Author Archives: Maxie Dunnam

What Are You Worried About by Maxie Dunnam

What Are You Worried About by Maxie Dunnam

There have been a few occasions in my life when, almost immediately after meeting and greeting a person, they asked, “What are you worried about?” Persons often wear themselves on their faces. 

In my last article I reflected on Tennessee Williams’ image, violets cracking rocks. In his teaching, Jesus used an equally powerful image: “Consider the lilies… how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” This was a primary teaching of Jesus. He closed a section of the Sermon on the Mount with his lesson about God’s care for us, “Don’t be anxious.” 

Ours is a jittery age. We are terribly worried about success and prestige, but we’re not worried half enough about what we’re doing to ourselves. We ought to be bothered about ulcers and heart attacks that we bring on ourselves. We ought to be bothered about the fact that our friendships are superficial. We ought to take note of the fact that no amount of money can compensate for the way we rob ourselves and become slaves to ourselves.

We have a right to be anxious. Conflicts and upheavals around the world are moving nations deeper and deeper into a war mentality. That’s a part of the big picture, and it is anxiety-producing. We don’t have to think at that level. Our day-to-day living brings enough. Jesus knew that, so he said, “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day” (Matt. 6:34).

One of the important things Jesus is saying is this: Don’t borrow trouble. I don’t know the history of that phrase, but we know what it means. So did Jesus. “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.”

Look at that issue from two perspectives. One will immediately strike a chord in us; the other, we have probably thought too little about.

First, don’t borrow trouble by taking on excessive anxiety about things you cannot change. Excessive anxiety about things we cannot change is one of the biggest issues in our life. There are some burdens that we cannot handle for ourselves, and there are some burdens that we were never meant to handle. Those burdens are to be turned over to God. 

A second perspective on hearing Jesus’ word, “Don’t be anxious,” is Don’t borrow the trouble of worrying about your ability to live the Christian life. This is something most of us have thought little or nothing about. Yet, I think it’s a big problem in many of our lives. We worry about our ability to live the Christian life. This expresses itself particularly in anxiety about the fact that we will fall into sin again.

We know that we are weak and that we do give in to temptation. Our problem comes when we adopt a poor me attitude that says, “It’s always going to be like that. I’m simply not able to live the Christian life.” To be sure, we sin. Hopefully, we feel guilty for our sins. But we must not remain in our guilt. Scripture promises that when we confess our sin, God forgives and “remembers our sin no more” (Jer. 31:34).

The fact is we are adding sin to sin if we choose to remain guilty after confession and repentance. We can exchange our guilt for praise because “the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).

So we should not borrow the trouble that comes from saying, “I’m sure I’ll do it again.” As Christians, we are in Christ, and we must live believing that in him we live one day at a time. We don’t dwell on the possibility of succumbing to temptation tomorrow. Jesus has set us free now, not tomorrow! As far as tomorrow is concerned, Christ is our keeper. We are living in him; and as long as we do, he will keep us. 

Don’t borrow trouble by worrying about your ability to live the Christian life. What are you worried about? Rehearse the lessons we need to keep in mind:

Don’t borrow trouble.

Don’t borrow the trouble of worrying about your ability to live the Christian life.

Be aware of, but don’t give into anxiety about the fact that we might fall into sin again.

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Violets Cracking Rocks by Maxie Dunnam

Violets Cracking Rocks by Maxie Dunnam

Easter is the punctuation mark of the Christian Faith: the death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s Son as his gift of salvation for all who will receive it. Easter stirs an image in my mind: violets cracking rocks.

The image was connected with the work of Tennessee Williams, one of America’s greatest dramatists. In their commentary about his life and work, critics often made the point that he was a lonely and frightened man. His plays presented a world of shattered hopes and failed visions. While he loved his characters, they, like him, struggled against the frightening blindness of their lives.

Later, Williams became less angry and frightened. After his death, Darn Sullivan, writing in the Los Angeles Times, noted that Williams’s themes had changed; that in his later work, he was writing about “the power of violets cracking the rocks.” 

What a powerful image… “the power of violets cracking the rocks.” More powerful, but in the same category, is an image: Jesus used, “Consider the lilies… how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” (Luke 12:27)

That the image came to me should not be a surprise. I grew up in rural Mississippi. Winters were wet and cold. We had few clothes, but they were adequate. I had three brothers and two sisters. I was the youngest of three boys. I not only wore “hand-me-down” shirts and overalls, but shoes. The size needed, and shoes available, determined what shoes were purchased in the Fall before winter set in. It was rare that we wore shoes at any time in the summer. Wearing shoes was determined by season and weather.

That necessity was decided primarily by my mother. We children didn’t enjoy wearing shoes, and we hounded our parents to let us shed them. I don’t know how other parents made the decision, but Momma had her own way. A blooming violet was proof of spring and promise of summer. If we could bring home a blooming violet, it was “shoes-off-time.”

That’s the reason Williams’ image came to mind just before Easter. What an image for resurrection: the power of violets cracking the rocks. In the weeks ahead I am going to reflect and share with you more about this dynamic because Jesus used a similar one in teaching about life.

Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! (Luke 12:27-28 NIV)

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Distinctive Style of Methodists: Our Worldwide Parish by Maxie Dunnam

Distinctive Style of Methodists: Our Worldwide Parish by Maxie Dunnam

Followers of Jesus have a distinctive style. There are many marks of the Methodist Style. We have considered A Catholic Spirit and Heartfelt Religion. Let’s look now at one other distinctive mark, our worldwide parish.

It is gathered up in Wesley’s popular saying, “The world is my parish.” That word captures the style of the Methodist movement—a concern for all humankind, a spending of ourselves and our resources that all the world might be brought to Christ.

Most of what I share here and much I have shared about other marks are from my book, Going on to Salvation (Nashville, Discipleship Resources, 1996). The truths still speak to us today.

We need to know that Wesley came to this position “kicking and screaming.” His decision to join Whitefield in preaching in the fields to the poor and to coal miners was a difficult one. He fought against it. Whitefield was having great success in reaching for Christ those for whom the established church paid no attention. He sent for John Wesley, knowing his preaching power and organizing skill.

Up to this point, Wesley had only preached in regular church services while in England. Should he accept Whitefield’s appeal and help with the open-air meetings in Bristol? Charles insisted that he not do it. But John practiced what he preached. He called on the Christian fellowship for guidance. He submitted the decision to the Fetter Lane Society, and they decided he should go. Wesley’s Journal for Saturday, March 31 reads:

In the evening, I reached Bristol and met Mr. Whitefield there. I could scarce reconcile myself at first to this strange way of preaching in the fields, of which he set me an example on Sunday; having been all my life (until very lately) so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church.

Wesley spoke to a little society on Sunday evening using the Sermon on the Mount “one pretty remarkable precedent of field-preaching,” he observed, “though I suppose there were churches at that time also.” The next day, Monday, Wesley reported in his Journal:

At four in the afternoon, I submitted to be more vile, and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation, speaking from a little eminence in ground adjoining the city, to about three thousand people. The scripture on which I spoke was this,…”The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor.”

In his book, The Radical Wesley, Howder Snyder sums up what happened:

Characteristically, Wesley immediately began to organize. He formed a number of societies and bands and on May 9 acquired a piece of property where he built his “New Room” as a central meeting place. When Whitefield returned to America in August, Wesley was left totally in charge of the growing work. He divided his time between Bristol and London, concentrating on open-air preaching, organizing bands and speaking at night to an increasing number of societies.

The Wesleyan Revival had begun. From the beginning it was a movement largely for and among the poor, those whom “gentlemen” and “ladies” looked on simply as part of the machinery of the new industrial system.The Wesleys preached, the crowds responded and Methodism as a mass movement was born. (pp. 32-33)

That’s what Methodism is all about—a missional and evangelical witness and outreach that sees the world as our parish—and every person in the world, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, without regard to race—every person as a person for whom Christ died.

The movement will go on and be empowered as we Methodists recover the warm heart, when we provide structures of love and care, and when we get a passion for ministry and mission, believing that “the world is our parish.”

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Distinctive Style of Methodists: Heartfelt Religion by Maxie Dunnam

Distinctive Style of Methodists: Heartfelt Religion by Maxie Dunnam

Followers of Jesus have throughout history exhibited a distinctive style.  In my first article I shared about Wesley’s peculiar flair. The second article highlighted a Methodist’s catholic spirit. Here, we will look to the heart of the Wesleyan movement.

 

 

The Methodist movement was born in England and soon began to burn with a fire of love across the land, in large part, because of two big problems in the Established Church. One was spiritual apathy. Deism had flavored the intellectual and religious climate. God had become a benevolent ruler of the universe, removed from personal experience. In the arrogant rationalism that pervaded the day, everything had to be utterly reasonable.

The second thing that had happened was that the nature of the church as an organization had become remote, removed from life, not touching the people where they were. One cleric, for instance, had been made a bishop and given a lifetime stipend, but never set foot in the diocese over which he presumably had spiritual and temporal oversight. It was obviously all temporal and nothing spiritual.

Into that setting with those two characteristics – spiritual apathy and a remote church structure -came the Methodist revival with an answer to these two glaring, devastating failures of the church. The answer? Heartfelt religion.

For spiritual apathy, there was the experience of the warm heart. People wanted desperately not only to hear the gospel, but also to experience it. So John Wesley’s Aldersgate experience became the model: “I felt my heart strangely warmed, I felt I did trust Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.” That experience was repeated over and over.

Furthermore, for people who experienced a church that had become lifelessly formal at best, and coldly remote at worst, the Methodists came with ministries of care and warm concern. The class meetings and bands of the Methodist societies became the settings for these expressions of compassion. People cared for and looked after each other’s souls. Loving hearts set other hearts on fire.

In a lecture at Emory University, Dr. Theodore Runyon introduced what to me was a whole new way of thinking about the “heart strangely warmed” and structures of care as means for our growth in Christ and our life in the world. It is a new way of thinking about a Methodist style. He used three terms to make an important distinction: orthodoxy, orthopraxis, and orthopathy. The first two terms were familiar; not the third. Orthodoxy is right doctrine, right opinion, right belief. But Methodists have never believed that orthodoxy was enough. God demands right action, right practice, right behavior – that is orthopraxis.

Even with that kind of plea for orthopraxis, working faith, Wesley always insisted that as faith without works is dead, works without faith profiteth nothing; that “all morality, all justice, mercy and truth – without faith – is of no value in the sight of God.”

Neither orthodoxy nor orthopraxis alone is sufficient. And what Runyon adds is that even together, they are not enough. There must be orthopathy. This means right passions, senses, tempers, dispositions; and in the larger sense, right experience. This, says Runyon, is the challenge to a theology of conversion – 

To recognize the crying need of humankind to be encountered and transformed by Christian faith in all aspects of their being, including the emotions, feelings, and experiences. Nothing less is a sign of the kingdom and its power in the midst of the present age. And nothing less than this kind of theology and experience ought to undergird our preaching, our Christian education, our evangelism and mission, and our witness and action for peace and justice.

Runyon then gave three hallmarks for such an orthopathic theology. First, Wesley’s “bookends” of creation and kingdom, the fundamental conviction that all creation is to be redeemed by Christ. The world and everything in it is to be brought under the Lordship of Christ not destroyed, but redeemed.

The second hallmark of orthopathy is realism about the present order of things. “We are a part of a world that has corrupted God’s good creation and become insensitive and deaf to God’s will and way.” The gospel forces us to see the alienation and estrangement of the present order and present the gospel necessity of being reborn into a new order.

Thus, the final hallmark of orthopathic theology is the familiar word of John 3:7: “You must be born from above.”

Runyon’s insight helps us think clearly about how we provide the opportunities for the “heart strangely warmed” and the structures of care that will be settings for the transformation of our whole life and total experience. When Wesley insisted that “true Christianity cannot exist without the inward experience and the outward practice of justice, mercy, and truth,” he brought orthodoxy, orthopraxis, and orthopathy together and gave us our marching orders.

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Distinctive Style of Methodist: Catholic Spirit by Maxie Dunnam

Distinctive Style of Methodist: Catholic Spirit by Maxie Dunnam

In my last article I made the claim that Methodists have a distinct style. As Christians, our style defines us as much, maybe more, than anything else.

I have the privilege of observing that more than most. My wife and I live in a life cafe. We have lived here for seven years, and plan to make this our “earthly home.” Though not formally defined and labeled as a “Christian Community,” we are. We have Christian worship on Sunday and a vesper service on Thursday.

We have many denominations represented here and at least two Jewish couples. Baptists and Church of Christ are the largest defined denominational groups. Though a minority, there are Methodists and our group is growing.

Other than the local churches I have served, different expressions of my ministry career have given me opportunity to live and test the popular expression of how Christians should relate: In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and, in all things, charity. Wesley described his approach to differences in belief in one big question, “Is thine heart right, as my heart is with thy heart…If it is, give me thine hand.”

I don’t know who first suggested it, but I confirm that sadly the church and too many Christians are plagued with xenophobia. Formally defined, xenophobia is “hatred or distrust of foreigners or strangers.” It is not new to the church. The apostles feared Paul and his work among the Gentiles. They were suspicious because they did not understand. That spirit within the church has often hindered the ministry of Christ. We fear opinions, positions, attitudes, and beliefs that do not match our own.

Over against xenophobia I want to put those celebrated words of John Wesley. “Is thine heart right, as my heart is with thy heart … If it is, give me thine hand.” Those words are actually from 2 Kings 10:15. Wesley used them as the text for one of the noblest sermons he ever preached, his sermon on the “Catholic Spirit.” It was one of the few instances in Wesley’s preaching when the scriptural setting of the text had nothing to do with the sermon. Unlike most of us preachers, Wesley didn’t take a text and depart from it; he stayed with it. Not so in this instance.

Wesley took the words completely out of their grisly context in 2 Kings 10 and asked, not what they meant there, but what a follower of Christ should find in them. And from that exploration, he gave us a great word to guide us as we claim and cultivate one of the most important marks of our distinctive style as Methodists: a catholic spirit.

Unfortunately there has been destructive misunderstanding and a misapplication of Wesley’s concept of the catholic spirit. We interpret that to mean “theological pluralism,” and such a pluralism has been projected as both acceptable and desirable of what it means to be a Christian within the Methodist tradition. Taken to an extreme, there is a fallacy in this concept. The way it is projected suggests that such a believer can believe almost anything about God, Jesus Christ, and the essential doctrines that relate to salvation. But this is a perversion of Wesley’s idea of the catholic spirit.

Such an uncritical, undemanding, unexamined emphasis on so-called pluralism was the furthest thing from Wesley’s thinking. He was unreserved in his condemnation of what he called “speculative latitudinarianism,” which would be his word for the way many interpret pluralism today. Wesley was rather adamant:

A catholic spirit is not speculative latitudinarianism. It is not an indifference to all opinions: this is the spawn of hell, not the offspring of heaven. This unsettledness of thought, this being “driven to and fro and tossed about with every wind of doctrine'” is a great curse, not a blessing, an irreconcilable  enemy, not a friend, to true Catholicism. A man of a truly catholic spirit has not now his religion to seek. He is fixed as the sun in his judgment concerning the main branches of Christian doctrine. It is true, he is always ready to hear and weigh whatsoever can be offered against his principles; but as this does not show any wavering in his own mind, so neither does it occasion any. He does not halt between two opinions, nor vainly endeavor to blend them into one. Observe this, you who know not what spirit ye are of: who call yourselves men of the catholic spirit, only because you are of a muddy understanding; because your mind is all in a mist; because you have no settled, consistent principles, but are for jumbling all opinions together. Be convinced, that you have quite missed your way; you know not where you are. You think you are got into the very spirit of Christ when, in truth, you are nearer the spirit of Antichrist. Go, first, and learn the first elements of the gospel of Christ, and then shall you learn to be of a truly catholic spirit (Fifty-Three Sermons, “Catholic Spirit,” p. 502).

With that perspective, it is easy to see that nothing is more needed in the church today, certainly in the United States, than a Catholic Spirit.

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Distinctive Style of Methodist: Knowing Who We Are by Maxie Dunnam

Distinctive Style of Methodist: Knowing Who We Are by Maxie Dunnam

Circumstances sometimes call us to do strange things – things we would not otherwise do. Circumstances also cause us to do things we should have done but never got around to before.

Two out-of-town visitors were walking along a street in New York City late one night. One of the pair, wary of the reputation of city streets at night, kept glancing over his shoulder, nervously eyeing every alley and shadowed doorway. Sure enough, his anticipation was rewarded. As the two rounded the next corner, two muggers appeared out of the darkness and closed in. The nervous fellow knew what was going to happen. He reached for his wallet, pulled out of a $50 bill and handed it to his friend: “Joe, here’s that $50 I’ve been owing you for six months.”

According to some critics, John Wesley never had an original idea in his life. He just borrowed from others. But the point is, even if it’s true that Wesley only borrowed from others, that would hardly solve the riddle of this man and the spiritual dynamic of the Methodist movement. Wesley’s genius and originality lay precisely in his borrowing, adapting, and combining diverse elements into a synthesis more dynamic than the sum of its parts.

Wesley also had the genius of putting an expansive, explosive truth in a single, sometimes simple sentence or a pithy phrase. He encapsulated his vision of mission and ministry in the sentence that has been on the lips of Methodists ever since: “The world is my parish.” He borrowed from Paul to summarize his theology succinctly: “Faith working through love.” He gave a challenging and rather complete principle of stewardship in the crisp triplet: “Gain all you can, save all you can, and give all you can.”

He put controversy into perspective, and challenged our motives, “Fervour for opinions is not Christian zeal.” He found unique ways to call people back to the essentials of Scriptural Christianity, “Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? Can anything but love beget love?” He described his whole approach to differences in belief and church order in the one question: “Is thine heart right, as my heart is with thy heart?… If it be, give me thine hand.”   

Together, these references suggest there is a distinctive Methodist style. I want to confirm and commend that. My wife, Jerry, and I live in a life care community. Even casual conversation and the way persons relate in our community reveal something of what they believe. We Methodists are a minority in the community, Church of Christ and Baptists are majorities. Even if I were not deliberately observant, I believe I would sense “something different.”  I think that has to do with style.

Diana Vreeland was an undisputed leader in fashion. She wrote her autobiography with the simple but stylish title, DV. It recorded her lifetime of living with inimitable style. She made a big point about the importance of style by referring to Japan. “God was fair to the Japanese,” she said. “He gave them no oil, no coal, no diamonds, no gold, no material resources-nothing! Nothing comes from the island that you can sustain a civilization on. All God gave the Japanese was a sense of style” (House and Garden, April 1984, p. 36, excerpts from DV). It was the ultimate compliment to the Japanese from this fashion style setter.

Methodists have a style that, to a marked degree, defines our uniqueness. I’m going to reflect on this distinctive style in the weeks ahead, and post here on Wesleyan Accent.

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The Human Race On Trial by Maxie Dunnam

The Human Race On Trial by Maxie Dunnam

My files are flowing over with magazine and newspaper articles, cartoons, and photos. Unfortunately, I have not found a good “keeping” and “retrieval” system that is not too time costly for the reflections I prize.

Yet, I saw it and I can’t forget it…a cartoon that depicted an older couple, obviously rich and retired, sitting in their posh living room. The lady was reading, her husband looking out the window with a smile on his face. One gathers that he has just shared with her his latest dream for retirement activity. Frowning, she looks up from her book and says: “With strikes, campus unrest, the communist take-over, air pollution on the rise, hippie protest, and immorality rampant, it doesn’t strike me as the time to start a butterfly collection!” 

As we move into this twenty-first century we need to reflect on this wise claim that has been made: the twentieth century has put the human race on trial for its life. 

It is difficult not to believe that. The institutions upon which we have become dependent, around which our lives have been ordered–education, business, medical services, the penal system, organized religion, government–have each in some way been gradually revealed as inadequate, a few of them perhaps beyond renewal and repair. In any case, they have not been equal to their promise; they cannot fill the longing in us. 

We are dissatisfied with things as they are. And while dissatisfaction is as old as the human race, and every period of history is unique in its own fashion, I believe we have reached a crucial moment in human civilization. Atomic bombs are not just more powerful weaponry. Electronic computers are not just more complex adding machines. Neil Armstrong was more than a latter-day Columbus setting foot on the moon. 

Dare I even think it? Maxie Dunnam is not just another old man becoming 90, seeking to make a redemptive difference in a needy world. What can I do? What must I do? What will I do?

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Count It All Joy by Maxie Dunnam

Count It All Joy by Maxie Dunnam

What? Count it all joy?

After a brief greeting, James begins his Epistle, “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations.” (James 1:2 KJV)

There is no hesitation, no fumbling to get to the point. It’s really a shout, COUNT IT ALL JOY! He continues, “when you meet various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2-4 RSV) 

Ponder verse 3 slowly… “For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.” Pay careful attention to the completion of his thought in verse 4: “For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

You see, suffering may produce steadfastness and faith, and we still will be incomplete. We still may lack joy. Pain by itself is evil, and alone, it doesn’t teach us anything. It may discipline us to be strong and not complain. Or, it may turn us into cynics. We may be tough and steadfast in our suffering, always keeping a stiff upper lip, but that’s a long way from what James is talking about– “Count it all joy … that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

Philip Yancey, in his book, Disappointment with God, gives us a clue for allowing our steadfast faith in suffering to work its full effect in our life. He tells us about Douglas, who “seemed righteous, in the sense of Job,” and who, like Job, suffered terrible afflictions he did not deserve.

Douglas had given up a lucrative career to start an urban ministry. His wife developed breast cancer, had a breast removed, and was struggling with the debilitating side effects of chemotherapy. In the midst of this crisis, a drunken driver hit their car and Douglas sustained a severe brain injury. He suffered terrible headaches and double vision. He could no longer work full-time to support his wife and daughter. He had loved to read, but now struggled to get through a page or two. If anyone had a right to be angry with God, Douglas did.

Yancey expected Douglas to express disappointment with God, but instead, Douglas said that he had learned “not to confuse God with life”:

I feel free to curse the unfairness of life and to vent all my grief and anger. But I believe God feels the same way about that accident—grieved and angry. I don’t blame him for what happened….I have learned to see beyond the physical reality of this world to the spiritual reality. We tend to think, “Life should be fair because God is fair.” But God is not life. And if I confuse God with the physical reality of life -by expecting constant good health, for example- then I set myself up for a crashing disappointment… We can learn to trust God despite all the unfairness of life. Isn’t that really the main point of Job? (pp. 183-84)

Douglas challenged Yancey to “go home and read again the story of Jesus. Was life fair to him? For me, the Cross demolished for all time the basic assumption that life will be fair.”

Do you see the difference? It’s very clear. We can waste our suffering, or we can allow it to produce trust in God, steadfastness in faith. And we can allow that steadfastness in faith to perfect and complete us–leaving us “lacking in nothing.” 

So the shout of James is real. “Count it all joy!” And we can do that–if we know that growth is not easy –if we will realize that when we are suffering, it doesn’t help us to compare ourselves to others. And, if we will not waste our suffering but allow it to produce steadfastness in faith, that is what will bring us to completion, lacking in nothing.

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Forever A Wonder by Maxie Dunnam

Forever A Wonder by Maxie Dunnam

How could I even consider just briefly nodding my mind at the incarnation with the one article I  trust you received, The Scandal of the Incarnation. So, here is more since this is Christianity’s unique and central claim: the Incarnation, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” (John 1:14)

Our nearest English equivalent to the Greek term that John used at the beginning of his Gospel may not express fully what John had in mind. It was a term coined by Greek philosophers to suggest the creative, outgoing, self-revealing activity of God. And that’s what John was trying to say.  I like the way The New International Version renders it: The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. God, in the beginning of all creation came, and now, in Christ, has come among us as God’s self-revelation in human form. From these clear and intentionally vivid beginnings, Christians through the ages have always given praise to the Son as well as to the Father, and they have eschewed any concept or idea of a God that stands in contradiction to this.

At the same time, the Christian claim is not only that Jesus reveals who God is and what God is like, but also that he reveals who we are as human beings and what it means to become fully human. John says not only that “the Word was God” but also that “all things came into being through him” and that he was “the light of all people” (John 1:3-4). For Christian faith, Jesus is the key to human life in the world – the key to the life of God in the soul of human beings.

Why did Jesus come?

In The Parable of the Birds, Louis Cassels tells a modern parable about the Incarnation that helps us to grasp its meaning.

The story begins by describing a man who doesn’t believe in the Incarnation and consequently thinks Christmas is “a lot of humbug.” He is a nice man; he just doesn’t understand the claim that God became man. One Christmas Eve his wife and children go to the midnight service, but he chooses to stay at home. Soon after they leave, it begins to snow, and he settles into a chair by the fire to read.

After several minutes pass, he is startled from his reading by a thud at the window. There quickly follows another thud, then another. Thinking someone must be throwing snowballs at the window, he goes outside to investigate. What he sees is a flock of birds huddled in the snow. In an attempt to find shelter from the storm, they had tried to fly through his window.

He wonders how he can help the birds, and then he remembers the barn. It would make a good shelter. So, he bundles up and heads to the barn. First, he turns on a light, but the birds don’t budge. Then he sprinkles a path of breadcrumbs leading into the barn, but the birds do not notice. Finally, he tries shooing them into the barn, but they scatter in every direction except the barn.

Cassels continues the story:

“They find me a strange and terrifying creature,” he said to himself, “and I can’t seem to think of any way to let them know they can trust me.

“If only I could be a bird myself for a few minutes, perhaps I could lead them to safety.”

Just at that moment, the church bells began to ring. 

He stood silently for a while, listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas.

Then he sank to his knees in the snow.

“Now I do understand,” he whispered. “Now I see why You had to do it.”

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The Congregation As Evangelist by Maxie Dunnam

The Congregation As Evangelist by Maxie Dunnam

It’s interesting to note that Jesus’ final commandment to evangelize never mentioned ministering to the hungry and sick. Before his crucifixion he had pictured the last judgment as a time when his true disciples would be separated from the unfaithful. He made one distinction between the faithful and the unfaithful. The true disciples would be those who have carried out his great commission to care for the distressed (Mathew 25: 31-46): “Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

Yet his test of true discipleship never referred to evangelizing. Did Jesus not know his own mind? George Sweazy insists there is no contradiction here. “There is just one commandment by which all will be tested – the commandment to care for those in need. There is no great commission without the great commandment.” Looking out over the city in all its misery, it was physical suffering that Jesus mentioned. At his departure into the heavenly glory, it was spiritual needs of which He spoke. Each implies the other. Those are the twin aspects of the Gospel. 

“Our talking so much about a polarization between personal evangelism and the social gospel is absurd. The church was born out of concern for the whole person, the whole world, the whole gospel. We are not allowed to choose whether to be an evangelistic or a social gospel Christian. The world can never have enough of either.” (The Church as Evangelist, San Francisco: Harper and Row; 1978. p. 21)

Throughout my ministry I have reminded my congregations and the students at Asbury Seminary that Methodism at its best has always held these two aspects of the gospel together. John Wesley said, “The Gospel of Christ knows of no religion but social; no holiness but social holiness.” There was no holiness apart from the community. It doesn’t hurt us to be redundant and keep telling the folks that well-known historians believed that England escaped a revolution like that in France only because of the Wesleyan combination of evangelism and social action. The English trade union movement started in Methodist meeting houses. The Wesleyan revival roused concern for public health, hospital care, prison reform, public education, and the abolition of slavery.

So, again, maybe the local church needs to be evangelized to evangelize. We need to be deliberate in our churches in “making disciples” who will in turn “make disciples.” We must nurture and cherish the bond between word and deed, ideas and consequences, beliefs and actions. And the primary place where this kind of evangelizing can and must take place is the local congregation.

I think of the last congregation I served. A young man, Don, was converted, made his profession public and was baptized. During the Christmas season, soon after his profession he played his guitar and sang,”Gentle Mary Laid Her Child.” What a witness! On the following Sunday, he was singing, “There’s one who is greater, there’s one who is waiting, just let Jesus take your hand”- singing about the Messiah. 

When he sang for us in that worship service, I thought about how he came to be in our church. It wasn’t this preacher who won him to Christ. It was Martha and Don, a young lay couple who had had a transforming conversion experience in our church. They were this young man’s neighbors. Their lives were so transformed by Christ that they captured Don’s attention; their performance and their profession spoke to this young Jewish person, and their witness is really what won him.

Martha and Don embodied the personal kind of evangelism as a crucial part of what we have talked about: the congregation as evangelist, with persons witnessing in word and deed, centered in Christ, waiting on the power and timing of the Holy Spirit, growing in the grace of full discipleship, sharing in the congregation as evangelist.

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