Tag Archives: Discipleship

Andrew C. Thompson ~ Want to Know More About John Wesley?

I received an e-mail from a pastor in Tennessee a few days ago posing this question:

A church member asked me to recommend a biography on John Wesley, and I didn’t know what to suggest. Wondering if you could suggest something?

That’s not an infrequent request to get for a seminary professor who teaches Methodist history. When I get an e-mail or a phone call along those lines, there are always a few book titles I suggest. We are living in a time where there are a lot of top-notch Wesleyan historians and theologians working on different aspects of the Wesleyan tradition. So fortunately, there are a number of good books you can pick up depending on the specific area of your interest.

Here are a few titles I’ve recommended in the past with some notes about how they can be used fruitfully:

A Real Christian: The Life of John Wesley (Kenneth J. Collins)

Kenneth J. Collins’ book, A Real Christian: The Life of John Wesley (Abingdon, 2000), is a relatively brief treatment of John Wesley’s life. It is a true biography in that its subject matter is the person of John Wesley, from his birth to his death. If you are looking for a relatively short book and one that focuses solely on the figure of Wesley, then this is probably the way to go.

Wesley and the People Called Methodists (Richard Heitzenrater)

Richard Heitzenrater’s book, Wesley and the People Called Methodists (2nd ed., Abingdon, 2013), is a longer work that focuses on Wesley in the context of the rise and development of early Methodism. Heitzenrater includes background material in an opening chapter on the English Reformation and the development of the Church of England in the late 16th and the 17th centuries. He also includes some material on the early development of American Methodism in the late 18th century as well. So this book is a biography as well, but it is more like a biography of early Methodism (with Wesley, of course, as the main character). Naturally, learning about the broader context of early Methodism is a very helpful way to understand Wesley himself better. For someone who wants to understand not just the man John Wesley but also the movement to which he committed himself for most of his adult life, this is the book to choose.

Both of the authors—Collins and Heitzenrater—are top-notch historians. Both also have a real gift for historical prose writing. The quality of their books is at an academic level, but both books are written so well that they are easily accessible by a lay audience. So if you are interested in a very readable account of John Wesley’s life and ministry, you can’t go wrong with either one!

Sometimes I’ll also get requests from people who are less interested in a biography than they are in a book that explains Wesleyan theology in a way that can be really embraced by a congregational audience. For people who are interested in the distinctives of the Wesleyan approach to spirituality and discipleship, I often recommend these books:

Recapturing the Wesleys’ Vision (Paul W. Chilcote)

Paul W. Chilcote has written one of the most compelling books on Wesleyan theology for a popular audience with Recapturing the Wesleys’ Vision: An Introduction to the Faith of John and Charles Wesley (Intervarsity, 2004). He divides his subject matter up into broad topics that arise from the Wesleyan approach to the Christian life: Message, Community, Discipline, and Servanthood. If that sounds so broad that it’s hard to get your mind around what he’s talking about, I think you’ll find that the individual chapter titles explain where he’s going well enough. The section on “Message” includes chapters on the Wesleyan understanding of grace; “Community” has chapters on the importance of growing in discipleship within a fellowship of believers; etc. Chilcote has chosen an effective arrangement of his subject matter, which highlights the way in which the Wesleyan vision embraces the “both/and” rather than the “either/or” in various areas of the Christian life. So in the choice between faith or works, the Wesleyan approach is to hold both faith and works together. In the question of whether faith should be embraced rationally by the head or affectively by the heart, the Wesleyan approach is to say that it is both head and heart. (You can draw out such pairings at length: form and power, law and gospel, pulpit and altar, justification and sanctification, God’s grace and human response, etc.) Chilcote refers to these as the “conjunctions” in Wesleyan theology. Encountering the richness of such a holistic conception of the life of discipleship reveals why the Wesleyan tradition is so utterly compelling.

John Wesley: Holiness of Heart and Life (Charles Yrigoyen, Jr.)

Charles Yrigoyen, Jr.’s, John Wesley: Holiness of Heart and Life (Abingdon, 1996) is a book that covers a number of themes in Wesleyan discipleship. Yrigoyen’s opening chapter offers a short biographical background on Wesley’s life before moving into a series of chapters that focus on the framework of Wesley’s theology (grace, salvation, etc.) and the practices known as the means of grace (which Yrigoyen identifies by the Wesleyan terms “works of piety” and “works of mercy”). He then adds chapters on Methodism in the American context and on the possibility of Wesleyan renewal in the present. It is a book that has a little of everything, which makes it a good introduction for someone who doesn’t know much about Methodism. There is one caveat to mention, though, which is Yrigoyen has written the book from a self-consciously United Methodist perspective. Wesleyans from other denominational backgrounds might find all the references to the UMC a bit off-putting. A helpful feature of the book is that it includes a substantial study guide, prepared by Ruth A. Daugherty. The guide—which is somewhat misnamed and ought to be called a “teaching guide” in that it is designed for a teacher to use in preparing a series of lessons—could be used profitably in small group or Sunday school settings.

A Blueprint for Discipleship (Kevin M. Watson)

Kevin M. Watson’s A Blueprint for Discipleship: Wesley’s General Rules as a Guide for Christian Living (Discipleship Resources, 2009) is the best book available on the General Rules of early Methodism. These three rules—which consisted of doing no harm, doing good, and attending upon the “ordinances of God”—were developed by John Wesley to guide the life of the early Methodist Societies. They served both as the pattern for how Methodists understood their engagement with the means of grace and as a disciplinary mechanism that defined what was required to remain in the membership of a class meeting. There has been a great deal of interest in the General Rules in recent years because of their potential to help form mature Christian discipleship today, and Watson’s treatment of them is the best resource available.

I’m always encouraged when pastors and laypeople express an interest in finding out more about our tradition. Ultimately however, if we want not only to learn about Wesley but also to become Wesleyan, we should take John Wesley’s approach to the Christian life seriously. It isn’t just about becoming familiar with a fascinating figure in church history. It is about letting that figure serve as a guide to point us toward Jesus Christ and the salvation that he wants to give us. In that sense, I always hope that those who go off to buy books on Wesley or Wesleyan theology do so with the intention of using them as a resource for their own practice of discipleship.

Matt Sigler ~ A New Way of Counting

Methodists are good at counting. The numerous records that have been kept over the years of “conversions,” “probationary members,” and the like, are a goldmine for historians. This penchant for noting numbers remains in our DNA today. “How many members?” and “How many in active attendance?” are the two primary questions asked when one evaluates the strength of a local church. The church growth movement did little to abate this obsession with head counting. While a growing congregation is, in fact, a sign of vitality, it’s the type of growth that we are marking that concerns me.

We Are Called to Make Disciples, Not Converts

Obviously there is a correlation between the two—one must be born again to become a disciple. And, one of the reasons I am a Methodist is because of the clear emphasis John Wesley placed on saving souls. As Wesleyans, though, we also affirm that conversion marks the beginning, and not the end of following Jesus. We should, we must, continue to celebrate each person brought to the new birth in our congregations, but we should never lose sight of the fact that baptism is just the start of life in Christ. Our church desperately needs to shift from just asking questions like “How many members?” to also asking “How is the congregation growing in Christlikeness?” This change in emphasis may equate with numeric growth, or it may not—calling people to come and die doesn’t always make for rapid growth in our time.

The Sunday Worship Gathering is Primarily a Gathering of, and for, the Faithful

Most Methodist churches I know of view Sunday worship as the primary doorway into the church. Worship styles are tailored to meet the perceived “need” of the surrounding community or “target” population. If a church is declining in membership the solution is most often thought to be found in a retooling of the Sunday worship service—making it more appealing. While worship in a local congregation must be contextual, I have found at least three problems with this approach.

First, it feeds into the consumerist mentality that has dominated the North American church for years, making worship often about personal preference.

When worship services are crafted primarily because of a concern for attractiveness, worship becomes a commodity. This approach does little to make disciples; oftentimes it simply makes spectators.

Second, this method is inevitably bound to the winds of change. I find it fascinating (and saddening) to see how many churches continue to launch new, “modern” styles of worship in an effort to increase attendance. Many churches that once offered “contemporary” and “traditional” options now offer a plethora of services with differing styles often defined by generational preferences.

Third, the weight of Christian worship history testifies that the Sunday service is primarily a gathering of, and for, the faithful. This is not to say that we shouldn’t consider how our worship services can best speak in the language of our local contexts. It isn’t to say that we shouldn’t consider if our gatherings are marked with radical hospitality and welcome. But we gather in continuity with the first followers of Christ who found the tomb empty on Sunday. When worship services are designed with the primary aim of increasing attendance, often the centrality of the Story of God’s salvation in Christ is obscured. “Boy scout Sundays,” “U2charists,” and countless other services which mirror the culture, have all fallen victim to this trap.

Our Culture Needs to See Faithfulness, Not Flashiness

In an increasingly post-Christian context the viability of the Church will stand or fall on the witness of its members, not the appeal of its facilities, programs, or worship services. For five years my wife and I were a part of a church-plant in Boston, MA. It wasn’t a perfect church— there’s no such thing—but we watched with joy as the church grew significantly during those five years. While there were plenty who joined the congregation through transfer of membership (people who had moved into the city who were already following Jesus); to a person, those who were baptized into the faith came to Christ because of a relationship outside of the Sunday service. One young man, for example, first became curious about Christianity after meeting some of our members at a gardening club. For over a year, he seldom set foot in our Sunday worship services, but came every week to a bible-study/fellowship group some of our members held in his neighborhood. He was baptized on Easter this past year in what was an incredible moment for our congregation. When it came time to give a testimony about how he came to faith, he had nothing at all to say about how good our worship band was or how attractive our space looked.

From the Top, Down

Our current ways of evaluating the health of local churches need to be reexamined. Methodist pastors face an ever-present pressure to increase membership, grow the average Sunday attendance, and pay apportionments. I hear plenty of Methodist bishops talk about making disciples, yet in most cases head counting on Sunday morning and the paying of apportionments remain the primary criteria for evaluating local congregational health. If we are to see a new way of counting in the Methodist Church, and, I would argue, healthier congregations as a result; change must come from the top down. Our Methodists leaders – our bishops – must model a fresh approach: an approach that values making disciples, restoring worship to its roots as a gathering of the faithful, and finally, faithfulness in the form of relational evangelism. If our leaders model this new way of counting, our pastors can more faithfully lead and grow communities of disciples.

Christianity with a Wesleyan Accent: Wesleyan Spirit by Kevin Watson

In “Thoughts upon Methodism,” John Wesley wrote:

I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe or America. But I am afraid lest they should only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power. And this undoubtedly will be the case unless they hold fast both the doctrine, spirit, and discipline with which they first set out. (Wesley, Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley, 9:527)

This post is the third in a series that explores the basics of Christianity with a Wesleyan Accent, especially focusing on the doctrine, spirit, and discipline that Wesley believed made Methodism a powerful movement of God. My first post emphasized that Wesleyans are more passionate about being Christian than about being Wesley, but that they do proclaim Christ with a recognizable accent. The second post discussed the doctrines that are at the heart of a Wesleyan proclamation of the gospel. This post considers the spirit that was essential to early Methodism.

So, what did Wesley mean when he urged Methodists to “hold fast” to the spirit with which they first set out?

Though it may seem to be the most difficult to define of the three, Wesley insists on including spirit with doctrine and discipline because right doctrine (belief) and right discipline (practice) are not enough in themselves. The key passage in “Thoughts upon Methodism” that gives insight into what Wesley meant by the spirit of Methodism is where he discusses the way that religion leads to increased productivity and frugalness, which leads to riches. He then turns from religion in general to Methodism in particular:

“How then is it possible that Methodism, that is, the religion of the heart, though it flourishes now as a green bay-tree, should continue in this state? For the Methodists in every place grow diligent and frugal; consequently they increase in goods. Hence they proportionably increase in pride, in anger, in the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life. So, although the form of religion remains, the spirit is swiftly vanishing away” (530).

In the last years of his life, Wesley was deeply concerned by the upward mobility of many Methodists, because he witnessed an increase in wealth leading to a transfer of loyalty from loving God and neighbor to riches.

But Methodists were people who were zealous, above all else, even to the exclusion of all else, for “holiness of heart and life” (529). Wesley worried about Methodists becoming rich because experience taught him that it was very rare that someone who became rich continued growing in love of God and neighbor. Instead, as people became rich, they tended to become more selfish and increasingly concerned with providing for themselves, instead of for others.

In “The Character of a Methodist”, Wesley described Methodism in a way that provides a nice description of his hopes for the spirit of a Methodist:

A Methodist is one who has ‘the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost given unto him’; one who ‘loves the Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his mind, and with all his strength’. God is the joy of his heart, and the desire of his soul, which is constantly crying out, ‘Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee!’ My God and my all! Thou are the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever! (BE, 9:35)

Christians who live and proclaim the gospel in a Wesleyan accent will do so in a way that evidences a deep and abiding love for God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And we will do all that we can to help all people come to know and love the God who first loved them.

For Wesleyans, love of God instinctively leads to love of neighbor. And so, in the above essay, Wesley immediately moves from love of God to love of neighbor, “while he thus always exercises his love to God… he who loveth God, loves his brother also. And he accordingly ‘loves his neighbour as himself’; and loves every man as his own soul” (BE, 9:37).

Wesleyans not only believe in a God who wants to save us “to the uttermost,” we are desperate to know this God as fully and intimately as we can. Methodism is a “religion of the heart,” because it is not only beliefs and practices, but beliefs that are put into practice with the expectation that the living God can be known and experienced in our lives.

A Wesley spirit is an approach to Christianity that is enlivened moment by moment by the living God. Wesley described this in a moving passage in his sermon “The Great Privilege of those that are Born of God.” He described the “continual inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit,” where “God breathes into the soul, and the soul breathes back what it first receives from God; a continual action of God upon the soul, the re-action of the soul upon God; and unceasing presence of God.” (BE, 1:442)

Just as our physical lives are dependent on constantly breathing in oxygen, may the Holy Spirit breathe life into our souls each moment. And may this Spirit-breathed life enable us to respond with praise, thanksgiving, and faithful living.

Andrew C. Thompson ~ The Logic of Holiness

There is a phrase in Wesleyan theology that holds the key to understanding most everything about present salvation. The phrase is “holiness of heart and life.” This is one of those terms that seems simple at first glance and yet is packed with meaning on multiple levels.

It’s also a term worth exploring, and I want to explore it here. But first a little detour about theological language in general.

The language we use

Conventional wisdom from “experts” dictates that we should find ordinary or commonplace words to describe Christian concepts so we can avoid putting up barriers between the Church and would-be believers. Our evangelism can be hindered, so this thinking goes, by the vocabulary we use to talk about the Christian faith.

I’ve heard some version of this perspective many times over the course of my ministry. And I’ve always had questions about it. To what length should we take this advice? Are we talking about avoiding the technical vocabulary of theology, or should we avoid core biblical terms as well? I’ve heard people suggest that we shouldn’t use the language of sin and salvation, either because it is off-putting or because it conjures up lowbrow images that good, sophisticated Christians should want to avoid. Is that a good idea?

At times, I wonder whether this point-of-view is just a concession to mainstream consumer culture. Many churches have emptied their membership requirements of anything that actually looks like, well, a requirement. The idea is to attract more people to the churches in question by becoming “seeker sensitive”—but does the evidence show that such a strategy really results in congregations filled with mature disciples of Jesus Christ?

Maybe emptying our language of its robustly Christian inflections is just another version of the almost irresistible urge to mimic the larger culture in the hopes of getting that culture’s blessing for what we Christians are doing. I think that’s likely the case. I also think it is a reason to consider an alternative strategy: Namely, embracing with gusto the vocabulary of both the Bible and the historic Wesleyan tradition. Such a strategy would seem particularly important if certain words or phrases themselves have great explanatory power for how we understand the nature of God, human beings, salvation, and discipleship.

The meaning of holiness

In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul explains the nature of sanctification as a life of holiness. He describes it to the church at Thessalonica in this way: “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified … For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 4:3, 7-8; NIV).

John Wesley was captivated by the biblical notion of holiness. He equated the life of holiness with present salvation. In one sense, holiness is that state of being purified from wickedness—in thought, word, and deed. But for Wesley, to understand the root meaning of holiness for us, we have to understand what God’s holiness really means first.

We can see the character of divine holiness, according to Wesley, in the First Letter of John. (This is the book of the Bible that Wesley once called “the deepest part of the Holy Scripture.”) It is 1 John that connects how we are to love one another with how God loves us. 1 John 4:7-8 reads, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love” (NRSV).

In his Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament, Wesley keys on this passage in 1 John as capturing the real substance of biblical holiness. His comment on verse 8 reads in part, “God is often characterized as holy, righteous, wise; but not holiness, righteousness, or wisdom in the abstract, as he is said to be love; intimating that this is his darling, his reigning attribute, the attribute that shed an amiable glory on all his other perfections.”

Thus, to become holy is to have your heart so transformed by God’s love that love itself becomes the defining mark of your very person. Wesley paints an image of what he means by this transformation in the 1741 sermon, “The Almost Christian.” He writes, “Such a love of God is this as engrosses the whole heart, as takes up all the affections, as fills the entire capacity of the soul, and employs the utmost extent of all its faculties.”

So holiness is not a static concept. It isn’t a condition where a Christian desperately tries to avoid thinking the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing, lest his spotless purity be marred by sin. Instead, it is the dynamic reality of love—transforming the believer’s life and giving the believer a new set of values and commitments that are in harmony with God’s desires for his children.

On Wesley’s account, this is the heart of the Christian life. Those who are growing in holiness are experiencing what we mean by salvation in this present life.

Holiness … from heart to life

The Wesleyan conception of holiness requires one more element in order to adequately explain how it takes root in the lives of Christian believers. This element is wrapped up in the phrase, “of heart and life” that we attach to the core term “holiness.”

When reading John Wesley’s writing on salvation, you’ll encounter some version of the phrase “holiness of heart and life” over and over again. A related phrase is “inward and outward holiness” by which Wesley means essentially the same thing.

The “heart and life” and the “inward and outward” act as qualifiers on the core term “holiness.” One way to grasp why they are important is to recognize that we never see them in the reverse order: it is never holiness of life and heart, for instance, but always holiness of heart and life.

In the church today, we often shy away from anything that emphasizes the need to experience something inwardly that we do not have any control over. We like the language of discipleship, because discipleship strikes us as something you go out “there” and “do.” What does it mean to be a Christian, we ask? And the answer is always something about getting outside the four walls of the church, making a difference, transforming the world, etc.

There is a Wesleyan critique to make to this approach to discipleship that is found in the view that holiness always moves from heart to life. Wesley himself was always highly skeptical of Christians who thought that their good works were the substance of their faith. He thought that such a view relied on what he called the “outward form of religion” while denying religion’s true power.

To put the matter another way: Wesley does not believe that you can work your way into faith, hope, and love. He rather believes that these core Christian virtues are “wrought in us (be it swiftly or slowly) by the Spirit of God,” as he puts it in a 1745 letter. And thus it is crucial that we have our hearts transformed inwardly in order for anything we do outwardly to be pleasing in God’s sight.

Commenting on Jesus’ teaching that “blessed are the pure in heart,” Wesley says that God is always well pleased with “a pure and holy heart” but “he is also well pleased with all that outward service which arises from the heart” (“Upon our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, IV”). The logic of this movement from heart to life Wesley states in this way: the “latter naturally [results] from the former; for a good tree will bring forth good fruit” (“Heaviness through Manifold Temptations”). This is all simply a way of saying that salvation is something God does—not us.

If we want to live in this present life as God desires us to live, then we need an outpouring of his grace into our lives. We will never be able to fake true holiness through the mechanical actions of daily life—even when those actions have a religious character to them. And who we truly are inwardly will finally be shown by our outward attitudes, words, and deeds in the world. So if you want your life to be marked by holiness in an honest and authentic way, it must be lived out of a holy heart that has been made holy by the action of the Holy Spirit.

All of this means that we can’t discard a phrase like holiness of heart and life only to replace it with something more pedestrian: “learning to be more loving,” or “becoming a better person,” or some such collection of words that seems less intimidating. The phrase itself communicates a powerful message. It is about holiness—biblical holiness—that we should be concerned. That holiness only comes about in us in a particular kind of way, and it is a way that calls for us to throw ourselves on the mercy of God.

Those recent trends to give up the traditional language of both the Bible and the Christian tradition in order to make the faith more palatable to outsiders are deeply misguided. When we go that route, we inevitably present Christianity as something less than it really is. So perhaps what we need to do is not change our language but rather repent and recognize that becoming a Christian involves a conversion—in every aspect of heart and life.

Ken Loyer ~ “Stay in Love with God”: Accuracy and Adequacy

Within United Methodist circles, the last five years have seen an increasing emphasis on reclaiming the General Rules for the Christian life and the mission of the church today. That interest is reflected in the book Three Simple Rules: A Wesleyan Way of Living by Reuben Job, a retired bishop in the UMC. The popularity of Job’s work has led to other related publications by Job such as a student edition, a DVD with additional teaching, and a leader’s guide for group study. Based on these materials as well as others, it seems that there is a renewed interest in Wesley’s rules to guide Christian living today. That is a promising development in my judgment.

Part of that project has included interpreting and even updating the rules for a contemporary context. For instance, Job changes the third rule from “attend upon all the ordinances of God” to “stay in love with God.” This expression has become increasingly widespread, not only in print but also in ecclesial practice. At a recent session of the Susquehanna Annual Conference, the bishop asked the ordinands, “Do you know our General Rules?” Dutifully, they replied, “Yes.” The bishop then asked, “What are they?” The candidates responded in unison in a way that I can only presume they were instructed to respond: “Do no harm, do good, stay in love with God.”

I have heard numerous people in various ecclesial and academic contexts use this reformulation as if it were the direct equivalent of the original. What I have not heard, however, is much in the way of critical reflection upon such usage. “Stay in love with God” is perhaps easier to say (and memorize) and sounds more modern than the rather cumbersome original, “attend upon all the ordinances of God.” Yet does that new, popularized rendering accurately express the point that Wesley was trying to make? At a deeper level, is the phrase “stay in love with God” theologically adequate?

Before I address these questions, I want to point out that the benefits of Job’s work are numerous. For years he has been a leading voice calling for the church to reconnect with its spiritual roots for transformative, missional engagement with the wider world here and now. Job makes many illuminating connections between our United Methodist heritage and the challenges and opportunities facing the church today. Nevertheless, I personally have deep concerns about this paraphrase of the third General Rule.

I do not believe that it accurately expresses Wesley’s point. According to Wesley, a third way that those who wish to remain in Methodist societies should “continue to evidence their desire of salvation” is “by attending upon all the ordinances of God; such are: The public worship of God. The ministry of the Word, either read or expounded. The Supper of the Lord. Family and private prayer. Searching the Scriptures. Fasting or abstinence.”

Those examples are specific practices that God’s people should engage in regularly as commanded by God. The attempt to summarize this list by simply saying “stay in love with God,” however, creates a problem because it lacks such specificity. Even though Job does mention particular spiritual practices in his book chapter regarding that rule, I am not convinced that the idea of “staying in love with God” by itself necessarily points people to what the love of God requires of us, namely, a certain way of life that reflects vital Christian faith through the power of the Holy Spirit. Wesley, by contrast, referred even in the title of the third rule to particular disciplines that should be part of life for those who genuinely know Christ and actively serve the Lord.

Beyond the question of accuracy, I also find the paraphrase wanting in terms of theological adequacy. Whatever the intentions behind “stay in love with God,” on its own it sounds not only too vague but also too sentimental. What is to prevent someone from claiming something like this: “Sure, I still love God even though I don’t get up for church on Sunday mornings, no longer read the Bible, and see no need to serve the poor or anything of the sort. I can still stay in love with God because it’s about a feeling in my heart, a feeling between God and me of being ‘in love.’”? Such sentimentality raises all kinds of theological problems, not least of which is a profound distortion of the nature of Christian discipleship.

For those reasons, we should seek more accurate and more adequate ways of expressing the third General Rule. The following alternatives are not original to me but are, in my judgment, worthy of consideration: “use the means of grace” or “practice the spiritual disciplines” (a phrase, notably, used in a book about reclaiming the General Rules that deserves a wider reading, A Blueprint for Discipleship: Wesley’s General Rules as a Guide for Christian Living by Kevin Watson, currently Assistant Professor of Historical Theology and Wesley Studies at Seattle Pacific University). Or we might simply say, in a slightly looser rendering, “grow to know, love, and obey God more.” While these are certainly not the only three ways it could be expressed, they reflect greater accuracy and adequacy than “stay in love with God” because they directly point to or at least imply specific practices and avoid the pitfalls of theological sentimentality.

At the very least, more careful consideration of the language that we use to articulate the General Rules, especially the third rule, could help foster deeper discussion among Wesley’s heirs today. That discussion, in turn, could spur us on to more faithful living, which was after all such a driving concern for Wesley. Otherwise, we run the risk of doing no more than professing love for God without practicing it or showing it in tangible ways—and that, I think we could all agree with Wesley, would simply be unacceptable.

Grow in the New Year: Sitting on the Bottom Rung on the Ladder of Sanctity

“Fear not little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32) What a great passage as we anticipate a new year! Another is one of the most tender words spoken by Jesus:

Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat, nor about your body, what you shall put on. For life is more than food and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! (Luke 12:22-24)

A teenager sent his girlfriend her first orchid with this note: “With all my love and most of my allowance.” This is Jesus’ word to us, “With all my love and with all my resources.” Knowing this, we Christians can make two bold assertions at the dawn of the new year. First, Christ knows me and loves me just as I am. But that isn’t all, nor is it enough. The second assertion is that Christ nurtures me; he changes me; I am to grow.

To stop with the first assertion – that Christ knows me and loves me just as I am – is to enter a static state that will become stale, boring, uncreative, unattractive. That isn’t the goal of Jesus for our lives. In To Pray and to Grow, Flora Wuellner affirms:

This living Jesus Christ not only sees me as I am, in loving forgiveness, but he also releases me from that which makes me unfree. He changes me. In him, we are not only reborn – we grow!

It is not enough to be made clean through Good Friday. We are to grow in power through Pentecost!

It was not enough for the prodigal son in Jesus’ parable to leave the pigs. The pigs have not yet left him! Safe now in his father’s house, he still has bad habits to master and new attitudes to cultivate.

The disciples sitting expectantly in the upper room after Jesus had gone from their sight to the Father, knew they did not yet have what it took to change the world. They knew Jesus loved them, but they needed to grow in his power to heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out the demonic, and reconcile the hostile.

“Beloved,” it was written many years later to the churches, “we are God’s children now [security and acceptance]; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him [expectancy and growth].” (1 John 3:2)

I like what Agnes Sanford said so gloriously. We Christians are to “sit down on the bottom rung of the ladder of sanctity and yell for Jesus Christ.”

He will come. He will come to nurture and change us.

The year 2014 will begin in just a few days time. As we close one year and begin the next, many of us will be in a mood to reflect, remember and reevaluate. In the midst of this season of resolutions it’s important to recall Jesus’ comparison: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10: 10)

Featured image courtesy Tim Mossholder on Unsplash.

Philip Tallon ~ Emerge from the Waters of Your Baptism: Investing in Confirmation

There aren’t many times in the life of the church where people sit down and say, “Please teach me doctrine.” As a theology nerd, I wish it would happen more. But it just doesn’t happen that much.

Now, this isn’t to say it never happens. In my ministry as a youth pastor I have students who are full of questions and are hungry for deeper answers. We’ll go out for chicken wings and spend hours talking about weighty matters. But these discussions over chicken wings don’t happen that often. Most of the time, our learning is set on cruise control. And the default speed isn’t that fast.

However, there is one time in the life of a family where almost everyone leans in and asks for some doctrinal training. There’s a time when they put the pedal down. And that’s confirmation.

Now, I don’t know about your confirmation, or what you do at your church, but growing up, confirmation felt like an afterthought. We met in the pastor’s office for a few weeks and he led us through some teachings. Then he took us in a van down to a district conference meeting where we sat through a few youth talks before he drove us back. It was cool for us to get face time with the pastor, but it didn’t feel cool to him. An unkind but not inaccurate word for the process would be “perfunctory.”

This is a problem. Because kids can sense when you aren’t that invested. They know you’re going through the motions. And I find that passion gets watered down in the transmission. If you want kids to care, you need to care twice or three times as much they do. You need to deliver passion concentrate.

So if you care at all about instilling some solid theology in your future church leaders, you should care about confirmation.

Now, I didn’t write this post to brag, but I’m pretty proud of what we do in student ministries at my church. Here’s what it looks like for us.

We do eight, hour-and-a-half sessions at the same time as our middle-school large-group meeting. The eight classes end with a fun weekend trip to a local camp.
The classes are a relaxed and rowdy atmosphere. We do games and have the groups compete against each other for points.
We partner our 10th-graders in the student ministry up with our 6th-graders. 10th graders act as big-brothers and sisters, bringing candy to confirmation class and going on the retreat as cabin leaders.
We’re very intentional about teaching through the basics systematically, biblically, and visually. Students are learning the full scope of the Apostle’s creed, how each article is rooted in scripture, and are given memorable visual hooks to help aid their comprehension.
We ask parents to help their students memorize scripture and study up for the following week. (This means confirmation is a ‘toofer,’ we get parents learning and engaging as well.)

That’s the how. Here’s the why.

INGRAINING: Confirmation is about catechesis, which means that students are called to ingrain Christian truth on their hearts and minds. This means that we’re making the students actually learn some stuff. They memorize scripture and learn the answers to specific catechetical questions. This is real Deuteronomy 6 kind of stuff. We’re doing what God commands us, to pass on this teaching about who He is to the next generation. And since we’ve found that our students are reluctant to bind Tefillin around their arms and foreheads, scripture memorization is necessary to get the content inside their heads.

EMERGING: Confirmation is also about initiation. It’s the final step in the baptismal process bringing them into full membership in the life of the church. The phrase we use for this at Christ Church is that confirmation is about “emerging from the the waters of your baptism.” This is helpful theologically because it grounds us in the infant baptismal tradition and makes good on the promise that the community made to nurture the child as part of Christ’s holy church. The metaphor is powerful in that it conveys the grace that our children have been swimming in this whole time, extending, in a sense, the baptismal moment until the present. But it also conveys upon our sixth-graders the notion that they have to emerge, dry off, and join in – or else they’ll simply drown. Now is the time to begin to take responsibility. By pushing parents and students to seriously study during confirmation, dedicating time and brain bytes to memorizing scripture, we’re not only talking about the importance of responsibility, but also giving them a chance to embody it.

I would encourage all pastors and youth leaders to dig into confirmation. Make it fun. And make it serious.

It’s worth it.

Also, of course, it’s commanded (Mt. 28:20).

Jack Jackson ~ Evangelism: ESJ’s Roundtable Conversations

Evangelism is a natural and necessary element of multifaith conversations from Wesleyan perspectives. True conversation by Wesleyans means true announcement of the good news of Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and coming reign. Yet a real conversation also means Christians are open to hearing what other faiths consider good news in their traditions. Multifaith conversations for Wesleyans always include evangelism (which to be authentic, must never include manipulation or coercion) and being evangelized.

Perhaps the best example of a Methodist model of this link between evangelism and multifaith conversations is E. Stanley Jones, a missionary to India with the Methodist Church from the 1920’s to 60s, and perhaps the twentieth century’s most significant missionary working out of the Methodist tradition. Critical to understanding his evangelistic ministry is appreciating the role of conversations with non-Christian communities.

He sought truth wherever he might find it, a characteristic that made him quite willing to submit Christianity to the scrutiny of its critics and be willing to be in conversation with persons from quite divergent traditions. He sought conversation with persons from other traditions because, if there was a better representative of God than Christ, he wanted to know it. He believed that there are people in other traditions who, like him, sought truth and would want to hear what Christ had done in Jones’s life. He lived in a tension between certitude of Christ’s supremacy and a great openness to truth wherever he might find it. In the end, though, he never discovered a more perfect representative of God than Christ and he never seemed to question the need for redemption from sin that Christ offers. His commitment to Christ, his desire to share the good news he found in Christ, and his openness to truth in other faiths, led him to offer and test his faith through three practices, namely large-group evangelistic lecturing followed by a question and answer session, round table conversations, and Christian Ashrams. Round table conversations provide the best example of where Christians both evangelized and were evangelized in multifaith settings.

Round table conversations were gatherings of smaller groups of people, usually between 15 and 40 people, which would allow for a more personal conversation than even a question and answer session afforded. Jones tried to ensure that approximately two thirds of the participants were non-Christians, with the remainder being primarily Indian Christians. Everyone was asked to share only their religious experience and specifically “how religion was working, what it was doing for us, and how we could find deeper reality.” The focus was on the practical effect of faith in a person’s life. The goal was to discover other people’s actual experience, not their understanding of dogma or doctrine. The focus must be “deeply experimental. What does religious bring in experience? What is its value for life?” The focus of conversations was not theology but the experiential benefits of faith. The round table conferences provided a venue for pointed conversations about different faiths, conversations where Jones believed an “untrammelled” Christ eventually stood at the center. Round table gatherings encouraged conversations among people from various religious traditions, secular philosophies, and ethical systems, who gathered as equals to share about their experience of religion.

The goal of the round table conversations was two fold. The first was to bring together people from India’s various religious traditions. The second was to create a space for educated Indians to specifically contemplate Christianity. In this way the gatherings were both interreligious and evangelistic. Every person was invited to share around the table. The conception of a round table was intentional, since nobody was head of the meeting. Jones himself never started the sharing and resisted attempts to summarize or comment on other people’s sharing. He usually shared at the end.

The goal was to have true conversation about each person’s experience of their own faith and its practical benefits for them, not doctrinal debate. The result was that people from each tradition were challenged, even Christians, regarding the source and substance of their faith. The result was an “attitude of appreciation with appraisal” of all religious traditions. Jones came to believe that these round table conferences provided the greatest venue for true conversation between people of different faiths.

Jones’s round table conversations offer an interesting vision of one Wesleyan community’s linking evangelism and multifaith conversations. He clearly believed in the uniqueness of the Christian faith, but his belief in humanity and the ability of all people to interact with the Holy Spirit led him to engage in open-ended conversations about the nature of various religious traditions and how people experienced the divine through them. His commitment to Christ was not a barrier to conversation with other traditions but rather opened him in dynamic ways to hearing other’s faith stories and sharing his own. In his mind, true multifaith conversation always included sharing the good news of Christ, and openness to good news from other traditions, though he never found better news than Christ. His round table gatherings, while highly specific to the context of India in the first half of the 20^th century, are a model that offers insights into how Christian communities can engage in conversations that are authentically evangelical, noncoercive, and multifaith in nature.

Ken Loyer ~ Graciousness: An Endangered Virtue

In elementary school, children learn about endangered species, those animals that have become so uncommon that their ongoing existence as a species is at risk. Endangered animals need special protection and care in order to have an increased chance of survival, growth, and flourishing.

The idea of endangered species recently got me thinking about another domain of life, the virtues. I don’t know of any purely objective ways to measure whether certain virtues are at risk, but it seems to me that in this day and age graciousness may well be endangered or headed in that direction.

At the very least, I am convinced that the virtue of graciousness is desperately needed today. We live in an increasingly fractured and polarizing world where signs of graciousness can sometimes be hard to find. Between the talking heads on TV and the near incessant social media chatter, much of it snarky and mean-spirited, this has become, more and more, a sound-bite society in which the loudest voice gets the most attention.

Sometimes the problem is not just that the world around us tends to be ungracious, but that even in the church, graciousness can be lacking. Ironically, graciousness can be lacking among those who claim the title “Christian,” when graciousness is supposed to be at the very heart of who we are as God’s people.

One recent study revealed that graciousness is nowhere near the top of the list of qualities people outside the church associate with the church. What tops that list are things quite different than graciousness. Many people share their impressions of Christians with words like “hypocritical,” “insensitive,” and “judgmental”; that’s especially true in terms of what young adults think about the church. Whether these perceptions are accurate or not, they make it all the more difficult for us to reach people, especially young people.

The challenge for us in the church today is this: simply to be Christian, to be who we are, to live the love we profess. It’s possible for us to be people of deep faith and conviction who embrace those who believe or act differently rather than shunning or condemning them. We have an answer for a broken and hurting world: the power of God’s grace for us, in us, and through us.

The answer is not cheap grace, but costly grace—and yet that is the way to true life. God’s grace is not cheap for God, for it cost Jesus everything he had, even his own life, which he freely gave up for us all. God’s grace is not meant to be cheap for us either, but costly, costly and transformative. Jesus said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Luke 9:23).

A Wesleyan accent on the Christian message could be what is especially needed today. Why? Because that approach offers a robust emphasis on God’s grace and what it produces in us, graciousness.

One of the most wonderful yet also confounding descriptions of a life of graciousness is found in Romans 12:

“Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:9-21)

These references to love, to humble, faithful service, and to peaceful actions even toward our enemies indicate that the Christian calling is certainly a high one. Some might say that such a standard is impractical if not altogether unattainable. Yet I see it differently: in the mystery of grace, this life is the one that God has called us to live. Jesus reminds us that what is impossible for us, in and of ourselves, is possible with God.

It is remarkable to consider how much the cause of Christ could be advanced throughout our communities and the wider world by a renewed commitment within the church to discipleship according to the Bible, not according to our own whims and distortions, and emphasis on the heart-renewing power of Jesus Christ. The marks of the Christian life—profound marks of graciousness—are ones that, I believe, the world longs to see. Graciousness may at times seem like an endangered virtue, but our connection to the source of that virtue and all others makes graciousness, for us, the great privilege and responsibility to know and share in this hurting, hungry world.