In my last article I focused on the notion of mission as “making disciples who make disciples.” I introduced the term “discipleship evangelism”, as the essence of evangelism. I hinted at the claim that there is “no great commission without the great commandment”. We must nurture and cherish the bond between word and deed, ideas and consequences, beliefs and actions. Good works do not save us but are the evidence of the transforming work of the Holy Spirit and the fundamental nature of practical Christianity.

Faith Working Through Love

One of the best definitions of practical Christianity that you will find comes from the apostle Paul. It is this: faith working through love. In Galatians 5:6, Paul makes the case for the essentials of the Christian life, over and against the superficial claims of religious preference: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love.” J. B. Phillips translates this “faith which expresses itself in love.” The New English Bible reads “faith active in love.” Paul is saying that, in God’s judgment according to Christ, the question is not whether we are obedient to the law, whether we are circumcised or uncircumcised, whether we are Methodist or Baptist. The question is whether in faith we have been shaped according to the reality of God’s love expressed ultimately in his crucified Son. And when there is a testing of that faith, it will involve not the doctrinal positions to which we have given intellectual ascent, not even the doctrine of the uniqueness of Christ, but whether our faith has expressed itself in love.

The goal of every church should be to have a congregation of disciples who are on a mission of discipleship. Disciples making disciples, that is the essence of evangelism.

An Example to Follow: Pauline Hord

At the last congregation I served as lead pastor, we didn’t have a church-full of disciples making disciples but we had some, and the number was growing.

Let me tell you about one of our prize examples, Pauline Hord. She has now passed on to glory. What a remarkable woman. She is the most unique blending of prayer and personal piety, with servant ministry and social concern, I know. When grave needs arose in my life, Pauline was one of the first persons I called, inviting her to pray with me.

Pauline was always going to someone or some group to give herself in prayer. Hardly a week passed that I did not receive a call from Pauline, telling me about some particular need in our congregation or in our city – a need that may call for emergency housing, or transportation, or medical attention. I don’t know how she was in touch with all of this, but she was.

Pauline’s primary passion was literacy and prison ministry. Our state, Tennessee, had and has a tremendous literacy problem. Thousands of people in our city can’t read and write well enough to function adequately in society. Pauline  worked with our public schools, training teachers in a new literacy method. She gave three days a week, four or five hours a day, to teaching this new method of literacy through model programs.

But, also, once a week she drove over a hundred miles one way to Parchman State Prison down in Mississippi, to teach prisoners how to read and write. Along with this, she ministered to them in a more encompassing way as she shared her love and faith, and witnessed to the power of the gospel. Think about this, She was eighty-five years old.

During those years, then President Geoge Bush started a program, called “Points of Light,” calling for citizens to exercise positive and creative influence and service in the communities where they lived. I nominated Pauline and she was chosen and written up in the daily newspaper. 

A few months later, President Bush came to Memphis and wanted to recognize the seven “Points of Light” there at a luncheon.

But he made a mistake. He set the luncheon on a Wednesday. That’s the day Pauline spent at Parchman Prison, teaching prisoners to read and write, and witnessing to them the love of Christ. She would not give that up to have lunch with the President.

That says it, doesn’t it? 

The Essence of Evangelism

Disciples making disciples: this is the essence of evangelism. Real evangelism cannot happen except where disciples are being made. And those who are growing in discipleship become bearers of real evangelism. As I have claimed, all this takes place primarily in the local congregation.

Many local churches I know have as a part of their mission statement, We need to be deliberate in our churches in “making disciples  who will make disciples.” It rolls off our tongues so easily, but is demanding in actualizing. As I insisted in my last article, we must nurture and cherish the bond between word and deed, ideas and consequences, beliefs and actions. And I’m certain that the primary place where this kind of evangelizing can and must take place is the local congregation.

Engaging with a ‘Generic Christian’

Sometime ago, I was driving on Poplar Avenue, a main street in Memphis  on which the church I served for 13 years as lead pastor is located. The car ahead of me had a bumper sticker. The bumper sticker is a way for a lot of people to sow whatever seeds they want to sow in the minds of other people. Also, it is one of our dominant means of communication, to say to the world around us that we’d “rather be sailing,” or that we “love our dog.” When I got close enough to the car ahead of me to read the bumper sticker, I saw, in big letters, “I am a generic Christian.” That attracted me. I wanted to know what that meant. So, I got closer to the car, knowing that there were some smaller letters written beneath those large ones. I got dangerously close to the back of the car to read the words: “Ask me what I mean.” Well, that intrigued me even more.

I suppose my interest was whetted further by the fact that the car on which that bumper sticker was displayed was a $85,000 Mercedes. I wondered how any driver of a Mercedes could be considered a generic anything. The car turned into the carwash. I had no intention of getting a car wash that day, but my interest had so peaked that I couldn’t pass it up. So, I turned in to get my car washed also – but really to engage that fellow in conversation.

He told me that, while he was a member of a local congregation in our city, he was so tired of the denominational emphasis in so many churches that he wanted to proclaim a different kind of message that the important message was to be Christian in the generic sense, not a “brand-name Christian.”

The Need for True Discipleship

Well, he had a point. But I wonder, don’t we have too many generic Christians and not enough disciples? Sometimes the reaction to “denominationalism” can become an excuse for refusing to be involved in any actual congregation. Still, to merit the faithfulness of erstwhile generic Christians, congregations must be prepared to get deeply and truly involved in the privilege and challenge of making disciples.

Too many congregations slink into the pattern of offering episodic programs emphasizing the mission statement. I believe the more desperate need in most congregations is deliberate consistent training in the “core” of the Christian faith and what it means to be a disciple, an intentional follower of Jesus Christ. We must have a “design” for that which will move folks along in a deliberate way in their discipleship growth. Our goal is simple, but requires comment and consistency. We want our congregational members, as Christians, to be reasonably informed, reasonably inspired, and reasonably equipped.

Understanding Discipleship Evangelism

I don’t know who coined the term “discipleship evangelism.” I believe it is a good one because it names the nature of evangelism: discipleship evangelism. Reflect on what that means.

First, it means that we can’t claim Jesus as Savior without a willingness to surrender to him as Lord.

Second, it means that an emphasis on a faith which does not include fidelity to Christ’s call to walk in newness of life and to share that life with others is a distortion of the gospel. Faith which does not give attention to holy living and ethical issues, telling the truth, seeking to live morally clean lives, shunning evil, fighting personal immorality and social injustice, feeding the hungry, caring for the needy, seeking the lost, suffering for those to whom the world has said no– that kind of faith, a faith which does not give attention to holy living and ethical issues, and does not care for others, is dead (James 2:26).

Third, it means that a faith which emphasizes holy living, ethics, and good works as a saving way of life is a false faith. Does that sound contradictory to what I have just been saying? What do I mean? I mean that holy living, ethics, and good works do not save us, but rather are the evidence of the transforming work of the Spirit within us.

Designing for Discipleship Growth

Along with owning the meaning of discipleship evangelism, I repeat, we. must have a “design’ for that which will move folks along in a deliberate way in their discipleship growth. That’s the way we will move to accomplish our mission of “making disciples who make disciples.”

Georgia Harkness was once considered one of our most outstanding theologians.

She was certainly a brilliant thinker and spoke prophetically to the church. Here is such a word: “We must rescue evangelism from the red-light district of the ecclesiastical community.” That’s putting it unquestionably straight.

Evangelism has been prostituted for money and personal gain. That’s the reason we need to remind ourselves that the focus of evangelism must be the local congregation, not primarily the street corner, the storefront, or the television. What may be most helpful is to think of evangelism and discipleship together.

Jesus’ Charge to His Disciples

In his parting word to the disciples, Jesus said, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

He spoke this word to the persons he had chosen, trained, tested, and nurtured. His charge to them was not a heavy command, “you ought to” or “you must”; not even “you should.” It was a simple statement of fact, “You will be my witnesses.”

The Great Commission

In another setting, Jesus gave his call to the early church: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and remember, l am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20). There’s no room for confusion about direction in this explicit instruction of our Lord. Spreading the gospel was to be top priority. No Christian was exempted from the task of disciple-making, and no aspect of life was excluded.

While the so-called great commission has been used as a foundation in evangelistic literature, and a challenge to churches to fulfill their missionary and evangelistic responsibility, it is more than that. It is a definition of the nature of mission itself. The resurrected Lord calls his disciples to “make disciples of all nations; baptizing and teaching them.”

Discipleship in Modern Evangelism

In the past three or four decades, there has been a renewed emphasis on discipleship in evangelism. One of the chief promoters of this emphasis, according to Mortimer Arias, has been the Church Growth school under the leadership of Donald McGavran; so much so that they have coined the term discipling as the verbal form to describe the evangelistic task. According to Arias, making disciples is for McGavran the specific evangelistic mission, and teaching and baptizing are left to other ministries in the church, and for a later stage in the life of the convert or disciple.

In our ongoing conversation we should note that Leslie Newbigin has charged that McGavran’s exegesis of the text will not stand scrutiny. It is clear in the original Greek that disciple the nations is the main verb, and that baptizing and teaching define what discipling’ is.(1) 

Thus, while we can agree with McGavran that discipling is the heart of evangelism, we can also agree with Newbigin, against McGavran, that discipling, and thus evangelism, includes “baptizing and teaching”.

Evangelism in Practice

This was our Lord’s definition. All too often, however, it has not been the practice of those who claim to evangelize. The evangelism of the electronic church, for example, does not seem to be too concerned about making disciples. Further, I doubt if these “trans-national corporations of evangelism,” as Mortimer Arias calls them, are taking seriously the call to make disciples, which in Jesus’ own words means “teaching them to observe all things I have commanded you.”

We can’t explore here the depth of all this means, but we can at least register the direction of what is implied for the local church. The Great Commission sends us back to everything Jesus taught. Certainly if we wanted a summary of the content of everything Jesus taught, it would be Jesus’ own summary of the law and the prophets and the great commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).

The Great Commandment and the Great Commission

John R. W. Stott, the British evangelical leader, was right when he declared at the 1974 Lausanne Conference on World Evangelization: “There is no Great Commission without the Great Commandment” 

We can’t talk about evangelism in and through the local church without talking about discipleship. And we can’t talk about discipleship without talking about evangelism.

Future Reflections

I will be writing a series of reflections on discipleship and evangelism in the weeks to come. Though I may not be thorough and systematic in these articles, I will seek to underscore the core of the Christian faith and way from a Wesleyan perspective. If you have wondered, that’s the reason we are publishing on WESLEYAN ACCENT.

(1) Mission in Christ’s Way: Bible Studies (Geneva: WC C, 1987) quoted  in Arias “The Great Commision” p. 17

It may not be good writing or even good grammar, but I deliberately put a question mark after the title of this article, Falling from Grace? This is a follow-up to my last article where I also put a question mark in the title Once saved always saved? Oh! Both, “falling from grace,” and “once saved always saved,” have to be questioned.

I closed my last article by suggesting that whether we can or can’t fall is not as important a question as whether we do or don’t. I continue the discussion here because the issue is important.

In our Wesleyan Methodist tradition, we talk about going on to salvation, because Salvation is a journey – the climax of which is being saved to the utmost, which comes through sanctifying grace, giving us power over sin. But that raises an opposite point: that there may be sin in the life of the believer.

That thought calls for a clear understanding of what we mean by sin. Wesley meant by sin “an actual, voluntary transgression of the law;… acknowledged to be such at the time it is transgressed.” Wesley always left open the possibility of involuntary sin, which he felt did not bring God’s condemnation. But to sin willfully in a continuous way certainly jeopardizes our salvation, for it separates us from God.

With that understanding the case was clear for Wesley. We may “fall from grace” and forfeit our justification, but we don’t have to. Whether we can or can’t fall is not as important a question as whether we do or don’t.

It helps our understanding to stay aware of two major principles. First, there is the principle of the abiding potential of evil within our lives – the old way of sin, which remains latent even in regenerated persons. Second, there is the principle of our absolute dependence on God. Even after we have been converted, we can do no good by ourselves, but must rely completely on the Spirit of God which performs the good in us and through us.

That means we must give ourselves to moral and spiritual discipline. As Christians, we repent daily, and cast ourselves on God’s grace. We grow in that grace and move from the threshold of faith – our justification by God – toward the fullness of grace, our sanctification. And all along that journey, we can be kept from falling from grace, kept from forfeiting our justification by the glorious assurance of which, with Fanny Crosby, we sing,

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God
Born of his Spirit, washed in His blood.

In my last three articles I have discussed assurance and sanctification. These aspects of salvation lead us to think about what separates a Methodist understanding from those who believe in eternal security. Once saved, always saved was a theme I was asked often about in the first churches I served in rural Mississippi.

We Methodist Wesleyans believe that it is possible to return to sin in our lives to the point that we forfeit our salvation. According to Wesley, this is not easy to do, but it is possible.

We must not allow the question to be centered on whether God is able to keep us from falling. Of course God is able! It is a matter of whether we are vigilant in responding to God’s grace. If we cultivate and stay alive to the Holy Spirit we can be aware when the temptation to fall back into old patterns of sin is gaining power. We also recognize and not allow the seeds of “new sins” to germinate and spring up in our lives.

Being always saved depends on whether we continually listen to God’s voice and not allow that divine love to grow cold within us.

For further reflection, I make the case by coming at it from a different direction. There are two widely held notions about sin in the believer that are different in the way Wesley thought and taught. One thought is that, “Yes, sin continues in the life of the believer, but it is not possible for sin to separate a person eternally from God. One may backslide, but still be saved – if ever saved in the first place.” The “if ever saved in the first place” is a common escape hatch. I’ve never had a discussion about the issue where the conclusion, “The person was never saved anyway!” did not sound. How can we make that judgment?

The second thought is that in our justification, and certainly in our sanctification, sin is completely eradicated from the believer’s life. The error in this position is that it treats sin as a “thing” we do. Sin is a relation. The question is not one of removal of sin from our lives, but of reconciliation with God which overcomes the estrangement of sin.

Separated from God by our sin, justifying grace brings us together again. Grace continues to work, sanctifying us, restoring us, until we are so at one in relationship with God. In that at-one in relationship with God our intentions are centered on doing God’s will, and our love is perfected to love as Christ loves.

Once saved, always saved? Oh! The discussion will continue. If we are a part of the discussion it is helpful to remember we may “fall from grace” and forfeit our justification, but we don’t have to. Whether we can or can’t fall is not as important a question as whether we do or don’t.

In an earlier article, we reflected on Wesley’s insistence on perfection being an essential dimension of our going on to salvation. He came from his Aldersgate experience convinced that all could be saved, and all could be saved to the uttermost. Thus assurance and perfection became essential in his understanding of grace working for our full salvation.

As I wrote in my last article, for Wesley, the terms Christian perfection, sanctification, and holiness carried the same meaning. Holiness is not optional for Christians. Jesus was forthright: “You shall be perfect, your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5:48 NJKV). The Holy Spirit, through Inspiration given to Peter, confirms the call: “As He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct.” (1 Peter 1:15 NKJV)

Wesley’s concern about holiness/perfection did not begin at Aldersgate. He preached a sermon on it, using the verse, “Real circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual and not literal,” as the text for the  sermon, “Circumcision of the heart,” which he preached at Oxford University on January 1, 1733. This is the only sermon Wesley preached before his conversion at Aldersgate in 1738 that he kept in its original form and used throughout his life in teaching Methodists. This consistency underscores a distinctively Wesleyan view of the Christian way: holiness of the heart and life, or personal and social holiness.

In 1725 he had a conversion to the ideal of holy living. He never abandoned that ideal, though it was cast in a different framework after his Aldersgate conversion.

Between 1725 and his Aldersgate experience in 1738, he consistently misplaced holiness. He was driven by the idea that one must be holy in order to be justified. That was the futile process which drove Wesley to the deep despondency that eventually brought him to Aldersgate. One of the decisive shifts that came in his conversion at Aldersgate was a reversal of the order of salvation-justification preceded holiness, not vice versa.

Howard Snyder reminds us that a part of Wesley’s genius, under God, lay in developing and maintaining a synthesis in doctrine and practice that kept biblical paradoxes paired and powerful. He held together faith and works, doctrine and experience, the individual and the social, the concerns of time and eternity.  So is the synthesis of personal and social holiness, holiness of heart and life (Howard A. Snyder, The Radical Wesley, p. 143).

It is important to keep a perspective on at least a skeletal outline of Wesley’s thought, especially about our need for salvation. For Wesley, it was a matter of the circumcision of the heart which was issued in love of God and love of neighbor-holiness of heart and life.

This was captured clearly and succinctly at the formal establishment of Methodism in America at the 1784 Christmas Conference in Baltimore. The question was asked, “What can we rightly expect to be the task of Methodists in America?” The answer came clear and strong: “To reform a continent and spread scriptural holiness across the land.” That’s personal and social holiness.

But what does all this mean? Simply put, it means that we as Christians are to be holy as God is holy, that the church is to be that demonstration plot of holiness set down in an unholy world. Jesus said it means that we are to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves. And Paul said it means that faith without works is dead, and the work of faith is love.

Wesley would affirm this as the sum of Christian perfection – loving God, and loving our neighbor. He spoke of “inward holiness,”that is love of God and the assurance of God’s love for us. And he spoke of “outward holiness,” that is, love of neighbor and deeds of kindness. He was fond of speaking of persons being “happy and holy.” For him the two experiences were not opposites, but actually one reality.

“Why are not you happy?” Wesley frequently asked. Then he would answer, “Other circumstances may concur, but the main reason is because you are not holy.”

That’s enough for us to go on. I want to be happy and holy, don’t you?

The Holy Spirit is certainly one of the most common and most important issues of faith and doctrine in the Church. We use the term and talk about the subject assuming that people know what we are talking about — when, at most, their understanding is limited and vague, and at best, they don’t have the faintest notion of what you’re talking about.

In Chapters 14, 15, and 16 of John’s Gospel, there are telling and descriptive words of Jesus about the Spirit, the nature and ministry of the Holy Spirit. It is significant that this is in the context of his announcement to his disciples that he is going to leave them. He is preparing them for his crucifixion and resurrection, and he promises that he is going to send someone to take his place.

Contemplate that for a moment. Someone to take the place of Jesus. Remember the setting. It is Jesus’ last week with his disciples. He knows the cross is coming. He knows that he must physically leave the earth, having accomplished God’s great mission of redemption through the cross and the resurrection. So, he promises his presence beyond the grave; the Holy Spirit will come to take his place.

Remember Jesus was limited to time and space. He was confined by human limitations. The coming of the Spirit, following his death and resurrection, was the fulfillment of the promise, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.” (Mt. 28:29)

In this series of articles, we will consider the different expressions of the One who is to take the place of Jesus. I urge you to read Chapters 14 and 15 as our Scriptural content and foundation.  

Different translations express the dynamic of this presence in different ways. The King James Version translates John 14:16 in this fashion: “And I will pray to the Father, and He will give you another comforter, that He may abide with you forever.”

In terms of our current use of the word comfort, that is not a good translation. We think of comfort basically in terms of sorrow and sadness. The Greek word is parakletos, and it literally means, “someone who is called to help.” So the Phillips translation is a very good one, “I shall ask the Father to give you someone else to stand by you, to be with you always.”  Isn’t that beautiful…and encouraging?  Let it settle in your mind..someone to stand by you, to be with you always.

Never in my lifetime has there been an occasion when we needed more desperately to claim this promise of someone to stand by us, to always be with us. The experience of the coronavirus was tough, complex, and challenging enough. A confounding, mysterious virus impacting the world. Then wham! the death of George Floyd, a public lynching with people looking on. Overlaying the mysterious pandemic, we had a social justice struggle more vividly felt than anything like it since the initial launching of the Civil Rights Movement sixty years ago. Following this are profound economic hurdles rising through inflation, massive migrations, and harrowing reports of war from Myanmar, Ukraine, Sudan, the Maghreb, Gaza … How long, O Lord! 

We are not a long way from the disciples when Jesus gave them his promise of companionship and comfort. They were bewildered and grief-stricken. Their minds were caught on the paralyzing thought that they were going to lose Jesus. It was hard, almost impossible, for them to even hear Jesus when He told them that he was going away physically, but that that was going to be the best for them. He was going to send someone to take his place, someone to be with them forever. 

The Holy Spirit which drove them onto the streets crying out in strange languages on Pentecost is the same Holy Spirit which still proclaims the good news of God’s presence today.