On Reformation

I have thought about this for a while and I think that this can apply to anyone in any field who wants to reform their organization.
The way to reform is any organization is not to abandon your organization. If you want to reform your local church, then you do not stop attending. You don't start hunting for another church to attend. You stay at the church and work for reform until the church begins to take steps towards reformation, or, until the church runs you off. Read about Martin Luther sometime.
If you want to reform the school where you teach, then don't apply for a teaching job at another school.
If you are a doctor who wants to reform the hospital where your residency is, then don't move your residency.

Too many times people, who are dissatisfied with the way things are going in their lives, jobs, churches, marriages, etc., turn their back on those things that they wish to change. They quit.
Their marriage hits a little snag and the following week they are divorced. The church heads a different direction than what they believe to be a Scriptural model and they stop attending.

A prime example of this line of thinking is evident today in our nations attitudes towards Iraq. Let's just quit Iraq and move on to North Korea. (If you want to comment about Iraq and the 'W', then do it on the last post. This post is about not giving up.) In short, you don't win wars by quitting. You don't reform anything by quitting.

This does not mean that you continue to do things the same way, or that you never change tactics, should the need arise. It does not mean that you stop learning and growing and shut out all arguments against your 'reformation'. It does not mean that you have arrived at the final perfected reformed stance and can now only focus your energies outward.
It does mean that as you yourself are being constantly reformed, you are using that personal reformation to feed your public reformation.

So when you look around and see that things are askew in the world, don't just turn your eyes to Heaven and sing about how terrible the world is and how happy you will be one day after awhile. Instead, turn your heart towards God, find your hope and joy in Him, and through the power of the Word and God the Spirit, turn the world upside down for Christ. If the time comes and you are rejected, shake the dust off your feet and carry the reformation elsewhere. But don't quit.

P.S. All you pastors out there, Mark Dever will take you the rest of the way.