Wesleyan Accent is World Methodist Evangelism’s online magazine of practical resources in the area of discipleship, evangelism, leadership and theology. Through articles, book reviews, and interviews, WME features leading and emerging voices of the Wesleyan Methodist world.
Dear Church Family, It seems as though we are living days where each new day spins further out of control than the last. It is easy to feel like society is fraying at the seams. So many of us are afraid. Angry. Unsure of the future. Worried for our kids, our grandkids, our nation, everything. It is so easy to
Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness abide in the fruitful field. The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever. – Isaiah 32:16-17 The word righteousness isn’t one you see popping up on your Facebook and Twitter feed much these days. Most people in North America would hear “righteous” and immediately translate
A Note From The Editor: With the Wesleyan mantra, “the world is our parish,” it’s not only pastors and long-term career missionaries who engage in missions in the 21st century, when international travel is available and common. Recently Wesleyan Accent spoke with Sarah Jane Bearss, a case manager and special needs childcare worker who chose to live and work in
“Whate’er his Spirit speaks in me, must with the written Word agree.” – Charles Wesley Many of the more contentious arguments in the church today are over social issues. That has certainly been the case for the United Methodist Church — the church I call home. Nowhere have the UMC’s internal debates over such issues been on clearer display than
The other day I was using Google maps and realized that when I dragged the map ahead on my route, this “re-center” button popped up! How handy! Maybe this is a new feature from the most recent software update, or maybe I’m just that slow and haven’t noticed it until now, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve
So it is with evangelism and discipleship. If we are engaged in both well, they become a seamless movement and we cross the threshold between one and the other without even realizing.
Father, you have made all in your image…you love all. Help me to love all, even in the midst of such fear, hatred and strife, may I reflect you and your love. May I be a beacon of hope and life in a world spinning out of control with chaos.
Much of the time, officers do exactly what they are supposed to do, and for this we can be grateful.
But they are armed. And the weapons they carry can easily kill people. This means that police officers must be trained to be extraordinarily disciplined in their perceptions of situations and people, and extraordinarily restrained in their use of
I am writing this while “on mission with Jesus in Ecuador,”* serving together with seventeen genuinely kind and faithful people from two churches in Georgia and the United Methodist seminary of Venezuela. We are being hosted by Sharon and Graham Nichols, who serve Christ through The Mission Society. Back in the day, church folk took suitcases of shoes, toys or
Always a lover of history, currently I’m partway through Ron Chernow’s excellent biography of American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton – the book, incidentally, which son of Puerto Rican immigrants Lin-Manuel Miranda turned into the hit Broadway musical. With a decent dose of Scot in my blood, I can get into any story of a struggle for freedom easily. Why else
What would it look like to follow the Great Commission without freedom?
As those of us in the United States celebrate Independence Day today, it may be difficult to imagine that. How would we “go and make disciples” if our government made it illegal?
Would we disobey? Go in secret?
Those are questions facing our brothers and sisters in the
We as a faith community must focus on how we can work to love our neighbors well, both in this and in our daily home, work, and play. This is an unspeakable tragedy and we should take extended time to mourn, to pray for the families of those murdered and injured, and to consider the depth of evil in the
What would worship look like if it was more about giving than getting? Less about “being fed,” and more about offering praise?
It might look like worship in Nigeria and other places in Africa, where praises are not the only thing lifted through dance and song, but tithes and offerings as well, as dancing and singing Christ followers come forward
I moved into my dorm room at college and unpacked a few suitcases and boxes. I took up half of the dresser and half of the closet. I had a long move-in-day to myself getting ready for classes the next morning. At nearly midnight my roommate showed up. After bringing in a few books and assorted items, he then carried in
The Institute for Ethics at Duke University conducted an online survey of about 1,500 people as part of a project designed to measure the morality quotient of Americans. They asked people to rate how likely they’d be to do certain morally questionable things like, for instance, kicking a dog in the head. As it turns out (happily), seven of eight
One of the most common phrases in our culture, and in the church as well, is “you can’t judge me. Only God can judge me.” And yes, there are many verses in Scripture that tell us that we should not judge each other, and that God is the only judge of our behavior or intentions. (By the way, none of
The Methodist Wesleyan family is alive and well in East Africa! God is calling young women and men to minister through word, deed and sign – evangelists, church planters, teachers, pastors, doctors, lawyers, government officials – all Holy Spirit-inspired and ready to go where God leads them.
How many lay people do you know who exhibit vision for the inbreaking Kingdom of God?
A couple of generations ago in North America, camp meetings and revivals were not uncommon in many Wesleyan Methodist traditions, flourishing in part from their popularity in the 19th century across frontiers. Outdoor meetings or camp meetings or week-long revival series held in local churches perhaps helped to pave the way for Billy Graham’s famous evangelistic crusades that inhabited tents
Compassion, in the Jesus way, is active – it steers toward the pain, joins folks in the valley of the shadow of death and finds some way to point to the hope of the resurrection.
We carry our great preachers around in the corners of our soul. They wait there to surprise us. They wait there to revive us.
Discussions about marriage, divorce and issues of human sexuality are not new. What is new is our unpreparedness for the current questions being asked.
Wisdom is not just an intelligence bomb that God drops on us one day when we get our first gray hair. It’s not an intellectual realization that hits us one day simply because we’re aged. We’ve all known older folks who are foolish. No, wisdom has less to do with gray hair and more to do with the experience of
You can look at some of the big picture issues of location and context and fear within Mark 5:1-19. Today I want to look at little bit a the people involved in this story: Jesus Heals the Gerasene Demoniac They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when he had stepped out
The first name given in creation was Adam. It means humanity.
The Scripture story tells us that God, through Jesus Christ, created all of humanity in his image and breathed into us the breath of life.
I thought of Adam when I saw the first hashtag given to Aylan’s story: Humanity Washed Ashore.
I can still see them. More than that, I can still sense them: The images from the first horror movie I encountered, unwittingly, at five or six years of age. This is more than a little disconcerting considering the images are rooted in the organ with which I make life’s major decisions. My brain is shaped, literally, with these images.
“Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone.” Colossians 4:5-6 “Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed.
“What’s that song you’re humming?” my five-year-old asked as we sat parked in the ATM line. “I’m gonna feast at the table of the Lord…” I sang more loudly. “FEAST? What does THAT mean?” “It means to eat a of really nice food as a celebration, like a party,” came my made-up-on-the-spot-parenting reply. What does it mean to feast at the
He says that “in Christ,” through what Christ has done for us in his life, death and resurrection, through his empowering Spirit and inspiring example and our relationship with Christ, God is recreating, restoring us to what he originally intended us to be. The Greek word that Paul uses literally means a “masterpiece.”
Sociologist, historians, and theologians suggest that we are living in the midst of a paradigm shift. Young adults inhabit a different world than that of their parents.
The Lord took Peter, James, and John to a high mountain apart. It was essential, for their effectiveness, that He reveal facts about Him they did not yet know. It is important to note that they were separated from the others and it is not by accident that they journeyed to a high mountain apart. He had something to show
The global West’s current fundamental battle of narratives is whether or not there is a context to being human. The Christian (and Jewish) narrative, of course, affirms a theological context: human beings are made in God’s image. The conflicting contemporary narrative, growing with uncritical acceptance, is the denial of God’s image—or any image. Instead, this competing narrative argues that human
“Read everything.” Rev. Steve DeNeff, a pastor and well-known preacher and speaker in The Wesleyan Church, said this one day in my undergraduate homiletics class. He is an excellent communicator and taught a fascinating preaching class. At the end of the second semester, he presented students with a print of a pastor in a pulpit, surrounded by shadowy figures –
In the Old Testament book of Exodus we read the account of the Israelites journey out of slavery, through the desert and into the Promised Land. This journey provides the ultimate illustration for our spiritual journey and Moses as their leader, demonstrates that the disciplines provide the access point to God’s Presence.
As we start our journey through Mark together, today we are going to look at Chapter 1:1-8: In the NRSV this section is entitled The Proclamation of John the Baptist: 1 The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 2 As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead
A college professor at my faith-based liberal arts university used to make a bold declaration. “The greatest spiritual need on this campus,” he would state, “is sleep.” Every semester he saw the same thing. A student would come to his office for a meeting feeling discouraged or depressed, defeated or frustrated, struggling. Whether it was addiction or relationship problems or
It was dark as I gathered around a battery-operated radio with a mother and her two children. We were silent as we strained to listen to the reports. We heard the word “levy,” but I didn’t fully understand what that meant at the time. Sections of the city were being listed, and I didn’t understand what that meant either until
Every year until the child participates in confirmation, in the days leading up to the child’s baptismal anniversary I send a letter marking the occasion. I also include an age-appropriate gift, like a children’s book. I have found that this is a good way to keep before the family and the child the meaning of baptism and to remind the
When I came back to this story of Jacob wrestling the stranger at the River Jabbok, I saw something that I had never noticed before. That is, Jacob is like Prometheus, in the Greek myth. Prometheus stole the fire from heaven and brought it down to human beings so that we could be like gods.
But this isn’t just something Christ did that was different than how God had previously revealed himself. Rather, God, from the beginning, has been challenging our understandings of the way the world is.
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