by Steve | Jan 9, 2013 | Uncategorized
By Kevin Watson
“Though we can’t think alike, may we not love alike?”
This phrase is one of the most frequently cited and most frequently misused quotes by United Methodists. The phrase is typically used to argue that doctrinal agreement is unimportant compared to loving one another. It is the go-to quote for Methodists who argue that Wesley was not interested in correct beliefs. However, I am convinced that most people who use this quote have not actually read much of John Wesley, much less this sermon.
Consider for example the following quote from Wesley at the end of the sermon when he is describing what a “catholic spirit” is and is not. “It is not an indifference to all opinions. This is the spawn of hell, not the offspring of heaven. This unsettledness of thought… is a great curse, not a blessing; an irreconcilable enemy, not a friend, to true catholicism.”
The confusion surrounding this sermon is understandable, because in the introduction to the sermon Wesley does say that differences of opinion or belief should never prevent Christians from loving one another. Here is the entire paragraph the well-worn quote is found within:
“But although a difference in opinions or modes of worship may prevent an entire external union, yet need it prevent our union in affection? Though we can’t think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt we may. Herein all the children of God may unite, notwithstanding these smaller differences. These remaining as they are, they may forward one another in love and in good works.”
Wesley then frames the rest of the sermon around the brief exchange between Jehu and Jehonadab in 2 Kings 10:15. Wesley wrote: “The text naturally divides itself into two parts. First a question proposed by Jehu to Jehonadab, ‘Is thine heart right, as my heart is with thy heart?’ Secondly, an offer made on Jehonadab’s answering, ‘It is.’ – ‘If it be, give me thine hand.’”
In answering the first question, “Is thine heart right, as my heart is with thy heart?” Wesley argues that differences of opinion are unavoidable. More interestingly, he argues that everyone thinks all of their opinions are true, but also knows that he is likely wrong about some of the things that he believes, “He knows in the general that he himself is mistaken; although in what particulars he mistakes he does not, perhaps cannot, know.” In essence, Wesley is arguing for epistemic humility. He wants people to acknowledge that as strongly as they hold their opinions, they could be wrong.
Wesley then turns to the various ways that people worship God. Wesley argues that, “everyone must follow the dictates of his own conscience in simplicity and godly sincerity.” And again, Wesley argues for a tolerance of a diversity of practice when it comes to different denominations, and different practices of the sacrament.
Then, Wesley asks “what should a follower of Christ understand” when he is asked “is thy heart right with God?” Then, for more than two pages Wesley asks questions that must all be answered affirmatively in order to receive the endorsement “thy heart is right, as my heart is with thy heart.” Here are a few of the questions Wesley asks:
• Is thy heart right with God? Dost thou believe his being, and his perfections? His eternity, immensity, wisdom, power; his justice, mercy, and truth?
• And that he governs even the most minute, even the most noxious, to his own glory, and the good of them that love him?
• Dost thou believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, ‘God over all, blessed for ever’? Is he ‘revealed in’ thy soul?
• Is he ‘formed in thy heart by faith?’
• Having absolutely disclaimed all thy own works, thy own righteousness, hast thou ‘submitted thyself unto the righteousness of God’, ‘which is by faith in Christ Jesus’?
• Is God the centre of thy soul? The sum of all thy desires?
• Art thou more afraid of displeasing God than either of death or hell? Is nothing so terrible to thee as the thought of ‘offending the eyes of his glory’? Upon this ground dost thou ‘hate all evil ways’, every transgression of his holy and perfect law?
The list of questions continues. Here, there are two things to notice.
1. Wesley is not dismissing either the importance of beliefs or of action. He actually seems very concerned to vet the person he is considering joining hands with, asking them a litany of questions. He is not shrugging his shoulders and saying, “I guess your truth is just different than my truth.”
2. The list of questions is filled with doctrinal assumptions! Among other things, the questions about the first person of the Trinity ask the person to affirm the classical understanding of the perfections of God. The questions about Jesus require the person to affirm the divinity of Christ, the necessity of justification by faith, and the new birth. There is at least an implicit affirmation of original sin and there is an assumption of agreement on hating sin and being determined to avoid transgression of his holy and perfect law.
People often read this sermon to suggest that Wesley thinks people with different understandings of sin should just agree to love each other. I’m not sure that pays sufficient attention to what Wesley is actually saying in this sermon. Another way of saying this is that I don’t think Wesley’s understanding of “opinions” would have included disagreements about sin. Wesley was a man of his time and thought that sin was clearly spelled out in scripture.
Wesley then shifts his attention to what it means to join hands. For him it is not pretending to embrace one another’s opinions or modes of worship. Rather, “Hold you fast that which you believe is most acceptable to God, and I will do the same.”
Here is how Wesley describes joining hands. Wesley expects someone who joins hands with him to:
• Love him “as a friend that is closer than a brother; as a brother in Christ.” He further asks, “Love me with the love that ‘covereth all things’, that never reveals either my faults or infirmities; that ‘believeth all things’, is always willing to think the best, to put the fairest construction on all my words and actions…”
• Pray for him.
• Provoke him to love and good works. In this Wesley includes, “O speak and spare not, whatever thou believest may conduce either to the amending my faults, the strengthening my weakness, the building me up in love, or the making me more fit in any kind for the Master’s use.”
• Love him not in word only, but in deed and in truth.
Finally, Wesley turns his attention in the last part of the sermon to his understanding of a “catholic spirit.” Interestingly he begins, “There is scarce any expression which has been more grossly misunderstood and more dangerously misapplied than this.” He then offers three statements of what a catholic spirit is not.
• A catholic spirit is not “speculative latitudinarianism,” an eighteenth century term that referred to “an indifference to all opinions.” For Wesley, this is “the spawn of hell, not the offspring of heaven… an irreconcilable enemy, not a friend, to true catholicism.” He continues:
“Observe this, you who know not what spirit ye are of, who call yourselves men of a catholic spirit only because you are of a muddy understanding; because your mind is all in a mist; because you have no settled, consistent principles, but are for jumbling all opinions together. Be convinced that you have quite missed your way: you know not where you are. You think you are got into the very spirit of Christ, when in truth you are nearer the spirit of antichrist. Go first and learn the first elements of the gospel of Christ, and then shall you learn to be of a truly catholic spirit.”
• A catholic spirit is not “practical latitudinarianism” or an indifference to public worship and the way it is conducted.
• A catholic spirit is not “indifference to all congregations.”
Closing observations
Let me close with these three observations.
1. Wesley is making the case for charity and a hermeneutic of generosity towards others. He is realistic in his acknowledgement that people will not agree about everything. I also suspect that he takes the call to love one another more seriously than most people who appeal to this sermon do. (I.e., do we really love those we disagree with like they are our brothers and sisters, or best friends? Do we spend serious time on our knees in prayer for them, begging God to bless them and pour himself into their lives in new ways?) The sermon reminds me of the room for growth I have in loving those with whom I disagree. And it reminds me that it takes work, it is not something to merely be vaguely affirmed.
2. I don’t think this sermon supports the “Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors” motto that some love and some love to hate. Saying that Wesley is arguing for open-mindedness in this sermon is much too simplistic. He is actually saying that Christians should be close-minded in their own beliefs, but generous and charitable with those with whom they disagree. Put differently, Wesley is arguing for certainty in the specifics of one’s faith that comes from careful thought and examination of the options and not a devaluing of the role of doctrine in order to have a bigger tent.
3. Speaking of big tents. My reading of this sermon is that Wesley would find a big tent vision for Methodism a liability and not an asset. For example, when he acknowledges disagreements about the sacraments, he does not seem to me to be arguing that the folks who disagree should try to worship in the same church. On the contrary, he seems to assume that they would not be a part of the same faith community, but they could still be a part of the church catholic. It makes me wonder if Wesley might view our experiment at unity within diversity as an attempt for one church to be the whole church catholic and if he might think that attempt itself lacked both humility and sense, particularly because we are so obviously not a full expression of the church catholic. A cursory reading of Wesley’s letters, for example, will provide multiple examples of Wesley defining which beliefs are acceptable within the movement he was the leader of and which ones meant that mutual cooperation was no longer possible. Wesley regularly enforced doctrinal/dogmatic uniformity among early Methodist preachers.
Ultimately, while it is probably technically true that contemporary Methodists do believe just about anything, I do not think one can use this sermon as justification for either deemphasizing doctrinal commitments or for a community of faith that lacks clarity about what its own vision for what faithfulness looks like.
Kevin Watson is Assistant Professor of Historical Theology and Wesleyan Studies at Seattle Pacific University.
by Steve | Jan 9, 2013 | Front Page News, Jan-Feb 2013
By B.J. Funk
Want to read a book better than the latest mystery novel you have read? Then, grab your Bible and feast your eyes on the intriguing 25 chapters of Second Kings! There you will find plenty of evil, hatred, and wickedness. Throw in war, cruelty, power, the desensitizing of right and wrong, and you have the ingredients that fill most of the best sellers on our book shelves. Add a famine so deadly that mothers eat their own children, mix in idolatry, conspiracy, murder, destruction, nauseating self-love, and you are standing in the middle of the reasons for Israel’s defeat. The intriguing story goes on and on, a tug of war between those who served God with a passion and those who led the Israelites astray.
But, there’s more. Woven into the framework of evil is the enchanting excitement of supernatural events: Elijah touches his cloak to the water, and it parts; He does not die but is taken up in a whirlwind; Elisha helps a widow with her debt by supernaturally expanding her jar of oil, and he also removes poison from a stew; He raises a boy from the dead, enlarges a small amount of food to feed a big crowd, and heals a man of leprosy.
Then there is Jezebel, the evil Baal-worshiping wife of king Ahab of Israel. She is thrown out of a window by eunuchs and then eaten by a dog. How humiliating is that for a main character!
To add insult to injury, the Babylonian army marches into Jerusalem, carries the people into captivity, and Jehoiachin, a former king of Israel, is put into prison. The story takes an unexpected turn after Jehoiachin has been in prison 37 years! The new Babylonian king releases Jehoiachin, speaks kindly to him and gives him a seat of honor. We have no indication why, especially since the king’s given name was Evil-Merodach, except we do know that God’s grace overrides evil rulers. The last two verses of this book reads, “So, Jehoiachin put aside his prison clothes and for the rest of his life, ate regularly at the king’s table. Day by day the king gave Jehoiachin a regular allowance as long as he lived.”
Talk about a surprise ending!
There are several thoughts we can carry with us from these last two verses. First, God is a God of surprises. He is the master at turning a story around and bringing a happy, surprise ending! Secondly, who but God would give us a story like this! Full of the theme “rags to riches,” it is also only complete as a “jail to grace” story. Lastly, who of us could deny that God can soften the heart of a king? Our Father knows how to place both the villain and his victim in the same paragraph and allow a tenderness and softness to change the plot.
The greatest thought we can take away, however, is to allow Jehoiachin’s release and Evil-Merodach’s forgiving spirit to make a difference in our own lives. Jehoiachin, the prisoner, did nothing to earn a seat at the king’s table. You and I, prisoners to our sin, have done nothing to earn a seat at our King’s table. Yet, He invites you to “put aside your prison clothes, and join him regularly.”
Are you walking around daily in your prison clothes, afraid to claim your new wardrobe? Do you still sleep in your jail cell outfit? You don’t realize Jesus has set you free? When Jesus bought your life through his death, he brought you freedom from old habits, freedom from past sins, freedom from all those things that inhibit you from being all he wants you to be. He took your filthy rags and in exchange, he gave you new, clean white robes of wholeness.
What are you waiting for? Run! Throw off those prison clothes! Find your seat at the King’s table!
Don’t let anyone else have your spot! Gulp down the cup of his love. Eat his grace until you are stuffed. Bask in the unbelievably wonderful feeling of freedom.
by Steve | Jan 9, 2013 | Jan-Feb 2013
By Duffy Robbins
Wouldn’t it be great if our students just walked into our youth ministries already committed to faithful Christian discipleship? How cool would it be if you were interrupted one night at youth group during your opening prayer by some eager student who asked, “Can we play with our concordances again tonight, and then have heated discussions about theological issues before we break up into small groups to talk about how we want to spend our tithes? Oh yeah, and can I get a new Purity Bracelet; I gave mine to my girlfriend?”
It would be fantastic if teenagers came to us as ready-made, ready-to-serve disciples. But, that’s not the way it generally works.
Typically, a youth ministry is a mixed bag of kids with commitments all over the place.
If we’re to model our ministries after the incarnational approach of Jesus, we’ll need to work very hard to meet kids where they are – wherever they are – in the odyssey of faith. That means thinking about where our students are in their various journeys of faith and then developing and targeting programs that meet them in that place. One of the ways to imagine those various places of spiritual growth is to think in terms of six different levels of spiritual commitment.
LEVEL ONE: Pool of Humanity. This represents the teenage population within your geographical sphere of influence.
Your group may not have any influence on these students at the present time. The vast majority of these kids may not even know you or your ministry exists. But you know about them, and by God’s grace and power you want to reach them with the gospel.
Every Pool of Humanity is different. Your Pool may be an urban population with several diverse ethnic groups and nationalities, or it could be a small rural community with a fairly homogenous population. It may be a place marked by affluence, or it could be a place haunted by high unemployment and low-income families. It could be that within five miles of your place of ministry there are a number of middle schools, high schools, and private and religious schools, or it may be that your entire community is served by one regional middle school and high school. There are as many scenarios as they are ministries. One is not necessarily better than another, but they are different.
If we want to see a fruitful harvest, we’ll have to give attention to our peculiar ministry environment. Jesus makes basically this very point in his parable of the soils (Matthew 13:1-18). The key to response in this well-known passage is not the seed (the Word God); it’s the soil into which the seed is sown. Or, to put it another way, architects don’t just begin drawing up plans to build a structure; they begin by surveying the ground on which they want to build that structure. So it is when we want to build a solid ministry. Before we construct the program we give some serious thought to the teenage population in our community.
Has your congregation, have your youth volunteers, have the parents of kids in the youth ministry environment ever spent an evening together wrestling with this question: Who are these kids we’re trying to reach? What are their needs? What are their questions? What supports do they have? What supports do they lack? Sound programming begins with thoughtful tuning and careful listening.
by Steve | Jan 9, 2013 | Front Page News, Jan-Feb 2013
By Reed Haigler Hoppe
“You know, in 1978 we stoned a missionary here. Killed him. We haven’t allowed anyone else in here since then…until you guys. You are different. It’s not your words, it’s your actions. We love you. We’re really glad that you came.” –Peruvian Woman
Billy and Laurie Drum serve with The Mission Society team in Peru, along with their nine-year-old daughter, Sarah. The Drums live in a rural mountain community called Patarcocha. Their adobe house complete with mud walls, a bucket toilet, and frequent water shortages – is perched two miles high into the Andes.
Billy and Laurie moved to Peru from Texas almost five years ago. Both science teachers, the Drums weren’t quite sure what their lives would look like in Peru, but they knew they had been called to cross-cultural ministry. “We are just lay people. We aren’t pastors. We came to the field as science teachers. So we always felt like we would just be sowing seeds here in Peru,” said Laurie (pictured above).
The Drums founded the Kuyay Talpuy program, which means “sowing seeds with the love of God” in Quechua, the local language. Through the Kuyay Talpuy education centers, the Drums are able to touch the lives of children, their families, and their communities. “We want to plant seeds of the gospel and of Christ’s love in the children here,” said Laurie.
Despite their intense desire to move to Patarcocha, it took a funeral of a dear friend to open the door. “After two years of working in the community every day, but living 45 minutes away in Huancayo, we were granted permission to actually move here.”
“Mama Victoria was the matriarch of the community of Patarcocha,” said Laurie. “Through her death and our inclusion in her family during the funeral, we were finally given recognition as members of the community. We suddenly moved from ‘missionaries’ and ‘gringos’ to a new, more intimate role.
“The community rallied around us and helped us make plans and begin to move in. We became neighbors and friends. We began to work on community issues together. We began to have community struggles together. We bonded in a new way.
“Living among the people has had the greatest impact on our ministry. We worked hard to try not to improve our living situation beyond what others in the community had access to. People knew that we could live better than they did, but we chose not to. We chose to be like them. We shop in the open market alongside our neighbors. Our daughter attends the same school as their children. We eat what they eat.
“We will always look different, and they will always know that we aren’t really from here, but they now consider us one of them. They call us family. That’s huge!” said Laurie.
When asked how she felt about the statement from a neighbor (in the read-out above), Laurie remarked, “Honestly, I have to say that during the first year when we were really being persecuted and we considered leaving, had we known that there was a history of killing missionaries here, we would have definitely left and not persevered. But, in this case, not knowing may have been the best thing. We stayed and stuck it out, and the ministry was blessed,” said Laurie.
Reed Haigler Hoppe is The Mission Society’s associate director for communications and is an ordained deacon in the Alabama-West Florida Conference of The United Methodist Church.
The Drums are relocating from Peru to a least reached area of the world in 2013. They plan to work with refugees and missionaries in their new field in the areas of counseling, coaching, and training. Learn more about their ministry and watch a video at http://www.themissionsociety.org/.
by Steve | Jan 9, 2013 | Front Page News, Jan-Feb 2013
By Barbara Dunlap-Berg
Evangelical United Methodist groups are teaming up with evangelical groups in other mainline Protestant denominations to share resources. Some of these evangelicals are working toward reform within their denominations. Others are in the process of splitting to form new denominations.
The leaders have covenanted to engage in joint ministries and to explore cooperatively planting churches and sending missionaries, offering incubator facilities to support new church plants, providing theological education and sharing space with dislocated congregations.
“What we hope to learn from each other is the ‘how’ of ministering that message in our 21st century North American culture,” said the Rev. Thomas Lambrecht, vice president of Good News, an unofficial evangelical caucus of United Methodists. “Through sharing, support and cross-fertilization, we believe we can be more effective in contemporary ministry, building vital congregations to make disciples for the transformation of the world.”
He was part of an ecumenical summit of 32 evangelical leaders from 14 United Methodist, Anglican, Lutheran and Presbyterian churches and organizations who affirmed common theological ground and sought practical ways of working together during a late October conference in Dallas. The unofficial United Methodist caucuses represented included Good News, The Institute on Religion and Democracy, The Confessing Movement within The United Methodist Church and Lifewatch (Taskforce of United Methodists on Abortion and Sexuality).
The ecumenical group’s goal is not to create a new United Methodist or evangelical super-denomination but, rather, a network to address common issues and concerns, Lambrecht said. “We believe in a type of ecumenism that is not institutional, but organic, built on partnerships and networks that can be of mutual benefit,” he said.
However, Lambrecht noted that one challenge he believes the denomination faces is its broad theological spectrum. The United Methodist Church is “the opposite of McDonald’s, where every restaurant offers the same menu and experience,” he said.
That lack of consistency, he continued, contributes to the denomination’s greatest challenge, which is “how to create growing, vital faith communities in a culture that has changed. One of the barriers to our doing that is the lack of a common theological message. Because of our diversity of beliefs, we have many different messages coming out of local churches and pastors.
“The denominational label doesn’t really tell you what you will be getting if you attend one of our churches. With such diversity, it is difficult to come up with a unified strategy to reach our culture for Christ.”
Rather than being in competition with United Methodist boards and agencies, Lambrecht said the ecumenical group envisions participating in experiences that denominational agencies do not offer. The goal, he added, is to share resources and experiences. “We do not anticipate diverting dollars or support from United Methodist programs, but offering additional alternatives.
“It is also true,” he said, “that some of our denominational ‘official’ experiences are not theologically congenial for evangelicals. The ecumenical experiences provide another option that for some might be more in line with their evangelical theology. Where appropriate, we hope to be able to include United Methodist agency staff in these shared ecumenical experiences.”
‘Encouraged’ by the future
Representatives of the Institute of Religion and Democracy, the American Anglican Council, the North American Lutheran Church, and the Presbyterian Lay Committee organized the summit. All have been part of an evangelical ecumenical group called the Association for Church Renewal, which consisted of renewal leaders from several mainline denominations.
Lambrecht said that when Association of Church Renewal formed, all of the renewal groups were still working toward reform within their denominations. Since then, several — namely those in the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) — have spawned new, independent denominations.
“It was thought that a new initiative was needed that could take account of that new reality and assist us in working together for spiritual renewal and growing vitality in whatever denominational setting we find ourselves,” he said.
Lambrecht said he does not see evangelicals within The United Methodist Church moving toward a split. “Our U.M. situation, he said, “is much different from most of the others, in that we have not reached a breaking point for evangelicals. In fact, we are quite encouraged about the future we see in our denomination.”
He said recent gatherings of General Conference, the denomination’s top lawmaking body, have upheld “the authority of Scripture and our moral teachings.” He added church leaders “finally getting serious about addressing our membership decline and wanting to work diligently to turn things around” indicate “a greater openness to what evangelicals have to offer,” he said.
Participants formed working groups, listened to plenary sessions and affirmed an ecumenical statement. While all of the leaders endorsed the statement, some did so as individuals rather than on behalf of their respective churches or organizations, Lambrecht said.
‘Being the church together’
The statement says the new group comes from diverse Christian traditions but is united in the Spirit. While the signatories acknowledge “the imperfections of Christian institutions and the broken nature of our collective witness to the world,” the signers also “commit to strive together for a faithful way of being the Church together. Our hearts are burdened for the millions of our neighbors who are estranged from God and the Church.”
The statement addresses two issues that have been a source of tension and even schism in their respective denominations — human sexuality and abortion. The statement defines marriage as between one man and one woman and affirms, “Every human life is a gift from God to be cherished and respected from conception to natural death.”
“The church should speak only on the issues that follow directly from core Christian moral convictions,” the statement said. Among the others it identifies are upholding the dignity of each person as created in God’s image, addressing the needs and expanding the opportunities of the poor, strengthening the bonds between parents and children and defending the free exercise of religion in North America and around the world.
Summit participants plan a 2013 summit and hope to piggyback on an Anglican church-planting event in Wheaton, Illinois.
They also want to address the issue of sex trafficking. Lambrecht said, “I personally hope we can involve our United Methodist agency staff in both of those experiences.”
Barbara Dunlap-Berg is internal content editor for United Methodist Communications in Nashville, Tennessee.
