Unfinished Reformation: Protestants in light of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church

The unfinished Reformation 

I think it is appropriate for Zurich to be the place where we call to complete the work that the Protestant Reformers began but never finished, but why bother? The events of the 16th and 17th century were incredible painful and costly. What could have been worth the lives of so many faithful Christians? These were real people after all: Jan van Essen and Hendrik Vos the Augustinian monks who heard the gospel from  Luther & ended at the stake in Antwerp in 1523. Luther honored them with a hymn: 

“Satan truly snatched them from us

And consigned them to the grave;

Still at their death he’ll madly rave,

When we sing aloud of Jesus”.

Or Patrick Hamilton, burned in St Andrews in 1528. Or Zwingli, decapitated on the field of Kappel in 1531. Or William Tyndale strangled and burned in 1536. Or the 300 Marian Martyrs or 70,000 Frenchmen executed in just 2 years? 

If the only things worth living for are things worth dying for, what about these men and women? The thing that gripped so many lives and compelled them to give so much was the gospel in its purity and beauty. The Reformation was an unfinished rediscovery of authentic Christianity. The prize beyond the all of the laws and structure; even beyond heaven itself, is Jesus Christ in all of his power, love, and beauty. 

It’s expansion was stopped by Roman Catholicism’s brutal opposition. Europe eventually erupted in 30 yrs of unmitigated violence in a European-wide war and Christianity became too hot to handle. What did that cost us & what should we recover? What is the Reformation’s unfinished business? I think it is time for a Reformed Ressourcement, a recovering the best lessons of the past for the sake of the future church. We sitting here are the partial legacy of the Reformation, but in our own time of churchly weakness, it can speak words of wisdom & encouragement to us. Time for us to take up the torch.

Given our limited time, I want to address two Reformational passions we need to recover now, and recognize, however, that both also represented lost opportunities that need to be reengaged. In other words, we are beneficiaries of The Reformers but we are also examples of its failures. Correcting these things will allow the church to rediscover the power of the gospel in our weak, anemic church.  The conviction that drove the Reformation’s passion to reform the Roman Catholic Church from the inside, not to destroy it but recover it, was the perception that it had strayed from the convictions of its first members, the apostles and martyr-witnesses who embraced the new birth in the afterglow of Christ’s resurrection. Just as the Lord Jesus Christ, the faithful and true witness (Rev 3:14), the first martyr (witness) had displayed his life-giving power at the empty tomb and ascension, so generations of faithful sons and daughters came forward to testify to the regenerative  life that could only come in union with Christ through faith. 

That immediate encounter with the living God, that new birth created an urgency to evangelize the world and, at the same time, to develop a durable identity capable of even flowering in the midst of ferocious persecution. Tertullian once said that the blood of martyrs was the seed of the church. So it was was, but it lasted and grew as it developed an identity as one, holy, Catholic and apostolic church. This emerged out of a common confession that shaped baptismal identity and served as the basis for the creeds. The early church grew but it realized that healthy growth required common beliefs and practices that guaranteed authenticity. How  do we distinguish true faith from counterfeits? What standard do you apply with which to measure faith? It was all about clarity. So they started with God’s own Word read in the midst of God’s own, covenant people. 

That reading of the Word as one church led to a way of reading and understanding, a rule of faith that produced what we call hermeneutics. The five solas of the Reformation: sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratis, solus Christus, soli deo Gloria is a digest of what the early church discovered about how to understand God’s words and apply them in describing God’s redemptive work. This is what the early church did and it is what the Reformers rediscovered. The medieval church that fought Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and Knox was not grateful for the rediscovery and did everything it could to silence its voice. It couldn’t, not completely anyway, and our being here today is living proof that this Word remains alive and powerful and active in our witness all around the world.

The Reformation was never completed, but it still speaks to us, calling us back to recover the authentic gospel and living faith that compelled millions of martyrs. I want to focus on two aspects of the Reformation that desperately need recovering:

Unfinished Prophetic martyr witness-John Knox

Blunt truth directed directly to power in order to confront unbelief with Gospel truth.

Unfinished catholicity-Peter Martyr Vermigli, Martin Bucer, Pier Paolo Vergerio

Unstoppable witness no matter what the consequences.

We Reformed martyr-witnesses must recover the bigger vision of catholicity & clarity that was burned into the Reformers, long before secularism and denominational marketing drowned out its voice. The 21st century Western church is altogether too safe and inoffensive. It is a flaccid thing and despised. Europe and America are now often not only post-Christian. They are anti-Christian. We find ourselves embattled and obsessed with protecting ourselves either by invisibility or winsomeness. Both are pathetic, failed attempts to survive. Christians in Egypt or Turkey could tell you that. We need a ressourcement, a recovery of the passion and drive of the Reformers to propel us forward to the time when we see our beautiful savior face to face.

Lesson 1 John Knox-Prophetic clarity

The irresistible call to proclaim God’s salvation and judgment

Amos 7;14-17

14 Then Amos answered and said to Amaziah, “I was no prophet, nor a prophet's son, but I was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore figs. 15 But the LORD took me from following the flock, and the LORD said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’ 16 Now therefore hear the word of the LORD. “You say, Do not prophesy against Israel, and do not preach against the house of Isaac.’

17 Therefore thus says the LORD: “‘Your wife shall be a prostitute in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be divided up with a measuring line; you yourself shall die in an unclean land, and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land.’”

Amaziah, a priest of Bethel in Israel, accused Amos of being a prophet for hire & told him to stop speaking to his people & angering the king of Israel & pedal his business in Judah. Amos, in fact, was no professional prophet selling his prophecies, but took care of livestock & sycamore figs. His job included piercing the fruit to release the fruit flies, making the figs edible. God himself called him out of that life to pierce Israel to make its fruit edible. In doing so, he was called directly just as David was. Amaziah took the consequences. Just as Amaziah cursed Amos, God cursed Amaziah & his whole family. His wife became a prostitute, his sons/daughters killed by a  conqueror, land seized by Assyrians, he would die in exile. God wants his own Word proclaimed and he raises up people who will do just that regardless of cost or risk.

2 Timothy 4:2-5 describes the call to proclaim gospel truth without cutting corners.

2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 5 As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

Our calling is to proclaim the words of life, at any time & circumstance. We tell the whole truth; words of encouragement, unpopular, judgment, truth. We have to because the work of evangelist is a divine calling that must be done even if you suffer. There can be no backing down or toning down.

It reminds me of my old friend Rev Edward Kasaija and his beautiful pigs. Edward was a swineherd in Uganda. He came to Christ while country was tyrannized by Idi Amin. Christians were martyred by the millions. His pastor had to flee the country and told his new convert Edward that he was called to replace him. Edward refused saying that he had 20 beautiful pigs and had no time to care for a herd of Christians. When I met Edward, he was the senior pastor of a large presbyterian church in Kampala. When I asked Edward how he ended up there, he said God killed all 20 pigs within the next 7 days and he answered the call. God called and compelled Edward’s response. I heard the story because God called me to Uganda through the words of Henry Krabbendam spoken in my dining room, when it was the last thing in the world I wanted to hear. I was compelled and I answered.

John Knox and prophetic clarity

Like other men of action, stories best illustrate who John Knox really was. After being ordained to preach, he  was outlawed and forbidden to preach by the corrupt and murderous archbishop of St. Andrews, and orders were issued that he be shot on sight if he failed to comply. Knox did not comply. Years later, a would-be assassin fired a shot through a window of Knox's house in Edinburgh, narrowly missing his mark. Still Knox preached.

John Knox, a Scottish lowland commoner, was born in the same area that was home to the Scots-Irish, so prominent later in American Presbyterianism, probably for his family’s sake was ordained as a priest. He was converted by George Wishart, an early Scottish Reformer, scholar, and self-described prophet. Knox was so taken with Wishart, our earliest picture of Knox was carrying a giant two-handed broadsword as  Wishart’s bodyguard. It is an improbable portrait. Knox was, according to others, an unremarkable student, a small man, "low in stature, and of a weakly one who, when first called to preach, declined, and when pressed, "burst forth in most abundant tears" and fled the room."

Wishart, after his imprisonment for preaching the gospel, compelled Knox to surrender his sword & not die w/him so he could live to preach after Wishart’s death. Wishart himself kissed his executioner and Knox embraced his new calling as a proclaimer of the gospel. “Proclaimer” is far too weak a word to describe Knox. A later biographer aptly named him “the trumpeter of God”. Knox delivered his first official sermon on Daniel 7:24-25, in which "he showed the great love of God for his Church," and how the true church hears "the voice of its own true pastor, Jesus Christ." He did not have long to preach. In 1546, he was captured by French forces in Scotland and became a galley slave for 19 months. The average life expectancy was under 3 months. Knox had something to live for, however, to trumpet the truth of the gospel. While still a slave, French officers attempted to force him to venerate a painted wooden image of Mary. "Trouble me not," Knox said. "Such an idol is accursed, and, therefore, I will not touch it." At this, his persecutors "violently thrust it to his face, and put it betwixt his hands." Knox took the idol and cast it into the river. "Let our Lady now save herself," he said. "She is light enough. Let her learn to swim."

After his release, the English offered Knox the pastorate of All Hallows, Bread Street, an influential pulpit in London, which he turned down. The Anglican royal advisors then presented Knox with the bishopric of Rochester, which he also declined. It was said of Knox, "No money could buy him." His passion was for Scotland and its surrender to an undiluted gospel.

After the return to England of Roman Catholicism under queen Mary, he fled to Germany & Switzerland in 1553 to join the Reformation there. That move changed everything. Rather than allying himself with “moderate” Presbyterian Reformers in England, he left for the Continent, gradually turning theologically toward Calvin. There he developed beliefs and practices of Presbyterianism that locked him to Calvin, particularly on the Lord’s Supper and discipline. The English Reformation, however, favored Bucer, Bullinger, and Peter Martyr Vermigli. I know for you these may just be names, but behind the names are a spectrum of beliefs. To understand the differences is to understand why the Reformation foundered over what seem to us to be small differences. For the moment, let’s just say that Knox was no diplomat. He never steered for the middle. He was not a man to compromise. His stubbornness even horrified Calvin, his biggest supporter, who thought the Scotsman quite stupid for treating his friends and enemies indistinguishably at times.  

At any rate, Knox, while he remained in exile from Scotland, pastored an English speaking congregation in Frankfurt. Then came a church split between Knox and the English exiles over how to administer the Supper and discipline. Knox left and settled in Geneva. There he fully adopted the understanding of the Lord’s Supper that is taught in the Westminster Confession of Faith. Negatively, the rift between English and Scottish Presbyterians never fully healed. Knox became persona non grata to the new Protestant English Queen Elizabeth when he penned a diatribe against Catholic Queen Mary that ended up on Elizabeth’s desk. The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558) did not go over well. Calvin had pleaded with Knox not to send it but as we say in New York, “it is what it is”. The two main family branches of British Isles Presbyterianism never fully knit back together. 

None of that, however, mattered as much to Knox as the gospel reigning over Scotland, his home. He benefited from Reformational Catholicity, but it did not define the Scottish Reformation.  If the church is one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic, Knox focused fundamentally on its holiness and apostolicity. Nothing mattered more to him than Scotland’s submission to the rule of God. It lit him up from inside. When he preached his last sermon at St. Giles, Edinburgh, in 1572, he was too weak to walk, and had to be carried. Even then, he could not deny his calling, regardless of cost. No compromise, no excuses, no surrender. The Scotland he said goodbye to was by then a radically changed place. There was a new Reformed identity. The Bible in its fullness was preached openly. He never made it easy, particularly on himself, but the gospel had been set free.

God used a weak, scrawny vessel in the midst of persecution & division to trumpet God to unbelieving power. He feared what could happen at times and struggled with anxiety but he feared God more. So should we. There are many, many other voices speaking to us in the same way. We should listen to them and learn.  We have not finished proclaiming the gospel. It is time to take up the mantle and divest ourselves with our obsession with winsomeness, bridge-building compromise, our cloaks of invisibility and trumpet the salvation of Christ once again. As an aside, the rising tide of anti-Christianity encourages me to think that Christian trumpets might once again get under people’s’ skin and into their hearts.

Lesson 2 Peter Martyr Vermigli: True Catholicity

Ephesians 4:1-6; 12-16

1 I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Exposition

1 Paul is a prisoner in the Lord & that morally empowers him to beg them to live the life as their calling requires just as he has. 

2 With the lowliness of Christ, in opposition to world’s standards; meekness (not timidly), a gentleness toward others & subordinate to God (Moses); patience in being slow to take offense or revenge; forbearance in setting aside your agenda to live in peace.

3 in the unity created by all living together in Christ through the Spirit

To belong to the kingdom of heaven, the elect of God, the saved and redeemed is to be in Christ. It is not simply to, as individuals, believe the right doctrines and have the right personal experience. It is more than each of us to be justified by the grace of God, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to the Holy Scriptures. It is to be eternally united in Christ as one body of Christ. Therefore, as Paul’s logic dictates, we ought to live and work as though we are really and truly one body with one head, the Lord Jesus Christ. To be clear, this is not a wished-for unity. It has already been accomplished in Christ. Therefore, it is not a second-tier doctrine, a desirable end state, but not as necessary or true as our individual salvations. 

4-6 unity: in Christ’s visible body by the Spirit that unites us to God

The word “one” appears seven times in rapid succession. Why? I think Paul is making a point to two groups of believers, each of which were in potential competition with the other. He was saying defjitelively that what fundamentally characterized Jewish and Gentile Christians was not their separate histories and the cultures as arose from them. What they shared now was the same Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Just as Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit are one, so are those elect according to the Father’s will, through the blood and life of the Son, to which we are joined by the Spirit. We are as one in Christ, and just as practically as is God. When the early church fathers described the church as one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic, it did so because the church was to be a reflection and representative of God and this is what God is. Though we can never be God, we are United to God in Christ through the Spirit. That implies that this new identity should dominate our actions and, crucially, our imaginations. 

Our unity is both spiritual and substantial: ‘One body”, “one baptism” imply physicality. They are not exclusively invisible or merely spiritual but real, substantial, and practical.

The identity of the body exists in the present and extends into eternity. It is a unity rooted in God’s person. 2 Peter 1:4-5 says, “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called

us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature. Being grounded in an eternal relationship to the triune God, we can truly hope. When we truly hope, when we have confidence in something real, not mere wishful thinking, we have the confidence to go, to risk and even die. 

12-16 working together for the gospel

Paul presupposes in verse12 that the visible body of Christ has a multitude and diversity of gifts. Perhaps anticipating the sinful habit of Christians competing with each other, he addresses the purpose of gifts to build up the whole body of Christ, so each part works with every other part.

REF is an evangelistic organization. It is, in one sense, a glorious thing. We are people of gospel passion. We may be, as I am, a pretty eccentric bunch, but we are people who have always taken our place on the line. We do not hire surrogates to do our fighting for us. But there is a significance to our being together in this life. 

13 says “until we all attain” unity in faith; an experiential knowledge maturing every dimension of life. That word “all” matters. In that case, the diversity we exhibit in the body is to strengthen and serve the whole. If I have a dream, it is to see other’s hopes fulfilled in the body of Christ. Born again faith is not spiritual autonomy. We are not beans in a jar. We are components of a living temple joined together with one key cornerstone.

Verse 14 describes our process of unity as a bringing to maturity. Uniting is integrative. It pulls together the evangel, discipleship, doctrine, character, conduct of life as the life in Christ that transforms us into living pictures of Jesus. 

Verses 15-16 addresses the followers of Christ, his church as ambassadors of truth bringing fractured, conflicted people in the stability and shalom of Christ. The world is tohu webohu, empty and chaotic. It is a dog eat dog world full of competing egos. God, however, is beautiful. He is perfect harmony, symmetry and proportion. The church is his reflection and his witness to the world. While some of us may be gifted entrepreneurs, our gifts harmonize in the body so that God’s lordship expands in the kingdom and the light of life shines in every dark place in the world.

Vermigli and catalytic unity

Ephesians 4 embodies Peter Martyr Vermigli’s passion for the gospel

The Reformation represents a glorious revival of the life-giving gospel, but we should not deny it also represented one signal failure: The failure to create a Reformed Catholic Church (unifying under one umbrella Strasbourg, Geneva, Zurich, Bern, Wittenberg, Canterbury, Edinburgh), preaching the same gospel, according to the same Bible, expressing itself as one faith, produced by the same source, the grace of God. 

This was never intended to be another Roman Catholic Church, unified under one pope, one magisterium. For the reformers like Vermigli, one served as a legitimate expression of God’s unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity while the other was a distortion of it. The failure of the Reformation could be seen in Luther, Zwingli, and later, Knox’s inability to flex on one matter, the Lord’s Supper. In 1529, the leading reformers including Luther and Zwingli met at the Colloquy of Marburg for the purpose of embracing one Reformation of the church. 15 points were submitted for approval by the participants. Everyone agreed on the first 14. Zwingli and Luther catastrophically broke on the 15th, the Lord’s Supper. It was not that the participants had to agree to identical practices mind you. They only had to affirm the biblical feasibility of the other’s. They could not and the modern church, our church, represents that legacy, both success and failure.

Just as John Knox represented both the trumpet of the gospel and an infuriating stubbornness that limited gospel unity, Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562), represents the Reformed middle ground that gathered the poles into fantastic gospel results, but was never enabled to produce the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic church he sacrificed for. Vermigli is my hero in the faith. Let me tell you more about him.

Vermigli was born in Florence, Italy, the son of a shoemaker and died in Zurich in 1562. As an aside, you may be surprised to know that some of the greatest Reformers never came from Germany, Switzerland or Scotland. Italians, Poles, Hungarians etc., driven from their homelands, immigrated to other nations and fertilized their soil with the gospel. In other words, the Protestant Reformation was an international movement of God not only because the gospel emerged and grew within specific nations, but, and this is crucial, it grew as a refugee movement. What happened in Zurich, Geneva, and London was largely a refugee missionary revival. Those of us who toil in hard soil should keep this in mind. Just as the Lord appeared to Israel when it was far away in the wilderness as Jeremiah 31 reminds us, so God comes to us in unexpected ways and brings unexpected gifts. In this case, the prayers of the nations were answered by the coming of a man, Peter Martyr Vermigli.

Vermigli had a rich and accomplished life. The son of a shoemaker, he entered the Canons Regular of St Augustine of the Lateran Congregation at Fiesole in 1514. He grew intellectually at Padua University, the finest school in Europe, where he taught himself Greek and received his doctorate: he later learned Hebrew at Bologna. He did not labor as an obscure German monk like Luther or a local priest like Zwingli or Knox. Vermigli climbed the Roman Catholic hierarchy. He rose to the position of monastery abbot where he became proficient in Augustine, coming under the influence of Juan de Valdes, and even before breaking with the Roman church, the teaching of earlier Protestant Reformers. 

I am not really dealing with him fairly. Vermigli wasn’t just proficient in biblical languages. He was the greatest Hebraist of the century, far eclipsing Erasmus, Luther, and Calvin. He slowly embraced the Protestant understanding of justification by grace through faith and rejected the Roman Catholic understanding of the Lord’s Supper. He moved away from Roman Catholicism and embraced what became Reformed Christianity. He was temperamentally methodical and not mercurial like Luther, Zwingli, or Knox. He was not flashy, but he acquired a reputation as an outstanding preacher and an exceptional apologist. He also displayed outstanding organizational gifts, but he generally never craved great visibility. At a point in the Reformation when the Reformers in Zurich and Geneva were at least suspicious of each other, Vermigli brought them together. The Swiss cities of Zurich, Bern, and Geneva were fiercely independent. It took a skilled change agent like Vermigli to pull them together. 

His ministry in Lucca, Italy became the centre of the Reformation in the country before the Counter-Reformation forced him to leave for Zurich in 1542 and from there to Strasbourg where he was mentored by Martin Bucer, just as John Calvin was and married a former nun. His achievements piled up. He eventually as a professor of Hebrew, a pastor and leading Reformer in Strasbourg, France, and the Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University. He helped to stimulate the Reformation in England. He moved to Zurich, Switzerland, served as a pastor and professor, finishing his life producing lasting change in the church. Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury in cited him to England in 1547. In England, he helped revise the 1552 Book of Common Prayer and rewrote canon law for the Church of England.  

He championed the idea of the real, spiritual presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper and the central importance of our union with Christ. Calvin considered him the master expositor of the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. These two doctrines helped unite the whole Reformed, Protestant world. Despite a galaxy of personal achievements, his passion was for writing and training normal people to use their Bibles. No Reformer, including Calvin, contributed more to the international spread of Reformed, evangelical Christianity. 

Catalysis, from the Greek katalusi (to loosen, set free), is a process that produces necessary changes. Catalysts are agents of change. God has always used catalysts to induce change in his mission to the world. These are people who God inserts into situations for the purpose of stimulating changes that expand God’s kingdom through his church. These are people less interested in themselves than in the results God produces in/church. They are the middle men: highly accomplished but gifted at seeing w/God’s insight.

The middle men of the Reformation included Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr Vermigli. I have already introduced you to Vermigli. I briefly mention Martin Bucer 1491-1551 because he mentored Calvin, enabled him in the ministry, personally teaching him what the life of a pastor means. Calvin was trained as a lawyer not a minister, so Bucer took on that role of mentor. Bucer eventually also had more influence on the English Reformation, though not the Scottish than Calvin. He was a kind of Barnabas, but he was also a mighty catalyst for God. We live in a celebrity culture. We have our rock stars. Christians do too, but in God’s providence, the lesser known souls, not less talented or less anointed, but called away from the spotlight, serve as wave amplifiers for gospel fruit.

Reformational application

What then do we learn from the Word we studied and its embodiment in the lives of John Knox and Peter Martyr Vermigli? First, a diversity of gifts accompanied the growth of the gospel kingdom. It is impossible to consider the gospel fruit without recognizing that God called people with diverse gifts that worked together for the sake of the kingdom. 

Furthermore, the deeper we explore the Reformation, the more apparent it becomes that the Reformers were not attempting to birth new churches or simply evangelizing individuals. They only thought there was ever one true church and it was, as the Nicene Creed affirmed, one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic. It was the church of the Lord Jesus Christ that he revealed to the apostles. Every Reformer believed that. So, there was never any question of erasing the visible church. The Reformation was a rebirthing, a rediscovery of the church that had been obscured with centuries of corruption and misdirection. People like Luther plunged into what became the Reformation because the power structures in Rome treated his attempts and correction and purification as a threat to its authority. In 2015, in the shadow of Vatican II, a square in Vatican City has been renamed in favor of Martin Luther. Does that mean Rome has corrected its errors and acknowledged Luther’s criticisms? No they have not. But they have a-patently recognized that his attempts and reform in the 16th century were never intended to topple the visible church, only correct its mistakes.

Men such as Vermigli were committed to the purification of the church, not its eradication or division. They hoped to correct the practices that prevented it from being truly one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic. For these men, the division or customization of the church was not a legitimate pursuit. To the contrary, the Reformers sought a cleansed and corrected unified church that could pull together for the sake not just of unity but also of the expansion of the gospel into every part of the world. Their dream was a functionally connected reformed church fully driven toward cooperative, evangelistic ministry. The vision incorporated men called as trumpets of God and others as  ambassadors of Christ who could pull together the many strands of the church, the different parts of the temple of God described in Ephesians into a single army of martyr witnesses. That was the Reformation’s great, consuming  vision. We came close on many fronts. 

One very prominent Missiologist, Andrew Walls, routinely feted Roman Catholics for their spirit of mission, citing their missionary efforts in China, India and the Americas, but discounting Protestant efforts as insular and parochial. He was so entirely wrong about that. Calvinist Geneva mounted its first overseas mission effort in !555 when a small party of Frenchmen moved to Brazil for the sake of the gospel and all in the midst of the deadly Counter-Reformation. Not very insular is it? We forget that at the height of the Reformation, Reformed churches established church planting hubs in Geneva, Emden, and London that supplied church planters with Bibles, hymnals, pamphlets, catechisms, and, crucially, shelter.

Vermigli and men like him remind us that the Reformation was a refugee movement. It involved cross-cultural fertilization. Vermigli and the change agents served as honey bees pollinating many national plants. Christians inside. Christians outside and the gospel always moving. That is our vision. 

What actually took place was something entirely different and it is the world in which we live. The thousands of denominations and separate Christian ministries are not the Reformation’s intended children. Fragmentation may be evidence of God’s judgment of Babel. It is not what Eden was intended to produce. Rather, the vision was of the mountain temple envisioned in Ezekiel that would ceaselessly expand until its boundaries encircled every part of the earth under God’s saving rule. That was the bigger picture. That work was never completed. The Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation along with its many inquisitions stifled the strong gospel presence that once flourished in Central Italy, in Spain, and in Eastern Europe. History has largely forgotten men such as Pier Paolo Vergerio 1498-1565, former Papal nuncio, who proclaimed the gospel at great risk to himself in Slovenia & Croatia. The Romanian Reformation was bullied by the Ottoman Turks and the ven greater Polish Reformation was ruthlessly crushed by the Roman Catholic monarchy and the Holy Roman Empire. Even more damaging to the soul of the Reformation was the failure to compromise on the part of Reformers that agreed only almost everything, but their failure to agree on everything produced cracks in the surface of the Reformation, cracks that eventually created breaks.  

So where to now?

So, where do we go from here? REF has a long legacy of frontline evangelistic commitment. We may not have a lot of money, but we put it where our mouths are, fueling outreach. Personally, I think this past, our past has a great deal to teach us. Here and now. REF was birthed in ecclesial crisis. Liberalism in the church was on the march. The evangelical voice had been treated as eccentric and relegated to the margins. How was this particularly different than the situation we now face? It seems to me that we are well experienced in knowing how to learn and work from the margins. God is raising up men right now in the nations: here in Zurich, in Romania, in Albania, in the lands whose Reformation voice was choked off before it could really trumpet. 

Just as God raised up the Luther and Knoxes, the frontline national warriors, so too did he raise up the enablers, the facilitators of mission like Vermigli and Bucer. Is there a reason he cannot or shouldn’t now? A new corps of missionary ambassadors. When I was a new missionary, our organization had the bad habit of sending inexperienced men and their families to facilitate national pastors, church planters, and evangelists. In other words, the helpers were often more of a burden than a help. We need to recruit and gather people with ministry experience and time to grow into Europe, Africa, or Asia. I have noticed that the secular world is beginning to discover these same areas for digital nomads, tax advantages etc. let me be a bit provocative. Some of these places in Central or Eastern Europe may also be less hostile to the cross than do those further West. Could these places bridge together, aided by organizations such as ours to bring a new Reformation that starts for there? Didn’t Theodore Roosevelt Jr., the famous American President’s son once say on Normandy beach, “We’ll start the war from right here!” It takes faith and a sanctified imagination to imagine a world different from your own, but Zurich, Strasbourg, Geneva and their stories are demonstrations that the world can indeed turn right side up.

If we could see the possibilities, how we put flesh on them? What are practical ministry initiatives we can birth in support of completing a Reformation? Third, what must we see about ourselves that actually appears to get in the way of God’s mission? If you can see God’s call to a place, people, or work, what do you have to put away in order to be obedient to God’s call on you and your family? Perhaps you are a senior person and you have spent your adult life pulling the strings. What would it take to divest yourself of power and subordinating yourself to someone younger for the sake of their success in ministry?

Focusing on the visible church as a driver of evangelism, not simply private faith presented by disembodied evangelists. In my experience as a church planter years ago in inner-city London, this is a major challenge, particularly if the have an established congregation. In my personal experience, starting from scratch avoids some of the inertia, if, and it is a big if, the new plant starts for the right reasons. If it’s starts intentionally as a place, an outpost for gospel expansion, amazing things can happen. If it starts with a breakaway body of disgruntled former church members, we’ll, that is another story. 

Along with these structural elements are two things I can think of. First, start in advance with extravagant time set aside for prayer. In fact, spend most of your time on your knees and then get out. Spend less time on planning. Second, pray so that you cultivate a holy imagination. Western church planters and evangelists are starved for imagination. We let our TVs and phones serve as our imaginations, but the Holy Spirit can do so much more. Follow the Reformers and see your own toil as part of something vastly larger, something that cannot be confined to the horizon of your expectations. That is where God, the God who is not confined by our limitations lives. 

Reformed believers embracing their own efforts as part of something larger. 

Incorporating Westminster Standard and Continental Confessions via strong experiential Christianity into integrating visions of ministry should be an imperative for an evangelistic, biblically-grounded modern Reformation. The 16th century Reformation was certainly an act of God that shook first Europe,then the colonies and the rest of the world. The world’s hostility is not a reason for stifling our voices but expanding our horizons. We still act as though national boundaries are biblical absolutes. They are not. Let’s keep it simple. Find fellow Reformed churches or believers and build bridges with them. 

Second, do not assume that Western Christians are experts in church planting. Just as the tide turns for the moment against Christianity in the West, seek out the brothers and sisters that are most skilled in maintaining their witness and maintaining their integrity in the face of evil. Find the people who know how to develop durable bodies and learn from them. It is a hard truth that the Reformation broke down in part because it’s strongest believers could not learn how to work things out together. The stakes and threats are high once again. Let’s not make the same mistake again. It is time for the whole church to rise up and live the identity God already gave it. We are, by God’s grace, one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic. By God, it is time to live as though we are.