by Steve | May 26, 2021 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, May-June 2021
A lithograph, of unknown origin or date, illustrates a camp meeting popular in the early 1800s.
By Windfield Bevins –
Methodism swept across the American frontier like an uncontrollable prairie fire. That is hardly how we would describe it today. There are great benefits in considering some of the things that led the decline of Methodism.
What lessons can we learn from the past so we don’t repeat them tomorrow?The first warning we can take from the Wesleyan revival is to observe what can happen to any movement over time. Sadly, some movements, as they become institutionalized, also grow more secular, losing the “evangelical” focus that gave them life in the first place. Many denominations that began as transformative movements eventually became institutionalized, leaving behind their original roots. If the cultural values and beliefs that initially helped the movement grow are not passed down to succeeding generations, this institutionalization will lead to the loss of the gospel focus and of disciple-making.
C.S. Lewis warned against this, saying, “There exists in every church something that sooner or later works against the very purpose for which it came into existence. So we must strive very hard, by the grace of God to keep the church focused on the mission that Christ originally gave it.” The cure for this secularization of the revival spirit, as Lewis suggests, is to develop habits and practices that keep us faithful to the original mission of the church: the call to preach the gospel and make disciples.
We see this pattern repeated throughout history. Many of the great revivals of the past began as Spirit-inspired disciple-making movements, yet over time they became secular institutions. For example, consider the history of the modern university.
Many colleges, including state universities in the United States, started out as Christian institutions to train young people for ministry and Christian service. Schools like Harvard (Puritan), William and Mary (Anglican), Yale (Congregational), and Princeton (Presbyterian) were created for Christian higher education. The Great Awakening led to the founding of Princeton, Brown, Rutgers, and Dartmouth in the mid-eighteenth century, and to the single most prolific period of college founding in American history. Over time, however, the revival spirit that founded these institutions was lost, and most of these former Christian colleges and universities became secular universities with little or no religious affiliation.
Institutionalization. Methodism was one of the greatest and longest-lasting discipleship movements in the history of the church. Yet as Methodism continued to grow, Wesley noticed that the movement was following the patterns of institutionalization. He lamented that this was happening, and he felt that a grim fate might befall the Methodists if they ever lost their zeal.
“I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe or America,” Wesley wrote. “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 the doctrine, spirit, and discipline with which they first set out.”
Sadly, this is exactly what happened to Methodism in the United States. Just one hundred years after the miraculous growth of the movement, there were warning signs of secularization. Today, the United Methodist Church, the descendant of the American Methodist movement, is in rapid decline and on the verge of splitting into factions. What caused this shift, making a large and growing denomination one of the fastest declining?
History teaches us that the church is susceptible to the secularizing tendencies of institutionalization whenever it loses focus on the message and mission of Christ. In The Convergent Church: Missional Worshipers in an Emerging Culture, Alvin Reid and Mark Liederbach observe, “When the church loses, forgets, or fails to emphasize the missional thrust of its purpose … it is a move away from a movement mentality toward what we would describe as institutionalism.”
Whenever movements are transformed into institutional churches, they will begin to reduce the tension they feel with respect to the surrounding culture. There is less emphasis placed on growth and multiplication, and this leads to a loss of growth and the start of a slow decline. This pattern has repeated over and over again throughout the history of the church. And while there are many sociological factors to consider, there are three primary reasons this secularization occurred in the Methodist movement, leading to its decline in North America.
Shift in Preaching. As Methodism became an established church in North America, there was a strong impulse to “keep up” with the more established churches and to become a respectable part of society. Though the movement had grown and multiplied through lay preachers and circuit riders, the days of the traveling preacher on horseback were now replaced by fancy pulpits and robes. According to Methodist historian William Warren Sweet,
“Clergy culture and learning were no longer a monopoly of the Congregationalists, the Presbyterians, and the Episcopalians. Education, refinement, and dignity now characterized the ministry and service of the Methodists.”
This resulted in a shift in the preaching. Clergy moved away from simple messages on sin and salvation to speak about science and politics. Gone were the days of the Methodist camp meeting. Early Methodist preachers had arisen from among the common people, speaking the language of the ordinary man. A generation later, pulpits were filled with clergy who geared their message to a more educated, socially conscious audience.
Over time the pioneering, counter-cultural spirit of the Methodist movement was domesticated. With the rise of educated clergy and increased social status came a further shift away from the original emphasis on holiness and the “methods” of the class meeting. As sociologists Roger Finke and Rodney Stark note, “Their clergy were increasingly willing to condone the pleasures of this world and to de-emphasize sin, hellfire, and damnation; this lenience struck highly responsive cords in an increasingly affluent, influential, and privileged membership. This is, of course, the fundamental dynamic by which sects are transformed into churches, thereby losing the vigor and the high-octane faith that caused them to succeed in the first place.”
Focus on Buildings. One hundred years from its humble beginnings, Methodism in North America had finally arrived. Not only had the Methodists become the largest denomination in the land, they had moved up the social ladder of society and were beginning to attract people of wealth and privilege. They had shifted from meeting in simple, unadorned buildings to constructing large, expensive facilities that rivaled the nicest established church buildings in town. In 1911, a new building for a Methodist congregation in Illinois even began charging $200 for good seats at the church.
These new, fancy buildings were a visible sign that Methodism had moved away from the vision of its founder. Once an upstart sect, it had become one of the established religions of the young nation. Yet while some would see these as positive signs, they were the beginning of the end of the Methodist movement in North America.
Today, you can look at almost any town in North America and find an impressive Methodist church building from this era, yet sadly, most of these have closed or are in the process of closing their doors due to declining membership.
Cutting the Class Meeting. The final nail in the coffin was the demise of the class meeting. From the time of the founding of Methodism, to be called a Methodist meant that you were a member of a class meeting. Yet over time this requirement was lost, and many began to see it as a sign that the movement had begun to falter. In 1856, at the age of seventy-two and in the fifty-third year of his ministry, the famous Methodist circuit rider preacher Peter Cartwright was already lamenting the loss of the class meeting:
“Class meetings have been owned and blessed of God in the Methodist Episcopal Church … For many years we kept them with closed doors, and suffered none to remain in class meeting more than twice or thrice unless they signified a desire to join the Church … Here the hard heart has been tendered, the cold heart warmed with the holy fire; But how sadly are the class meetings neglected in the Methodist Episcopal Church! … Is it any wonder that so many of our members grow cold and careless in religion, and finally backslide? … And now, before God, are not many of our preachers at fault in this matter?”
Reading Cartwright’s words, one can sense the grief of a man who had experienced the exciting energy of the Methodist revival and was now seeing that movement sliding toward institutionalization and into decline.
On my desk is a framed class meeting ticket from 1842 that belonged to a woman named Maria Snyder. Looking at it today, I can’t help but wonder, “What would Maria think of contemporary Methodism?” or “What would John Wesley or Francis Asbury think about the current state of the movement they started?”
Across the Western world, thousands of churches are closing every year. When will we feel grief over the state of our churches? Will a new generation once again heed the call to recover Scriptural Christianity? Might we see another disciple-making revolution spread across our country and around the world?
Winfield Bevins is the director of church planting at Asbury Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. Over the years he has served as a pastor, professor, and church planter. Some of this content is from WinfieldBevins.com, Marks of a Movement: What the Church Today can Learn from the Wesleyan Revival (Zondervan, 2019).
by Steve | May 26, 2021 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, May-June 2021
Terry Mattingly
By Terry Mattingly –
While working on the 1985 book Habits of the Heart, the late sociologist Robert N. Bellah met “Sheila,” who described her faith in words that researchers have quoted ever since.
“I can’t remember the last time I went to church,” she said. “My faith has carried me a long way. It’s Sheilaism. Just my own little voice.” The goal was to “love yourself and be gentle with yourself. … I think God would want us to take care of each other.”
A decade later, during the so-called “New Age” era, researchers described a similar faith approach with this mantra – “spiritual but not religious.” Then in the 21st Century’s first decade, the Pew Research Center began charting a surge of religiously unaffiliated Americans, describing this cohort in a 2012 report with this newsy label – “nones.”
Do the math. “Nones” were 10 percent of America’s population in 1996, 15 percent in 2006, 20 percent in 2014, and 26 percent in 2019. Obviously, these evolving labels described a growing phenomenon in public and private life, said political scientist Ryan Burge of Eastern Illinois University, author of the new book, The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are going. But hidden under that “nones” umbrella are divisions that deserve attention. For example, the 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Study found that 5.7 percent of the American population is atheist, 5.7 percent agnostic, and 19.9 percent “nothing in particular.”
“When you say ‘nones’ and all you think about is atheists and agnostics, then you’re not seeing the big picture,” said Burge. “Atheists have a community. Atheists have a belief system. They are highly active when it comes to politics and public institutions. But these ‘nothing in particular’ Americans don’t have any of that. They’re struggling. They’re disconnected from American life in so many ways.”
In his book, Burge stressed that “nothing in particulars are one of the most educationally and economically disadvantaged groups in the United States today.” This is also a growing slice of the population, with one in 20 Americans becoming “NIPs” during the past decade. While Protestants, at 40 percent, are the largest flock in American religion, the “nothing in particular” crowd is the second largest, at nearly 20 percent. Catholics are close behind at 18 percent.
Several other trends have affected the “nones” phenomenon, noted Burge. For example: Christians who say they never go to church increased from 10 percent in 1993 to above 15 percent in 2018. Meanwhile, America’s liberal “mainline” Protestant churches were 30.8 percent of the population in 1976 – but crashed to 19 percent in 1988 and down to 9.9 percent in 2016. Evangelical Protestants have remained relatively stable at about 21 percent, declining from a peak from 1983-2000. Catholics have varied between 27 and 23 percent, with mass attendance declining.
Most academics, politicos, journalists and even Christian apologists have, when addressing “nones” issues, focused on the most visible forms of this phenomenon, said Burge. It’s easy to find and quote articulate, highly motivated atheists and agnostics in online forums or “woke” secular activists on college and university campuses.
But “nothing in particular” Americans have remained in the shadows and it’s hard to find clear patterns that might explain their beliefs and behaviors. For example, not all “nothing in particular” Americans are unbelievers, strictly defined. One in 10 “NIPs” attend worship services yearly and another 10 percent attend monthly or more. And 25 percent of these Americans say that religion is “somewhat” or “very” important, with only 38.8 percent insisting that religion is “not at all important” in their lives.
“Nothing in particular Americans seem to be stuck. They’re left out. They’re cut off and trapped by globalization and economic forces that are totally beyond their control,” said Burge. “Many are angry, and they have nothing to lose. That’s why this NIP phenomenon is kind of scary to me.”
Terry Mattingly (tmatt.net) leads GetReligion.org and lives in Oak Ridge, Tenn. He is a senior fellow at the Overby Center at the University of Mississippi.
by Steve | May 26, 2021 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, May-June 2021, May/June MJ 2021
Jenifer Jones
By Jennifer Jones –
I almost didn’t go on the “GreenLight” mission trip. I had already participated in a fair number of short-term mission trips and had already visited the country where the team would be going. I was concerned whether the experience would bring me closer to solving the puzzle of what to do with my life – where God was leading me.
At 10 years old, I felt a call to missions after hearing missionaries speak at my church. I felt certain that I would go to college to become a teacher, marry a pastor, and head overseas. This was what I thought you had to do to become a missionary.
Then, just before graduating high school, I felt God saying “no” to missions. I was confused and angry. Had I not heard God’s voice after all? Why would he give me a desire to serve him overseas and not let me go?
I’ve always loved to write, so instead of going to school to become a teacher, I studied to become a journalist. After graduation, I got a job at a fantastic radio station. When it looked like there might be cuts at my workplace, I began looking for other options.
I felt God calling me to a year-long mission trip. “This is it!” I thought. “God is finally letting me go!” I figured I would fall in love with a country, feel the call to move there full-time, and I would be all set. That didn’t happen. But I realized I loved writing about what God was doing and my time as a journalist hadn’t been for nothing after all.
Once back in the United States, I began looking into organizations hiring missionary writers. Nothing felt quite right. A friend suggested I look into Asbury Theological Seminary, and I felt like it was what God wanted me to do. That’s where I was introduced to TMS Global and learned about its “GreenLight” missions trip – a short-term mentorship experience. My teammates and I spent three weeks learning from four cross-cultural
Workers (missionaries) and their children as they interacted with their community, their friends, their employees, and their family.
For parts of the experience, I questioned whether I was called to missions. For example, the needs of the people around us felt very overwhelming. I also questioned my skills. It didn’t always feel like I had much to contribute.
But on one of our last days, our hosts spent time noting positive things they had seen in myself and the other participants. These cross-cultural workers reminded me that just spending time with others could be a powerful contribution. They also affirmed my calling as a missions writer. Ultimately, I realized I did not feel a sense that I was meant to live full-time overseas, at least not right now.
Over the next couple of years, as I finished seminary, a mobilizer with TMS Global continued to work with me to further discern whether it was the right mission organization for me, and if so, what that might look like. She listened as I shared my hopes, goals, dreams, and desires. I could tell that she really cared about me, and not just about filling a spot in the organization. I wanted to tell missions stories. But I also wanted to live closer to my family. My new work at TMS Global incorporates multiple dreams that God had laid on my heart. It is a perfect fit for me.
The road to get where I am now has been long and winding, but I’m able to see how God has worked the various parts of my life and experiences together to prepare me for my current place. So much of my discernment process has been gradual. It has involved paying attention to my passions and talents, circumstances, life experiences, and wisdom from trusted sources. I’m grateful for the people who have guided me. I’m also thankful for experiences like the GreenLight trip that have helped me discern a place in God’s mission just right for me.
Jenifer Jones is a writer who focuses on telling stories about the work God is doing in the world. She’s also a poet. Find her writing at www.jeniferjones.com. If you are interested in someone walking alongside you in your discernment experience, reach out to TMS Global today at go@tms-global.org.
by Steve | May 26, 2021 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, May/June MJ 2021
B.J. Funk
By B.J. Funk –
Joseph was around seventeen when his cruel brothers sold him to a caravan of Ishmaelites on their way to Egypt. These folks were all kin, descending from half brothers Isaac and Ishmael. So much for loving your relatives.
It took 30 days for Joseph and the caravan to arrive in Egypt, and most of that time, Joseph was on foot and likely chained.
Egypt at that time was a land of extremes. There were the very rich and the very poor. The captain of Pharaoh’s guard, Potiphar, bought Joseph.
Potiphar was very rich. He had a huge home, several stories tall, with beautiful balconies and gardens. The rich knew how to spend some money, and they shopped for lavish decorations and furniture! They would never be seen at my yard sale. Or yours.
Joseph joined the other servants, working on the first floor while the family enjoyed the upper floors. Joseph found favor in Potiphar’s eyes because everything he did was successful. So, Potiphar put Joseph in charge of his household and of everything he owned. Because of Joseph, the blessing of the Lord was on Potiphar’s house and on his fields. Potiphar trusted Joseph, which is a miracle in itself because Egyptians despised shepherds. It was an intriguing and amazing occurrence, and God’s hand was all over it. “The Lord was with Joseph, and he prospered.” (Genesis 39: 2)
Potiphar’s wife noticed the dark skin, curly haired, muscular Joseph, and she decided she wanted to be with him. What could it hurt? She was not subtle. “Lie with me,” she said.
Joseph refused. “How could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” (Genesis 39:9). Potiphar’s wife looked puzzled. Wicked? He calls sex outside of marriage wicked? Wherever would he get an idea like that? And what’s this about sinning against God? Where did that come from? Who is this God anyway? She turned the whole scene around, blaming Joseph and bringing Potiphar’s fury. He put Joseph in the dungeon – and that’s where he met grace.
The story of Joseph is so covered with God that I can see him in every line, comma, and period! This is how God works when he is making a leader. He has to put him in the dungeon of life first. Keep him there. Teach him there. Break his pride. Stomp on his rebellious heart. Tear out jealousy, anger, resentment. Teach him to forgive, and wrap it all up with heavy doses of grace. Dungeon grace.
Joseph learned all of these lessons in his dungeon. Though painful and lonely, frightening and scary, Joseph came out of his dungeon a strong man, ready to be used of God. You cannot find any Lifetime, Netflix, or Hollywood movie better than the storyline of how God used a dungeon to make a man. It has drama, loneliness, fear, and survival woven into the storyline.
Growth and leadership happen to a person when God allows the dungeon to shape his heart. Make no mistake. If you want to move forward with God, a dungeon of some sort has to happen. You and I have to be willing to allow him to place us in as many dungeons as necessary until we come out refined, refreshed, redeemed, and ready to do His work. Fast forward to Romans and read what Paul said about troubles. He said suffering was the road to perseverance. “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance” (Romans 5:3).
The dungeon was Joseph’s school and in daily classes of prison life, he learned a lot about himself, a lot about others, and a whole lot about forgiveness. He learned what was important in life and what was not. When Joseph was finally released from the dungeon, he was a different person. The spoiled teenager was replaced by a repentant man. The youth who saw only things that benefited him was now a leader who recognized how he could benefit others. When his brothers came to Egypt for grain because of a famine, he eventually said to them words of forgiveness and life. “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20).
Your dungeon might be a difficult relationship, a financial strain, a rebellious child, or a nagging low self-image. Whatever, ask God to meet you there and to help you make it through. You will find that your dungeon will be the place of your deliverance. Embrace God’s gift – his gift of Dungeon Grace.
by Steve | Mar 18, 2021 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, March/April 2021
Cicely Tyson, 1997. Photo: © John Mathew Smith.
By Steve Beard —
“We don’t have long here, children. Our hopes and aspirations may feel limitless, but our days are finite, our experiences fading in the twinkling of an eye,” observed actress Cicely Tyson in her recent memoir, Just As I Am.
“Death is a love note to the living, to regard every day, every breath, as sacred. ‘What is your life?’ the scriptures ask us. ‘You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes’ (James 4:14). The Spirit is ever beckoning us to heed that wisdom,” Tyson continued, “to get on with what we’ve been put here to do.”
Her autobiography was published one week before she died on January 28. She was 96.
Having stepped into more than 100 different acting roles over her illustrious career, Tyson was as mystically discerning about the characters she would portray as she was confident that God was authoring her “Grand Story Line,” as she called it. “I am a firm believer in divine guidance. Above all, I am God’s child, cradled in his unfailing arms, guided by his infinite wisdom,” she wrote. “Everything that is happening in my life is unfolding exactly as God has intended. There are no coincidences. Rather, there is a loving Savior who holds my future as securely as he does my life, and at every juncture, he is whispering his will, showing me the way.”
Don’t be mistaken into believing that a life with navigation from above is necessarily an easy one. Her story testifies to that. Although she was a celebrated model, actress, and activist, she suffered crass indignities and discrimination as a Black woman. Although her pioneering roles presented her with a public platform, she was simultaneously on the receiving end of the brutality of bigotry.
“To ever heal these deep racial traumas – and seldom has it felt more urgent that we do – we must acknowledge that they indeed still exist, throbbing and tender beneath the surface, spilling over, like molten rage, into the streets,” she wrote. “Turning a blind eye to our history has not saved us from its consequences.”
Through it all, Tyson’s persistent excellence at her craft helped her capture three Emmy Awards, a Tony, and an honorary Oscar. She appeared in more than 25 films, 60 television shows, and 15 Broadway productions. She was honored by the Kennedy Center and awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Tyson believed that the arts could truly be a force for good and expand the civil rights vision. “My art had to both mirror the times and propel them forward,” she wrote. After the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Tyson was the co-founder of the Dance Theater of Harlem. In 1995, a magnet school in East Orange, New Jersey, was renamed the Cicely Tyson School of Performing and Fine Arts.
“I couldn’t have dreamed up a script more compelling than the one that played out for me,” Tyson wrote. “Who just happens to be approached on the street by a total stranger, only to have that man propose modeling, only to have that modeling work become a footbridge to the stage? To some, this might look like happenstance, a sequence of coincidences, a string of disconnected flukes. As I see it, my tide shift, my sharp turnaround, had the Savior’s handprints all over it. His sovereignty was apparent to me. It still is. The same Master who holds the firmaments in the crease of his palms, who commands oceans to recede, who maintains humanity’s entire existence with the mist of his breath – that God, the Source of time itself, the Creator of all life, has forever been directing mine.”
Just As I Am is not a conventional Christian bookstore devotional. That is not its intent. The confident testimony that appears is from one who grimaced through the broken marriage of her parents, her own unwed pregnancy, and her tumultuous romantic relationship with jazz legend Miles Davis. Through shipwrecks and sunrises, she consistently testified to the faithfulness of God.
At twelve, she began playing songs from the church hymnal on the piano. “During long afternoons as the sun’s mango rays painted shadows on our walls, I’d sit hunched over those chipped keys, soothing myself with the message of the hymn that has become my daily meditation: ‘Just as I am, without one plea/ But that Thy blood was shed for me/ And that Thou bid’st me come to Thee/ O Lamb of God, I come! I come.’”
Strong roles. As an actress, Tyson was outspoken about refusing to take parts that demeaned Black people – even if it meant going without work. The roles she did chose, however, accentuated her brilliance. In 1972, she portrayed Rebecca, the wife of a Louisiana sharecropper in Sounder. Tyson won an Emmy for her portrayal in “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” culminating in an unforgettable scene when she sips from a whites-only drinking fountain. Over the years, she played Harriet Tubman, Coretta Scott King, and Castalia in the mini-series “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All.”
In 1977, she became part of television history by playing Kunta Kinte’s mother in the TV series based on Alex Haley’s “Roots.” Airing over eight consecutive nights at the end of January 1977, the series blew apart the Nielsen ratings. At that time, the final episode became the most-watched TV production with 51.1 percent of all American homes tuning in for the epic story.
Fast forward through her seven-decade career and, at the age of 88, Tyson became the oldest person to win a Tony award in 2013 for her role as Mrs. Carrie Watts in the Broadway revival of Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful.” One notable part of Tyson’s performance triggered a newsworthy Broadway reaction when the audience joined Tyson in singing the classic hymn “Blessed Assurance” during the second act.
“From the first note, there’s a palpable stirring among many of the black patrons in the audience, which the play, with its mostly black cast, draws in large numbers,” reported The New York Times. “When Ms. Tyson jumps to her feet, spreads her arms and picks up the volume, they start singing along. On some nights it’s a muted accompaniment. On other nights, and especially at Sunday matinees, it’s a full-throated chorus that rocks the theater.”
The gospel song was a special touchpoint for Tyson. She dedicated a third-row pew at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, her home congregation, to her mother’s memory. The plaque reads, “To mother – Blessed Assurance,” a reference to the beloved hymn.
“On Sundays when I take my seat near her name, I think of all she endured, the many times she surely wanted to give up but pressed onward,” Tyson writes in her book. “I recall her swaying, eyes tightly shut, as the words of that hymn washed through her. ‘This is my story, this is my song,’ she’d belt out during the refrain. ‘Praising my Savior, all the day long.’ Her powerful testimony, grounded in grace and nourished in glory, has since become my own.”
At the age of 93, she gave a message to her home congregation about her religious upbringing. “We were in church from Sunday morning to Saturday night,” she said to laughter in the sanctuary. She played the organ, taught Sunday school, led the choir, and cleaned the church. “I decided at one point that if I ever lived to become a woman, I would never enter the portals of a church again,” she said jokingly – once again, to sustained laughter.
However, the magnetism and solace of faith proved to be almost irresistible. “I look daily toward heaven for restoration, for spiritual healing,” she wrote in her book. “My true identity isn’t rooted in our history, grievous and glorious as it is. It is grounded in my designation as a child of God, the daughter of the Great Physician. In his care, I find my cure.”
Rest in peace, Sister Cicely. Rest in peace.
Steve Beard is the editor of Good News.
by Steve | Mar 18, 2021 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, March/April 2021
Photo from iStock.
By Carolyn Moore-
Thinking back only two years ago, it is hard to imagine that wearing a medical mask could have become a national political conflict. And if someone had told me only a year ago that my faith would be called into question because I suspended in-person worship for three months during a worldwide pandemic, I would have smirked at such Orwellian nonsense and suggested a twelve-step group.
And yet, here we are. These are strange days indeed, as this crisis has frayed the national fabric and exposed the depth of our political and spiritual divide. But as with most things, there is an opportunity here to bring beauty from ashes. In a country fighting – literally fighting – for its life, Christians have a choice to make about our allegiance. Who is our King? Where is our country? What defines our worldview?
We are not the first to need such redefinition. In the New Testament, Peter’s letter to the Christian communities scattered across Asia Minor (a region that would fall inside Turkey’s boundaries today), was written to folks enduring deep and worsening tribulation. Peter’s letters were meant to encourage and inspire them to see themselves not as pawns of the state but as citizens of an alternate Kingdom. Although the world – and in particular the Roman Empire, the dominant earthly power in their world – did not value or want them, God did. And not only that, but God could offer them a country of their own, a worldview that would endure beyond an empire, and a King who loved them, chose them, and had plans for them.
In an age when the emperor was often considered to be a kind of god and a force to be feared, and allegiance was expected without question, Peter’s message was radical. Yet, into that very culture Peter would boldly speak the language of choice and rejection, priming his audience to hear that a choice to follow one empire was a choice to reject another, and that in fact they had already been chosen by one who had already been rejected by the very world that was now rejecting them.
In his letter, Peter would quote Psalm 118:22: “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” (1 Peter 2:7). Jesus would wield the same verse as a warning to the Pharisees: by rejecting Jesus, they were rejecting the Kingdom of God (Matthew 21:42). Peter would proclaim that this One, though rejected, has become the reigning King. Those who follow him would become citizens of his Kingdom and his gospel would become their worldview.
A citizen of this Kingdom would be known not by party affiliation but by supernatural transformation: “You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (1 Peter 2:9-10).
Every word in this passage deserves its own exegesis, but for our purposes we will focus on what it means to be chosen as a special possession. Our Wesleyan ears should hear again that chosenness is our theological inheritance, too. It is the gift of a life that has been fundamentally altered to reflect an other-worldly character, resulting in an other-worldly allegiance – in the world but not of it. And it is the leaven that works its way through a culture to fundamentally transform it into God’s special possession as well.
Chosen. A naturally competitive world teaches us to eye each other with suspicion and vie for our place. That spirit creates panic-runs on the grocery store and causes us to pull in and care only for “us and ours.” Chosenness is a critical quality of a Kingdom citizen. It was the missing piece in John Wesley’s spiritual life that – once discovered – changed the trajectory of his ministry and sparked a global revival.
Augustus Spangenberg once asked John Wesley if he knew Christ, only to have Wesley respond academically, “I know He is the Savior of the world.” Spangenberg pressed him on that point. “But do you know yourself?” That question exposed an interior world of self-doubt that plagued Wesley’s spiritual life and ministry effectiveness. 
The conversation with Spangenberg laid the groundwork for a later encounter with the Holy Spirit, after which Wesley could finally embrace the truth of his own personal chosenness. “I felt that I did trust in Christ and Christ alone, and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine …” (emphasis added).
Knowing ourselves as chosen not only allows us to conquer feelings of fear and spiritual inadequacy, but fundamentally shifts how we engage the world around us. We can operate from a secure place, our identity rooted in a firmer foundation than the shifting sands of partisan politics. When we know ourselves as chosen, we can empathize with the pain of others without feeling ourselves diminished in the process.
Jesus’s word to his followers that they were like a city on a hill or a lamp on a stand is a good word for us who worry that we are not enough. When a lamp gives off light, it isn’t diminished by that. Unless it burns out, it keeps giving light at the speed of light, even if everything around it is darkness. When we know ourselves as chosen and not in some way depleted, we can love, share, serve, and listen to understand, and yet be undiminished by all we give. We only increase the circle of illumination around us.
Royal. Peter goes so far as to qualify our chosenness as royal. We are children of the King. In a brutal, competitive, me-first world, Kingship is often acquired or defended by taking the lives – shedding the blood – of challengers. Meanwhile, Jesus is the anti-king-of-the-hill king. Rather than a tyrannical monarch who kills to gain power, King Jesus gave his blood away. When we allow his royal blood to course through our veins, we become members of his household with all the rights and privileges afforded to royalty. When we know ourselves as royal, we begin to see our needs as covered by virtue of our place in the royal family.
By calling Jesus’ followers “royal,” Peter shapes a new definition for citizenship. “Once you had no identity as a people; now you are the people of God. Once you had not received mercy but now you have received God’s mercy” (1 Peter 2:10). As children of the King, we have inherited all the rights and privileges of a royal family. In biblical terms, we are holy; and yet, we are not called to hold ourselves out from the world but to invite others into the Kingdom of God.
“Your task is to find the symbolic ways of doing things differently, planting flags in a hostile soil, setting up signposts that say there is a different way to be human,” writes British biblical scholar N.T. Wright. “And when people are puzzled at what you’re doing, find ways – fresh ways – of telling the story of the return of the human race from its exile, and use stories as your explanation.”
As royalty, we have the right, responsibility, and pleasure of inviting the world out of exile, introducing it to its alternate story of an in-breaking Kingdom that will never end.
God’s own possession. The Greek word Peter uses for “special possession” – peripoiesis – is fire-breathing. We find this word used five times in the New Testament and with various nuances of meaning. It can mean “a purchased possession,” but it is also used to talk about obtaining salvation. Where we see it used in that way, it is as if God is obtaining salvation for us, rather than us obtaining it for ourselves.
This word teaches us something about how God comes for us. He comes to buy us back, to provide a kind of protection, to get us out of bondage. And yet, peripoiesis is even more than that. Peri means “around.” Possession in this sense is literally God drawing a circle around us, as if to say, “This one is mine.” The word radiates the truth of our chosenness, of our regal status.
God has come for us, has drawn a circle around us, has claimed the ground around us as Kingdom soil and us as Kingdom citizens. There seems to be muscle behind this word, a sense not only of coming after us but of snatching us out of the hands of our enemies. Peripoiesis is the Great Lion of Judah hearing our cries and knowing our trouble and coming to stand guard over us until the enemy has passed by. Surely this is the spirit of Paul’s words to the Corinthians. “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
Inside that word – peripoiesis – is the word poiesis. In philosophy, poiesis is “the activity in which a person brings something into being that did not exist before,” observes theologian John Polkinghorne. Or as Peter would say in this same verse, God has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9). When God, who creates new things out of nothing, possesses us and draws us into Kingdom citizenship, he introduces something new into the world, almost as if uncovering a treasure buried in a field.
“Christians are the insiders who have diverted from their culture by being born again,” writes theologian Miroslav Volf. “They are by definition those who are not what they used to be, those who do not live like they used to live. Christian difference is therefore not an insertion of something new into the old from outside, but a bursting out of the new precisely within the proper space of the old.”
And why does God so transform us in this way? So we can declare his praises. As citizens of the Kingdom of God, our work is to declare the praises of our King and to reject anything other than the Kingdom of God as our highest priority and only allegiance. It is not ours to determine whether one party or another (or even one country or another) is more or less holy. The unshakable Kingdom of God is our country, and we are Kingdom people – royalty with power to inform and transform the community and world in which we live, vote, speak, act, and have our being.
King Jesus is our leader, a just and holy God who demands and deserves our absolute allegiance through faith and works. His gospel is our worldview and platform; it informs our every choice. Let that guide our every public comment and private musing as we navigate a volatile culture in desperate need of transformation.
Carolyn Moore is lead pastor of Mosaic United Methodist Church in Evans, Georgia. In addition to being a sought after speaker, blogger (artofholiness.com), author of several books, including Supernatural: Experiencing the Power of God’s Kingdom (Seedbed), Dr. Moore also serves as the chair of The Wesleyan Covenant Association’s Global Council. This essay first appeared at Firebrand (firebrandmag.com) and is reprinted here by permission.
