by Steve | Aug 18, 2025 | Front Page News, Home Page Hero Slider, Juloy-August 2025
Yesterday & Today: Church of God in Christ
By John Mark Richardson, Sr.
The Church of God in Christ (COGIC), a Holiness-Pentecostal denomination, has a deep spiritual heritage dating back to over 128 years. It has become one of the largest denominations in the United States and is the largest Holiness-Pentecostal denomination worldwide. It is a rich tapestry woven from the threads of African American faith, experience, suffering, resilience, hope, and community.
The COGIC was founded by Bishop Charles Harrison Mason, Sr., who was born on September 8, 1866, (although some records have 1864) in Shelby County, Tennessee, just over a year after the end of the Civil War. He was the son of former slaves and worked alongside his parents as sharecroppers throughout his adolescent years.
Mason grew up during a difficult and challenging era in America, particularly for African Americans. In a nation that had just torn itself apart primarily over the preservation of slavery and Southern states’ rights, survival was no easy feat.
The family of Bishop Mason faced the pervasive and devastating poverty that afflicted many Black individuals and families and Black communities following the Civil War. Amid this turmoil, Mason’s mother fervently prayed for her son, asking that he would be dedicated to God. Her prayers had a profound impact, inspiring the young Charles Mason to not only dedicate himself to God but also to incorporate daily prayer into his life. He earnestly prayed alongside his mother, asking above all things for God to grant him a religion like the one he had heard about from the old slaves and seen exemplified in their lives. This deep yearning for the God of his forebears became a central theme in his life, shaping his spirituality and purpose.
In 1880, just before his fourteenth birthday, Mason fell gravely ill with chills and fever, leaving his mother in despair over his life. However, in an astounding turn of events, he experienced a miraculous healing on the first Sunday of September that year. Eager to express their gratitude, Mason, along with his mother and siblings, attended church the following Sunday, at the Mt. Olive Baptist Church near Plumerville, Arkansas. An atmosphere of praise and thanksgiving enveloped the congregation as Mason’s half-brother, the pastor, baptized him, marking a transformative moment in Mason’s life after surviving a near-death experience.
During this moment of celebration, Mason said to his family and the local parishioners, “I believe God has healed me for the express purpose of alerting me to my spiritual duty.” From that moment on, Mason acknowledged and felt called into full-time ministry throughout his teenage and young adult years. His gratitude to God for his miraculous healing, his profound love for God, and his yearning to experience God like the saints of old fueled his desire to serve in ministry and live a life pleasing to God.
Mason’s Holiness Influencers
This deep sense of purpose and spiritual awakening naturally drew Mason towards the Holiness movement, which was making great strides in America during the 19th Century. This movement emphasized personal piety, sanctification, and a deeper, experiential faith, where adherents sought to experience God’s grace and power in transformative ways. Consequently, Mason attended various Holiness meetings and embarked on a quest to explore the Holiness movement further, eager to understand sanctification and embrace the sanctified life.
Mason’s readings on holiness and entire sanctification by various writers — John Wesley in particular — helped him establish roots in the Wesleyan tradition. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, championed the notion of personal holiness and social justice. Mason embodied these Wesleyan distinctives, and the Wesleyan Quadrilateral — scripture, tradition, reason, and experience — shaped Mason’s theological framework, integrating biblical authority, rich traditions, and vibrant spiritual experiences.
Additionally, and more importantly, Sister Amanda Berry Smith’s Holiness’s writings helped shape Mason’s beliefs and teachings that would lead to the Church of God in Christ’s deeply held beliefs and practices. Amanda Smith (pictured right) was a notable figure in the Holiness movement during the late 19th century. She was an African American evangelist, writer, and one of the first Black women to gain prominence in the Holiness and Pentecostal movements.
Amanda Smith’s writings and preaching focused on holiness and empowerment, significantly influencing many, including Bishop Charles H. Mason. Her work highlighted the importance of spiritual transformation and the experience of entire sanctification — a doctrine asserting that believers could attain a second work of grace that cleansed them from sin and empowered them for holy living and service in the present world. This doctrine resonated deeply within the African American church community, particularly for the Church of God in Christ and Bishop Mason, who claimed the grace of divine sanctification after reading Sister Amanda Smith’s autobiography.
After immersing himself in the writings of John Wesley, Sister Amanda Smith, and others, and experiencing entire sanctification during prayer, Mason’s life was transformed. However, his teachings on holiness and his fervent discussions about spiritual empowerment caused significant friction with the established order of the Baptist Church. In the 1890s, as he began advocating for sanctification and a more spirited form of worship, he found himself at odds with church authorities. His passionate emphasis on holiness was viewed as radical and contrary to traditional Baptist teachings.
Excommunication, Disputes, and Disfellowship
This escalating tension reached a culmination when Mason was formally excommunicated from the Baptist Church due to his beliefs and teachings regarding holiness. Consequently, this pivotal moment motivated Mason to team up with a former Baptist Pastor, Reverend Charles Price Jones, who was expelled from his pastorate for preaching holiness. These two incredible leaders collaborated to promote and disseminate the Holiness message more broadly. They did this through preaching, revivals, planting Holiness churches, providing guidance to pastors and churches wanting to embrace the holiness life, publishing literature, and writing inspired hymns and songs of praise.
This holiness fellowship and movement, led by two influential African Americans, attracted many to their cause. During this time, Bishop Mason (pictured right) received a revelation from God. In 1897, while walking and praying on a street in Little Rock, Arkansas, he heard God speak to him: “If you choose the name Church of God in Christ [based on 1 Thessalonians 2:14], there will never be a building big enough to hold all the people I will send your way.”
To this, Bishop Mason replied, “Yes, Lord!”
The collaboration between Mason and Jones was a beautiful but short-lived moment. Mason eventually experienced disfellowship from Reverend Charles Price Jones and others with whom he had served in ministry. After returning from the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles, California, Mason’s report about the events he witnessed and his personal testimony of baptism in the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues were met with skepticism, criticism, and resistance. However, what Mason experienced at the Azusa Street revival reaffirmed his belief that God had more for His people to experience and receive — a third work of grace: power!
Mason was profoundly impacted by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit during the Azusa Street Revival, which manifested through various signs, including speaking in tongues, healings, and a deep sense of community among diverse groups of people. His reports highlighted the revival’s emphasis on holiness, the power of prayer, miracles, and the importance of evangelism.
Mason also noted the racial and cultural diversity present at Azusa Street, which broke down barriers between African Americans and Whites, creating a unique space for unity in worship. This experience of inclusiveness informed his later work in establishing COGIC as a vital denomination within the Holiness and Pentecostal movements.
The disfellowship was a painful experience. Mason and Jones were dear friends, and many in the group were close to Mason. Although Jones and Mason could no longer serve in the ministry together, they continued to respect each other as leaders and loved each other as brothers. Ultimately, Jones would establish a different faction of the Holiness movement, Church of Christ Holiness U.S.A., while Mason continued to promote his distinctive teachings and practices.
The Formal Establishment of COGIC
By 1907, the seeds had been sown for the formal and legal organization of the COGIC. That year, Mason held a gathering in Memphis, Tennessee, where he officially established the Church of God in Christ as its own denomination.
This organizational meeting laid the groundwork for what would become a significant movement within the American religious landscape. Mason’s leadership was affirmed during this gathering as he was recognized for his theological vision, charismatic personality, and commitment to evangelism and spiritual empowerment. The attendees, composed of various clergy and laypersons inspired by Mason’s teachings and leadership, were the Church of God in Christ’s first General Assembly, and they voted to elect Bishop Charles Harrison Mason as the first Bishop of the COGIC.
The news and outcomes from this meeting attracted a diverse group of adherents to the Church of God in Christ, including many white congregants and preachers impacted directly or indirectly by the Azusa Street Revival, and who resonated with the tenets of Holiness. They embraced the radical inclusivity suggested by Galatians 3:28: “that in Christ, all believers are equal, regardless of their ethnic or social background.” As one affirmed, “the color line was washed away by the blood.”
An Interracial Denomination
From 1907 to 1914, the COGIC was arguably the largest interracial denomination worldwide. In congregations of the Church of God in Christ, black and white saints worked, worshiped, and evangelized together in an interracial, egalitarian fellowship modeled after the fellowship at Azusa Street. This occurred throughout the South, including Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, and Georgia, during a particularly racially tense time in the United States.
Additionally, because the Church of God in Christ was legally incorporated, they could ordain clergy whose status civil authorities would recognize. Clergy who wished to perform marriages and other ministerial functions that had legal consequences needed this official recognition. Mason also played a crucial role in carrying out the Azusa Revival from its movement phase to its denominational phase. Through Mason’s influence, scores of white ministers sought ordination at the hands of Mason. Therefore, large numbers of white ministers obtained ministerial credentials carrying the name of the Church of God in Christ.
Many white brothers and sisters who formed the Assemblies of God had been part of the Church of God in Christ from 1907 to 1914, during which time Bishop Mason ordained about 350 white ministers. In 1914, the Assemblies of God was organized, and in the second week of April that year, Mason traveled to Hot Springs, Arkansas, to attend the organizing meeting of the Assemblies of God. He preached on Thursday night, illustrating the wonders of God by holding up an unusually shaped sweet potato. He sang his spontaneous improvisation of spiritual songs that Daniel Payne in 1879 referred to as “corn field ditties.” With Mason were the “Saints Industrial” singers from Lexington, Mississippi. Mason bid the white leaders a warm farewell and gave his blessing for the white ministers to form their own organization. He also gave them permission to void their Church of God in Christ credentials in order to switch to those of their new denomination.
Bishop Mason’s Tenure and Accomplishments
During his tenure as founder and first Bishop of the Church of God in Christ, Bishop Mason led the church through phenomenal growth while championing civil rights and social justice. He actively worked to create a more equitable society, standing against racism and Jim Crow discriminatory practices, all while supporting the United States government in its fight against Nazism and Fascism.
He oversaw the construction of the largest African American church campus of the early 20th century, featuring a sanctuary that seated five thousand worshippers. This historic landmark campus was where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech — just a day before he was tragically assassinated.
Above all, Bishop Mason was a holiness preacher, inspiring people to live free from sin. He was also unapologetically Pentecostal, embracing the gifts of the Spirit and advocating for baptism in the Holy Spirit and the fruits of the Spirit.
Following Bishop Mason
Bishop Charles Harrison Mason, Sr., the beloved founder and first Bishop of the Church of God in Christ, died November 17, 1961. He served the denomination he founded for fifty-four years. Since the death of Bishop Mason, seven leaders have served as Presiding Bishop: Ozro Thurston Jones Sr. (1962–1968); James Oglethorpe Patterson Sr. (1968–1989); Louis Henry Ford (1990–1995); Charles David Owens (1995–2000); Gilbert Earl Patterson (2000–2007); Charles Edward Blake (2007–2021); and John Drew Sheard (2021–present and pictured left).
Bishop Sheard of Detroit, Michigan, serves as COGIC’s Presiding Bishop, embodying the spirit of Bishop Mason in his leadership. He has been a gracious and kind leader, guiding COGIC into a time of organizational peace, unity, prosperity, and national and international influence. He has coordinated the completion of major building projects, repaired and beautified existing structures, paid off existing debt, and responded to national and global crises and tragedies that have impacted the COGIC family. Bishop Sheard has reformed ministerial education and training for clergy, the COGIC Seminary and University, and has helped transition the COGIC into a more digital and innovative era. Bishop Sheard has also led the church in embracing a multi-faceted approach to ministry, prioritizing spiritual growth and evangelism, while maintaining a strong focus on:
• Youth and Education. The COGIC organization offers programs to engage young people in ministry and service, highlighting the importance of active, informed citizenship.
• Health Initiatives. Recognizing the critical health disparities in many African American communities, COGIC has implemented various health initiatives to promote wellness, access to care, and health education.
• Social Justice Activism. In response to contemporary social issues, COGIC has positioned itself as a leader in the conversation on justice, racism, and equity. This commitment echoes the church’s historical roots in the civil rights movement, as COGIC remains dedicated to lifting the voices of the marginalized.
• Global Outreach. By establishing missions in 112 nations, COGIC transcends geographical and cultural barriers, embodying Christ’s love in action.
• Connecting with the Wesleyan Tradition. The connection between COGIC and the larger Wesleyan family is not simply historical; it is a living relationship characterized by shared values and missions. As denominations continue to navigate modernity, COGIC stands with the Wesleyan movement with its emphasis on holiness and empowerment.
• Embracing Contemporary Challenges
As COGIC embraces its role in today’s society, it is also addressing contemporary challenges its congregants and communities face.
Looking ahead, the Church of God in Christ remains steadfast in its mission to spread the Gospel and serve local and global communities. It is poised not only to influence its members but to inspire churches across different denominations, including those within the Wesleyan family, to respond to the ever-changing landscape of faith and social responsibility.
By John Mark Richardson, Sr., is Regional Bishop, Church of God in Christ (COGIC), and Executive Director, Wesleyan Holiness Connection.
by Steve | Aug 18, 2025 | Front Page News, Home Page Hero Slider, Juloy-August 2025
Justified by Faith: Why the Details Matter — A Lesson from Making Bread
By James R. Morrow
How hard could it be? I had just tasted one of the best slices of homemade bread I’d ever eaten. Perfect texture, with a delightful taste (especially when slathered in butter!). I decided right then that I would make bread too. After all, it’s just flour, water, and yeast … or so I thought. Hours later, I tasted the most disappointing slice of bread I’d ever eaten.
A quick watch of “Bread Week” on The Great British Baking Show could have saved me a lot of trouble. It turns out, bread-making is more complex than it looks. You’ve got to pay attention to the type of flour, make choices about hydration levels, and don’t forget to activate the yeast! Then there’s rising and proofing times (cue Paul Hollywood declaring, “It’s underproved!”) and the mysterious world of gluten development. Yes, bread is bread, and we can find it almost anywhere. But the details make a huge difference. The more we understand about each part of the process, the greater our enjoyment of the final product.
Salvation is a lot like that.
Many of us can remember the first time we truly tasted salvation — an initial encounter with God’s grace that changed everything. That moment matters! But if we stop there, we risk missing the deeper beauty. Like baking bread, the details and distinct movements of human salvation matter. The more we understand what’s happening beneath the surface — what God has done, is doing, and will do — the richer our experience becomes. Paying attention to what occurs in salvation leads to a richer experience of the whole.
In the Wesleyan tradition, salvation is more than a single moment; it is the entire life of grace — a journey marked by God’s initiative and our continued response. God’s love meets us before we are aware of God (prevenient grace), pardons us from our sin (justifying grace), and reshapes us in holy love (sanctifying grace). Salvation is God’s work from beginning to end, from rescue to being made perfect in love, from alienation to union.
One of the first major movements in salvation is justification. It isn’t the whole story, but it is a vital part. It is the doorway to experiencing the fullness of salvation. Every subsequent experience of salvation rests on justification. That’s why it’s worth pausing to pay attention to what happens in this moment of grace.
What is Justification?
Simply put, justification is pardon. I like the way that John Wesley puts it in his sermon “On Justification”: “The plain scriptural notion of justification is pardon, the forgiveness of sins.” Justification brings a relative change in our status — from guilty to acquitted, from alienated creation of God to child of God, from lost to welcomed home. It is the work God does for us. (Regeneration and sanctification involve the work that God does in us.)
One way to picture this is through a legal metaphor. In the American legal system, a president or a governor can pardon someone who is awaiting trial or sentencing. That pardon nullifies all legal proceedings and releases the person from liability. When we are justified, God pardons us — fully. All of our past sins —whether in thought, word, or deed — are forgiven. All of them. We are washed white as snow. Our record is clean. The punishment is lifted.
The legal metaphor also helps us see how justification restores relationship. A criminal, once pardoned, can live again in good standing with society. Similarly, justification reconciles us to God. Once alienated from God by sin, we are welcomed into a right relationship and restored friendship with God.
Why We Need Justification
Reflecting on justification reminds us just how fallen we were. To be pardoned means that we were once guilty, condemned, and alienated from God. Scripture describes our natural condition as one of spiritual death, separation, and bondage to sin (Romans 3:23; Ephesians 2:1-3). We are not merely wounded or weakened; we are lost and utterly incapable of saving ourselves. This is true for all people, regardless of their status, morality, or religious efforts. Unless God acts, we are lost.
What God Has Done
Thankfully, God has acted. Romans 5:10 reminds us that we are “reconciled to God by the death of his Son.” Justification is possible because, in love, the Father sent the Son, who lived perfectly, gave his life for the world, rose from the dead, and now intercedes for us. And the Holy Spirit awakens our hearts, gives us grace to believe, and applies Christ’s saving work to our lives. (Notice how salvation is a Trinitarian thing!)
This is all God’s doing, accomplished through God’s love, for the sake of sinful humanity. No one deserves it, nor does anyone have the capacity to earn it — even those who have done seemingly good deeds. God justifies the ungodly, and all people prior to salvation qualify for that group.
The Role of Faith
There is only one necessary condition for justification: faith. As Ephesians 2:8 says, we are justified by “grace through faith.” Now, faith is not simply belief that God exists, that Jesus is real, or that forgiveness is a possibility. Wesley preaches that faith is “a sure trust and confidence that God both hath and will forgive our sins, that he hath accepted us again into his favor, for the merits of Christ’s death and passion.” In the spirit of Wesley’s own faith journey, we are reminded that faith is the conviction that Christ died for us, that our sins are forgiven, and that we, like the young prodigal son, are welcomed back into relationship with the Father.
I want to be clear here so that we don’t get tripped up by the YouTube apologists: faith is not a human work. It is only made possible by the grace of God. Without God acting first — by what we refer to as prevenient grace — we would have no capacity for faith. Our capacity for faith is an act of God to which we respond through surrender. God makes faith possible through grace, but God will not force someone to have faith. Justification, like all of salvation, is entirely an act of grace.
Let’s Talk About Some Questions
First, what about repentance — isn’t that important? Yes! While we can examine the various parts of the journey of salvation, that doesn’t mean they can be separated or cleanly delineated in real-life experience. Like ingredients in a loaf of bread, they’re all baked together. You can marvel at the results of gluten development and proofing, but you can’t separate them from the loaf. Wesley reminds us that repentance is a fruit of faith. Although it’s often all wrapped up together in experience, justification follows repentance as God’s pardoning work.
Second, isn’t this just “getting saved?” When people talk about getting saved, they’re often describing justification. And they’re not wrong. Justification is the moment when we’re pardoned, accepted, and set right with God. But that’s not all there is! Even in our initial experience of conversion, God is doing distinct but related work in us — namely, regeneration. If justification is the work that God does for us, regeneration begins the work that God does in us.
Wesley puts it this way in his sermon, “The Great Privilege of Those That Are Born of God”: justification “is the taking away the guilt,” while regeneration takes “away the power of sin.” He reminds us that “although they are joined together in a point of time, yet are they of wholly distinct natures.”
We don’t want to reduce salvation to justification any more than we want to reduce bread to flour, water, and yeast. But neither should we overlook the beauty and power of reflecting on what justification means in the life of salvation.
Why the Details Matter
Paying attention to the details of salvation — those distinct yet interconnected works of God — doesn’t complicate salvation. It enriches it. Justification isn’t just a theological concept; it’s a powerful work of God. It is a doorway. Through it, we step into the joy of full salvation.
When we pause to reflect on that moment — the pardoning mercy, new standing with God, the doorway swinging open to the fullness of salvation — we can celebrate just how deeply we are loved and find assurance that God has pardoned us.
That kind of reflection feeds our faith. It awakens worship, increases our gratitude, and sets our feet on the path of transformation. Justification may be the entryway, but from there, salvation unfolds one grace-filled room after another.
I’m a little better at baking bread these days, and I have a deeper appreciation for every bite of it I take. The details matter. And justification is one worth savoring.
(If you’d like to take a deeper dive into justification, I recommend reading John Wesley’s sermon, “Justification by Faith,” and grabbing a copy of Seedbed’s The Faith Once Delivered: A Wesleyan Witness to Christian Orthodoxy.)
James R. Morrow is an elder in the Global Methodist Church and lead pastor of the First Methodist Church of Albany in Albany, GA. Along with First Methodist Church, Jim is passionate about offering Christ from the heart of downtown for an awakening in Southwest Georgia.
by Steve | Aug 18, 2025 | Front Page News, Home Page Hero Slider, Juloy-August 2025
Unfolding Salvation
By Ryan Danker
This issue of Good News is dedicated to the work of God in Christ to make us whole, otherwise known as salvation. It is my hope that the articles contained here will help us to better understand the process, or order, or even way by which God calls each and every one of us to new life in him.
God’s saving work has always been at the heart of the Wesleyan revival. The early Methodist leaders weren’t launching revivals wherever they went. They were trying to keep up with the outbursts of revival, the restorative work of God. God was at work and they wanted to catch up with what he was doing. And his work involved the salvation of souls. He who created us, loves us, and wants us to live victorious lives. And ever since we turned from him, God has gone out of his way to bring about our restoration.
Just think of Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son. It has many meanings, but one of them is that the parable is a picture of God’s constant desire for us to return home, to return to him, even when we’ve insulted him, squandered our inheritance, and lived self-centered lives. In the parable we learn that when the father, even after all that the son had done, sees him from a distance, he runs to him and takes him into his arms. This is the loving embrace that awaits each of us. This is a picture of salvation.
From the moment of the Fall, when humanity sinned and brought death and corruption into the world, from that very moment, we begin to see God’s plan of salvation unfold. Look at the account of the Fall in Genesis, even there we catch small glimpses of God’s plan of salvation. Adam and Eve had broken the covenant that they had with God and the repercussions were disastrous for them and for the creation itself. God responded to their faithlessness by sending them away from the life that they were intended to live, a life that sin made no longer possible. But when God cursed the serpent that had beguiled them he spoke of the “seed” of the woman who will ultimately “bruise” the serpent’s head. The church fathers read this as a reference to Christ, born of Mary, the second Adam and the second Eve, from whom and through whom salvation would come.
The plan of salvation unfolds throughout the rest of Scripture. Even after the Fall, God continued to walk with his people, ultimately calling on Abram to become Abraham and Sarai to become Sarah, whose decedents would be a chosen people, a holy people set apart as a beacon of God’s work of restoration. He called the people of Israel to be his own so that they might cooperate with his work to bring wholeness and healing to the world.
Only in Christ, though, do we see the work come to fulfillment and completion. Only God incarnate, God with us, God as one of us, would the full healing begin, a new creation. Made one of us, he lived and died as one of us, saving us by his full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice on the cross.
Sin entered the world through our disobedience, but Christ’s death conquered sin. And the same victory that he won on the cross can be applied to your life and to mine. Sin doesn’t have the last word, even on this side of death. Christ’s resurrection by the Spirit of God, a new life, can also be ours as we receive a share of that ultimate life awaiting the general resurrection when we will be made fully like him.
The beauty of the Wesleyan tradition can be seen in its hope-fullness. Wesleyans have a sure hope that we can experience the saving work of God in our lives now. In fact the word “now” is a very Wesleyan word — and arguably a scriptural one. Once when writing to an early Methodist, Wesley — who was talking about the fullness of salvation — said, “Be a Methodist still! Expect perfection now!” The promise of salvation is not just a promise for a future time, but a promise that can be fulfilled and experienced now. Holy love, the life God intended for us from the beginning, can reign in our hearts now.
We can see this in the words of Charles Wesley in one of his striking hymns,
“O for a heart to praise my God
A heart from sin set free!
A heart that always feels thy blood
So freely spilt for me!”
Salvation is something that we can experience in this life and expect now, but it is also a process. There are certainly moments of great change within that process, but wholeness in Christ is a work that we must dedicate ourselves to, by grace, for our entire lives. We are to grow from grace to grace.
Wesley once talked about the process of salvation by using a house as an analogy, a picture of God’s work. He said, “Our main doctrines, which include all the rest, are three, that of repentance, of faith, and of holiness. The first of these we account, as it were, the porch of religion; the next, the door, the third, religion itself.” Salvation is driven by grace — the power of the Holy Spirit — and faith, our response to God’s offer of love.
What we describe as prevenient grace — which means the grace that goes before — is in reality God’s desire to be in relationship with all people. He calls to us like one seeking the lost. He is constantly seeking a loving relationship with each and every one of us, even when we’re not seeking him. This call or grace awakens us, takes the blinders from our eyes, and we begin to see our present situation, a situation where sin has the upper hand. This is sometimes called an awakening. One of the earliest names of people in the Evangelical Revival was actually “the awakened.” They knew that they needed God, and that only in him could they find true wholeness and peace.
When we are awakened to our need for salvation, seeing the depths of our sin and the mess we have made, we experience the need for God’s mercy and we are given a desire for God. And so by grace we turn to him in faith, which can also be understood as trust. Faith is the key, even as grace is the engine. In justifying grace we receive by faith the pardon of God who justifies us, forgives us, placing our trust in what Christ has done for us on the cross. And we’re not just seen to be justified, we are justified as the life of God becomes our own.
The Book of Common Prayer describes God as one “whose property [character] is always to have mercy.” He longs to set us free. And once we receive God’s pardon, we begin to experience the power of God’s cleansing work. The past is gone and we start anew. This is called the new birth and it is when we first experience the freedom we have in Christ. Its name alone should tell us how vital this is as a new beginning, a new life. It’s not just a name, though; it’s an actual change. We are born again by the power of God.
New birth is the beginning of the process of sanctification; a process propelled by the means of grace such as prayer, fasting, meditating on Scripture, partaking of Holy Communion, and serving one another in love. A true Christian life should be filled with these opportunities to encounter God’s grace. In the process of sanctification, walking hand and hand with Christ, we learn his ways. For a moment, think of it just as you would any relationship. It takes time to get to know another person. But after spending enough time with someone, you know what that person likes, what they think about things, even some of their better, or lesser qualities. Now apply that to Christ. And unlike a relationship with another person like ourselves —even one we love deeply — Christ has no lesser qualities. He is the very embodiment of perfect love, or as Charles Wesley wrote “pure unbounded love.” To walk with him is to walk with God. And no one who spends time with God remains unchanged.
This walk, or process, enables us to experience what Wesley called Christian perfection. Don’t be frightened by the word “perfect.” The word is used regularly in Scripture such as in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus commands us to “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” As with any command of Scripture, it is also a promise. God doesn’t just give us commands from on high; he gives us the grace to actually live this way. His commandments are promises of his grace.
But what does Scripture mean by “perfect”? Scriptural perfection is not static as though any change would undermine it; it’s actually dynamic. It is perfection in love (think of that loving father from the parable again) that breaks the power of sin and enables us to live a life of holy love that looks and sounds and is a life shaped by Christ’s own life. The point is to be like Christ, because in him we see God’s vision fulfilled and he wants to see that vision fulfilled in us. Salvation, in so many words, is the freedom to be who God always intended us to be.
The hymns of early Methodism were organized by Wesley in a hymnal to describe this ordering of salvation. The hymnal has a wonderfully long title — very common at the time — A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists. It was published in 1780 and until the recent publication of Our Great Redeemer’s Praise in 2024, this hymnal was the only truly pan-Wesleyan hymnal, one that the whole family can use.
My doctoral advisor, David Hempton, has said of the 1780 hymnal: “If one were to choose one single artifact of Methodism somehow to capture its essence, the most defensible choice probably would be the ‘Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists.’”
And the hymnal is organized according to the Scripture way of Salvation taught by the early Methodists. We can see in it sections “for those groaning for full salvation,” for “those backsliding,” for those who are walking with Christ and one another in the early Methodist bands (small groups), and for those who have reached perfection in love.
Poetry has a unique way of communicating the faith. And so I leave you with one of Charles Wesley’s hymns from the 1780 collection.
“Saviour of my soul, draw nigh
In mercy haste to me;
At the point of death I lie
And cannot come to thee;
Now thy kind relief afford
The wine and oil of grace pour in;
Good Physician, speak the word
And heal my soul of sin.”
Let us pray for this blessing in our own day, in our churches, our communities, and in our own lives.
Ryan Danker is the publisher of Good News.
by Steve | Nov 20, 2024 | Front Page News, Nov-Dec 2024
Coming out of Exile –
By Riley B. Case –
The 1960s were not a good time for evangelicals. For one thing, the Methodist liberal establishment did not even want to admit evangelicals were evangelicals. When I went to the head of the chapel committee at my Methodist seminary and asked if we might be able to include some evangelicals among the chapel speakers, he informed me everyone at the seminary was evangelical, and just who did I have in mind. When I explained he replied, “I believe you are talking about fundamentalists and we’re not going to share our pulpit with any of them.”
When Billy Graham came to Chicago and some of us wanted to ask Graham to visit our campus, the president of the school said, “No, because we do not wish to be identified with that kind of Christianity.”
The prevailing seminary and liberal institutional view was that “fundamentalism” was an approach to Christianity of a former day and was not appropriate for Methodists, neither in the present day nor for the future. Methodism was set in its direction. In a survey of seminaries conducted in 1926, every single Methodist seminary had declared its orientation as “modernist.” As early as June 1926, the Christian Century had declared that the modernist-fundamentalist war was over and fundamentalism had lost. It announced its obituary in these words: “It is henceforth to be a disappearing quantity in American religious life, while our churches go on to larger issues.”
Other larger issues in the 1960s included war, race, COCU, economic disparity, Death of God, the Secular City, liberation theology, rising feminism, process theology, and existentialism.
Institutional liberalism was out of touch – and I was frequently bemused in those seminary days by how out of touch it was. When someone mentioned revivals in seminary, the professor indicated that revivals were a thing of the past and he had not heard of a Methodist church that had held a revival for years.
It so happened that a friend of mine from Taylor University days, Jay Kesler, was at that very moment holding a revival and would preach at 152 revivals during his years at college, most of them in Methodist churches. Youth for Christ was on the scene, as was Campus Crusade and Billy Graham’s ministry. Evangelical schools were flourishing.
That was the situation when Chuck Keysor, a pastor from Elgin, Illinois, wrote an article for the July 19, 1966 issue of the denomination-wide Christian Advocate entitled, “Methodism’s Silent Minority.”
“Within the Methodist church in the United States is a silent minority group,” Keysor wrote. “It is not represented in the higher councils of the church. Its members seem to have little influence in Nashville, Evanston, or on Riverside Drive. Its concepts are often abhorrent to Methodist officialdom at annual conference and national levels.
“I speak of those Methodists who are variously called ‘evangelicals’ or ‘conservatives’ or ‘fundamentalists.’ A more accurate description is ‘orthodox,’ for these brethren hold a traditional understanding of Christian faith.”
Keysor explained in the article that this minority was often accused of being narrow-minded, naïve, contentious, and potentially schismatic. This was unfortunate because these people loved the church and had been faithful Methodists all their lives.
In making his case Keysor mentioned that there were many more of them than official Methodism was counting. At least 10,000 churches, for example, were using Bible-based Sunday school material instead of the official Methodist material. The 10,000 figures brought strong reaction and led to charges of irresponsibility and plain out lying. But Keysor knew whereof he spoke.
Trained as a journalist he had served as managing editor of Together magazine, Methodism’s popular family magazine. He had then been converted in a Billy Graham crusade and spent some years as an editor at David C. Cook, an evangelical publisher. The 10,000 churches figure had come from his years at Cook. He knew more about what churches were not using Methodist materials than did the Nashville editors at the time. At Cook, he also became aware of the evangelical world.
Keysor’s article drew more responses than any other article Christian Advocate had ever published. The responses followed a common theme: “You have spoken our mind. We didn’t know there were others who believed like we did. What can we do?” Keysor called together some of the most enthusiastic responders. Hardly any of those early responders would be recognized today. Nor were they recognized then. They, after all, were the “silent minority.” They were the little people, the populists — rural church pastors, long-suffering lay persons, conference evangelists.
The obvious step forward for Keysor, a trained journalist, was for a magazine. A notable voice of encouragment was from Spurgeon Dunnam of Texas Methodist (eventually becoming The United Methodist Reporter). In the September 6, 1968, issue Dunnam editorialized that the church needed a conservative voice. The liberal voice was presented by the official Methodist press with Christian Advocate and Concern (Dunnam was one who believed that an official “press” was too often public relations-oriented and thus reflected the views of the leadership) but there was no conservative voice and Good News could fill the void.
“The Texas Methodist is pleased to make known to its readers that within the past year a responsible ‘conservative’ journal of opinion has been born within the United Methodist Church. It is called simply Good News, and we think it is just that.”
Coming out of exile. Would it be possible for evangelicals to get together? On August 26, 1970, the first national convocation was held. Sixteen hundred registered and crowds on some evenings swelled to over 3,000. The speakers included luminaries such as evangelist Tom Skinner, Bishop Gerald Kennedy, Harold Ball of Campus Crusade, and E. Stanley Jones. Dr. K. Morgan Edwards of Claremont School of Theology gave the keynote address. People who came to the convocation prayed and hugged and worshipped and wept and said “Amen” and “Hallelujah” without fear of disapproving stares around them. Twenty percent of the attendees were between 20 and 35 years old. Keysor wrote of the event, “We are coming out of exile.”
The critics cried, “divisive.” Again Spurgeon Dunnam responded. In an editorial titled “Constructive Divisiveness” Dunnam commented:
“The question which remains is: are the evangelicals a divisive force within the church? Yes, they are divisive. Divisive in the same way Jesus was in first century Judaism. Divisive in the same way Martin Luther was to sixteenth century Catholicism. Divisive in the same way that John Wesley was to eighteen century Anglicanism. And, strangely enough, divisive in the same way that many liberal ‘church renewalists’ are to Methodism in our own day.
“A survey of Methodism in America today reveals these basic thrusts. One is devoted primarily to the status quo. To these, the institution called Methodism is given first priority. It must be protected at all costs from any threat of major change in direction….
“The other two forces do question the theological soundness of institutional loyalty for its own sake. The progressive, renewalist force has properly prodded the Church to take seriously the social implications of the Christian gospel…. The more conservative, evangelical force is prodding the church to take with renewed seriousness its commitment to the basic tenets of our faith…”
When Dunnam was writing those words, the Reporter was reaching a million persons per week and was the largest-circulation religious paper in the world. Under Dunnam’s leadership, it investigated both liberal and conservative activities. Even when Dunnam disagreed with Good News, he always treated us with integrity.
In the midst of all this activity, Good News was not on solid ground financially and staff-wise. Then a providential person and offer came on the scene. Dr. Dennis Kinlaw, president of Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky, was cheering Good News on from the sidelines, but he came up with an idea to help Good News as well as Asbury College. He offered Keysor a job of teaching journalism part-time at Asbury with the understanding that the rest of his time could be used to edit the magazine. For the fledgling Good News board it was an answer to prayer. The move was made in the summer of 1972.
At the time Good News was not even recognized as an advocacy group in the church. Engage magazine listed the special interest groups at the 1972 General Conference: Black Methodists for Church Renewal, the Women’s Caucus, the Young Adult Caucus, the Youth Caucus, the Gay Caucus. There was no evangelical caucus. By 1976 things had changed. Good News was able to generate 11,000 petitions, most having to do with maintaining the Discipline’s stand on marriage and sexuality in response to an aggressive progressive agenda.
Keysor knew that these controversial cultural and theological issues would divide the church. The institutionalists responded with the kind of language that would be used frequently of evangelicals of the Good News-type in the years to come: “reactionary,” “out-of-step,” “fundamentalist,” “highly subsidized,” “hateful,” “seeking to undermine the church’s social witness,” “not serving the interests of the church.”
One critic, Marcuis E. Taber, summed up the accusations in an article that appeared in the Christian Advocate (May 13, 1971) entitled, “An Ex-Fundamentalist Looks at the Silent Minority.” According to Tabor, Good News was an “ultrafundamentalist” movement with an emphasis on literalism and minute rules which was opposed to the spirit of Jesus. It had no future in a thinking world.
The Christian Advocate gave Keysor a chance to respond and so he did in the fall of 1971. The response, classic Keysor, was perceptive, straightforward and prophetic. It said basically that Tabor and others were reading the church situation wrongly. Storms were battering the UM Church and soon it will be forced to jettison more of its proud “liberal” superstructure. Meanwhile evangelical renewal was taking place: the charismatic movement, the Jesus People, Campus Crusade, stirrings in the church overseas. If there was a right side of history, it was with evangelical renewal. This is what it meant to be “a new church for a new world.”
Was Keysor right? Looking back on our history, this is worth a discussion.
Riley B. Case is the author of Evangelical & Methodist: A Popular History (Abingdon). He is a retired United Methodist clergy person from the Indiana Annual Conference and a lifetime member of the Good News Board of Directors. This article first appeared in the January/February 2017 issue of Good News.
by Steve | Nov 20, 2024 | Front Page News, Home Page Hero Slider, Nov-Dec 2024
There is More! Carolyn Moore’s message to the GMC General Conference –
By Carolyn Moore –
Days before being elected as a bishop of the Global Methodist Church at its General Conference meeting in Costa Rica, the Rev. Carolyn Moore preached the opening sermon during the first evening worship on the campus of the Methodist School in San José.
There is a scene in the book of Acts that has grabbed my attention. It seems like a word for this moment in our history, so turn with me if you will to Acts 19.
“While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples. He asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”
So Paul asked, “Then what baptism did you receive?” “John’s baptism,” they replied.
Paul said, “John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance.
He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.”
On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.
When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied.
There were about twelve men in all.
Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God.
But some of them became obstinate; they refused to believe and publicly maligned the Way. So Paul left them. He took the disciples with him and had discussions daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus.
This went on for two years, so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord” (Acts 19:1-10).
This is the story of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God!
To get at everything this moment in history has to teach us – the ones standing in another significant moment of history – we need the backstory. This conversation between Paul and these disciples actually begins some stretch of time before we get to this scene, with a Jewish guy named Apollos, who was preaching in Ephesus before Paul ever showed up.
We learn in Acts 18 that Apollos knew about Jesus, was enthusiastic about the gospel, but was preaching only the baptism of John. Somehow he’d missed the message that there is more. And if we learn nothing else from Paul in this scene, I hope we can absorb and begin to live out of that word: there is more.
For Apollos, it wasn’t until two more seasoned disciples – a couple named Priscilla and Aquila – heard him preach that he got the whole gospel. They took him to their house, fed him a good meal, and explained to him, “Friend, there is more to the story!”
Can you imagine finding out after you’d been preaching a while that you didn’t know there was more? Or maybe I need to say that this way. Some of us who have been preaching a while may not have realized (or may have forgotten) there is more. In fact, some of us probably need to take a moment to identify not with the good folks who knew but with the well-meaning preacher who missed it, because some of us may need to grieve the fact that there are dimensions of God we still don’t know … and then … after we’ve acknowledged the lack, we need to get excited about the fact that there are dimensions of God still to explore!
So Apollos gets schooled. We need to appreciate his humility in this moment – his teachability – when he finds out John’s baptism was a prequel to the main event, which was the coming of Jesus, the Messiah, and the subsequent outpouring of the Holy Spirit. John said so himself: “I baptize you with water, but the one who comes will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Which is not to minimize John’s baptism. His was a deeply personal work of initiating grace – a getting ready for what was to come: a freedom from invitation, freedom from the tyranny of sin, freedom from a sacrificial system that tied them to a temple and to a Law that was meant to give life but that had become so cumbersome as to be deadening.
John had an important message for those waiting for God’s Messiah, that where we start from … matters. If we want the “more” that this gospel promises, we must begin by confessing all that has kept us stuck in the shallow end of grace. We must be willing to name aloud the demons that have pestered and paralyzed us, and we must do so believing in the supreme power of grace to cover all that lacks in us and all that lacks in those around us.
Grace is the beginning of “more.” Justifying grace is our invitation into deeper waters. So the baptism of John was an initiation into grace, as if he were saying, “Don’t step into this river until you’re ready to leave the pond behind. Don’t make the mistake of dragging out of stagnant waters your bitterness and your anger and your judgments. Don’t bring those into the river of sanctifying grace now flowing from the throne of God.”
Do you hear that grace, Church? Can you receive it? Where we start from … matters.
Some years ago, I was speaking at an event in Atlanta. A colleague and I both happened to arrive at the hotel at the same time, so we both found out at the same time that the hotel was overbooked. There was no room for either of us at the inn. The hotel rebooked us at a place near the airport about half an hour away from where we were. Since I had a car, I offered to give my colleague a ride to the new hotel. I used my phone to find a route and with total trust in the direction my GPS was taking us, we started out.
As it turns out, that app on my phone will give me one option if I’m driving and another option if I’m walking. I don’t know what demon controls that choice on my phone but sometimes when I get directions to a place, it’ll show up as if I’m walking. As life would have it, the first time it ever did that was the night I was driving myself and my colleague across Atlanta, so I didn’t notice we were being directed as if we were walking from downtown to the airport.
I don’t know how I missed it – I was tired, it was late … pick your excuse. The upshot was that for the whole drive we never touched one of Atlanta’s fine freeways, a fact that baffled me but somehow didn’t cause me to stop and recalculate. I just kept driving. For ninety minutes of that thirty-minute drive, we drove the most awkward back way through the darkest streets in the most sketchy part of town at night on a weekend.
If I’d been the passenger in that car, I’d have assumed I was being kidnapped.
Imagine for a moment (I often do when I remember this event) how much more intelligent I might have looked if when we first got in the car I’d taken a moment (ten seconds!) to scan the screen and make sure all the facts were in place. If I had started us off right, I would not still to this day feel immediate shame when I see that colleague.
Pro tip: How you get started … matters. Your starting place theologically will determine your trajectory and impact where you land. Likewise, your starting place spiritually will determine your trajectory and impact where you land.
So yes! In your pursuit of the Holy Spirit start where John and Jesus started. As you believe, repent. As you go seeking a baptism in the Spirit, be immersed in sorrow for all you’ve done to oppose the Kingdom of God, whether you knew what you were doing or not. Find your heart for humility and soak in it until there is nothing left but Jesus, because on the other side of repentance, there is more. We who believe in justifying grace also know that repentance is just the beginning of all the grace. There is a sanctifying more. This is the essence of Methodism. Ours is a “freedom to” faith led by an audacious optimism (as my friend, Kevin Watson puts it) in the sanctifying more of the gospel.
So Paul’s question to those folks in Ephesus was an invitation to believe in the “more.” Something in that conversation makes Paul suspect these people are missing the rest of it so he asks them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”
Brilliant diagnostic question!
If your answer, as with those precious souls Paul found in Ephesus, is, “For way too much of my life, I didn’t even know there was a Holy Spirit,” there is good news for you straight out of the first-century church. It is never too late to go after the more!
Notice what happened. Look at Acts chapter 19:6, When Paul placed his hands on those Ephesian disciples of John and baptized them in the name of Jesus, the Holy Spirit came on them and they spoke in tongues and prophesied!
Talk about course correction! I’m just guessing no one was expecting that! But there they were, with an immediate supernatural response to the presence of the Holy Spirit. It had to feel like leaving the back roads and hopping on an expressway! John Stott says of these people Paul finds in Ephesus still living in a justification world, having never moved on to the sanctifying joys of the Spirit, that “Pentecost finally caught up with them!”
Don’t you love that?
My brothers and sisters in Christ on the verge of this great move of God, are you ready for Pentecost to catch up with us? Because we can do this the hard way. We can do the spiritual equivalent of traveling down every back road and dark alley, taking the longest possible route, waiting until after we’ve organized and systematized and elected and ordained and commissioned and created all our policies and procedures (I mean, we are Methodists after all! We do love “method”). We can wait until after we’ve expended all our own effort before we attempt to retrofit our movement with whatever of the Holy Spirit we can squeeze into the margins. Or we can start now, while we’re still flexible, moldable, still maybe a little messy (the term I prefer is wild). We can start now while our movement is still young and our hearts are still soft, while we still have some sense of adventure and joy and creativity about us, and we can cry out for the Holy Spirit to infuse our DNA with love and power in equal measure.
What will it be, my people called Methodist? Are you ready to let Pentecost catch up with you? Because where you start from determines what we receive, and what we receive makes all the difference.
There is more. What a powerful question Paul asks of us in this room: “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”
Can we as Global Methodists receive the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit as a non-negotiable as we begin? Can we cultivate a compelling vision for a Spirit-filled Methodism and let that be our witness to the world and our contribution to the Body of Christ? You know, right here in this message would be my obvious opportunity to lay out a three-point plan for developing such a thing in our movement, but I’m not that good. It seems a bit arrogant to say I know how the Spirit wants to move among us. But I do have some suspicions about where a healthy, Spirit-filled, global Methodism might begin. For starters, I think we might all benefit from a holy curiosity characterized by a willingness to experiment. This seems like a very good place to begin if we really want to get beyond the status quo.
What if we could develop a posture of holy curiosity toward historic Methodism that allows us to mine the best of the ancient ways while remaining curious about and open to all the Spirit-filled life can be?
What if we try some things together — experiment a little, become more open to the moves of the Spirit, less interested in excellence-and-order for the sake of nothing more than excellence-and-order, and more interested in things Jesus actually commended to those first followers, like casting out demons and curing diseases, proclaiming the Kingdom as we heal the sick? Are you willing to come into this movement with a spirit of holy curiosity toward the supernatural dimensions of God still waiting to be explored?
My friends, are we willing to let Pentecost catch up with
us?
And if we’re going to experiment, I suspect we might also benefit from a fresh understanding of spiritual leadership, one marked by its commitment not to a more excellent organizational chart but to a more vibrant life in the Spirit? I notice in the Church that we often talk about spiritual gifts when we are looking for volunteers but we use a business model for structuring ourselves. Why is that? Why do we structure ourselves for maximum control and efficiency when Paul – the one who first envisioned what church can be – challenges us to structure ourselves spiritually? His leadership chart began with apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers – all activated through the infilling of the Holy Spirit. How committed would you be to advocating for that kind of spiritual leadership for our movement, from the volunteer lay speaker to the ordained elder to the bishop?
Do we have the imagination for that? Can we unleash a new generation of leaders who move in the supernatural power of God?
Leaders, are we willing to let Pentecost catch up with us?
And how might that influence the culture of our local churches? What kind of spiritual atmosphere might be cultivated under that kind of leadership? I’m not talking liturgy or worship style or the org chart. I’m talking about the intangibles, the pervading presence of the Holy Spirit … the sound we make when we pray. Can we learn the vocabulary of real, deep-end, contending, Spirit-driven prayer as a primary language … so the world will know there is more?
Church, are we ready to let Pentecost catch up with us?
When Paul finds this group in Ephesus, there are just a handful of people (twelve, the story says) doing their best to understand what God was doing in the world. Ten verses later, the story tells us that under the influence of the Spirit of God, they’ve gone from twelve guys to all the Jews and Greeks who lived in that part of the world having heard the word of the Lord! From a handful of people to the evangelism of a whole city … in ten verses! Jesus said the Kingdom of God is like that. Its like yeast that a woman takes and mixes into about sixty pounds of flour until it has worked it way all through the dough. That’s how its done in the Kingdom of God under the influence of the Holy Spirit. It starts with a handful (or a roomful?) of people and before you know it, the whole world knows there is more.
Let’s pray together. There is a beautiful woman who lives in my neighborhood and goes to my church. Her name is Laura. She didn’t grow up in church so her perception of God was based on a “freedom from” kind of religion — a lot of guilt, not much grace. As she put it, she believed that if she did bad, she was bad. For Laura, that became something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It really is true, theologically, that where you start from … matters.
Laura came at life from a place of guilt and shame and that led her to spiral into habits to numb the pain. She became a serious addict. Eventually after losing the ability to care for her three kids, she ended up on the street. Homeless, Laura resorted to making money in ways she never thought possible.
She ended up in prison and that’s where she first opened a Bible and got hungry for more. She had a cell mate who loved Jesus and that intrigued her. She didn’t get delivered of her demons. So when she got out of prison, she ended up back on the street and back to her old ways … but the hunger she found while she was in?… that never left.
I want to share with you in her words something that happened to her while she was on the streets. Laura writes, “You may know that the Gideons supply Bibles for every hotel room. In one of those rooms, I found myself picking up that Bible … even in the midst of my chaos. A man … this was a client, folks … came into my hotel room and noticed the Bible and my reading glasses on the night stand. He proceeded to ask me why I was reading the Bible while I was doing these things I was doing. An immediate feeling of conviction and shame fell on me and out of nowhere, I heard my voice yell, ‘Let’s pray together!’ I said it over and over. I must have scared him to death. He bolted out of the door.”
Laura said that for her, that was the beginning of the end. The Lord had set her up. She was so hungry for more that when she was eventually arrested again, she felt nothing but relief. She ended up in a recovery house and saw how real faith could be lived out not just as “freedom from” but as a “freedom to” adventure. That was so compelling to her. She wanted more and God delivered.
Laura is now two years sober. She’s home again and raising her children. The whole family is in church – our church, a Global Methodist church! – and Laura is sharing her testimony everywhere, talking about the freedom she has found in the more of a Christ-centered, Spirit-filled life. She leads a 12-step group at our church and another one at a local recovery house and she has even been invited to speak at local and regional gatherings of the Gideons.
Isn’t that the best? This is how the Kingdom grows! Its like what happened in Acts 19: “This went on for two years so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord.”
Friends, this is the whole reason we go after the Holy Spirit. It is not just so we can have a more enjoyable quiet time. We go after the igniting power of the Holy Spirit because someone is still out there hungry for more. And we go after it because we have a charge to spread scriptural holiness throughout the land and across the globe. We go after the whole gospel so we can cast out the demons that have our friend bound up in fear and pain, and we go after it so we can lay hands on people and watch Jesus heal the sick, and we keep going after it until the whole world knows there is more!
Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?
If you missed it, if we missed it – and friends, I suspect somewhere along the way, Methodism missed it – if we missed it, the good news according to this scene in Acts 19 is that its not too late. This is our moment! We’re just getting started! We can let Pentecost catch up with us! We can get on our knees tonight and cry out for more … tonight … for ourselves … for our movement … for a world that is hungry to know the whole optimistic, curious, joyful, Spirit-drenched gospel. Are you willing right now to cry out for more? If you are, I invite you to begin where the scriptures invite us to begin – with repentance and infilling – because where we start from … matters.
I invite you to hear Paul’s encouragement: there is more. Are you ready to pray for that fresh move of the Spirit, both in your life and in this new movement? If so, I invite you to cry out and ask boldly for God to fill us freshly.
Carolyn Moore is a newly-elected bishop of the Global Methodist Church. She is a church planter and former senior pastor of Mosaic Church in Evans, Georgia.
by Steve | Nov 20, 2024 | Front Page News, Home Page Hero Slider, Nov-Dec 2024
Tears of Joy at GMC General Conference –
November/December 2024 –
Climbing up the rough side of the mountain –
I cried today. The opening worship of the convening General Conference of the Global Methodist Church [September 20] touched my core. The quality of the music, impressive and earnest, was not the trigger. Nor was the impassioned and spiritual multi-lingual concert of prayer that followed. It was just… the moment. Methodist Christians from all over the world stood to praise Jesus at a moment of kairos, an Ebenezer of God’s faithfulness. In the years leading up to this day, it had pleased Providence to baptize us in fire… fightings without and fears within… in order to find out if we are yet alive. Today we knew and confessed, we are. No one was there by accident. Each one paid a price known only to them. The Global Methodist Church is better than it ever could have been with a Protocol, Connectional Conference Plan, or other such amicable re-shuffle of the same old deck. Climbing up the rough side the mountain has made us stronger, humbler, and all the more determined.
– Chris Ritter
(Via PeopleNeedJesus.net)
I’m Finally Home
As an evangelical, Wesleyan, female pastor, I’ve never felt like I “fit” anywhere, really. I was a lifelong United Methodist, but saw the proverbial writing on the wall for years. I knew a day would come when I would have to leave, but there would be no place to go. I even got a second Masters degree in another field because I assumed I would one day be churchless and jobless.
There are other Wesleyan denominations who supposedly ordain women, but you rarely see said women leading. That’s why, for me, this week has been an emotionally overwhelming experience. I ran into a seminary colleague today and she said, “We’re home! We’re finally home!” That’s what being part of this new expression of Methodism has meant to me.
I stood sobbing today (a familiar reaction this week) after the first ballot for bishops had been cast. We had 3 elections on that initial ballot: an African man and two women. It wasn’t an identity politics result. It was three people who genuinely have the gifts and graces for the office and rose to the top, not to fill an agenda, but because the Holy Spirit chose them.
As a female, it meant something incredibly significant to have the only two women on the slate be elected in the first round. It was a resounding affirmation that I’d finally found a place to “fit”. These are my people, this is my tribe.
When my friend declared, “We’re home! We’re finally home!”, she was speaking a new reality over my lifetime of spiritual homelessness.
I am home. I’m finally home.
– Tina Dietsch Fox
Fletcher, Ohio
(Via Facebook)
Different kind of tears
There were lots of tears at the Global Methodist Church’s first General Conference, held this week in San José, Costa Rica, to officially found the new denomination. They were tears of joy, relief, and gratitude for the holy love of God.
“I cried,” said Jeff Kelley, pastor of a Global Methodist church in McCook, Nebraska. “I haven’t cried in worship in a long time. And then we had worship the next day, and I cried again.”
John Weston, pastor of a Silverdale, Washington, church and one of 21 candidates to serve as an interim bishop during the denomination’s formation period, said he felt like he couldn’t stop crying. And Emily Allen, an Asbury Theological Seminary student serving as a delegate for churches in the Northeast, wept in worship too.
“The times of worship every day have prepared us to be the church we need to be,” Allen said. “To hear the Word of God declared very boldly, to hear the invitation to receive the Spirit, to receive the holy love of God? I was just kneeling and crying.”
Many of the more than 300 delegates and 600 alternates and observers from 33 countries remembered there had been tears in past years at past conferences too. The internal strife in the United Methodist Church and the ongoing quarrels over basic theological issues, including human sexuality, the authority of Scripture, and the responsibilities of bishops, had often emotionally wrecked them. In Costa Rica, establishing a separate Methodist denomination, the tears were different.
– Daniel Silliman
(Via Christianity Today)
More freewheeling
During the conference, delegates rejoiced in exuberant worship and praise music, often with arms uplifted. This somewhat charismatic worship style is not typical even for most evangelical or conservative Methodist congregations. Most such churches are still fairly sedate and liturgically Mainline Protestant, with organ music and often solemn silence. But Global Methodist leaders when they gather are more freewheeling, somewhat reminiscent of early Methodism in Britain and America, in which revivals often included dramatic emotions and outbursts. The delegates in Costa Rica were fully united with many overseas delegates, especially from Africa, whose own worship style is likewise exuberant. The name “Global Methodist” is no accident. United Methodism’s global nature, with millions of church members in Africa, long kept it from liberalizing on sexuality issues, as other Mainline Protestant denominations did years ago. These battles built strong alliances and friendships between American evangelical United Methodists and their brethren in Africa.
–Mark Tooley
(via The Dispatch)
The fire of revival
I’ve gone back to the hotel, in part to rest, but more importantly to process the emotions I’m feeling (something that is foreign to me). This morning did not start out easy, and to be frank I didn’t know how we would be able to worship. Our music stands for the band and orchestra were missing, the cables that connect the organs to the sound system were missing, and everyone needed my attention when I really just wanted to go off and figure out a game plan. The Devil (and I truly mean that) was fighting what was about to take place in that space. When I was at my lowest this morning, Doc Abiade came and asked me to pray, and everything changed.
The Holy Spirit took control. I heard the song in my head “There are Angels Hoverin’ Round” and I remembered my mentor praying for God to place angels at the corners of my house for protection, and I’m confident God sent down angels to protect us today.
Here’s what happened – everyone pitched in! Professional musicians used chairs as music stands, a non-Methodist church put a member on a motorcycle to race across town to get us cables, and the room came to life! The orchestra played, hymns and praise songs were sung, Bishop Mark Webb guided us in confession and pardon, my friend, Roberto Paracasio prayed with the anointing of the Holy Spirit, MaryLou Reece read scripture, Bishop Scott Jones preached, Bishops Robert Hayes and Mike Lowry led Communion, and then the Spirit took over completely. Revival broke out!
I never understood what revival was until 2022 at New Room, but I didn’t fully appreciate it until today when I knew God is in control of not only The Global Methodist Church, but also every person in that room. The fire of revival is happening! We went 45-minutes over schedule and as my friend, Tom Lambrecht said, no apology was needed. Today was incredible!
I walked in my hotel room and began weeping again, and I’m weeping as I type this because I was so amazed by what happened. This must be what the people at Pentecost felt. I’m so glad Jennifer Allen and Hannah Grace were there to experience it.
Today was not about a denomination or polity or business, it was about Jesus taking complete control of his church. I surrender all to him! Use me however I can serve the Kingdom. If you want to experience the same, find your way to a place of submission and surrender to God.
Thank you, God! Thank you, to the GMC for letting me be a part of it! Praise God from whom all blessings flow!
–Sterling Allen
Worship Director of the General Conference
(via Facebook)
Editor’s note: We are deeply grateful for the ministry and gifts of the entire GMC organizational team on-site at the convening General Conference in Costa Rica. We are especially thankful for the visuals from the Global Methodist Church communications team and Max Otter Productions.
