Where Do We Go from Here?

Modern Reformation magazine isn’t going away, but it is changing. That change is still in its early stages and primarily concerns our choice of media. We’re shifting from a print subscription periodical to a digital multimedia newsletter. Our website, modernreformation.org, will be a bigger priority now. We’ll focus on publishing high-quality videos as well as our traditional essays, reviews, and other written content. And everything we do will be much more tightly integrated with the rest of the wonderful team and programs at Sola.

Change like this generates enthusiasm and anxiety. In preparing this final print issue of Modern Reformation, our team has experienced flurries of activity alongside periods of self-reflection. We’ve spent a lot of time wrestling with the Big Questions: Who are we? Where have we been, and where are we going? What matters most?

In this essay, I want to share with you, our faithful readers, some of the fruit of that reflection by looking backward and forward at MR’s mission, media, and message.

The Mission: For a Modern Reformation

The church’s mission statement is Matthew’s famous Great Commission, in which the risen Jesus both claims his authority as ruler over all and exercises that authority by sending his people to accomplish his ongoing work in the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus doesn’t leave us in the dark about what his work looks like:

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:16–20)

When King Jesus sent his church out with his word and Spirit, he gave us (as the communion of saints and as individual believers) everything we need for our mission of announcing the good news of the kingdom, serving his work of naturalizing new citizens under his heavenly rule who bear the sacred name of the Holy Trinity.

That mission and its character don’t fundamentally change when God’s people pursue reformation in existing churches rather than the initial formation of new churches. As confessional Christians, we emphasize that the ordained ministry of word and sacrament in corporate worship is God’s chosen instrument for saving sinners, gathering his people, and strengthening us in faith and fruitfulness. This applies no less in cases when the community is backsliding from the pure teaching of the Scriptures, has added unbiblical requirements that bind Christians’ consciences to merely human traditions, or has become entangled in the snares of worldly cares. Word and sacrament ministry is always the means by which God builds his church and strengthens it against the gates of hell.

At Sola, we’ve always been adamant that we’re not pursuing our mission instead of the church’s or apart from it. Jesus is committed to his church, and so to be committed to his mission means being committed to his bride. Here’s Sola’s official mission statement:

Sola Media serves today’s global church by producing resources for reformation grounded in the historic Christian faith.

By drawing on the riches of the Reformation to challenge and encourage thoughtful Christians around the globe to think theologically, MR fortifies these disciples and equips them to equip others. In this way, our desire is to support the church in its unique, God-given mission of making—and being—faithful disciples.

I want to take a moment to speak especially to the many MR readers who hold ordained office in the church or occupy other positions of teaching authority and influence. Because we who teach and lead are held to higher standards (James 3:1), it’s tempting to think that Jesus’ mission toward us changes when we become disciple-makers in addition to being disciples. We realize non-Christians, new Christians, and nominal Christians need to keep growing in the knowledge and grace of the gospel in order to be formed in the image of Christ. But this is no less true for committed, mature believers. Indeed, the greater responsibility you carry and the deeper maturity you’ve been given means you need to hear and believe the good news of God’s grace even more profoundly. When those of us who’ve been running the race for decades fall flat on our face once again—usually tripping in the very same places—we need to hear God’s forgiveness and favor pronounced upon us more clearly and more often, not less. Whenever “our heart condemns us” because we knew better and we still blew it, that’s when we most need to hear that “God is greater than our heart” (1 John 3:20). Knowing God in Jesus Christ defines progress in everlasting life no less than its beginning and end (John 17:3).

When it comes to the storms of temptation to waywardness, self-
righteousness, or doubt, disciples and disciple-makers all huddle together in the same leaky boat. None of us has any hope except to entrust ourselves to the One who strides upon the waters, who commands the wind and waves to be still.

Supporting the church in these ways has been MR’s mission since the beginning. But since we’re undertaking such a major shift in media, it’s worth spending some time reflecting on whether this media shift might help or hinder our mission—indeed, whether our media choices might inherently shape or even distort our message.

In the technical vocabulary of traditional academic theology, media (plural for medium) is the Latin term describing the means, instruments, or tools by which agents accomplish their intended goals. The keyboard with which I type this essay and the page or screen on which you read it are media. Historian Richard Muller notes that when classic theologians discussed the role of media in shaping intentions, actions, and goals, they did so with the understanding that means are typically secondary and passive. In other words, media doesn’t usually play a leading role in directing motives and outcomes. And as passive, media are morally neutral in themselves, since intent lies with the agent and not with the tools they employ. My keyboard is involved in, but not responsible for, the motives and outcomes of my writing. These thinkers also realized, however, that sometimes the media we choose can so strongly affect how and why we act that they become more than mere tools. They become more like contributing causes in their own right.

In recent times, philosophers and theologians have emphasized that media often play a more prominent role than we intend or even realize. If my keyboard makes it hard to type this essay quickly and accurately, then not only my motivation but the final product itself will be seriously affected by the unsuitability of my tools. I remember a friend in college who had so much evangelistic zeal that he wanted everyone who crossed his path to hear the good news of God’s grace toward undeserving rebels. So he decided to get a vanity license plate. I can still picture his beat-up old car rumbling across campus, SINNER emblazoned in dark blue letters against bright white enamel on its rusty rear bumper. All media will color the messages they carry—sometimes beyond recognition.

In fact, media shape the messenger as well as the message. As T. David Gordon reminds us in a recent MR essay, the ways we engage with our contemporary digital tools shape our souls just like working with physical tools shapes the calluses on our hands.

We can learn from the wisdom of older and newer thinkers here. Media is rarely—if ever—neutral in the sense of being indifferent or inconsequential. But neither is any medium inherently virtuous or vicious. God’s use of stone in giving the Ten Commandments to Moses, or God’s commands to Habakkuk and Isaiah to inscribe their visions on tablets (Hab. 2:2; Isa. 8:1), or instructions to Jeremiah and John to write down their visions in a scroll (Jer. 36:2), weren’t universal endorsements of the superiority of those media for all places and times. Reading those visions in a modern English print edition or listening to an audio Bible app doesn’t strip these prophets’ messages of their status or meaning as God’s very word.

There are, of course, many meaningful differences between sharing a message on a stone or wooden tablet or a papyrus scroll versus a print magazine or a YouTube video; but those real differences don’t make any medium good or bad in itself. The Ten Commandments reject the use of their own medium when stone becomes an instrument for idolatry (in the form of graven images, Exod. 20:4). We could have a debate about whether stone or papyrus or YouTube or license plates (or some, all, or none of the above) are suitable tools for communicating God’s word in our own day. But if the most consequential thing about these words is that they were inspired by the Spirit of God—rather than what media the prophets and apostles used to record and share them—then we likewise should see our own media choices as subservient to the mission they serve and the messages they carry.

This means we need to avoid the twin extremes of being naive about media preferences, at one end of the spectrum, and of binding consciences to our preferred media, at the other. I can imagine an argument many centuries ago between biblical copyists cloistered away in an English monastery:

“No no, Eldred, traditional parchment is far more fitting for conveying the infinite value of Holy Writ, and the esteem in which we should honor it, than that cheap, newfangled paper.”

“Yet, Ranulf, how will merchants and bakers ever be able to afford such a luxury? I share your high respect for God’s word—that’s why I wish it to reach men far and wide in the most accessible form possible.”

“What! And place divine revelation on the same level as the thousand guild meeting placards and town hall notices tacked up to every post on every cross-street? Eldred, if we began distributing the Scriptures on such disposable materials, we would soon find them being handled as thoughtlessly as these.”

“Better to place a Bible in many dirty hands, Ranulf, than to place it in precious few clean ones . . .”

And round and round it goes. If this seems fanciful, just reread Eldred and Ranulf’s argument, replacing “parchment versus paper” with “print versus digital,” and it will begin to sound more familiar.

This argument about appropriate means of communication has always been lively. Socrates, in Plato’s Phaedrus, famously opposed the practice of teaching or learning anything truly worthwhile through writing, which allows the foolish to read a little about a lot and to confuse this surface knowledge with deep wisdom. The pre-Reformation humanist Johannes Trithemius lamented the loss of the spiritual benefit of hand copying sacred manuscripts to the trendy ease of mass printing them. The Reformers complained (with good reason) about the ambiguity of relying on images of biblical characters and saints in stained glass to educate the illiterate. Roman Catholics complained (with less justification) about the difficulty for ordinary people to interpret Scripture in the vernacular. Whether either side in these various arguments over the years was right, both had a point—at least when it came to the complex question of knowing how and when to use which media.

That’s why the use of media is so often a wisdom issue. And if a wisdom issue, then an area of Christian freedom and discernment rather than compulsion. We must say, in the same vein as Paul’s instructions about eating meat or drinking wine, that all media are lawful in themselves but not all are beneficial or edifying to us or others (1 Cor. 10:23–33; also Rom. 14). We can enjoy responsible Christian freedom in this area all the more so when we’re not trying to displace or replace the church and its ordained “media” for salvation. God has ordained the particular means of word and sacrament for grace. In areas of Christian freedom, then, let’s evaluate media the same way. If we ask, “Are these means wise and good?” Then let’s respond, “Good and wise for what?”

Christians have often been pioneers in creatively using new media in service to the church’s mission of carrying the gospel to the nations and teaching it to our children. The modern form of the book as we know it today (the codex) was first popularized by the early church in what my former colleague at InterVarsity Press Al Hsu has called a first-century “media revolution.” The new technology of the book made access to the Scriptures more durable, more convenient to carry, faster for finding and comparing specific passages—and easier to hide, if need be. Historian Diarmaid MacCulloch has argued that, humanly speaking, the Protestant Reformation would have been inconceivable without the increasing popularity and affordability of reading due to the printing press, since “a religion of the book needs books.” MacCulloch also shares an observation from Calvin biographer Bernard Cottret that “the increase in Bibles created the Reformation rather than being created by it.” Christians today continue to pursue creative missionary efforts in otherwise impenetrable countries through the use of radio broadcasts of Scripture and Christian teaching, which must be sophisticated enough to detect and counteract frequency jamming efforts by government authorities. I’ve purposefully avoided offering examples from the digital domain, since these extremely powerful and disruptive new tools tend to be most controversial, but I believe the same principles of responsible Christian freedom apply.

So, W.W.L.D.? “What Would Luther Do?” The Wittenberg Reformer was famous for his media savvy. The title and subtitle of Andrew Pettegree’s fascinating 2016 book on the subject tells us nearly all we need to know when it comes to this aspect of the Reformer’s approach: Brand Luther: How an Unheralded Monk Turned His Small Town into a Center of Publishing, Made Himself the Most Famous Man in Europe—and Started the Protestant Reformation. Given the chance today, I can only suspect Luther would lean into whichever contemporary tools and technologies would allow him the greatest reach for the church’s timeless message without intentionally undermining that message (or the mission of its messengers) in the process.

Before it became a magazine, MR was a free newsletter, a bulletin printed and distributed from Mike Horton’s Biola University dorm room. Surprising as it may sound, then, our bold changes in MR’s format are more like a reformation than a revolution. We’re not turning our back on the past. We’re going back to our roots.

The Message of the Mission:
Or, How Do We Move Forward by Going Back?

Since mission, media, and message are always distinct but never divided, as we bring MR into a future reflective of its mission and media roots, we should also ensure that we keep MR just as close to its founding message.

One way to tell what you’re passionate about is to consider what you can’t stop thinking about (and talking about). Over the course of more than thirty years, what has MR published about more often and more passionately than anything else? I’ll share here only a quick bullet list of our consistent emphases—because if I get going on any one of them, I may never stop!

• Theology—knowing the Triune God and seeing everything in relation to God—lies at the heart of the Christian faith and life.
• Thinking theologically—from Scripture, by the Spirit, through faith, within the communion of saints, in engagement with the culture—is vital for being a mature, fruitful disciple of Christ.
• The unity of Scripture’s storyline, its message, and its recipients all centers around God’s covenant promises made and kept in Jesus Christ, the faithful Adam, the eternal Son who took on our nature to be the only mediator between God and humanity as our prophet, priest, and king.
• The gospel truths embedded in the catholic faith and emphasized in the solas of the Reformation—centering on God’s effective pronouncement of justification solely on the basis of Christ’s righteousness received by faith alone—are essential for genuine reformation and renewal in our age (or any age).
• The law-gospel distinction is critical not only for understanding the Bible but also for our relationship with God and neighbor.
• Worship, evangelism, and discipleship through word and sacrament are the irreplaceable and exclusive mission God has entrusted to the church.
• Both personally and cosmically, we must uphold both sides of the tension of living in the time between the times: the overlap between Christ’s coming to inaugurate his kingdom and pour out his Spirit, and his future return to complete his work of making all things new.
• All Christians, not only those in ordained ministry, are entrusted with gifts and callings that glorify God and bless others inside the church and out.
• The nature and purposes of the everlasting kingdom of Christ and the temporary kingdoms of this world don’t exist in isolation from each other, but they should never be confused with each other.

These emphases distill so much of what MR’s editors and contributors have discovered to be good, true, and beautiful about our God and his ways as he has given himself to be known in his word. These are the excellent and praiseworthy things we delight in thinking about (Phil. 4:8–9).

Conclusion

Like the Great Commission for the church, Sola’s mission statement summarizes what we do and how we do it. But there’s always a goal—there’s always a why driving us forward, motivating our mission as well as our media and message. For the church, that why surrounds the Great Commission like bookends:

And Jesus came and said to [the disciples], “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:16–20)

As Christians participating in the mission of the church, that’s our glorious why: the promise of everlasting communion with our risen king.

For Sola, our why is encapsulated in our vision statement:

Our vision is to see reformation in hearts, homes, and churches around the world—so Christians know the good news of justification in Christ alone through faith alone and experience joy in the sufficiency of Christ, confidence in the assurance of salvation, freedom for their callings in the world, and relentless hope in Christ’s coming kingdom. Soli Deo Gloria.

As an MR reader, isn’t that what you long to see, not only out there in your family and your congregation but also in here—in the deepest recesses of your heart, where you still struggle to believe that God in Jesus Christ went to the depths of hell’s suffering to bring you to the heights of heavenly joy? That’s why we believe MR’s catholic and reformational emphases are so vital. They focus our faith on the Big Answers to the Big Questions, in which God tells us who we are, where we’ve been, where we’re headed, and what truly matters.

I pray this vision motivates you to continue to partner with us in the mission of sharing this message for the sake of the church—even as we shift our media to share it as widely as possible. For a modern reformation, yes—but to the glory of God alone.