by Good News | Aug 6, 2021 | July/August 2021, Magazine, Magazine Articles
The Rev. Rob Renfroe, president of Good News
By Rob Renfroe –
Will we hold General Conference in 2022? That’s the question many people are asking. The simple answer is we must. And we can.
This year, the most vocal progressive church in my annual conference, the Texas Annual Conference, requested and was granted disaffiliation. It will join the United Church of Christ, a denomination that has no ties with our Wesleyan heritage.
Last year, the second largest congregation in our conference left. It is a traditionalist church with a pre-COVID weekly worship attendance of 3,000.
Outside of Texas we are witnessing the same exodus. The largest progressive church in the country, Glide Memorial in San Francisco, disaffiliated earlier this year. Asbury Memorial Church in Savannah, Georgia, left in 2020 explicitly because of United Methodism’s stance on marriage and sexuality. Three smaller progressive churches in Maine are in the process of leaving the New England Conference. UM News Service reports that 51 congregations disaffiliated from the UM Church in 2020.
Two traditionalist midwestern megachurches have also disaffiliated. Granger Community Church in Indiana, with a weekly worship attendance of nearly 4,000, and multi-campused Christ Church in Illinois, with a weekly attendance of well over 2,000, have both departed.
The longer we wait to resolve our differences, the more opportunity there will be for mistreatment of congregations, real or imagined. The largest church in Georgia, Mt. Bethel in Marietta, has announced its intention to leave because its senior pastor was to be removed without the church or the pastor being consulted. The largest church in New Jersey (a Korean congregation) has split for a similar reason. And three Korean churches in Southern California are at odds with their bishop and district superintendents because their pastors have been told they would be removed. (See article on page 36.)
Of course, it’s not just churches; it’s people, too. We are told that some persons are leaving UM churches or not joining because they cannot be associated with a denomination that does harm to LGBTQ persons. Every week our office receives notice from long-time Methodists that they are leaving the denomination because they can no longer sit under the ministry of a pastor or a bishop they believe is preaching a gospel that is contrary to what God has revealed in Scripture.
Some of the exiting churches are uniting with other Wesleyan denominations. Some are not. Most of our members who are leaving are joining Baptist or non-denominational churches.
Whether we are progressive, “centrist,” or traditionalist, we all believe there is something very special about our Wesleyan witness that prioritizes God’s grace and emphasizes his call to holiness of heart and life. The longer we wait to hold General Conference and adopt the Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace through Separation, the more churches and members we will lose to the Wesleyan way and the weaker our witness will be.
We must end our division and move on. That means General Conference must meet in 2022.
But, can we? What if delegates outside the United States are not fully vaccinated and are unable to travel? Or they cannot receive visas to come to this country? Good News is encouraging overseas delegates to get vaccinated wherever possible. We are working with others to try to ensure visas will be available to delegates and others.
But what if, despite all of our efforts, international travel is still impossible and an in-person General Conference cannot take place with all our international delegates present? Then a virtual or a hybrid General Conference can and should be held. Is that really do-able? Of course, it is. Corporations hold meetings with hundreds of their employees in scores of different countries every day. They have found the required technology to hold such meetings.
The reason these companies did not decide that virtual meetings are too difficult to pull off is simple. They want to make money. The desire for greater profits has been sufficient for corporations to find or develop the technology required to conduct detailed, multinational meetings. And if we do not do the same, it will only be because the Kingdom of God is not as important to United Methodists as making money is to corporate America.
Nearly every capital city in the world has a hotel near its major airport with sufficient technology for delegates to connect securely with General Conference. Delegates could stay in those hotels at no greater cost to the church than the hotels in Minneapolis. And whatever additional technological costs may be required will be more than offset by the savings of not having to pay for air travel to the United States.
Some of us have been calling for separation since 2004. It has taken others of us longer to reach the same conclusion. But the vast majority of our representatives were prepared to vote on the Protocol in 2020. We gave the Commission on General Conference the benefit of the doubt when GC 2020 was postponed, and we understood their concern that equal access to technology and full participation at the Conference might not be possible for all delegates.
But it is now time for the Commission to be understanding of us. The Church is hurting. We’re losing congregations and members. Our Wesleyan witness is being weakened. We need the Protocol to be passed. We need to adopt it no later than 2022. It can be done and it must be done.
by Good News | Aug 6, 2021 | July/August 2021, Magazine, Magazine Articles
Blood-stains from World War II on the pews of the church-turned-combat-hospital in Angoville-au-Plain, France. Photo by Bob Kaylor.
By Bob Kaylor
Driving through the countryside of the Normandy region of France feels a bit like entering the world of an animated Walt Disney film. The green fields, bushy hedgerows, lolling cows, and medieval-period stone houses, churches, and barns call to mind many stories that we learn as kids – stories that begin, “Once upon a time…”
A few years ago, I chose this area because the D-Day battlefields have been a place on my bucket list that I have always wanted to visit. We based ourselves in Sainte Mere Eglise, the tiny village where the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions landed in the early morning hours of June 6, 1944. An effigy of Private John Steele of the 101st and his shredded parachute still hangs from the church’s bell tower, commemorating where he landed on the roof that night. During that early morning, this sleepy Norman village quickly became a maelstrom as paratroopers landed in the midst of stunned villagers and scrambling Germans who had been fighting a house fire. The town looks today much like it did in 1944, but with a few more cafes, ice cream shops, and memorabilia stores.
I had arranged an all-day private tour with a local guide, Monica Baan, a Dutch resident of Saint Mere Eglise, who was very knowledgeable and who spent a lot of time interviewing veterans of D-Day, most of whom are gone now. The stories I had read in a myriad of history books suddenly came to life as we walked through the town and then drove to places like Utah Beach, Pointe du Hoc, Omaha Beach, and even to Brecourt Manor where Easy Company and Lt. Dick Winters of Band of Brothers fame fought their first engagement. It was stirring to visit those sites and be reminded of the immense task at hand that day for these soldiers, sailors, and airmen.
As someone with a passion for military history, I knew a lot about what took place, but Monica filled in some gaps with stories I had never heard. While driving through the Norman countryside, she stopped by a little church in the village of Angoville-au-Plain, a place so small that it’s barely noticeable in the midst of the bucolic backdrop of farms and fields. “I want to tell you a story you probably have never heard,” she said. We went through the side door of a small 11th century Catholic church into a quiet sanctuary where the story took place.
In the early morning hours of D-Day, thousands of U.S. paratroopers were scattered across Normandy and small crossroad villages like Angoville-au-Plain suddenly became hotly contested territory. As the wounded began to cry for help, two medics from the 101st, Robert Wright and Kenneth Moore, looked to set up an aid station and the village church seemed to be the best available option. They set about gathering the wounded from both sides into the church using a handcart and wheelbarrow they found, often exposing themselves to enemy fire in the process. They used the pews of the church as hospital beds and, incredibly, there are still several of those wooden benches in use that continue to show the stains of blood where those wounded were treated.
A hole in the roof, still stuffed with canvas, and a shattered tile on the floor are remnants of the intense fighting around the church where a mortar round entered the sacred space but failed to detonate. As the battle raged back and forth, American paratroopers were forced to retreat from the village and the medics faced a difficult decision. Their lieutenant wanted to withdraw them, but Wright and Moore insisted on staying to tend to the wounded, even if it meant their capture by the enemy.
Robert Wright described the scene in the church on the evening of D-Day: “By the evening we had 75 of them (wounded personnel and one local infant, in the church). Our own folk had come to tell us that they could not stay any longer. So we were left with the wounded. A German Officer soon arrived and asked if I could tend to his wounded too. We accepted. During the night the churchyard was the scene of another battle. Two of our casualties died. But among those I could tend, none lost their lives. I tended all sorts of wounds, some were skin deep but others were more serious abdominal cases.”
The battle raged outside for three days, with the village changing hands several times. All the while, Wright and Moore kept tending the wounded from both sides. At one point, several Germans stormed through the door of the church, but seeing that the medics were treating wounded from both sides they quietly left and marked the door with a Red Cross. In another instance, a German soldier came seeking treatment but Wright and Moore had established a rule that no weapons would be allowed in the church. They refused to treat the German until he added his weapon to the growing pile outside the church door. He would eventually do so and come under their care.
The windows of the church were all blown out and Wright was hit by a piece of the falling ceiling. He would receive a Purple Heart for it, but it was a medal he only grudgingly accepted. On June 8, a couple of days into the fighting, two Germans who had been in the bell tower of the church since before D-Day finally came down and surrendered to Wright and Moore, who immediately put them to work. The medics tended the wounded for 3 days straight with no break and no sleep, short on supplies and under constant fire, but they saved some 80 lives in the sanctuary of this little church. Many other lives would be birthed in the future families of those whom they saved. The pews that had been built for saving souls became the place where people broken by conflict and pain found salvation of their bodies as well.
As I listened to Monica spin out this true story, it occurred to me that Wright and Moore were doing the ultimate form of pastoral ministry in that holy place. They had been baptized by fire and ordained by duty to continue their work. They were priests officiating over a sacrament of broken bodies and shed blood. Their tireless work revealed a much deeper truth about what the church is about – a hospital for broken people, no matter their “side” or whether they are combatants or innocent civilians. These priestly medics seemed to understand this instinctively to the point at which even their enemies recognized the importance of the mission. They were being the church, not just using one for an aid station.
With this story echoing in my soul, I began to have a deeper awareness of the wounded people I saw around me. I noticed them walking around places like London and Paris, standing in doorways puffing a cigarette, or crammed into a pub looking for some solace or community. I saw it in the hollow eyes of business people walking quickly to a job they might have hated and in the immigrant trying to find his way in a strange new land. Casualties are stacking up in a culture where people have become commodities and pawns in a consumeristic war for their bodies and souls. What sort of ministry will reach them?
It will be the kind of ministry that will risk everything to save the people around us, no matter who they are. I loved the way one pastor put it in his welcome at one church I visited that summer: “If you’re our guest today, we want you to know that this is a place where it’s OK to not be OK. But our hope is that you don’t want to stay in that not-OK place. We love you enough to tell you the capital ‘T’ truth about Jesus Christ.” That’s a welcome for all – an invitation to add our weapons and conflicts to the pile outside and come inside to be made whole.
I spent the first part of my life and ministry as a soldier – a soldier bearing weapons of war and then the sword of the Word of God, which I have wielded in defense of the faith. Those are both honorable occupations, but standing in that little church in Normandy I felt a conviction that what the world needs the church to be right now is more of an aid station, and pastors to be more like medics. The cultural battles might continue to rage around us, but we have a job to do. It’s not to preserve a pristine institution, but to be the kind of place where blood stains on the pews remind us that our work is about saving lives, both bodies and souls.
Robert Wright would return to Normandy in 2002 for the dedication of a monument to what he and Moore did during those three days in June. He died in 2013 and is buried in the little cemetery outside that church in Angoville-au-Plain under a simple marker that reads “R.E.W.” He wanted his final resting place to be near this sanctuary of life that he and his friend created in the midst of horror and death.
I loved that this little church didn’t fix the holes, patch up the floor, or scrub down the pews after the war. The missing pieces of stone on the walls that were taken off by bullets and shrapnel haven’t been paved over. They did replace the windows, but with a tribute to these two medics who became saints. This holy place is now a monument to the kind of church God has called his church to be.
Bob Kaylor is Lead Pastor of Tri-Lakes United Methodist Church in Monument, Colorado. He is a member of the Good News Board of Directors and a council member of the Wesleyan Covenant Association. Dr. Kaylor is the co-host of the WCA podcast called Holy Conversations.
by Good News | Aug 6, 2021 | July/August 2021, Magazine, Magazine Articles, Uncategorized
By B.J. Funk –
“It is always just possible that Jesus Christ meant what he said when he told us to seek the secret place and to close the door,” C.S. Lewis observed in God in the Dock.
In the Beatitudes, Jesus said, “And when you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they will be seen by people. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But as for you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:6, NASB).
When my two sons were little boys, I gave them each a drawer at a table in their room. That drawer was theirs only. I called it their Special/Secret Drawer. They were young – ages five and three – and it gave them joy to have their own special place. Their own crayons, their own stamp collection, etc. I don’t know why it worked so well, but it did.
At that same time, I had my own Special/Secret Drawer in our guest bedroom. Into that drawer, I stuffed page after page of my hurtful marriage. I wrote a lot about my pain, my broken heart, and also a lot about what God was teaching me. I read books that I knew would give me spiritual strength.
The book I clung to was Dennis Bennett’s book, Nine O’Clock in the Morning. Bennett, an Episcopal priest, found himself in a spiritual wilderness. Along with his wife, Rita, he shared the fire that led to a longed-for renewal. This now classic story tells how the Charismatic Movement began and swept into churches across America.
I was in a spiritual wilderness. I could not sleep. I lost weight rapidly. I cried to the Lord for help.
The title of Bennett’s book is taken from a New Testament episode and the words of the Apostle Peter right after the Holy Spirit descended on the small group gathered and waiting for the Lord’s guidance. When they came into the streets, they were swaying and stumbling and so they were accused of being drunk. Actually, they were woozy with the power of the Spirit. Peter corrected them.
“These men are not drunk, as you suppose,” he said. “It’s only nine o’clock in the morning” (Acts 2:15). Then Peter explained that the prophet Joel had prophesied this very thing, that God said through Joel that he would, in the last days, pour out his Spirit on all people. That’s when the church was born, and three thousand people were added to their roll on that very day.
I began meeting the Lord each morning before the boys got up. There, he bathed me in love. I learned that, as C.S. Lewis said, Jesus implores us to pull away and go to God in secret. He would reward us.
That marriage lasted five more years before my husband divorced the boys and me. I include the boys in that statement because, by his choice, their dad has not seen them in thirty years.
But that’s not really the point of this article. I believe that my special times with my Lord in those early morning hours were the real reason I didn’t hit bottom five years later. The Holy Spirit had become real to me. And in all of the feelings of loneliness and betrayal that would come to me again, I knew I would make it. I threw away everything in that drawer.
In many churches, the Holy Spirit is ignored or feared. Yet when we ask him to baptize us with his Spirit, we find a life with Jesus that we had not known before. And by the way, he has never required me to do anything that would embarrass me. He is a Gentleman. My walk with him is between a Gentleman and a Lady.
Oswald Chambers says, “The Holy Spirit makes real in me all that Jesus did for me.” The United Methodist Church needs the power of the Holy Spirit to invade our lives with depth, joy, and power. And we would all welcome a 3,000 member surge. Dear Lord, let it be.
B.J. Funk is Good News’ long-time devotional columnist and author of It’s A Good Day for Grace.
by Good News | Aug 5, 2021 | July/August 2021, Magazine, Magazine Articles
By Max Wilkins –
At TMS Global, we talk a lot about “joining Jesus in his mission.” But what, exactly, is that mission? Maybe you’ve wondered that, too. In recent decades, parts of the church in North America have watered down the mission of Jesus until anyone who is doing anything even remotely helpful or is simply being nice to others is thought to be on mission.
From its inception, however, the actual mission of Jesus has been about one thing: making disciples. Jesus spent the entirety of his earthly ministry making disciples. And as he gathered with his disciples on the evening before he was crucified, he prayed to his heavenly Father: “I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do” (John 17:4).
It is essential to note that Jesus had not yet been to the cross, much less risen from the dead. He had much remaining work to do. But he had made disciples. And it says something about the importance the Lord places on disciple-making that he would indicate that this was the work his Father sent him to do, and that by doing it, he had brought glory to his Father on earth. How remarkable that Jesus would now entrust this God-glorifying mission to us! Yet, that is exactly what he does.
The final words in Matthew’s gospel have come to be widely known as the Great Commission. It is understood by the church that in these words Jesus is giving marching orders to those who would join him in his mission.
“Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age’” (Matthew 28:18–20).
There is a command in these verses, and only one. I have had the opportunity to share with communities of believers in dozens of countries around the world, and I commonly ask them: “What is the command in the Great Commission?” Nearly 100 percent of the time the immediate and enthusiastic answer is: “Go!”
Many years ago, the late Christian singer Keith Green recorded a song entitled “Jesus Commands Us to Go.” It is a beautiful song, and the song’s sentiments are shared by many passionate believers. It is, however, also theologically incorrect. The Great Commission does not command us to go. We know this because the text is handed down to us in Greek, a language in which command verbs have their own form. When looking at this passage in Greek, it becomes clear: the only command in the entire passage is “make disciples.” In fact, Jesus seems to assume that those who follow him would not need to be commanded to go. Movement is more or less implied in the act of following. A better translation of this passage in English would be something like: “As you are going … make disciples!”
The mission of Jesus is to make disciples. Period. And while there are thousands and thousands of ways to make disciples, and we can utilize many platforms to accomplish this vital work, not everything that is nice and helpful is also disciple-making. It is essential that those who would live lives worthy of the calling of Jesus be about the work of making disciples. It is the only mission that ultimately matters, and the one that brings glory to God on the earth.
The good news is that we are not on our own as we live into this mission. Paul reminds the believers in Thessalonica that it is the power of God that makes the mission possible. These outcomes are both accomplished “by his power” (2 Thessalonians 1:11).
At TMS Global our mission statement calls us to join Jesus in his mission, but we understand that mission to be making disciples. Thus, all TMS Global cross-cultural workers are engaged in disciple-making regardless of their platform for ministry.
Max Wilkins is the president and CEO of TMS Global. This column is adapted from his latest book, Focusing My Gaze: Beholding the Upward, Inward, Outward Mission of Jesus. To learn more, visit seedbed.com/focusingmygaze, or inside cover.
by Good News | Jul 28, 2021 | July/August 2021, Magazine, Magazine Articles
The Rev. Angela Pleasants prepares participants of the WCA Legislative Assembly for communion. WCA photo by Katy Patterson.
By Angela Pleasants –
In addition to being a local pastor, I am also a chaplain for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department in North Carolina.
A couple of weeks ago, I was in my sergeant’s office watching a video of Mark Gungor, a popular speaker and minister, using two mannequin heads as props in a sermon. One head was male. The other was female. After jokingly doing the sign of the cross, he pointed to the female head and tried to explain how women think. He described the female brain as intricate as an internet expressway. “Women can think of many things at one time,” he said. All of our emotions get involved. We hop from one subject to the next and to the next.
Then he pointed to the male head and said that a man’s brain has little boxes in it. There’s one thing in one box. Men have a box for the spouse. A box for the children. Another for the job. None of the boxes can touch. “Men open one box at a time and that’s what you deal with,” said the minister. You open one, and then the next, and then the next. Jokingly, he said men even have a box in the basement for the mother-in-law.
“Also,” the pastor said, “men have what’s called the Nothing box.” That’s right, the Nothing box and in that box is nothing. That’s why when wives ask husbands what they are thinking about they can so often say, “Nothing.”
The minister’s humorous illustration made me think about the correlation between how men keep track of the boxes in their brains and the way that our society encourages us to put people into boxes. We all are tempted to do it. We want to try to put people in a box, close it up with a nice bow, and put a label on it. Why? Because it makes us feel better when we can put someone in a box and label that person. Therefore, it validates us.
Of course, that is a secular world view that tries to box and label people. The sad part is that it has trickled into the body of Christ. My question is, “Why have we in the body of Christ today permitted the secular worldview to dictate, define, and identify who we are?”
Paul said, “Do not be conformed to the world.” Why? Because the world is not yet redeemed. It is not spiritually discerning. It does not hear from God. Yet we still allow it to dictate how the body of Christ is supposed to think.
When Jesus came up out of the waters at his baptism, the voice of heaven names who he is as the Son of God. “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:16). Then Jesus goes into the wilderness and is tempted for 40 days. After that time of temptation, he begins to preach. “Repent! For the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” Then he begins to teach and heal.
The Sermon on the Mount is our defining moment as the body of Christ. It begins, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God” (Matthew 5:3). In other words, blessed are you who know that we are spiritually bankrupt and that we need something outside of ourselves. That is Jesus Christ.
Jesus goes on to teach about salt and light, and how our righteousness should exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. He teaches us about humility, to seek the kingdom of God, and not to be driven by selfish ambition.
Jesus said, “Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.” Matthew reports, “When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, for he taught with real authority – quite unlike their teachers of religious law” (Matthew 7:24-28 NLT).
He was teaching about the foundation. If you did not dig about 10 feet into the bedrock, the storms would come and knock the house over. Storms hit all the houses – those that had foundations at the bedrock and those that were merely on the shallow sand. Which one will be left standing? The one on the solid foundation.
Of course, Jesus was not just talking about the physical building of brick and mortar. He was talking about a spiritual foundation.
To the crowd of his day, Jesus was saying, You have heard the shallow teachings that have been built on the shifting sands of the religious leaders of the day – the scribes and the Pharisees. You can choose the path of the “establishment,” and the path of ease and comfort, and remain on the sinking sand of the religious leaders of your day.
Or, you can follow the path with a solid foundation. It may not be easy. It definitely won’t be comfortable. The way is narrow. There will be persecution. There will be attacks. But the end result will be eternal life.
Jesus gave them a choice. Which way will you choose? The sinking sand or the solid foundation?
That is the choice we have today as we live in the kingdom of God. We can choose the sinking sand of the establishment. We can continue to be comfortable and at ease.
Or we can continue to stand firm in the solid rock of Jesus Christ, standing firm in the gospel truth. I love when Paul said, “I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” The choice is ours.
When Jesus spoke those words on the Sermon on the Mount, this was the defining moment for those who made the choice to enter into the kingdom of God through Jesus Christ. What do I mean by defining moment? It was the moment where Jesus set forth the theme and nature of the kingdom. It was also showing God’s grace and showing how Christians are to live.
Saints, we have a defining moment right now. What is going to be our choice? Jesus said that when we choose the way of the kingdom of God, we are blessed. We are blessed when we come to him realizing that we are poor in the spirit. We are blessed when we mourn over our sinful nature, knowing that he is the only one that can heal and forgive us. We are blessed when we are merciful. We are blessed when we serve as peacemakers. We are blessed when they persecute us.
Jesus said we will be lied to, mocked, and persecuted, but rejoice because it happened to the prophets. The kingdom of Heaven will be ours. This is our defining moment. Let us celebrate that together.
Angela Pleasants is a United Methodist clergyperson in the Western North Carolina Annual Conference. She also serves as the chair of the Racial and Ethnic Equality Taskforce of the Wesleyan Covenant Association. This article is adapted from her address to the Wesleyan Covenant Association 2021 Global Gathering.
by Good News | Jul 26, 2021 | July/August 2021, Magazine, Magazine Articles
The Rev. Dr. Carolyn Moore addresses the 2021 Global Gathering of the Wesleyan Covenant Association. WCA photo by Katy Patterson.
By Carolyn Moore –
A well-known Reformed pastor and theologian once said, “God is always doing 10,000 things in your life, and you may be aware of three of them.” It’s a good line. It opens up the creative pores and asks what are the 9,997 things God is doing around me right now that I’m not even aware of? What relationship is he repairing? What movement is he birthing? What miracle is already in the works? What if God is doing far more in your life and you’re not even aware of it?
In Acts 16, Paul is sitting in a room in Troas feeling some dejection. Things had not gone so well on this trip. Good ideas were met with contention and doors were closing. It starts with the simple suggestion that they go back and visit the believers in all the towns where they’d started churches and already preached. Then they started to brainstorm who they’d take with them. Barnabas thought they should take John Mark. Paul didn’t. That debate erupted into a huge blow up. We could spend a lot of time psychologizing this scene and deciding who was right and who was being ridiculous but if we go down that road we’ll miss one of those 9,997 things God doesn’t want us to miss: The Holy Spirit directs the mission – not us.
Paul wanted to visit the believers but you don’t get the sense that was the mission in the mind of the Holy Spirit. “Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas” (Acts 16:6).
For the lack of an open-door, Paul is left to wonder what in the world God is up to. Here’s this go-getter apostle trying to win souls for the kingdom, begging for an opportunity to do what he does best. And there is God slamming every door that distracts Paul. Slowly the Holy Spirit nudges Paul towards the coast where he will finally be able to gaze across the sea towards Macedonia and catch a glimpse of God’s heart for the nations.
Every door has a threshold. That is the point of entry at the bottom of a door that leads us from one room to the next. In spiritual terms thresholds mark progress. They represent forward movement in our spiritual maturity. It would make sense that it would be precisely at the thresholds that we experience the most pressure. When I approach a threshold that takes me from one level of intimacy with Christ to a deeper level, I begin to encounter greater pressure right at the threshold itself, just before the breakthrough.
That pressure can sometimes feel overwhelming. There we are waiting for the threshold of a new spiritual place, hearing God’s invitation to come on in. And meanwhile some devilish force is luring us backwards creating pressure against our progress, thresholds, or doorways. Another biblical word-picture is gate.
“Gates are where we win or lose. That’s why Scripture uses gates as the place to be broken through,” writes Barbara Yoder. “We must break through intimidation, faithlessness, fear, hopelessness, despair or whatever else looms like an unconquerable foe at the gates. The threshold is where we either cross over or hold back, opting to be safe in our homes. Yet once we cross over it is where we meet the incredible supernatural power of God to break through before us, victorious over every obstacle. It is after we leap that we begin to possess our inheritance for the current season.”
Paul was sitting at the coast of Troas, this threshold moment being lured by the Holy Spirit through a doorway into Macedonia where he would begin to possess a revolutionary call to take the gospel beyond Asia and into the world. “During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready to go to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them” (Acts 16:9).
That’s so Paul, isn’t it? He is like a spiritual battling ram – breaks down a door, steps over a threshold into a whole new spiritual territory. I don’t know why he didn’t see it coming. I mean he had already preached this moment. In Acts 13, we find him battling the incessant complaints of religious people who are anxious over the mixing of races and evangelization of foreigners. Paul’s response to them draws from Isaiah’s word to the Israelites, reminding them that truth is not a private affair.
Paul quotes from Isaiah 49, “For this is what the Lord has commanded us: ‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’” This word moves us right up to a threshold, a doorway, because most of us are content to nestle down inside our own salvation and be comfortable. But Paul won’t have it. He needs us to hear the prophet’s word as our call too. ”I will make you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6 ESV).
Dr. Tim Tennent teaches us that the missionary task is bigger than we tend to give it credit for. “When we see the church being planted cross-culturally we begin to see that the gospel is being brought to new people groups, and that is the missionary task,” he writes. God is always stretching us towards the ends of the earth, towards the ones who don’t yet know.
“Even if every Christian in the world became an evangelist and they witness to everybody they knew, and everyone they knew became Christians, and they themselves became evangelists, even after you had a tremendous movement to Christ all over the world, there would still be over a billion people who had never even heard the name of Jesus,” Tennent writes. “Why? Because they had no friends or neighbors to evangelize them, to speak the word of God to them. So however vibrant the church’s life may become in various parts of the world where the church is planted, however vivacious the people’s ministry may be, however mature the church’s growth, the world will not be reached, the Great Commission will not be fulfilled, until people cross cultural barriers and bring the gospel to those who have not heard it.”
That’s why the threshold moment in the life of Paul is so critical. There he stands at the far edge of the movement. Paul, maybe the only follower of Jesus bold enough to do such a thing, opens the door so the world could be introduced to a global Messiah. Why? Because if Jesus is not Christ for the whole world, he’s not Christ for any of it.
In Acts 16:13 we read, “On the Sabbath we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who gathered there. One of those listening was a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshiper of God … When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. ‘If you consider me a believer of the Lord,’ she said, ‘come and stay at my house.’ And she persuaded us.”
What an example of our thesis that God is doing, 10,000 things. Here is Paul opening up the gospel door for Europe and when he gets there, he finds himself evangelizing women. How bold!
Down by that river sharing the gospel with Lydia, Paul crosses yet another threshold and finds himself on the creation side of Genesis 3 and, by that obedience, God opens the door for Lydia to join the fellowship of biblical women who dared to walk back in the Garden of Eden and claim their call to carry the good news to a lost and hurting world. We thank God for Phoebe, Junia, Priscilla, Mary, Tryphena, and all the women that Paul said worked hard for the Lord.
The first century church proved that when men and women worked together to build the kingdom of God, operating in freedom and in the power and giftedness of the Holy Spirit, the effects of the fall are reversed, and the glories of the gospel are exposed. Paul has a word for the future Global Methodist Church: Don’t forget the Macedonians. Don’t forget the ends of the earth.
Hope above the fog. A few weeks ago, I presided over a funeral in Florida and had the chance to walk on the beach at sunrise and was staring at the horizon, waiting for the sun to break through. That morning, the fog created a band above the horizon.
Staring at the fog line, waiting for the sun to show up, I thought about us and waiting for the dawning of the Global Methodist Church. I also thought about that quote, “God is always doing 10,000 things around us and we are aware of three of them.” And I wondered what if we are waiting for something that has already happened? What if God has already placed his stamp on this vision. Has he already sent it forth into the world like a sun that has already risen above the horizon yet hasn’t broken through the fog? And what if while we’re focused on the dawning of something that God has already blessed to happen, he’s off doing 9,997 things we’re not even aware of yet.
Just as I thought about that, I turned around and saw all of these people staring in the direction of the horizon. There was a door. It wasn’t a physical door, but it was definitely an open door. It was actually rows upon rows of hotels and there were people just waiting to see the sun break over the fog.
Those rooms were full of people who must surely be starving, as I once was, for a better answer to life. Some of them were perishing for lack of it. And I can literally hear the cry, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” So, I stood there looking at the hotels and the fog and wondered and grieved about how much time all of us have spent desperately staring toward a horizon waiting for a sun that has already broken through while a world of lost and hurting people are starving for a better answer.
Be encouraged. Don’t focus on the fog. Focus on the door. Because God is always doing many things in the world and right now, he is inviting us to step through a doorway to become a light to the nations because the world is our parish, and the world is God’s mission.
Carolyn Moore is a United Methodist clergyperson and the founding and lead pastor of Mosaic Church in Evans, Georgia. She also serves as the chairwoman of the Wesleyan Covenant Association Global Council. You can read more of her essays by visiting her webpage (artofholiness.com) and podcast. This article is adapted from her address at the Wesleyan Covenant Association’s Global Gathering in April.
