October 2025
As I prepared this newsletter it struck me what an odd month October is. We begin with a celebration of church unity on October 5th (World Communion Sunday) and end with a celebration of an event that divided the church on October 26th (Reformation Sunday). I am a Protestant. I love reading the Protestant Reformers, including Martin Luther. My academic scholarship places theologians from the Swiss Reformation in conversation with contemporary philosophy. I teach a seminary course on the theology of the Protestant Reformation and have taught a similar course for lay adults in my previous church. All that is to say, I take the Reformation seriously and it is a significant part of my identity as a Christian, a theologian, and as a pastor.
Yet the Reformation was not without its downsides. It would fundamentally divide the church in a more radical and lasting way than the earlier divide between the western (Roman Catholic) and eastern church (Orthodox) centuries before. The fracturing of the church is hardly something to celebrate. It is a loss to be mourned. Furthermore, the kinds of reforms championed by Luther and his contemporaries would lay the ground work for further schism and fracturing – where churches solve their disagreements by endlessly splitting off into new sects and new denominations. This is something with which we, as United Methodists, are painfully familiar. Clearly, there is an ambiguity to the heritage of the Reformation.
Yet uncritical championing of the necessity of church unity is not necessarily a good thing, either. It leads to a centralization of authority and an unwarranted confidence in all-too-human popes,
church councils, and traditional practices. It can lead to the kinds of abuses of church power that led to the Reformation in the first place.
Perhaps, we need to take our cue from the month of October and hold these two ideals (unity and reform) in a kind of tension, reflecting that the Church needs both of these impulses to be preserved. We need to think of ourselves as part of the universal Church, as small-c catholic Christians. We need to remember that our denominations and our sects are all subordinated to our loyalty to the Lordship of Christ – that as Christians, whether Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox, we are united in the waters of baptism and in the body and the blood of Christ at the Lord’s Table. We need to respect the historical continuity of our tradition, a conversation and process of discernment that spans the centuries, and not to falsely think that Christianity was invented in 1517. However, we must remember that this Church is populated by human beings. We are fallible. We make mistakes. We make errors. We need to always struggle to be faithful to what God has done for the world in Jesus Christ. Ecclesia semper reformanda est – the Church must always be reformed. Let October be our reminder of this ideal: to always strive to be both reformed and catholic
Grace and Peace,
– Pastor Jeff