Your people shall all be righteous; they shall possess the land forever. They are the shoot that I planted, the work of my hands, so that I might be glorified. – Isaiah 60:21 (CEB)
Today is the day of remembrance for Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, who died on this day in 1787. Muhlenberg was the leading pioneer pastor for Lutheran Christianity in North America. He roamed the countryside, beginning in the colonial era, travelling from congregation to congregation, building up the first structures of a Lutheran denomination in North America. He was particularly focused in Pennsylvania but also worked more broadly, with trips into New Jersey and other areas. He was sent from Germany in 1742 and spent 45 years building up a cohesive Lutheran identity in the New World and connecting congregations into an early synod.
One of the things Muhlenberg is most known for is his conviction about the American church should not simply be a replicate of European churches. The church needed to shift and change to meet its new context and changing times. He is known for the slogan ecclesia plantanda, or “the church must be planted.”That is, core pieces of what we have been given must remain: scripture at the center, the celebration of the sacraments and a sense of personal conversion. Other parts of the practice of Christianity can and should change. For instance, in creating a liturgy that all German immigrants could adopt regardless of what part of Germany they were coming from, he combined elements of different regional liturgies in Germany and added some new aspects to make a unique North American German Lutheran liturgy.
It is worth remembering Muhlenberg’s image of the church as needing planted. I think it is a continually true image. The church is not static and can never be static. To be static is to focus on what God has done in a previous moment rather than being open to God with us in our time and needs that we are in right now. Even more, it looks backwards rather than to the future that God promises. We are not the same as we were 40 years ago and our needs have changed. This is true physically, socially, and spiritually. The church needs replanting again and again, and that is as true today as it was when Henry M. Muhlenberg arrived in Philadelphia in 1742.