Reformed pastors love the Reformation—the nailing of 95 theses to the door, the “Here I stand” moment, the wonder of one man facing down the corrupt power of a Pharisaical empire. We love the battle cry of semper reformanda (“always reforming”) and our accompanying daydreams of reenacting Luther’s stand in our day. Yet too often we’re oblivious to lurking dangers that make our churches more like 16-century Rome than the reformers.
Translation was a cardinal virtue of the Reformation before it began. Since the time of Wycliffe and Tyndale, faithful saints have worked to put the Bible into the common language, into the vernacular. The goal of these efforts was to get God’s Word out in such accessible terms that, as Tyndale dreamed, the boy who drives the plow would know the Scriptures better than the scholar.
Does a vision of contextual translation fuel our churches today? Do our sermons and worship services translate in such a way that 20-something Starbucks workers feel as at home in our churches as the university professors? Let’s explore why we still need contextualization and some ways we should embrace it in today’s church.
Need for Translation
Reformed worship is Word-filled and Scripture-directed. We worship God as he commands and not according to our own whims. When we come to worship, we don’t ask “How inventive can we be?” but “What is most consistent with God’s Word?” Having set God’s glory and God’s Word as our aim, we then seek to educate and welcome people in ways that will clearly communicate the historic and biblical truths we profess.
But when Reformed churches, who rightly love history and the Word, refuse to do any contextualizing work, they can develop a class problem. Look around your church community. If you see predominantly educated, well-to-do, white-collar professionals, it may be that your church has failed to translate its Reformed heritage into the common tongue. Educated professionals more easily develop a palate for the beauty of antiquity, but most people today find ancient verbiage to be clunky, awkward, foreign, and cumbersome. In a word, it’s a distraction.
Do our sermons and worship services translate in such a way that 20-something Starbucks workers feel as at home in our churches as the university professors?
What’s our objective as church leaders? It’s not to elevate people’s tastes but to elevate Jesus Christ. That doesn’t mean discarding excellence. It means knowing your context. The church in Yale’s backyard should look and sound different from the one off Road 22 in the Kansas wheat fields. Yes, the church at large should labor to be understood by both the masses and the elite, but your church should labor to be understood by the people in your local community. Aim not to dumb or water down your teaching but to speak in the vernacular.
Practice of Translation
What does this look like practically? Here are three suggestions.
1. Use accessible language when teaching doctrine.
A few years back, our children’s ministry began using the New City Catechism. One church member complained, “We’ve got the Westminster Catechism. What’s wrong with that one?”
Nothing. The New City Catechism’s authors are aware of their indebtedness to previous catechisms. But like those older confessional documents, the New City Catechism both looks backward to its roots and keeps an eye on the questions and diction of its time. It speaks to today’s problems in today’s language.
Like Jesus, who filled his teaching with stories, folksy illustrations, and agricultural analogies, we must aim to teach with substance, with accuracy, and in a language people can hear. Remember, the mark of a gifted teacher isn’t that people walk away thinking, “He’s so smart!” Rather, they think, “That’s a lot simpler than I thought.”
2. Take time to explain unfamiliar movements of Christian worship.
Preaching and singing have contemporary counterparts in public speeches or concerts, so these parts of worship feel more natural for outsiders. Other practices, like the public confession of sins, feel wildly exotic to the uninitiated. What a golden opportunity for Reformed churches!
Explaining and teaching confession and forgiveness as part of our regular worship will make a striking difference in our churches and in society. When we explain the flow of worship, we also explain patterns that should be part of the rhythm and flow of a Christian’s life.
3. Be open to new music.
This is undoubtedly the most controversial of my suggestions. Asking a church to change its music is like asking a rabid fan to change his favorite team. Let me be clear. Contextualization doesn’t mean adopting the Hillsong hit list. On the other hand, I do believe ruling out certain instruments or innovations in tune fails to keep in step with the Reformation spirit.
No matter how much we wish to preserve tradition, we must remember that detailed musical instructions don’t appear in the Bible. We want to follow God’s Word, yet we’ll never replicate the musicality of the early church (nor does God want us to). Don’t cement 17th-century forms as the zenith of Christian worship. Don’t reject pianos and microphones simply because the early church didn’t have them. Be as open to trying out new worship music or new arrangements of old hymns as you are to using 21st-century Bible translations and praying in modern English.
Curate Your Church’s Culture
Everything church leaders do cultivates a church culture The way you dress, the way you worship, your tone, the church’s lighting, and the social customs before and after the service—each action contributes to your church’s overall “feel,” and this culture conveys as much about your understanding of the gospel as do the words you speak from the pulpit.
When we explain the flow of worship, we also explain patterns that should be part of the rhythm and flow of a Christian’s life.
The goal of contextual translation work is to present the message and life of the gospel in a comprehensible and attractive way. Fear of translation is understandable. It can sound like seeker-sensitive compromise and pandering. Translation inevitably runs a risk. We certainly don’t want to do the sort of “translation” work that twists and manipulates Scripture or that jettisons centuries of theological labor for the latest hit. But translation is the work of ministers who recognize their calling as missionaries and, dare I say it, reformers. If our churches are to be “always reforming,” they’ll be always translating.
The Gospel Coalition