ReForm

Change and reformation are not the same thing! This will certainly be a year of transition, and we run the risk of believing that ‘things are changing around here.’ There’s new leadership, new ministry, new ways of doing things…a lot of NEW. But that’s not the same as CHANGE. Who we are as a church family doesn’t need to be changed, but there are new ways of doing what has always defined us. 

We are of course, children of God - with our ancestry rooted in a time of reformation of the church. The goal was never to ‘do something different’ or to start a denomination or even protestantism. It was to reform those things that had drifted from their origin. It was to reclaim what had been set aside momentarily but lost over time. 

And of course it was to be who the church was instituted to be in the ways of the time - to be modern to that time period - reviving the church to be people, mission, and Kingdom oriented in place of the rituals, hierarchy, and power structures that developed over centuries. 

There aren’t better things to do than what we’ve always done. There are better ways to do what we’ve always done.

And that’s not just the large-scale ‘church’ at St. Matthew; it’s the granular, individual St. Matthew family member that we will see God ReForm. Who you are hasn’t been lost. Who you are was established at your rebirth by faith and the waters of Baptism. We aren’t asking this year ‘what have I become’ or ‘how can I become something else, something God wants me to be?’ That would deny the truth of His Word that has proclaimed you to be His child, His beloved. 

This year we ask: ‘What’s a better way to be who I have already been made to be?’  Or ‘How is God calling me to live as who He made me to be, but to live that out in a different way?’

Who We Already Are- September 13, 2026