook he was preparing, Luther advised the poet and translator to avoid lofty words used at court; these hymns were to convey the word of God in German verses that everyone could understand.
In taking the measure of the man, historian Roland Bainton sees Luther’s greatest contribution as the renewal of the mission of the church. Luther not only opened the doors of the Church for those to whom it had been closed but also cast a vision for how a life investment in the Church could make a difference in the world.
Not all assessed Luther’s efforts in glowing terms. The bull written against Luther during his own day and presented to the Pope opened with the words, “A wild boar has invaded thy vineyard.”
Perhaps.
But by the time the boar had finished his tear through the field, a new wine had been cultivated, giving rise to a new wineskin that would spread renewal throughout Christendom.
Even to this day.
James Emery White
Sources
Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther.
Graham Tomlin, Luther and His World.
Richard Marius, Martin Luther: The Christian Between God and Death.