by Steve | May 2, 2025 | Home Page Hero Slider, In the News, March/April 2025, Uncategorized
Recurring Patterns & Unheeded Warnings —
By James R. Thobaben (March/April 2025) —
Humans see patterns. It is not enough to see facts, that is, bits of information that correspond to the world around us. It is also necessary to have knowledge, that is an understanding of how those facts fit together. Indeed, to live and thrive, we must also see patterns.
Still, sometimes, we perceive and/or describe patterns incorrectly. This is especially true of historical patterns. There really are patterns that exist and repeat. This is even true about the little corner of humanity describable as Wesleyan-Methodism. Patterns exist. Tendencies are discernable. Probabilities are evident.
One of the most helpful schemas for understanding the history of Methodism is that of Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923) as modified by H.R. Niebuhr (1894-1962). Troeltsch’s theology is not of very much value to orthodox/orthopraxic believers, but his sociology is. Troeltsch developed the ‘church-sect’ model which was later supplemented by H. Richard Niebuhr, another excellent sociologist who also made dubious theological assertions.
Unfortunately, their sociological arguments are more than a bit “academic-y.” And, these are made even more confusing by Troetsch’s and Niebuhr’s propensity to use very common words like “church,” “sect,” “mystic,” and “denomination” in very narrow and often counter-intuitive senses. For instance, for them “sect” does not mean a closed group of crazed religious extremists, “mystic” does not refer to one who is lost in the adoration of God, nor does “denomination” mean an organized autonomous branch of Protestantism. Even so, their general description of the patterns of church history are very helpful in understanding Methodism.
So, modifying the terms and definitions of the church-sect model just a bit to fit more contemporary language and circumstances, one can divide up Christian Protestant ecclesial organizations using four patterns:
• A state-approved church: An organization that directly cooperates with those holding political and economic power; often the “state-approved church” (in the most extreme form, this is a “theocracy”).
• A sect: An organization in tension with the surrounding society’s power-holders due to the high membership standards that are contrary to the values of the popular culture or, at least, those holding political authority.
• A routinized denomination: An organization with primary focus on maintaining institutional structures and only loose concern with the original mission for which they were created; often there is little expectation of, nor concern for, the local congregation’s membership beyond their financial support ( the word “routinized” means “routine-ized” and often implies an unaccountable bureaucracy).
• An association of syncretistic individuals: A loosely-affiliated group in which members do not necessarily have common beliefs and behaviors; but tensions are minimized by high individualism and low shared expectations.
Although these are ‘ideal types’ or generalized patterns, they are helpful for describing the reoccurring organizational patterns in Methodist history and likely where it will go in the future. Knowing this can help the new expressions of Methodism (perhaps) resist such tendencies and maintain fidelity to the God they claim to serve and the mission for which they first came into existence.
Seeing Historical Patterns in Methodism
At first, Methodist was a “sect” but within a state-sanctioned church. In a sense, it was a Protestant version of a monastic community within Catholicism. The Oxford Methodists (Charles Wesley, William Morgan, and Bob Kirkham, to be joined by John Clayton and George Whitfield, and soon led by Charles’ older brother John) were very strict, holding high membership expectations. They freely chose to be accountable to one another in order to spur one another into living out Christian holiness even while serving as clergy in a broader national church with only nominal membership standards.
Soon enough, these early Methodists — all affiliated with the most elite educational institution in the English-speaking world — began to insist that religious excellence was possible for and expected of all. This claim, and some of their methods (field preaching, visiting the imprisoned, etc.), resulted in significant tension between themselves and ecclesial authorities.
Rejection by their social peers did not impede the early Methodists’ efforts to follow their shared mission of spreading scriptural holiness in “reforming” the nation and the Church (Large Minutes). To the first Methodists this meant offering Christ to any with “a desire to flee the wrath to come” and assisting those born-again to mature in faithfulness. The movement was open to men and women, the rich and the poor, the educated scholar and the day laborer. Methodism grew beyond the founders’ expectations, and it did so quite rapidly. It maintained its sectarian strictness (evidenced by the expulsions noted in the early editions of the “Minutes’’), even while remaining within the state church (the Wesleys and several others remained priests).
The development of formal structures was necessary to maintain both the extremely high membership expectations and significant outreach. In this necessary development of structure — this “routinizing” — lay the insidious kernels of the organization’s spiritual decay. The pattern was set.
Methodism and its revivalism first made its way to the colonies of North America through the ministry of Calvinist Methodist George Whitfield (1740), who allied himself with Jonathan Edwards. The former was the key preacher of the Great Awakening, the North American side of the British Evangelical Awakening that in England and Ireland was being led by the Wesleys. Revivalism in the American colonies lost momentum, in part due to limited organizational follow-up, but Methodism itself picked up again in 1760s under the leadership of committed laypersons. Methodism was still a “sect in a state-sanctioned church” with strict small groups maintaining moral and doctrinal standards.
The American Revolution, though, compelled an organizational change. Some Methodists, and a great number of Anglican priests left for Canada or Great Britian. Those remaining concluded they did not need a state church. Still, the sacraments were a means of grace, Methodists believed an ordained ministry was necessary for consecration. American-based ordination would have to be. The circuit preachers could be ordained, and the strict class and band system would then be maintained by North American lay leadership. Francis Asbury, along with Thomas Coke, (recently sent by Wesley) initiated a new organization, the Methodist Episcopal Church, for this purpose. The “sect-in-state-sanctioned-church” had become a “sect.”
High expectations of members (e.g., regular prayer, mutual accountability, attendance upon the sacraments, regular financial support, and active service to the marginal, including explicit opposition to slavery) once again put the group at odds with some of the newly established political, social, and economic authorities. The sect’s leadership accepted such as inevitable. As Wesley had several decades earlier noted: “Nor do the customs of the world at all hinder [the Methodist from] ‘running the race that is set before him.’ He knows that vice does not lose its nature, though it becomes ever so fashionable…He cannot, therefore, ‘follow’ even ‘a multitude to do evil’” (Character of a Methodist, 1741).
The now unattached sect remained strict for two to three generations. During this time it grew, and grew rapidly (it turns out that people who take Christianity seriously often want to be serious Christians). A huge upswing occurred with the Wilderness Revivals of the first decade of the 19th century (often called the Second Great Awakening, centered at Cane Ridge Meetinghouse in Kentucky). While other congregations were established, it was the strict, revivalist Baptists and even more so Methodists that exploded west of the Appalachians.
Wesley instructed the early Methodists to “[g]ain all you can by honest industry. Use all possible diligence in your calling” (Use of Money). He also realized, long before those sociological thinkers, that this would lead to increased wealth and status and, perhaps, spiritual problems associated not only with materialism but with social “acceptability.”
“I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe or America. But I am afraid lest they should only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power. And this undoubtedly will be the case unless they hold fast both the doctrine, spirit, and discipline with which they first set out” (“Thoughts on Methodism,” 1787).
By the third and fourth generation Methodists had begun their rise into the new middle class and started to lose their sectarian mutual accountability. This was evidenced in increasing cultural accommodation. For instance, as Asbury bemoaned:
“My spirit was grieved at the conduct of some Methodists, that hire out slaves at public places to the highest bidder, to cut, skin, and starve them; I think such members ought to be dealt with: on the side of oppressors there is law and power, but where is justice and mercy to the poor slaves? what eye will pity, what hand will help, or ear listen to their distresses? I will try if words can be like drawn swords, to pierce the hearts of the owners.” (The Journal of the Rev. Francis Asbury: Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, from August 7, 1771, to December 7, 1815 (New York: N. Bangs and T. Mason, 1821), 2:273)
Along with their economic success and a desire for social acceptance came what could only be called an abomination: the toleration of chattel slavery amongst a wide swath of the membership. The first Book of Discipline (1785) of the Methodist Episcopal Church had required that, “unless they buy them on purpose to free them,” anyone dealing in the trafficking of slaves was, “immediately to be expelled.” Sadly, by the third decade of the 19th century, a bishop owning slaves was tolerated by far too many. Perhaps this was inevitable due to the disregard some fifty years earlier of Richard Allen and Absalom Jones and perhaps 40 laypersons.
The 1830’s toleration of slavery was not the cause, but the proof that Methodism had moved from being a “sect-within-a-state-sanctioned church” through being an independent “sect” to become a “routinized denomination.” Though a debate raged, some denominational elites made excuses for the tacit (or sometimes explicit) approval of the societal convention. Schisms over the moral and doctrinal compromise had already occurred and schism after schism would follow.
Methodism’s willing compromise with the culture seemed to be the inevitable, a sociological pattern. Methodists had become economically successful, the mutual accountability of the band system had gone into decline, and bishops had found pleasure hobnobbing with cultural elites. Methodism did continue to grow in numbers, but also in the social acceptability that coincided with cultural accommodation, in that case over the toleration of slavery.
Schisms over the perceived abandonment of early Methodism’s sectarian fervor occurred. Sometimes this led to a belligerent legalism with the split-off organizations maintaining a small, highly sectarian membership.
There is no reason to rehearse all of Methodist history. The pattern is one that has obviously recurred. Sectarian purity with high membership expectations is modified, rightly or wrongly, for more effective outreach. The organizational structures develop with leadership seeking social approval, and then routinize into unaccountable bureaucracies. Schism after schism occurs in the hope of a “primitive,” Scriptural purity, but then the pattern is reiterated by the third or fourth generation.
Finally, the Methodist movement made it to the late 20th century. In Britain, the pattern of this stage was marked by innumerable abandoned Methodist buildings. In Canada and Australia, Methodism was absorbed into “united” churches, seemingly gaining nothing but more managerial positions. In the U.S. the “mainline” churches — including the United Methodist — were no longer “main.” The oldline denominations, as well as many evangelical ones as well, were deemed mediocre in fulfilling their missions, at best.
Completing the sociological pattern, many of those oldline congregations had become nothing but “associations of syncretistic individuals.” The oldline churches were often made up of people with a shared appreciation for potlucks but having little else in common. Certainly, the “average Methodist congregation” was not theologically or morally consistent. Accountability on personal purity and doctrine for the laity (and, arguably for the clergy and bureaucrats) was gone. “Social holiness,” a term referring to mutual accountability on core doctrine and morality, had come to mean agreement with the bureaucracy’s social agenda.
The historical pattern has been reiterated time after time. Dynamic reformers coalesce in effort to reinvigorate their community. Keeping their original fervor and strictness, they start to grow. They are respected by some for their integrity and rejected by others for their legalism. Small reform groups form internally and a few split off. Paradoxically, the new main body’s social acceptance so compromises its character that it becomes unappealing, and it starts a slow decline. The dissipation is slow at first, because the group has significant social and economic capital which continue to fund the managerial level of the organization.
Can Patterns of Decay Be Resisted?
Does this repeated pattern indicate a sort of sociological predestination? No, but, so what?
• What will happen to the UM Church? In all likelihood, decline continues, especially overseas. Eventually, that will stabilize, perhaps with the societal presence of the UMC being similar to that of the UCC or the PCUSA. A few congregations may remain strong or even grow in small towns or in urban enclaves. Denominational resources that remain will be devoted to organizational maintenance.
Internationally, the UMC brand has not been as damaged as in the US, but it is becoming so. These churches will either decline or split off (the trust clause will be less effectual, though the US funding will remain enticing to bishops and bureaucrats). Lost members will go to growing neo-Pentecostal denominations or become postmodernist non-participants. Some congregations and conferences may become GMC or go autonomous.
There is some hope for those individual UMC congregations that want to remain true to that original mission of the Oxford Methodists. They can survive and thrive, but only to the extent that they operate distinctly from the central administration. Unfortunately, toleration of such by those with organizational authority is unlikely.
• What happens to the GMC? It may become a slightly more conservative version of the UMC. It is likely that rules will quickly arise that limit significant experimentation in order to promote the maintenance of the organization.
Fortunately, this process of routinization is currently being delayed by the stripping down to basics in the new Discipline. Still, it important that the GMC not confuse sectarian theological and moral conservatism with political and cultural conservatism. The goal cannot be to replicate ideals of post-WWII suburban Methodism. If the GMC establishes mechanisms and requirements for mutual accountability for both personal purity and social service, and if it allows experimentations in ministry forms, then it may actually flourish, at least for three or even four generations.
• What happens with the small congregations that have gone independent? They likely become something akin to independent Baptist churches that happen to allow infant baptism. Though there will be exceptions, most will likely function as “family chapels” with strong pastoral care but little concern beyond the walls, so to speak.
• And, what happens with the Foundry Network, the “Collegiate” body, and other very large churches that are not formally affiliating with others? Ironically, as with the very small independents, the lack of accountability beyond the organization may lead to institutional inbreeding. Though their being better at adopting techniques from the popular culture will keep their numbers up at first, they will grow increasingly dependent on the personal charisma of their leadership and an erroneous belief in their own irreplaceability or the spiritual exceptionalism.
The hope for such is that those individual leaders will recognize their need to be accountable, for as Wesley put it “there is no holiness but social holiness.” This includes for those in authority. These churches must demonstrate a genuine willingness to cooperate in ministries, a willingness to participate in outside educational endeavors, and — most importantly — a willingness to be answerable to someone outside the formal congregational structures. Still, if those leaders can direct the church toward expectations of purity (not just numerical growth) and service outreach (not just seeking popularity), then much good ministry can occur (at least until a problematic leader arises).
It is hard to believe any of these groups remaining in or coming out of the UMC will continue to spiritually thrive in their current forms for more than three generations. This is not cynicism, but an acknowledgement that patterns are called patterns because they recur, over and over.
So, in the future, will any offer good ministry, meaning serving the marginal in the Name of our Lord and preaching the Good News to those needing salvation, be offered? Yes, of course, for the glory of God cannot be stopped by human failure. And, there have recently been small expressions of renewal. Perhaps more are coming.
For Methodists to be part, though, they will have to figure out new ways to reiterate the original mission of Methodism and the original mission of the Church. Breaking patterns is hard. And, my suspicion is that these patterns will be sadly replicated.
So, are these “new expressions” following the UMC schism all doomed by a sort of sociological predestination? No. This pattern of rise and decline can be resisted, but I do not see it happening. Then again, I could be wrong.
James Thobaben is Dean of the School of Theology and professor of Bioethics and Social Ethics at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. He is the author of Healthcare Ethics: A Comprehensive Christian Resource. This article appeared in the March/April 2025 issue of Good News.
by Steve | May 1, 2025 | Home Page Hero Slider, In the News, March/April 2025
Body Language —
By Jessica LaGrone (March/April 2025) —
The first paying job I ever held was as a Health Aide in a doctor’s office that primarily treated patients and families who were unable to pay for medical care. I wasn’t qualified to do much in the way of real medicine, so one of my main jobs was to call patients in from the waiting room, to take their height and weight and blood pressure, and then to ask them a set of questions to obtain a medical history known as the anamnesis.
Most of us have been through this process so many times that we might be able to reconstruct the questions off the top of our heads:
• What brings you in today?
• How are you feeling?
• Where does it hurt?
• How long have you felt this way?
An anamnesis includes not only our immediate symptoms, but also our family medical history, allergies, questions about alcohol and drug usage and risk-associated behaviors. The result, recorded in a medical chart, sounds a little like a story, a little like a puzzle, a little like a problem to be solved.
But it’s also vitally important to remember that behind each anamnesis is a person, that the symptoms described are not disembodied, but belong to a living soul whose experience of that story feels very, very personal. Can you imagine anything more intimate than the things you experience happening within your own body?
Anamnesis is a Greek word that means “a calling to mind,” or “a remembrance.”
It’s a calling to remember — here specifically a remembrance or a recalling of the experience of one body. But it’s also the medical history going even farther back than that person’s own medical memory.
When I had the job of collecting an anamnesis from each patient I was not yet “in ministry,” but let me tell you that hearing the story of the body feels like holy work. It feels a little like being a priest: hearing confession and helping someone enter into healing.
Years later I found myself on one of those God-prescribed U-turns and began to realize that my calling was not medicine but ministry. One day I was sitting in a seminary class learning about the sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion when the professor began recounting the historic names of the different parts of the eucharistic liturgy: Confession, Absolution, Sursum Corda, Sanctus, Anamnesis, Mysterion, Epiclesis.
I loved learning all of the mysterious-sounding words, but one of them in particular stood out to me. Anamnesis: The remembrance, reenactment, and participation in the history of the Body.
The very same word used by medical professionals to recount the medical history of our bodies was the word used at the Communion Table to recount the holy history of Christ, his ministry, death, and resurrection, which includes his actions and words of institution at the table in the Upper Room: “Take and eat, this is my body, which is given for you.”
I felt like pausing for a moment to send a quick message to my dad, who once told me I was throwing away an undergraduate degree in premedical biology to go into ministry. I thought about telling him: It turns out, they’re basically the same thing! (Aside from the earning potential, anyway.)
Just like an anamnesis in a medical chart follows the journey of a body, an anamnesis at the Table describes the journey of Christ’s body. A holy history of how Christ came to live and die and rise again for us. An anamnesis of love.
In a passage from the first letter to the Corinthians, Paul makes a shocking claim: “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it” (I Corinthians 12:27).
I can’t imagine a way of addressing someone in any more intimate way than referring to them as one’s own body. Can you?
Nothing is more intimate for us than the experience of our bodies. Our bodies are responsible for all of our input and output to the world around us. They move at our slightest impulse. They provide contact with the world through our senses. Our bodies are both the way we receive input from the world around us, and the way we move outwardly to impact the world around us.
Here Christ is saying: That’s how closely I relate to you, those who believe in me, who follow me. You are my body. You are the way I long to physically and outwardly express my thoughts, my will, my impulses. When I long to touch the world, I touch it through you. When I pour out resources, I do it through you. When I want to share my joy and celebration at the good world I have made, I want to experience and express that through you, my body.
Back in the doctor’s office where I worked, our storeroom held shelves and shelves of medical charts containing the stories of each patient’s symptoms, subsequent diagnoses, and treatments. Some patients had charts so thick that we filled them and had to open up a second chart, and a third, and more, just to hold their story.
Imagine how thick a medical chart would be for a 100-year-old patient. What if a patient could be more than a millennium old? Two millennia old? How long would their story stretch?
Imagine, if you will, that patient’s anamnesis:
The patient is a 2000-year-old who presents with both acute pain and rampant disease, but also a remarkable capacity for healing and resilience. She has been through a multitude of cancers, amputations, and treatments, but also astonishing recoveries.
Her greatest scars include the Crusades, her silence during the Holocaust, her complicities to slavery and injustice and abuse. Some of these diseases are so disfiguring those closest to her would say she doesn’t even look like herself.
She has been through many treatments, recoveries, and regenerations, often stirring from the point of near death. Sometimes it seems that she is in a coma, or on life support, but that’s usually when she is revived somewhere it is least expected.
Without her, our laws would have no foundation, our societies would lack moral guidance, purpose, and hope. Without her we would miss the depths of compassion brought through her works in hospitals and schools and missions. Through her diseases have been cured, orphans taken in and raised. Countless lonely people in her have found family and purpose and strength.
Because this body is always shifting and growing, it’s difficult to find ways to describe her physical anatomy. What exactly is her height, weight, mass? Is her temperature hot or cold or lukewarm? Is her heartbeat racing or slowed to a flat line?
It’s hard to say what should go in her chart under physical characteristics. Is she a tiny country church up on a hill or a mega-church auditorium? Is she shouting or meditating, dancing or repeating liturgy? Is she gathered under trees, in tents, in cathedrals or auditoriums, at schools or in homes? Is she in schism or in unity? Marching in protest or in bowing in deep contemplative silence?
When we try to picture her some of our feelings are warm and nostalgic, others are pockmarked with trauma or pain. “Church hurt” is a diagnosis repeated all too often these days.
Being part of a body can be both painful and healing. When a physical body has encountered an illness or pathogen, it develops antibodies that are specifically targeted, specifically shaped, to take down those challenges the next time it faces them. It’s the reason I won’t have chicken pox again — my body still carries the antibodies it made when I was nine.
One of the miraculous things about being a member of a body that has existed over 2000 years is that there is very little we can experience today that it hasn’t gone through in some way before. If we are paying attention to the incredible connectivity to the history of this body, we may find many of our diagnoses are not new at all. If we search our chart we may also find treatments there that help.
Scripture can inoculate us against individualism. The Psalms can give us a booster of lament and praise and anger and repentance and joy. Liturgy and history swirl within us, bringing nourishment and reminders that this is not the first time the church has faced challenges.
Church history carries in its bloodstream stories like Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s, who knew the Church during some of her darkest days of sickness. Surrounded by evidence of disease, he still worked to build a new kind of Church that stood on conviction, even when it meant losing his own life to save hers.
Perhaps when we encounter the dizzying effects of nationalism, or the painful symptoms of tyrants and conflicts and wars, pieces of the past will rush at us like white blood cells ready to fight again the very things that threatened before and threaten again.
In the last few years it seems like story after story has broken with news of leaders of the church inflicting harm on the body through misconduct and abuse.
Recently when one of these horrifying scandals broke, a preacher close to the events used his platform to offer those at the center of pain the metaphor from scripture of Lot’s wife, telling those facing a church torn apart by abuse not to turn back, not to dwell on the past, but to continue moving forward in faith.
Whatever his intentions, many heard it as a call not to reveal or process the wounds laid bare by the scandal that had broken only days before. Unfortunately, his message brought more pain to those already hurting. It was heard as a call to silence the heartbroken rather than facing an honest and open counting of the cost, lest the Church be hurt by the stories that might be told.
If I learned anything in the patient intake room long ago, it’s that the telling of the story of pain is part of the healing. Until the body bears witness, tells its whole story of hurt and grief, there is no chance for true healing. That’s what an anamnesis is — to tell the story of the body so that help and healing and intervention can rush in to the areas that need it the most.
To tell the truth is the beginning of getting the help we need. But to hide a wound means risking that it will fester to the point of infection, dismemberment and ultimately loss. If we want to heal, we will tell the stories of the body, even those that make us flinch.
I sometimes talk to young people who have experienced so much pain as they’ve witnessed the flaws of the Church that it makes them want to withdraw into a little corner of the faith. They haven’t given up on Jesus, just the people with the keys to his house.
Sometimes they wonder if they could leave all the trappings behind and start over. As one of them told me recently: “I don’t know if I can bear the Church, but I think I could do just Jesus and me and a few friends.”
“Well,” I said, “then you’ve just started the Church all over again!”
For those who want to authentically follow Jesus, amputation is not an option. We can’t do it alone. Christians need Christians. Churches need churches. Our medical history would urge us not to let the moments of struggle drive us away from the place that healing can happen. Amputation has never gone well for the limb.
There are no single-celled Christians. No healthy single-celled churches. Bodies need connective tissue to survive.
In Communion, the anamnesis, finds its climax in these words: “On the night he was betrayed and gave himself up for us, Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it and said: ‘This is my body, given for you.’”
The same night of deep pain and betrayal was the night when the blessing of the body was offered. This same story of crucifixion is followed by triumph of resurrection. Jesus knows how to sit with a body in pain and suffering. It’s his body after all — both suffering and mended, broken and blessed, all at one table
When my son and my daughter were small, they often had skinned knees and elbows, bruised foreheads and shins. Each night in the bathtub was an anamnesis in and of itself — recounting that day’s bumps and bruises, the most recent wounds of normal childhood play.
Sometimes there was some wound, scabbed over, that would change from night to night, almost as if by magic. “Look mommy,” they sometimes said: “Look! My skinned knee isn’t so bad, my bruise is going away. Why? What happened?”
Who tells a three-year-old about platelets and macrophages and hemoglobin? Who would explain to a preschooler the veritable processional of internal saints streaming to the site of their hurt to bring healing? I would. Because of my dual obsession with medicine and ministry, I did.
And each time we talked about their bodies’ remarkable ability to heal I would also tell them: “God made your body this way! Isn’t that cool? God made your body so that it knows how to heal itself from the inside out.” And sometimes I would even get choked up thinking about these precious bodies, and all the wounds to come, and how God would be there with them for every single one.
After a while, perhaps because I had explained it so often, they just stopped asking. They did what children do: instead of asking the questions, they began to narrate the answers themselves. They would point to a knee or elbow or scab, still hurting but better today than the day before and declare:
“Look mommy! God is healing me!”
May it be true of you and me. May it be true of the body itself. Amen.
Jessica LaGrone is the Dean of the Chapel at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. This article appeared in the March/April 2025 issue of Good News.
by Steve | May 1, 2025 | Features, Home Page Hero Slider, In the News, March/April 2025
Scriptural Holiness: A set apart people —
David F. Watson (March/April 2025) —
At its 2024 Convening General Conference, the Global Methodist Church adopted the following mission statement: “The Global Methodist Church exists to make disciples of Jesus Christ and spread scriptural holiness across the globe.” As one of the people who helped craft this mission statement, I was elated at the overwhelming majority that voted in favor of its adoption. Naming scriptural holiness as the center of our mission was an important step in claiming an authentically Wesleyan voice and vocation. After all, it was none other than John Wesley who told us that God’s design in raising up Methodist preachers was to “reform the nation and, in particular, the church; to spread scriptural holiness over the land.”
Since that time, however, a number of people have asked me to explain the term “scriptural holiness.” I get it.
Many Methodists haven’t talked about scriptural holiness for generations. While a brief definition is difficult, the following description might get us started: Scriptural holiness is the work of God we receive through faith to make us a new creation, freeing us from the power of sin to live as a set-apart people. In what follows I’ll unpack this a bit.
Holiness as Separation
At root, holiness is about separation. The Hebrew word we translate as “holiness” is qodesh. It refers to things that are set apart, separate from the ordinary world. It is first and foremost an attribute of the transcendent and perfect God. Consider Isaiah’s vision of God in Isaiah 6:
“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.’ The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke” (vv. 1-4).
Of all the things these angels could say about God, they proclaim his holiness. God is separate from us. The eternal God who created all things is perfectly righteous and loving, all-powerful and all-knowing. We are not.
Isaiah perceives the contrast between the holiness of God and his own profane nature. He thus cries out in fear. “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
A Set-Apart People
The good news, though, is that God wants to share his life with us. For this reason, he created a set-apart people to represent him among all the other peoples of the earth. As he says to Israel in Leviticus 20:26, “You shall be holy to me; for I the Lord am holy, and I have separated you from the other peoples to be mine.” Israel is to receive something of the character of God. Just as God is set apart from this world, so Israel will be set apart from other nations. This separation from other peoples involves covenant fidelity between God and Israel. As God says in Exodus 19:5-6, “Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” The people of Israel are to worship and live differently than the other nations. They are to be holy.
Israel and Judah went through periods of faithfulness and periods of rebellion against God. At times God would send prophets among them to warn them that they had departed from the covenant they had made with him. Sometimes the people listened. Often they did not. The kings rarely did. Following Jeroboam, all the kings of Israel were wicked, as were many of the kings of Judah. Yet the calling of Israel as a holy nation was only a part of God’s plan of salvation. It was never the entirety. When we reach the last verse of the last book of the Old Testament, the story continues.
Jesus Sets Us Free
In the fullness of time, God became incarnate as one of these Israelite people whom he had set apart. “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Jesus, both divine and human, has made the holiness of God available to us in a new way. He not only calls us to holiness, but empowers us to live as holy people. On the cross, he took our sin upon himself, broke its stranglehold over our lives, and set us free for joyful obedience. As Paul explains this to the church in Rome, “But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness” (Romans 6:17-18). We were once slaves to sin, but now we have been set free to love and serve God.
Wesley knew we could never do this on our own. In our own strength, we can never truly live the way God wants us to live. Sin is too powerful. It warps our minds. It makes us believe that good is evil and evil is good. Apart from the grace of God, we cannot perceive our own sinfulness. In his sermon, “On Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, Discourse the Tenth,” Wesley writes,
“Know thyself. See and feel thyself a sinner. Feel that thy inward parts are very wickedness, that thou are altogether corrupt and abominable…. Know and feel that thou are a poor, vile, guilty worm, quivering over the great gulf! What art thou? A sinner born to die; a leaf driven before the wind; a vapour ready to vanish away, just appearing and then scattered into the air, to be no more seen!”
If this sounds harsh to our ears today, we should understand that Wesley was trying to get across the extent to which sin has warped our hearts and minds. Everyone has sinned — everyone — and even when we know what is right, we often end up doing wrong (Romans 7:14-24). Until we diagnose the problem, we cannot find the cure. The problem, as Wesley understood from the teaching of Scripture, is the pervasive and coercive power of sin. The cure is the healing power of the Holy Spirit.
Continuing his argument in Romans 6, Paul contrasts an old life of sin with new life in Christ. He reminds the Christians of Rome that they used to be enslaved to sin. “But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life” (6:22). This word we translate as “sanctification” is hagiasmos, and it means, “being made holy” or “being set apart.” Now that you’ve been freed from sin, the advantage you get is that you’ve been set apart. You’re empowered to think, speak, and act differently than you did before. You’re called to and empowered for a different kind of life. Those who don’t know Christ will not understand why you live in this strange new way, but you can invite them to be part of this set-apart people as well.
A New Creation
Once we receive Christ, we are not simply the Revised Standard Version of our old selves.
The change God works in us is truly radical. The word “radical” comes from the Latin radix, which means “root.” Our transformation by the power of the Holy Spirit is not superficial. It is fundamental. It occurs at the very root of our being. We call this the New Birth — a crucial element of the Wesleyan understanding of salvation. As Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3:3, “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” We are made new. In Christ we are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). This happens because we become “participants of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Put more simply, God shares himself with us, and in so doing makes us into the people we were always meant to be.
Faith and the Means of Grace
Holiness is an aspect of the nature of God, and it is something he shares with us. What part, then, do we play in becoming holy people? Do we simply sit back and watch TV while God does all the work? Wesley would bristle at the idea. We are saved by grace through faith — by putting our whole trust in Jesus Christ for our salvation. That faith will result in certain behaviors that will make us increasingly open to the work of God. We call these “means of grace.” Wesley identified particular means of grace as the “ordinances of God,” which he listed in the General Rules:
• The public worship of God.
• The ministry of the Word, either read or expounded.
• The Supper of the Lord.
• Family and private prayer.
• Searching the Scriptures.
• Fasting or abstinence.
None of these practices saves us. None makes us holy. None changes our hearts. Only God can do these things. Rather, these practices are responses of faith to the work of God. They are ways in which we beckon the work of the Holy Spirit. When we sin, we quench the work of the Spirit in our hearts, but when we partake of these means of grace in faith, we invite the Holy Spirit to change us. When we read Scripture, worship God, pray, receive the Lord’s Supper, or fast, we engage in practices commended or commanded in Scripture that serve as conduits of the Holy Spirit. As the Spirit works in our hearts, we are made new.
Scriptural holiness is the work of God we receive through faith to make us a new creation, freeing us from the power of sin to live as a set-apart people. When God makes us new, we will think, speak, and act differently from the world around us in important ways. We will live as set-apart people. Many will think us strange. They may even regard us with animosity. Yet it has been this way since the church’s earliest days. Our calling is not to seek the favor of an unbelieving world, but to love and serve God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — who shares his nature with us and sets us apart to bear witness to his love.
David F. Watson serves as Academic Dean and Professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. He holds a PhD from Southern Methodist University and is an ordained elder in the Global Methodist Church.
By David F. Watson
At its 2024 Convening General Conference, the Global Methodist Church adopted the following mission statement: “The Global Methodist Church exists to make disciples of Jesus Christ and spread scriptural holiness across the globe.” As one of the people who helped craft this mission statement, I was elated at the overwhelming majority that voted in favor of its adoption. Naming scriptural holiness as the center of our mission was an important step in claiming an authentically Wesleyan voice and vocation. After all, it was none other than John Wesley who told us that God’s design in raising up Methodist preachers was to “reform the nation and, in particular, the church; to spread scriptural holiness over the land.”
Since that time, however, a number of people have asked me to explain the term “scriptural holiness.” I get it. Many Methodists haven’t talked about scriptural holiness for generations. While a brief definition is difficult, the following description might get us started: Scriptural holiness is the work of God we receive through faith to make us a new creation, freeing us from the power of sin to live as a set-apart people. In what follows I’ll unpack this a bit.
Holiness as Separation
At root, holiness is about separation. The Hebrew word we translate as “holiness” is qodesh. It refers to things that are set apart, separate from the ordinary world. It is first and foremost an attribute of the transcendent and perfect God. Consider Isaiah’s vision of God in Isaiah 6:
“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.’ The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke” (vv. 1-4).
Of all the things these angels could say about God, they proclaim his holiness. God is separate from us. The eternal God who created all things is perfectly righteous and loving, all-powerful and all-knowing. We are not.
Isaiah perceives the contrast between the holiness of God and his own profane nature. He thus cries out in fear. “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
A Set-Apart People
The good news, though, is that God wants to share his life with us. For this reason, he created a set-apart people to represent him among all the other peoples of the earth. As he says to Israel in Leviticus 20:26, “You shall be holy to me; for I the Lord am holy, and I have separated you from the other peoples to be mine.” Israel is to receive something of the character of God. Just as God is set apart from this world, so Israel will be set apart from other nations. This separation from other peoples involves covenant fidelity between God and Israel. As God says in Exodus 19:5-6, “Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” The people of Israel are to worship and live differently than the other nations. They are to be holy.
Israel and Judah went through periods of faithfulness and periods of rebellion against God. At times God would send prophets among them to warn them that they had departed from the covenant they had made with him. Sometimes the people listened. Often they did not. The kings rarely did. Following Jeroboam, all the kings of Israel were wicked, as were many of the kings of Judah. Yet the calling of Israel as a holy nation was only a part of God’s plan of salvation. It was never the entirety. When we reach the last verse of the last book of the Old Testament, the story continues.
Jesus Sets Us Free
In the fullness of time, God became incarnate as one of these Israelite people whom he had set apart. “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Jesus, both divine and human, has made the holiness of God available to us in a new way. He not only calls us to holiness, but empowers us to live as holy people. On the cross, he took our sin upon himself, broke its stranglehold over our lives, and set us free for joyful obedience. As Paul explains this to the church in Rome, “But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness” (Romans 6:17-18). We were once slaves to sin, but now we have been set free to love and serve God.
Wesley knew we could never do this on our own. In our own strength, we can never truly live the way God wants us to live. Sin is too powerful. It warps our minds. It makes us believe that good is evil and evil is good. Apart from the grace of God, we cannot perceive our own sinfulness. In his sermon, “On Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, Discourse the Tenth,” Wesley writes,
“Know thyself. See and feel thyself a sinner. Feel that thy inward parts are very wickedness, that thou are altogether corrupt and abominable…. Know and feel that thou are a poor, vile, guilty worm, quivering over the great gulf! What art thou? A sinner born to die; a leaf driven before the wind; a vapour ready to vanish away, just appearing and then scattered into the air, to be no more seen!”
If this sounds harsh to our ears today, we should understand that Wesley was trying to get across the extent to which sin has warped our hearts and minds. Everyone has sinned — everyone, and even when we know what is right, we often end up doing wrong (Romans 7:14-24). Until we diagnose the problem, we cannot find the cure. The problem, as Wesley understood from the teaching of Scripture, is the pervasive and coercive power of sin. The cure is the healing power of the Holy Spirit.
Continuing his argument in Romans 6, Paul contrasts an old life of sin with new life in Christ. He reminds the Christians of Rome that they used to be enslaved to sin. “But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life” (6:22). This word we translate as “sanctification” is hagiasmos, and it means, “being made holy” or “being set apart.” Now that you’ve been freed from sin, the advantage you get is that you’ve been set apart. You’re empowered to think, speak, and act differently than you did before. You’re called to and empowered for a different kind of life. Those who don’t know Christ will not understand why you live in this strange new way, but you can invite them to be part of this set-apart people as well.
A New Creation
Once we receive Christ, we are not simply the Revised Standard Version of our old selves.
The change God works in us is truly radical. The word “radical” comes from the Latin radix, which means “root.” Our transformation by the power of the Holy Spirit is not superficial. It is fundamental. It occurs at the very root of our being. We call this the New Birth — a crucial element of the Wesleyan understanding of salvation. As Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3:3, “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” We are made new. In Christ we are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). This happens because we become “participants of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Put more simply, God shares himself with us, and in so doing makes us into the people we were always meant to be.
Faith and the Means of Grace
Holiness is an aspect of the nature of God, and it is something he shares with us. What part, then, do we play in becoming holy people? Do we simply sit back and watch TV while God does all the work? Wesley would bristle at the idea. We are saved by grace through faith — by putting our whole trust in Jesus Christ for our salvation. That faith will result in certain behaviors that will make us increasingly open to the work of God. We call these “means of grace.” Wesley identified particular means of grace as the “ordinances of God,” which he listed in the General Rules:
• The public worship of God.
• The ministry of the Word, either read or expounded.
• The Supper of the Lord.
• Family and private prayer.
• Searching the Scriptures.
• Fasting or abstinence.
None of these practices saves us. None makes us holy. None changes our hearts. Only God can do these things. Rather, these practices are responses of faith to the work of God. They are ways in which we beckon the work of the Holy Spirit. When we sin, we quench the work of the Spirit in our hearts, but when we partake of these means of grace in faith, we invite the Holy Spirit to change us. When we read Scripture, worship God, pray, receive the Lord’s Supper, or fast, we engage in practices commended or commanded in Scripture that serve as conduits of the Holy Spirit. As the Spirit works in our hearts, we are made new.
Scriptural holiness is the work of God we receive through faith to make us a new creation, freeing us from the power of sin to live as a set-apart people. When God makes us new, we will think, speak, and act differently from the world around us in important ways. We will live as set-apart people. Many will think us strange. They may even regard us with animosity. Yet it has been this way since the church’s earliest days. Our calling is not to seek the favor of an unbelieving world, but to love and serve God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who shares his nature with us and sets us apart to bear witness to his love.
David F. Watson is the president of Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kenucky. He holds a PhD from Southern Methodist University and is an ordained elder in the Global Methodist Church. This article appeared in the March/April 2025 issue of Good News.
by Steve | Dec 17, 2024 | Home Page Hero Slider, In the News
Good News Legacy Continues
As Good News wraps up 58 years of ministry seeking to advocate for scriptural Christianity and lead Methodists to a faithful future, our legacy continues. It continues in the lives of men, women, and children who were inspired and brought closer to Jesus through Good News convocations and the consistently high quality articles featured in Good Newsmagazine. It continues in the closer connections and networks created among U.S. evangelicals and with brothers and sisters in Europe, Africa, and Asia. It continues in the recovery of Methodist essential doctrines and practices that had been forgotten or deemphasized in what Billy Abraham called “doctrinal amnesia.” It continues in the formation, growth, and deepening of the Global Methodist Church as the newest expression of historic Methodism.
The board of Good News has also taken two key actions that will ensure tangible ways that the Good News legacy will continue into the future.
Good News Magazine Goes On.
Many have expressed the desire that Good News magazine continue in some form. We are pleased to announce that the magazine has found a new home!
The John Wesley Institute (JWI), a program of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, is assuming control of the magazine and website of Good News. Editor Steve Beard will continue to guide its publication as a broad-based advocate for Methodism in theology and practice. Pivoting away from denominational battles, Good News magazine will focus more on what it means to be Methodist. What do Methodists believe? How do we practice our faith? How is God working through various streams of Methodism to bring people to salvation by faith in Jesus Christ and discipling them in the faith?
You will soon hear more from the JWI about the opportunity to continue receiving the magazine and supporting its publication. They will also maintain the Good News website as an archive of what God has accomplished through Good News over the years, as well as a repository for future articles and inspiration. We look forward to the continuation of this valuable resource for global Methodism.
Scholarship Legacy for Pastors in Training
For over 55 years, Good News used the generous gifts of our donors to work tirelessly toward ensuring that the historic Christian faith was handed down through the generations. In the last decade, that work has culminated in the creation of the Wesleyan Covenant Association to expand our reach and ultimately the start of the Global Methodist Church. In a real way, Good News kept orthodox Methodism alive through challenging years and ultimately helped shape a denomination that will keep it alive for generations to come.
Having accomplished our primary mission, the Board began to consider how we might best use the remaining funds of Good News to leave a lasting legacy. That included helping to fund the Global Methodist Church Convening General Conference. And now we are humbled to share that we have established three student seminary scholarships. These three endowed scholarships will continue the work of Good News until Christ comes again by offering the opportunity for new generations of seminary students to embrace our historic Methodist tradition and transmit it faithfully in GMC churches for years to come.
Our three scholarships have been placed at three seminaries, each in honor of a Good News President.
- Wesley Biblical Seminary in Ridgeland, Mississippi, will offer the Charles W. Keysor Good News Scholarship in honor of our first president.
- Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, will offer the James V. Heidinger II Good News Scholarship in honor of our second president.
- The Wesley House of Studies at Truett Seminary (Baylor University) in Waco, Texas, will offer the Rob Renfroe & Tom Lambrecht Good News Scholarship. For our third presidential scholarship, we chose to honor both our current President Rob Renfroe and his long-time Vice President and collaborator in ministry, Tom Lambrecht. These two men partnered together to help complete the purposes for which Good News was founded, and we are grateful to be able to honor them both in this way.
If you would like to add a donation to the endowment of any of these three scholarship funds, you may do so to honor the presidents’ work through the years. Information on how to do that is found below.
We hope it brings you joy to know that until Christ comes again, pastors will be trained through the support of Good News donors like you, and they will carry our hope of renewal and revival in Methodism forward into the future!
The Board of Good News is excited and honored to provide for the continuation of Good News’ legacy through the continuation of the magazine and the training of faithful pastors to serve the church of the future. May the work that started in 1967 continue to bring glory and praise to our heavenly Father, our Lord Jesus Christ, and our empowering Holy Spirit.
Information on donations to the scholarships:
Gifts to Wesley Biblical Seminary in honor of Charles W. Keysor should be sent to:
1880 E. County Line Rd.
Ridgeland, MS 39157
On the memo line of the check, please write “The Charles W. Keysor Good News Scholarship.”
Gifts to Asbury Theological Seminary in honor of James V. Heidinger II should be sent to:
Asbury Seminary
ATTN: Advancement Dept.
204 N. Lexington Ave.
Wilmore, KY 40390
Gifts may also be made online at https://asburyseminary.edu/donate/.
On the memo line of the check or in the comment box of the online giving form, please write “The James Heidinger Good News Endowed Scholarship.”
Gifts to Truett Seminary in honor of Rob Renfroe and Tom Lambrecht should be sent to:
Baylor University Advancement
ATTN: Jon Sisk
One Bear Place #97050
Waco, TX 76798-7050
On the memo line of the check, please write “Renfroe Lambrecht Good News Scholarship
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.
