reformed and reforming

Russ from Reformed Renegade asked what is my opinion on The modernisation of the reformed Church. He has written several pieces on this very issue at his blog http://reformed-renegade.blogspot.com/.

A reformed Church is always reforming, I like that idea, that is why I argue that the baptist position is the more reformed of all the Protestant Churches, as the reformed position moved further from Rome it saw that Biblical baptism was adult baptism.
However I have noticed a sad trend with the modernisation of the Church, in that the thing to get modernised first is doctrine which either gets dumbed down or thrown out. Thankfully in recent times this seems to be changing and I am thankful that worship music is becoming doctrinally sound as well as modern. I recently bought a copy of Pierced for our Transgressions a modern defense of the doctrine of Penal Substitution, I was pleased but not entirely surprised to find Stuart Townend endorsing the book. Townend's worship music is exactly what contemporary worship should be, it is contemporary in that the music is modern. Yet it is also worship music ,there is no dumbing down In Christ Alone for example. This is just one of many fine examples from Townend. This song especially expresses everything that orthodox confessional Christianity should and in a style that is a pleasure to sing. In one of his articles Russ quotes from Prof Andrew McGowan's Always Reforming (which has a better cover in the States) and this is a good place to start (especially as A TB McGowan is the Principal of HTC and I could do with the brownie points) :-)
'Some have forgotten about Semper Reformanda in their progress towards a rigid confessionalism.' P.13 There is a tendency in some Reformed churches to stick to what is old merely for the sake of tradition so you walk through their doors and go through a time warp coming out in either the C17th, C18th, or C19th. Yet the truths of scripture are timeless and should be freshly applied to each new generation. Many seem to forget for example that when Charles Wesley wrote his hymns they were contemporary, thankfully many of them are also timeless but we can still express ourselves in C21st language. Last semester we had Angus Macrae from Dingwall Free Church speak at the morning chapel service. Angus read Psalm 67 including the superscription which says, To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments. A Psalm. A song. I was laughing to myself because he is a Free Church minister and they do not allow musical instruments in the Free Church and they only sing Psalms. Angus however was a breath of fresh air, he gave a tremendous sermon on the Psalm and he informed us he is working for change within the Free Church. Not to change doctrine but to bring the Church into the C21st.
Peter Adam was speaking at the Scottish Ministers Association last summer and he said of a church that he attended, where the music was loud. His first thought was, this is blasphemous, but then listening to the words he realised it wasn't he just didn't like it. To be a reforming church in this generation we need to take note of where we start from, the different musical tastes within the fellowship as well as age range. We should express our worship and our worship music in the language of the culture without leaving the world of the Bible behind.

All that said and done, I know in twenty years time when I am in my 50's I am going to struggle with contemporary music!
Shalom
Stephen