by Steve | Jan 7, 2019 | Jan-Feb 2019, Magazine Articles
By Bishop Scott J. Jones –
Serving Christ with biblical faithfulness, intellectual integrity, and cultural relevance has become increasingly difficult in my lifetime.
Nevertheless, I can repeat with joy the words of the apostle Paul: “I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.” With John Wesley, I understand that difficult passages of Scripture are best interpreted in accordance with the analogy of faith, “that grand scheme of doctrine which is delivered in the Bible.” This general theme of Scripture is the way of salvation. …
Let me remind you of Wesley’s opening words in his “Thoughts Upon Methodism:”
“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.”
Three key elements: spirit, discipline, doctrine. We must maintain the spirit and by that I understand our focus on our mission. We are at heart a missionary movement. We were raised up to reform the continent and to spread scriptural holiness across the land. You should know that the first draft of our current mission statement quoted that phrase found in the first discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church. … Our mission is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world, and our future vitality depends on aligning all our resources on that mission.
Wesley’s admonition also calls us to maintain our discipline. Our disciplined approach to serving Christ is a hallmark of our identity. We obey our conferences. We obey our rules. In Charles Ferguson’s famous phrase, we are organizing to beat the devil. We are methodical.
Wesley’s admonition also focuses on our doctrine. We are a biblical people, and our way of reading Scripture is faithful and fruitful. Our Wesleyan understanding of the gospel, contained in our doctrinal standards is a precious resource for accomplishing our mission. …
God’s primary tool is the church, because all holiness is social – we do this in community. We do this by participating in the means of grace which are the ministries of the church – weekly worship, accountability groups, holy communion, daily Bible study, daily prayer, acts of mercy toward the poor. The Holy Spirit is aching to use us for the transformation of lives. We must embrace the gospel and our role in its proclamation and embodiment. I want to be part of a church that conveys God’s amazing grace to people in need.
I belong to a denomination where many local churches are embodying God’s amazing grace. What a privilege it is to be part that process. Thanks be to God for his gospel.
Bishop Scott J. Jones is the Resident Bishop of the Texas Annual Conference/Houston Episcopal Area.
by Steve | Jan 7, 2019 | Jan-Feb 2019, Magazine Articles
By Joy Moore –
Preaching scriptural holiness means being unashamed in a post-theistic world to say there is a God. God is here. And wherever God is, there is life. There is hope because there is newness. Our job is not to start a revival. Our job is to be those who are revived, because we’ve encountered the Holy Spirit.
We are partnering with him to set captives free and to form a transformed community. That means that we must be able to speak truth to power, even when that power is the tribe we think we are a part of. It means that we must both seek personal and societal transformation, not as a political agenda, but as scriptural holiness. We are called to create communities who are disciples of Christ alone.
Scriptural preaching invites people to know that God loves every one of his creatures. Good preaching turns attention to the fact, in the words of Paul Young, God is especially fond of you. And me. And them.
The Wesleys described salvation as present deliverance from sin, a restoration of the soul. Scriptural preaching will help us to know what it is that the Lord requires: that we practice justice, that we favor kindness, and that we live so God is glorified. We are called to be a distinctive peculiar people who unashamedly stand for justice and righteousness in this broken and fallen world.
We have the responsibility of pointing to where God is right now on earth. We bear witness to the in-breaking that God promised. The kingdom is here on earth, and to not be ashamed of that is to be a witness to the transforming work of God. Through Wesley’s ministry, he demonstrated the message of Jesus through his ministry that salvation includes social and political and individual and spiritual dimensions.
The gospel compels the church universal to engage in social and political action for the least of these. We have this letter from a former terrorist turned church planter with a testimony of God’s transforming grace. He writes to a young man who risks abandoning the teachings of his grandmother. Since his childhood, Timothy has been the recipient of established Christian teachings and practices. It’s to him Paul describes faith as not individual belief in Jesus, but of a long tradition of beliefs and practices passed down from one generation to the next. The faith represents a legacy of traditions, of practices, and beliefs to which the people of God have always remained committed. Timothy is exhorted to remain committed to that old religion, that narrow road, that strange teaching. Paul knew a time would come when people would not tolerate sound teaching. In arrogance and pride we would collect teachers who say what we want to hear. We would choose to be identified by our race or our gender or our sexuality and political positions or geographic location and economic status. We would segregate by ethnicity.
There’s a practical reason why the Sunday morning hour is the most racially divided hour of the week. It’s because way back when the reformation divided us, they divided us first by our ethnic and national lines. The churches became divided – even the Baptist and the Methodist who originally were more integrated than any of the other denominations.
I’m glad to be part of a movement that placed a church in every county as citizens moved across the country. I’m glad to be part of this crazy idea of itineracy that we should practice our faith in a community of disciples, where we are, but we are part of a larger community of disciples. And we should get together every once in a while to share the transforming truth of God.
We too are divided by class and status. We’ve become more interested in our tribe than being God’s tribe. One day, every nation, every tribe, every tongue will come together at one table, because God is preparing a banquet for all of his children. On that day, we will kneel together before the Risen One and say that he is Lord. If you want to enjoy that eternity, we need to start practicing it right here and now. So the challenge for us to preach is not to preach our politics or to preach our ethnic group or to preach just the needs in our state at this hour. Instead, Paul told Timothy, preach the word and be ready to do it whether it is convenient in circumstances, sufferings, difficulty, hardship, in times of discomfort, in moments of anguish, when things don’t go your way, when the spouse walks out on you, when the bishop assigns you there, when your children go away, when the laws of the nation contradict the laws of God, when the denomination looks more like the nation than the people of God – in all circumstances.
Dr. Joy Moore is the lead pastor and ecclesial storyteller at Bethel United Methodist Church in Flint Michigan.
by Steve | Jan 7, 2019 | Jan-Feb 2019, Magazine Articles
By Leah Hidde-Gregory –
I am the woman at the well.
Don’t worry, I haven’t been married five times – but it would not have mattered to Jesus if I had been because his grace is just that messy.
My story is a bit messy. It didn’t start out that way. I was born and raised in a parsonage. I am a sixth generation pastor. I was a busy “super Pharisee.” I did all the right things, but with the wrong heart. I was proud. Oh, how I was proud.
That all came to an end on December 22, 1999. My husband and I had been married nine years, we had a beautiful two year old little girl and I was pregnant with our second child. I felt as though life could not be much better.
Then my husband came in and sat down and explained that he no longer wanted the life we were living. He said that he loved me and our daughter, but that he was gay and wanted a divorce. A month later he moved out of our home. Mine was the first divorce on either side of my family.
We don’t know why the woman at the well was divorced so many times – if she left or if she was abandoned – but we do know she lived in the reality of what it meant to be a divorced woman in her time.
A false sense of shame settled into my soul. I no longer wanted to be seen by anyone from the church. I was literally driven to my knees by life, broken and full of shame – some I deserved, some I did not – and that is where Christ found me.
At my lowest point, Christ met me at a church that a friend pastored. It was filled with outcasts – divorced, gay, straight, rich, poor, agnostic, devout, black sheep – and even a Pharisee or two. This was not a progressive church or a conservative church. It was just a group of people seeking to be the church.
I would sit at the back of the sanctuary and just weep every Sunday for months. One day after communion, I bolted out the back door in tears – ugly crying. A wonderful woman came to check on me sitting on the church steps. I told her that I was just embarrassing myself crying so hard in the church – that I just needed to stop coming and realize there was no place for me in the church anymore. She told me that she couldn’t think of a better place for me to cry than with family and she led me back into the sanctuary.
In that little church, I saw persons with all types of brokenness give up what they discovered to be unholy and unhealthy for their souls because they were accepted and loved into seeing Christ at work in their life. It was through the love of the congregation, the conviction of the Holy Spirit, and the messy grace of Jesus Christ that they were transformed.
Christ offered the woman at the well living water along with a dose of hard truth of her need for him. She was drenched in the “Living Water” as she encountered Christ in truth and messy grace.
I know what it is like to be drenched in that “living water.” I know firsthand how Christ takes away the pain caused by others, and the brokenness caused by my sin.
Some people have said I am a member of the Wesleyan Covenant Association because a gay man broke my heart. They couldn’t be more wrong. Twenty-eight years ago I pledged to love that man until the day I would die, and I have kept that promise – albeit differently than how I meant that day. At no time over the last 18 years have I stopped praying that God would give him a very blessed life.
Two years ago, I attended the WCA gathering in Chicago because I had a longing to be with people who believed in the power of Christ to not just make disciples, but to transform lives. I came a little skeptical, because I didn’t want to join something that was against anything. I wanted to be a part of a Christ-centered movement that truly loved people, a movement that made a place for people to encounter God no matter where they were on their journey, and create a space for them to fall in love with Christ – for them to receive the messy grace that was offered.
We are at a time in in our denomination where we have to decide if Jesus was a prophet and nice teacher that taught us how to love well or is Jesus the Messiah, the Savior of the World. Is Jesus the Christ, the promised one who takes away the sins of the world or is He simply a good person who is okay with leaving us in a “You’re Okay, I’m okay world,” when we know down deep in our soul that we are not okay.
Do we go on having the form of religion, without belief in the power of our Savior for salvation and transformation? While ministry is contextual – the way we reach people and the way we express the gospel – the Good News is not contextual!
Jesus Christ is our savior. He spoke hard truth to the woman at the well, but he covered it with messy grace. “Go and sin no more…”
We are not talking about banishing people who hurt us, whose lives don’t align perfectly with scripture. If that were the case could any of us be in the house of the Lord? We are talking about allowing Christ’s redeeming love to transform us – all of us, you and me.
The Rev. Dr. Leah Hidde-Gregory is the District Superintendent and Dean of the Cabinet of the Central Texas Annual Conference.
by Steve | Jan 7, 2019 | Jan-Feb 2019, Magazine Articles
By Bishop Mike Lowry –
A legend arises out of the mist of early Christian lore of a crucial turning point in the life of the infant church which merits reflection on this occasion. Like most legends it carries a core kernel of truth. So compelling is the story that it was made into an award-winning movie entitled Quo Vadis in 1951.
In The Rise of Christianity, scholar Rodney Stark records the following:
“In the ‘Acts of Peter’ [a mid-second century Christian writing] we read that an upper-class Roman wife and convert sent word that Peter should flee Rome as he was to be seized and executed. For a time, Peter resisted their pleas to flee: ‘Shall we act like deserters, brethren?’ he says. But they argue with him, ‘No, it is so that you can go on serving the Lord.’ Reluctantly Peter agreed. Putting on a disguise, he begins to flee the great center of the Roman Empire. As Peter exits the city gates, to his shock he sees the Lord entering this citadel of imperial might. ‘Lord,’ Peter asks, ‘where are you going (quo vadis)?’ And the Lord said to him, ‘I am going to be crucified.’ And Peter said to him, ‘Lord, are you being crucified again?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Peter, I am being crucified again.’ The ‘Acts of Peter’ records the following: ‘Peter came to himself; and he saw the Lord ascending into Heaven; then he returned to Rome, rejoicing and giving praise to the Lord, because he said, “I am being crucified.’”
Back among the followers, Peter told them what had taken place and of his new resolve to be crucified. They again tried to dissuade him, but he explained that they were now to serve as the “foundation” so that they might “plant others through him.” In the crucifixion account that follows, Peter (crucified upside down at his own request) speaks at length from the cross to a crowd of onlooking Christians about the power of faith in Christ.
We who gather this day stand again at the city gate. We too converse with good, well-meaning colleagues who believe deeply in a different path to faithfulness. We too, just as Peter so long ago, this day encounter Christ before us. The question put by Peter lingers in the air over our gathering: “Quo Vadis” – “where are you [we] going?”
It is here, leaning on the gate pillars of conviction and commitment, that we must pause to seek again the guidance and insight of those first Christ followers. It is here we are bid to stop, worship, pray, reflect, and anchor ourselves again in the heart, mind, and fellowship of the One crucified for our sake, and for the sake of this bruised and battered world.
Focus with me on the Apostle Paul’s writing to Christians at the heart of the Empire. He anchors himself, those first followers, and we 21st century followers in the gospel. “That’s why I’m ready to preach the gospel…. I’m not ashamed of the gospel: it is God’s own power for salvation” (Romans 1:15-16).
Scholars tell us that the claim to be unashamed of the gospel carries a distinctive weight and witness in Roman culture. That culture was built along lines of status, standing, and shame. Shame represented the disgusting opposite of honor.
Paul takes the very concept of shame and stands it on its head. It is a challenge flung boldly into the face of society’s false presumptions and personal predilections. No wonder the gospel will be called a “scandal” and “foolishness” by Paul in 1 Corinthians.
Our situation today is not as dissimilar from the writing of Paul’s letter to the Romans as we are inclined to think. Make no mistake. The days of casual Christianity are over. The same issue of deep faithfulness is upon us. Once again, we are in a time when to be Christian is to be seen as quaint, backwards, and scientifically ignorant. For some, it is even a sign of being mean spirited and bigoted. And here we must pause for a moment to confess that we have brought some of this on by ourselves through a narrow-minded refusal to love those who disagree and more often than we would like, a coarse indifference to the hurting, hungry, and homeless, both physically and spiritually. Yet surely the response to our appropriate confession is not abject surrender to the whims of our hedonistically saturated civilization. Dean Inge’s famous quote rightly reminds us that “Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself [or herself] a widower [or widow] in the next.”
Is it not time to admit that instead of being the transformer of culture we have been transformed by our culture? To borrow an insight from James Davidson Hunter’s To Change the World, we have steadily sacrificed a Wesleyan commitment to sanctification for purposes of cultural acceptance and the result has been to steadily be marginalized by the culture itself. Is it not passed time to declare that the day of cultural accommodation is over?
We gather at the city gate, the intersection of Christ and Culture. Let this be our grace filled witness: “So don’t be ashamed of the testimony about the Lord or of me, his prisoner,” writes Paul. “Instead, share the suffering for the good news, depending on God’s power” (2 Timothy 1:8).
Bishop Mike Lowry is the Resident Bishop of the Central Texas Annual Conference/Fort Worth Episcopal Area.
by Steve | Jan 7, 2019 | Jan-Feb 2019, Magazine Articles
By Madeline Henners –
God has deepened and strengthened within me the conviction that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. It’s the truth that transcends all nations, all generations, all denominations. The truth of Christ is something to earnestly contend for and eagerly seek with all your heart.
The Lord called me to contend for the faith. That’s what Methodism’s founder John Wesley did in his day. He contended for truth and for the lost souls with that truth. We’ve been given the Holy Spirit so that we can contend for the truth even in the midst of the struggle we’re in and strife we’re facing. This is the time we pray together. This is the time when we call our church into holiness and accountability. We can restore greater order to the church, but if we don’t have the revival power of the Holy Spirit, we’ll still be stuck.
We have a rich spiritual heritage in Methodism. There are four characteristics of John Wesley’s ministry that we definitely need for the future of Methodism.
One is the charismatic nature of revival that even shocked Wesley. He didn’t expect it to rock his own view of God, but it did. When he experienced the Holy Spirit and people started shaking in conviction, it helped him see God’s work in a whole new way.
Two, Wesley was a fervent defender of the faith. In his dialogues with his Calvinist colleagues about the intricacies of our theology, Wesley’s engagement was marked by grace.
Three, there was a discipline of accountability to holiness and faithfulness. We cannot have a church without accountability. In addition to calling for our leaders to be accountable, we need to ask ourselves if we are personally accountable
Four, Wesley went to the people outside the church walls to share his faith. He went begrudgingly at first, but he went. He was astounded. Although doors to some congregations were closed to him, the call on his life was so strong he preached in the fields and saw the power of the Holy Spirit fall. And lives by the thousands were changed. Wesley travelled hundreds of thousands of miles across England on a horseback. Nothing could stop his mission of contending for Christ.
Jesus is always relevant. He is the only way for truth and freedom.
The only way we’re going to navigate the future of Methodism is when we ask, “Lord, what is my next step?” And not just my next step for me and my church but for us as a global denomination. For my brothers and sisters in Africa and in the Philippines. We’re a global connection. How do we navigate this together through discernment of the Holy Spirit?
Despite the pangs of anxiety, we need to remember that Jesus is still on his throne. He is not despairing. Instead, he is inspiring, empowering, and equipping us.
The Rev. Madeline Henners is an elder in the Rio Texas Annual Conference currently pursuing her doctorate at United Theological Seminary.
by Steve | Jan 7, 2019 | Jan-Feb 2019, Magazine Articles
By David F. Watson –
The idea that there are parts of the biblical canon that we need to disregard is nothing new. It’s a theme we’ve seen again and again through Christian history. And every time it’s been a mistake.
I get it, though. I understand the impulse to act like those parts of the Bible we don’t like or we don’t know what to do with just don’t count. There are some parts of the Bible, after all, that are really cutting against the grain of the world we live in today. Conventional wisdom tells us that these ideas are out of date. They just don’t work. We know a better way. You know what passages I’m talking about, right?
Passages like: “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44) or “Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all” (Romans 12:17) or “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5).
I mean, how culturally out of step do you have to be? Isn’t that absurd? How can we believe that today? It was probably okay for people in the ancient world, but… well… back then they didn’t have … (insert here the political party you don’t like). Those people deserve whatever nastiness they get.
You see, those passages are hard for me – passages about loving our enemies and meekness. Those aren’t my defaults. It sure would be easier if Scripture really wasn’t authoritative, or we were free to get rid of the parts we wanted. But we aren’t. The very reason we need a canon – a rule or measuring rod – is that we are prone to go astray, and we need the revelation of God to guide us.
I don’t know what the future holds for the United Methodist Church. Things are pretty messed up. And in the midst of all of this controversy, in the midst of all of this deep disagreement, the Bible forces me to remember that the people I disagree with, people I may get really mad at, are so important to God that Christ died for them. And in those times when I’ve tried to hurt the people who hurt me, when I’ve returned evil for evil, when I haven’t shown meekness, but succumbed to pride or anger – Scripture calls me to confess my sin and repent.
Dr. David F. Watson is academic dean and professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio.
