by Steve | Sep 6, 1995 | Archive - 1995
Archive: Church Growth Through Intercessory Prayer
By R.A. Pegram
Churches can and will grow for many reasons. There are seminars, consultants, videos, and shelves full of books available to instruct on church growth. Growth can come about by the personality, natural abilities, and winning ways of a pastor. But sometimes, growth in a congregation can be deceptive.
Several years ago, while serving a district superintendent, I observed good growth in a particular church that had a new pastor. The cabinet brought him in from the South and he had a very winning personality. Every time I met with the leaders of that congregation, they enthusiastically praised this young pastor. Then I received a phone call and found out that he was having an affair with a sixteen-year-old from a former pastorate. Needless to say, the growth did not last.
Church growth (meaning members) can be brought about by publicity, gimmicks, contests, and giving away prizes to the one who brings the most new people. Church growth may be obtained by simply entertaining a crowd—never challenging them to change. Church growth may also be developed by using marketing techniques that have been proven effective in the business world.
In other words, churches that grow are not always growing for the right reasons and in the right way. After all, even many false churches can grow. Cult grow!
As followers of Jesus Christ, it is not the growth that we are concerned about. Growth is a side effect! But as we put Jesus and his kingdom first in our lives, we want to see the church grow because we want others to join our happy throng and become a part of the kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
If the kingdom of Jesus Christ has first place in our lives, we want to obey Jesus’ greatest command: “Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).
This will cause church growth that remains. But the growth is a secondary issue.
How do we make people disciples of Jesus the Christ? If we try to make them our disciples, we all are led astray. Paul did not ask or want people to follow him as Paul. He wanted people to follow him only as he followed Christ.
To be a church that makes disciples, we must be disciplined to live lives like Jesus lived. We cannot do that by using only our mental powers. We can know with our intellect all about Jesus from the Scriptures, but it is impossible for our human abilities to supply the power to live as Jesus lived.
While in the human body, Jesus’ power to discipline his life in obedience to the Father did not come from his human intellect and will. He had a special communion with God the Father. Jesus took time to pray! He prayed for his Father’s glory.
We need to pray that Jesus will be glorified in us, so that our lives will give glory to Jesus and in turn give glory to the Father. Jesus looked up to heaven and said, “Glorify your Son that your Son may glorify you” (John 17:1).
Jesus prayed for his disciples, “I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those you gave me, for they belong to you.” He wanted his glory to shine through them. He prayed for their safety. They were to be kept by the power of God’s name. But he prayed for this. It did not come automatically! He prayed that they would have his joy in all its fullness. Jesus also prayed that they would be kept safe from the evil one, so that they could be truly dedicated to God!
We need to pray also for what Jesus promised in this prayer concerning love. He talked to God the Father about the same love that God has for Christ being in us, and that Jesus himself could then be in us!
Jesus not only prayed, but he also wanted and needed others to pray with him.
In his darkest hour before his arrest, he took Peter, James, and John to be near him as he prayed. After he had prayed—and then found them asleep—he said to Peter, “Could you not keep watch with me for one hour? … Watch and pray” (Matthew 26:40).
Jesus had prayed for an hour. He needed others to pray with him. He commanded them to “keep watch and pray.” Yes, there are times when we need to pray alone-then there are times we need to pray in partnership.
Jesus set the example for us. We need to pray if we expect results from our lives and ministry. The result God wants is for people to be brought from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light.
The only way to see a church grow on a sure and firm foundation that will endure the storms of time is through intercessory prayer. Only by the growth of individual churches will we see the church grow in the United States and in the world. The time to pray is now!
In Taking Our Cities For God (Creation House), John Dawson says, “It is time to exercise worldwide faith, to pray worldwide prayers, and to expect a worldwide outpouring of God’s Spirit. More than half the people who have ever lived are now alive. The population is climbing to more than five billion. If we don’t have an awakening in this generation, more people will go to an eternity without Christ than in all the past generations put together.”
Outpourings of the Holy Spirit on the church come by way of intercessory prayer. We pray and God sends! At Pentecost, I believe the disciples were praying not only for themselves, but also for the people of Jerusalem who had rejected Jesus. Many of those who had rejected Jesu were relatives, friends, acquaintances, and business associates. The disciples were interceding for Jerusalem with a oneness of purpose. They wanted to see people come to believe in their resurrected Lord. When the Holy Spirit fell on those who were praying, I believe they were so filled with God’s love that their prayers were set on fire for the people they knew.
We can pray people into the kingdom. They did! And today we live in a world where we are in touch around the globe. We are not in touch only with the people in our Jerusalem. Since communication and travel have caused us to be worldwide people, we need to pray worldwide prayers. Then, as John Dawson says, we need to expect a worldwide outpouring of the Spirit of God upon us!
I do not want to stand before God and give an account of myself if I failed to pray to receive an outpouring of God’s Spirit on my city, my country, and my world.
We need to pray until we release control of even our own prayers to God! God will lead us in how great a thing to ask. We need to let God reign over our emotions as we intercede for our church and our world. Nehemiah interceded for Jerusalem when he heard about the difficulty the people had, and that the walls and gates had not been restored. “When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed…, ‘O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God…'” (Nehemiah 1:4-5a). Dawson believes that many Christians “are unable to move with the Spirit into seasons of travail because they have a fear of experiencing deep emotions. The root of this hindrance is the fear of losing control, yet our whole spiritual life depends on our yielding control to the Holy Spirit.”
I have no trouble with the “church growth ” concept when I view it from the perspective that many in our generation are lost today and will be lost eternally if we do not bring them in. This growth, if it is to come by prayer, will not come by quoting a few words or saying a quick prayer that lacks the power of the Holy Spirit. The outpouring of God’s Spirit (real church growth) will come and many will tum when we pray Christ’s own fervent and expectant prayers for the lost!
We must believe people are indeed lost in order to pray effective intercessory prayers. We must be willing to invest our time. “The only thing that will sustain the intercessor through a long season of prayer is continued revelation from the Holy Spirit,” writes Dawson. “The Spirit loves the Father; the Spirit reveals the Father’s compassion; and the Spirit gives us the faith to know that the joy of answered prayer will always come to those who continue in faithfulness. ”
We must lose ourselves in God’s Spirit to truly intercede. I am reminded of a chorus we sang long ago, “Let me lose myself and find it Lord in thee. May all self be slain, my friends see only thee. Though it cost me grief and pain, I will find myself again. If I lose myself and find it Lord in thee.
We need to pray for the lost until we lose ourselves in God’s love for them and identify with their lostness. When we lose ourselves in God, we will allow God’s view of things to dominate our thinking. “The priorities of eternity and the spiritual world should be the realities that dominate our thinking,” Dawson writes. When we die, I’m afraid we will find out that the phantoms we call reality today will be seen for what they are. The very things we think of as reality today will show up as the unreal. The things we talk of as other-worldly will be the real world of eternity. Let’s live and pray for the things that will mean the most to us a thousand years from now. Those people who do not know Jesus the Christ in this life, will be somewhere one thousand years from now. Our prayers can make a difference! What a privilege God has given us in the power of intercession.
Finding time to pray
We live in a busy world. Most all of us lead very busy lives. How do we find time to pray? I’ve noticed that people find time for what is really important in their lives.
Susannah Wesley, mother of John and Charles Wesley—the founders of Methodism—had nineteen children. She didn’t have all the conveniences that we have today. She was also a pastor’s wife. But every week, she spent one hour of spiritual training with each child. John remembered the hour his mother set aside for him for the rest of his life, and he prayed during that hour. Every day she set aside one hour and went into her bedroom from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m., closed the door, knelt beside her bed, and prayed and read the Bible! “How would you like to try to explain to Susannah Wesley why you can’t find time to pray?” asks Larry Lea in his book Could You Not Tarry One Hour? (Creation House).
Prayer was very important in her life, and her intercession changed the world!
We can and must change the world with our intercession for the unchurched. I have a special burden for the lost and feel this is the basic way we should grow as a church.
C. Peter Wagner believes, “Satan is not unduly threatened by the kind of prayer that stays within the Christian community. As long as we are not expelling him from the lives of people, he will let us be as religious as we wish. But if we begin to take seriously our call to Christian service and especially our commission to world evangelization—I speak advisedly—all hell may break loose.”
Let’s cause all hell to break loose! The power we have within us known as the Holy Spirit is so much greater than the powers of hell, that we have nothing to fear! Let’s do it! Do what? Let’s declare war on the spirits of darkness through prayers of intercession. We can and will bring people from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light!
We are in a war! Let’s take the offensive. By prayer we can go after the forces of Satan. Peter Wagner speaks of taking the world view espoused by Jesus Christ so we will cooperate most naturally with the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ world view sees the cosmic drama as a clash of loyalties between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world. We are to invade the kingdom of darkness first of all by intercessory prayer in order to release the captives and bring them into the kingdom of our God!
Prayer is our most important weapon. In The Last of the Giants, George Otis Jr. writes concerning the role of prayer: “With effects as boundless as the God whom it stimulates, prayer is easily the single most important weapon in the believers’ arsenal today. It is writer Walter Winks’ spiritual defiance of what is, in the name of what God has promised. Intercession visualizes an alternative future to the one apparently fated by the momentum of current contradictory forces. It breathes the air of a time yet to be into the suffocating atmosphere of present reality!”
Otis points out that the intercessory prayer mentioned more than thirty times in the book of Acts preceded virtually all major breakthroughs in the outward expansion of the early Christian movement.
By being willing to be intercessors and by recruiting many others, we can—and I believe we will—have major breakthroughs and outward expansion today in the part of God’s kingdom called United Methodism!
R.A. Pegram recently retired after serving 45 years as a United Methodist pastor. He is the former senior pastor of Faith United Methodist Church in Neenah, Wisconsin, a congregation he pastored for 19 years. The Rev. Pegram now lives in Intercession City, Florida.
by Steve | Sep 4, 1995 | Archive - 1995
Archive: Seminaries in Crisis
By Geoffrey Wainwright
Almost all seminary professors will tell you that theological education is in a crisis. Nevertheless, they will tell you that their own institution is doing a pretty good job. Therein lies the self-delusion. Chances are, those professors are themselves part of the problem. Since self-diagnosis is so difficult, some outside views may help to reveal what’s wrong. As I read the external reviewers, three critical areas appear from the outset.
First, the curriculum.
In the rather conservative Christian journal First Things (January 1992), we read the lament of Professor Robert Jenson who taught for decades at the Lutheran Seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania: “Long ago, the church’s demand for various sorts of ‘practical’ and therapeutic ‘experiences’ in the seminary curriculum reduced their space for theology below the viable quantity. Biblical, historical, and systematic theology are hard disciplines, to which only the very able and well-prepared can catch on quickly. … A few years ago the situation further deteriorated as the recruitment of students changed. Seminary students now for the most part arrive with no appropriate higher education whatsoever. More disastrously yet, a decisive number seem somehow to self-select from the least catechized segments of our in-any-case secularized churches. This, of course, changed the curricular situation from calamitous to hopeless.”
More benignly put, present-day theological students need—more than ever, in the circumstances described by Jenson—a basic and thorough grounding in the classical disciplines that treat the essential identity of the church: Scriptures, tradition, and doctrine. And yet, the seminaries have added ever-new humanistic elements to the curriculum (psychology, sociology, management studies … ) without adding to the time required for training ordinands. There is now no time for acquisition of the biblical languages, and precious little time for serious instruction in the sacred texts themselves.
A church which, like the United Methodist, claims adherence to the “primacy of the Scriptures” surely needs to insist that its future ministers be better schooled in them. It can be done, if the priorities are set right. In the sixties and seventies I taught in the Protestant Faculty of Theology at Yaounde in the Cameroons. There, our African students—for whom even the medium of instruction (French) was not their mother tongue—spent much of their first year in acquiring a working knowledge of Hebrew and Greek; and for each semester of their remaining three years, they were required to take at least one course in biblical exegesis or theology that presupposed the original languages. Our purpose was to equip them, not only for the regular task of biblical preaching, but also for the work of translating and retranslating the Bible into the African languages. The Gambian theologian Lamin Sanneh has recently shown, in his book Translating the Message (1989), the powerfully renewing effect of vernacular translations of the Scriptures upon the peoples who receive them. Our own churches and cultures badly need the renewal that fresh contact with the Word of God through scripturally literate pastors and preachers can bring. How can the Word of God enliven a congregation and a people that are deprived of its exposition?
Or take the case of Christian doctrine. Even at Duke Divinity School I am allowed only one semester in which to teach the basic course in theology, covering all the major doctrines of the faith. How can contemporary theology be done without a deep awareness of the tradition to which we owe our faith? On a recent teaching exchange with the United Faculty of Theology in Melbourne, Australia, I discovered that the basic course in theology lasts for a full year, and that each student is then required to add a further major course in one of the principal doctrines of the faith—Trinity, Christology, ecclesiology, or whatever.
Second, let us move from curriculum to syllabus.
Even if the curriculum allows an appropriate proportion of time to the essential disciplines, much depends on what is actually taught in any given course. Let’s look this time at the Christian Century (February 5-12, 1992)—a generally liberal publication—where we read the observations of Jon Levenson, professor of Jewish Studies at Harvard Divinity School, lamenting the “political correctness” that effectively excludes the teaching and affirmation of the historic Christian faith at a not untypical seminary: “In an institution once explicitly and formally Christian and still culturally so, largely dedicated to the education of ministers, one can deny with utter impunity that Jesus was born of a virgin or raised from the dead. But if one says that he was the Son of God the Father, one runs afoul of the institution’s deepest commitments. If the ancient Christological confession is to be retained at all—and this, presumably, is only a matter of personal preference—it must be recast in gender-neutral terms. … The older formulation may still be employed for purpose of critique—to show the alleged androcentrism of the early church, but not for purposes of affirmation, at least not without an immediate qualification to the effect that the traditional language is a historically conditioned convention and an unhappy one at that.”
So what does it profit us, then, if the curriculum allows, say, a decently modest amount of time to the study of pastoral care but the syllabus is packed with the drivel spouted by most applicants for a recently open teaching position in the subject, without any awareness of classical issues and debates in Christian anthropology and soteriology? A semester devoted to Richard Baxter’s Reformed Pastor would be far more beneficial to the future minister than scripturally uninformed, and theologically Pelagian, elucubrations on self-improvement and self-fulfillment. Thank God for the sterling efforts of Thomas C. Oden to renew pastoral theology on a scriptural and traditional basis!
What kind of a course in “Worship and Preaching” is it that is limited to the “how-to” and has no room for study of the classic Christian rites, the theology of the sacraments, the history of scriptural interpretation, and the rhetorical and oratorical masterpieces of the great preachers throughout the church’s tradition?
Third, then, the professors.
The secular journalist Paul Wilkes, in the December 1990 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, wrote about “the deeply troubled world of America’s seminaries” under the title “The Hands That Would Shape Our Souls.” The article concentrates chiefly on seminary students, but what about the professors who are forming the future pastors who are to be charged with the care of souls? Wilkes notes that some faculty members, “who were in graduate schools during the tumult of the 1960s and 1970s, tend toward an orientation that could variously be described as anti-institutional, antidogmatic, deconstructionist, ‘post-Christian,’ or Marxist. As graduate students, these faculty members were relentless in their questioning of smug sectarianism or unthinking adherence to a creed, and some would say unapologetically that the God who brought them into such studies did not make the cut as the new, lean team was chosen. … Now in their forties and fifties, they have adopted religious beliefs and values that diverge sharply from tradition.”
In other words, we are in the presence of what Roger Kimball, on the wider academic scene, calls The Tenured Radicals. What is to be done when, say, a tenured professor in a United Methodist seminary adopts a particular position in sexual politics as the criterion for taking or leaving scriptural material, and decides to add from explicitly “pagan resources” what is otherwise missing?
In my judgment, an absolutist version of “academic freedom,” imported from a secular world that is otherwise committed only to relativism, is quite misplaced in an ecclesial institution. The church believes that it has received by divine revelation certain decisive insights into truth, and the task of its preachers and teachers can only be to explicate and interpret the gospel and the faith, not to subvert them. The last thing that United Methodists need worry about is that the seminaries might fall, Southern Baptist style, into the hands of the fundamentalists. The far greater risk arises when appointed teachers sit loose to historic Christianity.
In United Methodist terms, that means that the “theological exploration” commended in the text of the 1992 Discipline should take place within the framework of official Methodist doctrine as set, not by a word-processor in Nashville, but by the Wesleyan and other historic standards. Happily (and in no small measure by virtue of A Foundation for Theological Education), there is now emerging from the 1980s a new breed of younger United Methodist scholars whose dissertations in Scripture, history, theology, and liturgy locate them firmly within the evangelical, catholic, orthodox faith. It is vital that they be appointed to teach in the seminaries.
What then is to be done?
John Henry Newman wrote a classic essay “On consulting the faithful in matters of doctrine. ” In changing times, the instinct of faith often proves more durable among “ordinary Christians” than among their intellectual leaders, for they are less subject to the flights of fashion. Still, in our day seminary teachers and students need to become more accountable both to the flock and to the chief shepherds of the flock, the bishops. For their part, the Council of Bishops in May 1991 adopted a “Statement on the Quality and Education of Ministry for the United Methodist Church.” Though formulated in less detail than it might have been, this document already sets out some appropriate demands for curricula, syllabi, and instructors to follow, and some suitable questions to be raised by all who are engaged in testing candidacies for ordination.
As we look to the future, the maintenance or restoration of the church’s health will in large part depend, humanly speaking, on the care taken in appointments to teaching positions, approval of candidates for ordination, and elections to the episcopacy. Meanwhile, professors, pastors, and bishops might well ponder the self-critical questions John Wesley framed in his “Address to the Clergy ” of 1756 (Works ed. Jackson, vol. 10, pp. 480-500)—and ask how the present generation could come closer to a satisfactory remedy, and the next generation be helped to come closer yet.
Geoffrey Wainwright is the Robert E. Cushman Professor of Christian Theology at Duke University Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina. This article originally appeared in The Challenge. It is reprinted here by permission.
by Steve | Sep 2, 1995 | Archive - 1995
Archive: The Power of a Promise Keeper
Last summer my dad and I were back up in the nose-bleed seats of Anaheim Stadium, home of the California Angels. Throughout my childhood, my dad would often take me to the ball park to watch major-league baseball—a ritual bonding experience for men and their sons. On this day, however; we were not in the stadium to cheer on the Angels. Dad and I were joining 52,800 other men to yell, clap, sing, do the wave—and recommit ourselves to God, our churches, and our families. The name of the event was Promise Keepers, a spectacular Christian ministry experience for men.
Founded in 1990 by former University of Colorado football coach Bill McCartney, Promise Keepers will have attracted more than 700,000 men in 13 locations this year. Meetings were held in Pontiac, Michigan; Los Angeles; Boise, Idaho; Washington, D.C.; Houston; Denver; Indianapolis; Atlanta; Seattle; Minneapolis; St. Petersburg, Florida; Oakland, California; and Dallas, Texas. The group is looking into 36 possible sites for 1996.
Promise Keepers is a combination of an old-time revival meeting, a Christian rock concert, and an intense seminar on family values and racial reconciliation. The men eat together, pray together, worship together, and join in unofficial paper airplane flying contests.
With one glance at our contemporary culture it is not difficult to see how a ministry devoted to men has tapped into such a heartfelt need. Divorce, crime, and drug and alcohol abuse are at all-time highs. At every turn, men are confronted with seductive voices and technicolor images that suggest life would be more rewarding with more money or a younger lover. Promise Keepers is a wake-up call to modern men, reminding them that wealth and pleasure are not life’s ultimate rewards.
Unlike some of the various manifestations of the popular secular men’s movement, Promise Keepers does not encourage men to wear loincloths, run around in the woods, and howl at the moon to discover their inner warrior. Instead, Promise Keepers simply challenges men to get right with God.
-Steve Beard
The following interview is adapted from a conversation that Bill McCartney had with Good News magazine and a handful of radio journalists in the press room of the RCA Dome in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Q. Can you explain the phenomenal growth and vitality of Promise Keepers?
A. Promise Keepers started as God put me in touch with the fact that when a man is born again, Jesus Christ supernaturally places his Spirit in the heart of that man. If a man who has the Spirit of God inside him will stand up and be counted for Jesus Christ, almighty God will stir him over and over again. That’s what this is. The overwhelming majority of these men have been born again, and when they come together to celebrate Christ, almighty God stirs their spirits. That’s what you see.
Q. What is Promise Keepers all about?
A. If you look up the word integrity in Webster’s, you’d see that there are six definitions of integrity: utter sincerity, honesty, candor, not artificial, not shallow, no empty promises. If you were to reduce it to its simplest terms, a promise keeper is a man who keeps his word. He’s a man who counts his words, he measures them, and then he lives up to them. That’s a real man.
That’s not what the world out there thinks a real man is. They think a real man is a rugged guy, a macho guy, a successful guy, a guy who has the answers. That’s not true. A real man is one who will do whatever he says he’ll do, he’ll deliver. He’s a spiritual man. He’s in touch with the fact that, in and of himself, he can do nothing. It’s only the power of God that gives him real value and significance—that’s a real man. That’s a man’s man.
Q. As the founder of Promise Keepers, what has all this meant to you personally?
A. It’s interesting to me that God would use a guy that’s as broken and flawed as I am. As Promise Keepers has developed, I’m just like every guy out there. I’m learning to die to myself, and to be a loving, attentive, and giving husband and father. I look back at my life; and it’s filled with discrepancies, contradictions. It’s filled with the pursuit of my dreams, at the expense, really, of those around me. But, sovereignly, God can use anyone. He can even use me. That’s how I look at it. There’s nothing that qualifies me, except the grace of God, the mercy of God. Nothing.
There are a lot of people out there saying it’s because I’m a football coach, men identify. That’s nonsense! That’s not true, in my opinion. It has nothing to do with football. It has everything to do with the fact that God will use a surrendered heart, and my heart is broken before God.
Q. What are some of the stories that have really touched you?
A. Just recently, a kid approached me. He told me that his dad is a preacher and he had attended the Promise Keepers event in Los Angeles. At the end of the night, the pastors were brought forward and honored by all the men. This pastor called his son the next day and basically said: “I thought I would have to wait till I got to heaven to receive that kind of affirmation.”
What Promise Keepers is doing is coming alongside clergymen. Pastors are at risk. They’ re beleaguered. They’re broken down. They’re withering on the vine, and what men are being called to do is go home to their churches, love their pastors, encourage them, bless them, strengthen them, and pray for them. And so here’s an example of a faithful warrior who thought he was going to have to wait until he went through the Pearly Gates to be affirmed.
That’s not the way God ever intended. We should see our clergymen as God’s treasures handed down to us. We should see them as a pure gift from God; we should recognize that what God has invested in them is for us, and we should just literally love these guys—day by day as they live out their lives in our presence. But this isn’t being done. That’s why that story touched me so much.
I’ll tell you another story. A guy worked up enough courage to invite his boss to come to a Promise Keepers gathering. After he had worked up enough courage to ask his boss to come, and he said he would come, the problem was that this conference was going to start at 6:30 in the morning. So, at 4:30 in the morning, he got up some more courage and called his boss to make sure he was up! Sure enough, he got him up, got him out of bed, and his boss came to the conference. Halfway through the conference, his boss got a phone call. It was the police. They had found his two daughters (15 and 16) who had run away from home. They had each told the police: “You can do whatever you want with us, but we’re not going home. We refuse to return to that house.” This father, who was attending his first Promise Keepers meeting, asked the officer if they would just hold the phone up to his girls’ ears. This is what he said to them: “Sorry I haven’t been the father that you deserve. But if you’ll come home, I’ll be the man that you’ve needed me to be. Please forgive me.” They both returned, and he went home a changed man.
It’s all about changed hearts and changed lives. Those stories really touched my heart, because that’s what God is doing in men. They’re starting to take responsibility; and I’m in that category.
Q. What do you say to men whose lives are shattered by divorce or separation from their children?
A. I just say to them that you reap what you sow. And you can’t undo what’s been done. However, God will start with you right where you are. He did·that in my life. I’ve been married 32 years, five months, and 27 days. And the reason I know that is I give thanks every day. And I’ve been a taker all those years. It’s always been about me. Now my wife has forgiven me. She’s willing to let me learn to be a giver as she goes through this process with me.
Those guys who have marriages that have been shattered, almighty God can restore a right spirit in those men. He can take their lives from where they are, and he can do something good with them. It happens over and over again to anyone that will turn to the Lord.
Q. What about fathers who put sports ahead of the family, or of accepting Jesus?
A. I rode that train. I would say that we’ve become addicted to a lifestyle where we want to be entertained, where we want to watch performances; so much so that we need to break free from that kind of bondage. We need to retrieve our priorities. Have you noticed that at these conferences, there are no performances—there’s no entertainment. Yet, the messages are really just the opposite. They’re compelling, they’re convicting, and they call out what’s really in a man. Isn’t it interesting that God would use this venue to produce this kind of results?
When those men stood up this morning and cheered, they were cheering from the depths of their hearts to say, “I give up chasing sport as my god. I give up chasing all those things that have kept me from being the man that God calls me to be—a holy man, a righteous man, a godly man.” That’s what men are feeling, and that’s what’s being stirred inside them.
Q. What is going wrong with society?
A. There’s a disease that is slowly destroying our nation. It’s sin—separation from God. Sin is missing the mark. Sin is at the very crux of the problems all across our nation. We’re going to see our nation restored, we’re going to see things reversed when godly men stop sinning and start showing that the church has got to lead the way. God has designed the church to be the instrument by which we can restore our land.
We don’t think it’s in government. We don’t think it’s in politics. We don’t think it’s in welfare. We think it’s in the church that almighty God will resurrect a right spirit and lead.
I personally believe that if just the Christians gave, we could pay off the national debt. I believe that if every church in the United States would take two families, and take them off welfare—come alongside them, love them, nurture them, and help them to be able to stand on their own, and finally to be able to take care of themselves over a period of time, there would be no welfare problems.
Q. Promise Keepers has been accused of being sexist. Is it?
A. If you will stay and listen to the content of what’s being presented, then you’ll be one of the first to put that to rest—that nonsense about Promise Keepers suppressing women. That’s not what we’re calling men to do. We’re calling men to come alongside their wives.
Women have held up the mantle. Women have worn both hats. And men have abdicated. We’re calling men to come alongside their wives and to be part of the solution.
In Isaiah 38:19, almighty God mandates that a father shall make known the truth to his children. That’s the Lord. He’s saying, “Fathers, take responsibility for the spiritual temperature in your home.” But the way you do that is to come alongside your wife. You’re not exercising dominion over her, you’re loving her. Love her like Christ loved the Church.
What did Christ do for the Church? He died for it. So, we need to die for our wives. We need to serve them. We need to give it up for them.
Q. What about the racial reconciliation that you are so impassioned about? How’s Promise Keepers doing?
A. I’ll be honest with you. This conference right here breaks my heart. This is not what God intended. The distribution of minority brothers out there is not what God had in mind. But this conference filled up so fast. It’s the Anglo that moves that quickly today. He’s the one with the most substantial credit card, and he can fill up this stadium. It’s remarkable how fast this stadium filled up.
In the last two weeks, I have had three separate meetings with what we call “gate keepers.” A gate keeper is a clergyman who has tremendous influence throughout his region. He’s a guy that other clergy look to. He’s gained that kind of acceptance and credibility. He’s probably well along in his years. We’ve brought in eight Hispanic gate keepers from around the nation. And these guys strategized as to how we could get, first of all, the Hispanic clergy to come to Atlanta in February for the Clergy Conference. We haven’t even opened registration for that. We’ve seen what happened here at Indianapolis, and we’re trying to prevent it from happening in Atlanta. It’s not that we want to turn away Anglos, it’s just that we want to see a mosaic. We want to see the cross section of God’s men so everyone is represented.
Then, we had a group of five Native-American gate keepers. We had a group of five Asian-America gate keepers at the same time. And then we had 12 African-American gate keepers. It was an extraordinary meeting, because these guys have so much wisdom.
What happens when you’re an African-American, and you’ve lived out the contradiction, you’ve lived through the oppression, you’ve lived through the pain, you’ve lived through the denial, and you’ve come through it in love. Now that’s an extraordinary guy! And we had 12 of them come together. You think they don’t have wisdom and compassion and heartfelt solutions? They do! We asked: “How can we bring all the clergy of our nation together in Atlanta and have a full representation of the African-American clergy there?” And what these guys did was plotted, and strategized, and prayed, and sought the Lord for how that can happen. We’re trying to prevent the disparity of numbers, the overwhelmingly white audience. We’re trying to reach out, but there’s so much pain, there’s so much history, that it takes time to work through those things.
Q. What can we expect of Promise Keepers in the future?
A. We feel the call to rebuild the cities. To come alongside the oppressed and the poor. To dissolve the gangs. To get this nation’s poor off welfare. And the way that is going to happen is through a lot of prayer and a lot of people moving out of their comfort zones, and moving in to help. If a guy just writes a check, and says, “I did my part,” that’s baloney! He didn’t do his part. But if he gets involved, then writes the check—now we’re talking about progress! We’re talking about people entering into other people’s pain. As soon as a man does that, he has done something substantial.
Q. Coach McCartney, certainly you have heard talk about revival—sensing God’s spirit moving in a movement like this. What would it take to have revival in America?
A. Traditionally, revival has come out of repentance, it has come out of fasting, and it has come out of prayer. That’s what is going to stir revival. Revival really is the fire of the living God igniting the fire that’s inside us. The only way we can build that kind of substantial fire is to be men and women who are repenting, fasting, and praying to God. That’ll stir the right kind of flame in us that God will ignite.
by Steve | Jul 20, 1995 | Archive - 1995
Archive: Confessing Movement Draws 900, Adopts Statement
By Bishop Cannon
“Tonight we come before the church to insist that the central dilemma facing the United Methodist Church is our forgetfulness of central Christian teachings. United Methodist Christians do not have our religion to seek. We are part of a doctrinal tradition that has said yes to some things and no to others,” keynote speaker Dr. Mark Horst told more than 900 United Methodists gathered at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Atlanta.
Horst, senior minister at Park Avenue United Methodist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota, winsomely repeated a call to doctrinal fidelity in a ballroom filled with persons from all jurisdictions of the UM Church who gathered in support of the Confessing Movement. The movement was born a year ago when 92 United Methodists came to Atlanta at the invitation of Bishop William R. Cannon (retired); the Rev. Maxie Dunnam, president of Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky; and Dr. Thomas C. Oden, professor of theology at Drew Theological School, Madison, New Jersey. Participants attended out of concern for the church’s “abandonment of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ as revealed in Scripture and asserted in the classic Christian tradition and historic ecumenical creeds.”
Echoing that concern, Horst said, “Tonight we gather to recall the United Methodist Church to remember and reclaim and reignite its doctrinal heritage.” He warned against allowing humility to cause United Methodists to become apologetic about their faith. “People think as soon as we start to talk about doctrine that we are arrogant, lacking in humility. But there is nothing more arrogant than the prevailing assumption that Christian faith is something I make up as I go along.”
Countering those who accuse the Confessing Movement of division, Horst charged, “The really deep division which has rocked the Church … is the division between those who want to throw out the classical faith of the church and those who do not.”
Bishop William W. Morris, (Alabama/West Florida), opened the conference by preaching on the theme “Jesus is Alive and Well.” Following the message, the Rev. Maxie Dunnam expressed his appreciation to Bishop Morris, telling participants, “We felt it was important to immerse ourselves in the gospel.”
Barbara Brokhoff, approved conference evangelist (Florida), also spoke and reminded the conference that United Methodism must retain its central focus upon Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, because “when we are away from our center, we sound like cackling witches.” She added, “Some things in the church are life and death issues. Jesus is one of those.”
Speaking on doctrinal confession and renewal, Dr. William J. Abraham, professor of evangelism and philosophy of religion at Perkins School of Theology, Dallas, gave a rationale for why United Methodism needs a Confessing Movement. “We need a Confessing Movement because the substance and content of the faith have been called into question in our culture, and more conspicuously within the church at large.” We expect such a challenge from our pluralistic society, Abraham observed. “It is another matter entirely, however, when the faith of the church expressed in our doctrinal standards is called into question by those who want to remake or re-imagine the faith in ways which repudiate the great classical doctrines of the Church universal.”
The UM Church also needs a Confessing Movement, said Abraham, “because as a church we have in reality been committed to a form of practical, doctrinal incoherence for a generation or more.” He went on to say the church has been suffering from an acute case of “doctrinal amnesia,” simply forgetting our doctrinal heritage, and from “doctrinal dyslexia,” a turning inside out and upside down the crucial material on doctrine in the Book of Discipline. “We have replaced commitment to the great doctrines of the church with a commitment to a speculative theory of religious knowledge,” said Abraham.
By the conclusion of the conference, “A Confessional Statement,” which had been studied and refined in small groups, was approved by participants. “The purpose of this Confessional Statement is to call The United Methodist Church—all laity and all clergy—to confess the person, work, and reign of Jesus Christ. This Statement confronts and repudiates teachings and practices in The United Methodist Church that currently challenge the truth of Jesus Christ—the Son of God, the Savior of the world, and the Lord of all.” The conference confessed, “in accordance with Holy Scripture and with the Holy Spirit’s help, that Jesus Christ is the one and only Son of God,” “the one and only Savior of the world,” and “the one and only Lord of creation and history.”
In the concluding Confessional Charge, participants stated, “We will faithfully support United Methodist activities, groups, programs, and publications that further this confession, and we will vigorously challenge and hold accountable those that undermine this confession.”
The Confessing Movement invites all United Methodists to sign the Confessional Statement and also invites local churches to affirm the Statement by action of their Administrative Boards, Administrative Councils, or Charge Conferences.
Bishop Cannon, a member of the Confessing Movement Steering Committee, concluded the conference with a moving “Apologia” for Christianity in our day. Consistent with previous speakers’ calls for doctrinal renewal, Bishop Cannon said, with heart-felt conviction, “What we welcome in our denomination today under the title of pluralism and what we glorify as theological diversity were anathema to our forebears and were excluded from the thought and practice of the Methodist Episcopal Church.” He lamented the church’s move away from commending the Savior in Christian proclamation to merely engaging in interreligious conversation. “Indeed, in the New Testament, Christian proclamation is emphasized, not discussion and dialogue. The apostles were not interested in what people thought. Their sole concern was divine truth as revealed in Jesus Christ. When the Church loses this realization she ceases to be herself.”
The bishop continued that it is time for United Methodists to “heed St. Augustine’s warning against the juggling and misuse of Scripture to suit our own predisposition: ‘If you believe what you like in the Gospel and reject what you dislike, it is not the Gospel you believe but yourselves.’”
The beloved and respected elder statesman bishop concluded with a moving testimony that he was only seven years old when he accepted Jesus as his personal Savior. Soon after that he offered himself to preach. “I was not so much called to preach as I asked for the privilege of being a preacher. But Christ accepted my offer and made me one of his preachers. That was 72 years ago,” he said. With a sense of victorious witness, he closed with these words to attentive listeners, many whose eyes were glistening with tears, “And I can testify now with the Apostle Paul that I have never been disobedient to the heavenly vision.”
by Steve | Jul 11, 1995 | Archive - 1995
Archive: Holiness for a New Millennium
By John N. Oswalt
“Holiness” is a word which has fallen on hard times. For most of us it is a word which does not have very positive connotations. We think of Bible-waving “Holy Rollers,” or store-front churches with some such name as “The Sanctified Church of God of the Holiness Brethren.” Or we think of prim, self-righteous people whose religion is primarily what they don’t do. It is little wonder that no self-respecting teenager today would aspire to “holiness.”
But that is not what holiness, biblical holiness, is all about. Like many of the other great ideas of the Bible, holiness has suffered a lot of mistreatment, often at the hands of its greatest friends. But just because an idea has been mistreated, even abused, is no reason to abandon it, especially if it is as near the heart of biblical religion as holiness is. Instead, we must find ways to recapture the essential truth and make it livable for our day. That is especially true for this idea, because the Christianity which has forgotten holiness is in deep trouble.
What is the essential truth of holiness? It is that God’s purpose for us is to share his character. In many ways Christian teaching in the last 40 years has lost sight of this. We have taught ourselves that God wants us to be happy, or free from guilt, or well-adjusted, or saved from eternal condemnation, or open-minded, or financially and materially blessed. Now, all of those are partially true, but the problem which all of them have is that they are largely me-centered—they focus upon benefits which accrue to me from my practice of religion. This kind of religion can become pagan all too quickly. What do I mean by that? I mean that pagan religion is the kind which seeks to manipulate divine power through religious behavior. Consider many of our prayers. Aren’t they offered to persuade God to do something for us we want? Why do we go to church? Isn’t it to receive blessings, however those blessings are defined? And what is the result of religion like that? Unfortunately, the result is very similar to what we have seen in American Christianity in the last 20 years. We have seen prominent Christians involved in financial mismanagement (otherwise known as theft), in sexual infidelity, and in all kinds of extravagantly materialistic life-styles. And why not? If God’s chief goal for you and me is happiness, then surely anything which promotes, or seems to promote, that happiness must be legitimate.
This problem is rooted in the way we have handled the dearest of all evangelical doctrines: salvation by grace alone. I do not want to minimize this truth in any way, nor do I want to suggest that we need to return to the doctrine of salvation by good works. That heresy characterizes too many United Methodists today. The Bible is crystal clear on this point. None of us can make ourselves acceptable to God by our own goodness. That is the way of human pride, and human pride is the essence of sin. No, we can only come to God by admitting our absolute helplessness and accepting what he has already done for us through Christ. This is the Good News, and we dare not stop declaring it to the world.
So what is the problem? The problem is that we stop right there, and declare only part of the Good News. When we do that, we make it appear that all God requires is to get us “saved.” To be sure, he wants us to accept our forgiveness from him, and not be estranged from him anymore, but that’s not all. In fact, it may not even be the most important part. When we act like forgiveness is all there is to the Good News, what do we communicate to people? We communicate that being forgiven is all God wants. So if you are forgiven apart from any behavior of yours, then it doesn’t matter how you behave, does it? Just enjoy your forgiveness! You have probably seen a bumper sticker which reinforces this point in a very subtle way. It says “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven.” There it is: the purpose of the Christian religion is to get—to get forgiveness and the happiness which flows from that forgiven condition. The behavior of Christians is really beside the point. And that explains the rash of moral failures which has blighted our witness recently. Christians have said in effect, “Don’t expect much from me in the way of character, it’s only being forgiven that counts.” And sure enough, reality has just matched our expectations; the world has not gotten much from us in the way of character.
But perhaps you believe that I have overstated the case. Perhaps you are saying, “Now wait a minute, everybody knows that being a Christian means that there are certain moral expectations upon a person. After all, the very reason we are shocked at the behavior of many Christians is because we have these expectations.” This is certainly true. No reputable minister or evangelist suggests that if you are truly forgiven by accepting the grace of God in Jesus through faith, it really doesn’t matter how you live. But what so many of us do suggest is that as important as Christian living may be, it is really viewed as very secondary to the main point: forgiveness. The result is that we don’t have any great expectations. After all “Christians aren’t perfect, they are just forgiven.” But forgiveness is not the main point of the Christian religion. Christianity is not about what we get from God in return for our religious behavior. Christianity is about the transformation of our character into the likeness of God’s character. So Jesus said to his disciples who were commenting upon the rigorous righteousness of the Pharisees, that their righteousness would have to exceed that of the Pharisees if they hoped to see the kingdom of heaven. What could he possibly mean by a statement like that? Surely Christianity is about relieving us of such rigor, not about turning up the rigor a few more notches. What Jesus meant was that his disciples would have to have the same passionate concern for keeping God’s commandments as the Pharisees had, but that they would have to add to that concern a new motivation, the motivation of love springing from the realization of forgiveness. The Pharisees’ problem was not that they were too righteous, it was that they were not righteous enough. Here is the clue we are looking for. Forgiveness, or any of the other benefits we get from God, are not ends in themselves; they are means to a much greater end. When we try to make ourselves acceptable to God by our good works, all our righteousness is just damnable pride. God wants the good works, but he wants them to be an expression of that wondering love which springs from a grateful heart. He wants the righteous behavior, but only when we have stopped trying to prove by it that we can be as good as God!
All this is illustrated beautifully in the story of the Exodus. Did God ask the Hebrew people to live perfectly righteous lives for a couple hundred years before he would deliver them from Egypt? Hardly! He simply delivered them for love’s sake alone. It was only after they had been delivered and were on their way to the Promised Land that he offered them his covenant. What were the terms of the covenant? If the people would agree to belong exclusively to God, he would care for them and bless them in wonderful ways. Of course the people jumped at the opportunity. Of course they wanted the God who had just shown himself to be both gracious and all-powerful to be their God. But what would it mean to belong exclusively to God? Would it involve lots of strange rituals and weird, secret magic? No. Apart from serving God alone, not making any idols, not dragging his reputation in the mud, and showing that all their time was his by how they treated the seventh day, all of God’s commands had to do with how they treated other people—ethics! What a strange idea!
What does my ethical behavior have to do with my relationship with God? Only everything. In the covenant, God placed a series of ethical requirements upon the people (like not oppressing their workers), and then said, “for you must be holy, just as I am holy.” God’s holiness is not some magical essence of his, it is his character. And what he was trying to impress upon the Hebrew people was that if they were to live with him, their characters had to be just like his. Since the Hebrews belonged to God, if he did not oppress people, then they could not oppress people either. But their obedience was not for the purpose of entering into a relationship with God; they were already in one simply because of his grace. Rather, God intended for righteous, ethical living to be a response to the grace that he had already given. Holy character is the goal of all of God’s covenants of love in the Old Testament.
The same thing is true in the New Testament. Over and over again, Paul announces that if anyone thinks they can make themselves good enough for God by keeping the law (the covenant commands), they are badly mistaken. Use the law in that way, he says, and the only thing it will do is damn you for your failures to keep it perfectly. No, he says, accept your salvation—your forgiven relationship with God—as a free gift to you by means of Christ’s sacrifice of himself. But then, in letter after letter, and with what seem like surprising words to those who do not know the Old Testament, Paul turns right around and commands Christians to do nothing contrary to God’s law. To this we respond, “Surely, Paul, if obedience to God’s covenant commands cannot bring us into a forgiven relationship with God, there is no reason to obey them at all.” To that suggestion, Paul responds explosively, “Not at all! Don’t you understand? Christ came to deliver us from bondage to sin! How could you even think of continuing to live in that bondage if you have ever experienced the love of God?” (See Romans 6, Galatians 5 and 6, I Thessalonians 4 and 5, etc.) Nor is this just Paul’s idea. It appears in I Peter and also in I John. All of these apostles understood that God’s purpose in delivering us from the condemnation of sin was so that we would live holy lives, lives that mirrored the ethical character of God.
But there is a problem; and that problem, just like the original expectation, appears first in the Old Testament. Once you understand and accept that the natural response to God’s grace is to want to live his life, it would seem that all you have to do is do it. That’s what the Hebrews thought, too. When Moses instructed the people to call down a curse of death upon themselves if they ever broke any covenant commands, they agreed to at once (Exodus 24:1-8). Little did they know that within a month they would be dancing around a golden calf! And the rest of the Old Testament is a story of the Jews’ escalating despair over their inability to live the life of God, a life which they increasingly understood was the best life—the one we were all designed to live.
So, what to do? One approach was to pad the biblical laws with twice as many additional laws so that if the additional ones got broken, at least the biblical ones would not. But as Jesus pointed out in rather strong language to the Pharisees, that still does not get at the real problem—a heart that does not want to give itself away to God and others. That is the problem: our wills are not a clean page which we can give over to God by a simple, decisive act. No, the Bible teaches us that the human will is deeply perverted. It is determined to serve itself, please itself, and exalt itself in ways most of us are shocked to uncover in ourselves. For most of us, just as for the Hebrew people, it is only when we decide to accept God’s love in Christ and attempt to live his life, that we discover how deeply ingrained that twisted will is. Even our righteous living can become just another attempt to make ourselves look good.
God’s plan confronted the problem from another angle entirely. His plan, as revealed in the promises he made through several of the prophets, was to give his Spirit. The human spirit was helpless to live a life of true holiness, because it was held hostage to the perverted will. So God planned to give his Spirit—who until this point, had only been given to a few select leaders—to everybody. That would mean that God’s own Spirit would give people the power they lacked in themselves to live out God’s holy character in their lives. For an example, we read in Ezekiel 36:22-27:
“Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: It is not for your sake, O House of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Sovereign LORD, when I show myself holy through you before their eyes. For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; and I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; and I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.’”
This is why the disciples of Jesus were so excited when the Holy Spirit came on them. This was what the Hebrew people had been anticipating for hundreds of years—divine power to truly keep their covenant with God, to live lives like his.
This is what the death and resurrection of Jesus has made possible for all Christians—the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives so that we can live holy lives. But many Christians do not realize this. We have thought Christianity was about forgiveness and personal pleasure, comfort, and security. As a result, too many of us are missing out on the real benefits of Christianity here on earth—the privilege of living as we were meant to live, with love to give in place of hatred and contempt, with integrity in place of deceit and self-serving, with self-forgetfulness (humility) in place of all the puffery and self-marketing, with pure and faithful relations in place of perverse and faithless ones, with glad, self-giving in place of the fearful, self-protection which is all around us. This is the life which is a true pleasure, the one in which there is real security. This is what we have been made for.
Not only do many of us fail to understand that we are expected to live holy lives, we haven’t comprehended that when we received Christ, we received the Holy Spirit in whom all the power to live holy lives exists. As a result many of us are like the couple who lived in an electrically wired house using candles for light. When they were asked why they did not use the power, they replied that they had never had the electricity turned on because they were afraid to let the power company know where they lived, for fear somebody from the company would come and spy on them. A lot of us are like that with the Holy Spirit. We have accepted Christ, so everything we need is in place. The Holy Spirit is in us and is ready to fill us with himself and empower us to be the holy people we were made to be. But we live in the dark. Why? Because our perverse wills hold us in slavery, telling us that if we were to really let the Holy Spirit take control of our lives, we would lose our independence. What we would really lose would be our inability to live our Savior’s life in our homes and workplaces. What we would really lose would be our foolish pride which poisons our relations with other people, especially with those we love most. What we would really lose would be the self-centeredness which twists every good intent back upon itself.
Independence? Yes, the independence of a galley-slave who is afraid to accept adoption from the captain of the ship because then the captain might command him to do something. Who would not gladly give up an independence like that to share the Captain’s life and love?
This is what biblical holiness is—the power and the freedom to live the life of God, even if everything around you should be slipping away into corruption, hatred, and despair. It is not a life of self-righteousness, or priggishness, or bizarre, mindless behavior. It is, in the words of John Wesley, “loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.”
What do you need to do to experience God’s holiness through the fullness of the Holy Spirit? Nothing different than what you did when you received Christ. You need to repent of your proud and selfish determination to run your (Christian) life the way you want. You need to believe that Christ really can give you his character, not merely on the surface, but through and through. You need to make an absolute, irrevocable surrender of your will to him. And you need to ask him in faith to fill you, now, receiving his promise in faith. This is the door to genuine holiness. Will you open it?
John Oswalt is the Beeson Professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. He is a noted Old Testament scholar and a contributing editor to Good News.
by Steve | Jul 10, 1995 | Archive - 1995
Archive: Holy, “Knock-em-Down” Preachers
By John H. Wigger
In 1802, 26-year-old Jacob Young began a new Methodist preaching circuit along the Green River, a vast and growing region of central Kentucky. Knowing he could count on little help from his supervising elder (a millwright who divided his time between his craft and itinerant preaching), Young devised his own strategy for evangelizing the region:
“I concluded to travel five miles, as nearly as I could guess, then stop, reconnoiter the neighborhood, and find some kind person who would let me preach in his log cabin, and so on till I had performed the entire round.”
Near the end of one dreary day, Young came upon a solitary cabin in the woods. He spotted a woman in the doorway and asked for lodging, but the woman refused. Desperate, Young exclaimed, “I am a Methodist preacher, sent by Bishop Asbury to try to form a circuit.”
“This information appeared to electrify her,” recalled Young. “Her countenance changed, and her eyes fairly sparkled. She stood for some time without speaking, and then exclaimed, ‘La, me! Has a Methodist preacher come at last?'”
The family members were North Carolina Methodists who recently migrated to Kentucky. Their home soon became a regular preaching appointment on Young’s circuit.
This eager reception of a Methodist circuit rider was repeated over and over again in the late 1700s and early 1800s, so much so that Methodism experienced remarkable growth.
Early circuit riders were a different kind of clergy than had ever been seen in America, serving a rapidly expanding and spiritually hungry nation. They pursued their calling with remarkable zeal, forever changing the style and tone of American religion.
What was a circuit rider’s life like? And what was their collective impact?
Virtual Miracles
Along with the Baptists, the Methodists were among the fastest growing churches in post-Revolutionary America. Between 1770 and 1820, American Methodists achieved a virtual miracle of growth, rising from fewer than 1,000 members to more than 250,000. In 1775, fewer than one out of every 800 Americans was a Methodist; by 1812, Methodists numbered one out of every 36 Americans. At mid-century, American Methodism was almost ten times the size of the Congregationalists, America’s largest denomination in 1776.
Key to the Methodist success was a dedicated contingent of itinerant preachers, or circuit riders. During this era, most Americans lived on widely scattered farms or in tiny, often remote villages. In 1795, 95 percent of Americans lived in places with fewer than 2,500 inhabitants; by 1830 this proportion was still 91 percent. Itinerant ministry provided preaching, the sacraments, and church structure to communities that would not otherwise have been able to attract or afford a minister.
In 1790, the Methodist preacher Freeborn Garrettson noted that in New York, thousands “in the back settlements, who were not able to give a hundred [pounds] a year to a minister … may now hear a sermon at least once in two weeks; sometimes oftener” —thanks to the presence of Methodist circuit riders.
In many areas, the pace of settlement simply outran the resources of the older denominations. In 1770, the territories that would eventually become Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee contained only about 40,000 people of European or African descent. By 1810, the combined population of these same regions was more than one million. In many of these rapidly growing regions, the Methodists held the only religious services for miles around.
The Methodist Difference
In contrast to the mobility of the Methodist itinerants, New England clergy traditionally held lifetime tenure in a single parish. Of the 550 graduates of Yale College who entered the Congregationalist ministry between 1702 and 1794, a remarkable 71 percent ministered for their entire career in only one church. In colonial New England, both pastor and people saw ordination as a long-term commitment to a single congregation. Nothing could have been more foreign to the Methodist concept of an itinerant ministry.
Educationally and socially, the early Methodist preachers were cut from the same fabric as the farm and artisan families who made up the bulk of their audiences. Unlike their college-educated Congregationalist and Presbyterian counterparts, the early circuit riders began ministry with a natural social affinity with their listeners.
The typical circuit rider was a young, single man with an artisan background, who himself had already moved several times from one village or town to the next, but whose life had been abruptly transformed by a dramatic conversion experience. Before turning to preaching, Bishop Francis Asbury (Methodism’s most influential early leader) had been a blacksmith; and most of the other preachers had been carpenters, shoemakers, hatters, tanners, millers, shopkeepers, school teachers, sailors, and so on.
In many cases, the only real distinction between a Methodist preacher and his audience was which side of the pulpit each was on. Almost none of the first-or-second generation itinerants had anything more than a common school education. Until the year 1800, even a full-time itinerant’s salary was limited to a paltry $64 a year. During that year, it was increased to $80 a year for an unmarried preacher. By comparison, the average annual income of a Congregationalist minister in 1800 was $400.
Ministry on the Move
A typical Methodist itinerant was responsible for a predominantly rural circuit, 200 to 500 miles in circumference. He was expected to complete this circuit every two to six weeks, with the standard being a four week circuit. His partner, if he had one, usually did not travel with him, but either followed or preceded him on the circuit. Hence, on a four week circuit, the people could expect preaching about every two weeks, but only rarely from a circuit rider on a Sunday.
On rural circuits, the itinerants made preaching appointments for nearly every day of the week, sometimes both morning and evening, with only a few days per month allotted for rest, reflection, and letter writing. Circuit riders were urged to preach at 5:00 a.m. in the summer and 6:00 a.m. in the winter. The itinerants usually met and examined the classes (weekly small-group gatherings of one or two dozen people) at each appointment—all of which could take three to four hours a day, in addition to traveling time. Quarterly meetings, held at a centralized location, added variety to this routine; and during the early 1800s, camp meetings began replacing one of the quarterly meetings.
Boiling Hot Religion
Early Methodist sermons emphasized the practical, the immediate, and the dramatic. “People love the preacher who makes them feel,” observed Methodist preacher Thomas Ware. The typical circuit rider preached from a basic set of Scripture texts embellished with anecdotes and analogies from everyday life. The few expository skills he used were largely gleaned from the sermons of colleagues. But he also learned to preach with what the itinerant Henry Smith referred to as an irresistible “Holy ‘knock-em-down’ power.”
Nothing would have been more anathema to Methodist itinerants than the dispassionate reading of a prepared sermon. They preached extemporaneously, without notes or manuscript. As Bishop Asbury once urged one of his preachers, “Feel for the power; feel for the power, brother.”
Circuit riders were both familiar and frightening, homespun heralds of a gospel which, although attuned to everyday life, it was yet unsettling in its larger implications. This approach led one contemporary to call early Methodism “a boiling hot religion.”
The preaching of John A. Granade is an extreme but telling example. Born in North Carolina about the time of the American Revolution, as a young man Granade became “perfectly reckless,” rambling through Kentucky and the Cumberland country (an Appalachian region in Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee) before settling in South Carolina to teach school. Distressed over his spiritual condition, Granade made his way to Tennessee, where for two years he was plagued by “voices” and “tormenting whispers.”
Day and night, through snow and rain, during the winter and spring of 1797-1798, Granade wandered about the woods “howling, praying, and roaring in such a manner that he was generally reputed to be crazy.” Throughout the western states he was known as the “wild man.”
Finally converted at a camp meeting, Granade immediately channeled his spiritual energy into preaching. “I would sing a song or pray or exhort a few minutes,” Granade later recalled, “and the fire would break out among the people, and the slain of the Lord everywhere were many.” Crowds began to follow him from place to place, “singing and shouting all along the road.” Some claimed Granade had a secret powder that he threw over the people to enchant them, and others believed he worked “some secret trick by which he threw them down.” At one meeting, so many people fainted and “lay in such heaps that it was feared they would suffocate.”
Baptizing Common Places
American Methodists soon redefined sacred space. By 1785, only 60 Methodist chapels had been purchased or built, but there were more than 800 recognized preaching places. Meetings were held in homes (where the majority of weekday sermons were delivered), courthouses, schoolhouses, the meeting houses of other denominations, barns, or in the open.
While riding the St. Lawrence circuit in 1813, Benjamin Paddock regularly preached in a dry goods store in Potsdam, New York. Likewise, Robert R. Roberts once preached in a tavern in northwestern Pennsylvania, though not without difficulty. Partway through Robert’s discourse, a drunkard in the audience awoke, calling out, “Landlord, give me a grog!” When Robert’s protested granting the man’s request, the tavern owner replied, “Mr. Roberts, you appear to be doing well; I would thank you to mind your own business, and I will mine.”
Grueling Pace
The early circuit riders preached and traveled at a grueling pace. John Brooks, for example, labored so intensely during his first three years in the itinerancy that he reported, “I lost my health and broke a noble constitution.” During one tempestuous revival, Brooks lay “sick in bed,” but the people “literally forced me out, and made me preach.”
In 1799, itinerant Billy Hibbard rode the Cambridge, New York, circuit, a 500-mile, four-week circuit with up to 63 preaching appointments, in addition to the responsibility of meeting the classes. In one year on the Flanders, New Jersey circuit, Thomas Smith estimated he traveled 4,200 miles, preached 324 times, exhorted 64 times, and met classes 287 times. Indeed, in many parts of the new nation, Methodist preachers suddenly seemed to be everywhere, which prompted one New Yorker to exclaim in 1788, “I know not from whence they all come, unless from the clouds.”
Circuit riders also frequently had to contend with poor or uncertain lodging. Most often the itinerants stayed with sympathetic families along their routes, though they sometimes lodged at inns or slept in the open. At the end of one weary day in the North Carolina back country, itinerant Thomas Ware sought shelter at the isolated cabin of a young couple. “The man gave me to understand, at once, that I could not stay there,” recounted Ware. “I looked at him, and smiling, said, that would depend upon our comparative strength.” Unwilling to wrestle the Methodist preacher, the couple relented—and in the morning Ware baptized their children.
Bishop Francis Asbury set the standard for all early Methodist itinerants and left little doubt as to what he expected from his charges. During his 45-year career, Asbury, who never married, rode more than a quarter of a million miles on horseback and crossed the Allegheny Mountains some 60 times. He visited nearly every state once a year. One biographer estimates that Asbury stayed in 10,000 households and preached 17,000 sermons.
Common Heroes
Following Asbury’s example, the Methodist circuit riders transformed religious life on the early American frontier.
After devising a strategy for evangelizing central Kentucky, for example, youthful Jacob Young set out to accomplish his goal. On most days, he managed to find a place to preach. On one occasion, Young preached in a bar room. Several times he found groups already gathered eagerly awaiting the rumored appearance of a preacher. Wherever possible, Young established weekly class meetings to carry on in his absence.
At a place called Fishing Creek, Young discovered a Methodist society under the leadership of an African American slave named Jacob. With the assistance of several local women, Jacob preached regularly and had organized a class meeting. Young was impressed with what he saw. Though Jacob was illiterate, Young noted that he “could preach a pretty good sermon,” and that “his society [was] in excellent order.”
Within three weeks, Young had forged enough appointments for a four week circuit. By the end of the conference year, Young had taken in 301 new members, receiving all of $30 for his labors.
Once, after Jacobs had preached, a man began shouting at the top of his voice, “Young Whitefield! Young Whitefield!” —comparing him to the great 18th-century evangelist.
Recalled Young, “I thought I was one of the happiest mortals that breathed vital air.” And so were the many families he ministered to—those for whom Methodism became a pillar of their lives.
John H. Wigger is assistant professor of history at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. This article originally appeared in Christian History. It is reprinted here with permission.
