Renewing the Covenant

Happy 2010!

The coming of a new year is an appropriate time to take stock of our lives and think about how we want to live and act in better ways over the next 12 months.

People often call this process "New Year's Resolutions." I've got an alternative, if you'd like one. It is a way to think about your resolutions as aspects of your Christian discipleship. And that might just make you think about them more deeply after the hog jowl and black eyed peas have been cleared away.

In 1755, John Wesley came to believe that gathering a congregation together for a "Covenant Renewal Service" was, in his words, a "means of increasing serious religion." He reports in his Journal for August 6, 1755, that he spoke to a congregation about this practice, "which had been frequently practised by our forefathers and attended with eminent blessing: namely, the joining in a covenant to serve God with all our heart and with all our soul."

A few days later, he led the congregation in just such a service. He records on August 11th,

"Such a night I scarce ever saw before. Surely the fruit of it shall remain forever."

Services of Covenant Renewal are seeing something of a renaissance amongst Wesleyan Christians during our time. Just this week, Amy Forbus of the United Methodist Reporter has an excellent story looking at contemporary uses of Covenant Renewal Services in both Britain and America.

The idea behind the Covenant Renewal is not that you are establishing something new with God on your own initiative. It is instead a renewal of your baptismal covenant, made within the congregation of the faithful. And in that sense, it is a means of grace, which can open us up to the renewing and empowering work of the Holy Spirit.

If you are interested in investigating the Covenant Renewal Service, start by checking out the Covenant Prayer in the Wesleyan Tradition on p. 607 of the United Methodist Hymnal. The full service is found in the United Methodist Book of Worship, pp. 288-294, which provides an order of worship for the Covenant Renewal.

Pastors could think about using this service on the first Sunday of the new year, or (as I will be doing) as a way to orient Baptism of the Lord Sunday on January 10th. If you are a layperson who thinks this could be an effective service of worship for your congregation, point your pastor to this blog post and ask him or her if it could be a part of your church's worship in the new year.

Gratuitous Cat Post #4

This is Lulu, who is one of the most awesome felines ever to walk on four legs. She's also a very gentle critter, unless you happen to be a chipmunk or a mole or some other small rodent who lives in our neighborhood. She's got just enough of her predator instinct to be bad news for those guys. But hey, we live in a fallen world.

If you haven't ever done so, check out John Wesley's sermon, "The General Deliverance." It has a beautiful expression of hope for the final redemption of all God's creatures.

Cats included, of course.

[Update on 11/5/09: CNN is reporting the first cat to have contracted the H1N1 flu virus. See this link for the story.]

The Power of Holy Communion

How often should we celebrate the Lord's Supper?

Wesley Report's Shane Raynor recently wrote that he has received real spiritual benefit from weekly participation in Holy Communion. At my church, we celebrate monthly. But moving to that level of frequency after I arrived as pastor a year-and-a-half ago was a big change for my congregation. Previously, the church celebrated very infrequently.

At our chapel services at Duke Divinity School, there is at least one Eucharistic worship service per week. The Duke Chapel, right next door to the seminary, also has a mid-week celebration of Holy Communion every week. Those multiple celebrations of the sacrament mean that all members of the Duke community can receive the Lord's Supper every week if they so desire.

But what is the reason for coming to the Lord's table at all? And why should we do so frequently?

People with little experience in regular participation in the Lord's Supper (and often with little inclination to increase their frequency), sometimes say that the sacrament is "special" and should be celebrated infrequently lest it become too "common." But would we use that same argument with prayer? Or preaching? With those particular means of grace, don't we assume that increased frequency - matched with a willing heart - is a spiritual benefit to the Christian believer?

In the Wesleyan tradition, one of our best resources for looking at the importance of regular participation in Holy Communion is John Wesley's sermon on "The Duty of Constant Communion." In the sermon, Wesley points out that "Do this in remembrance of me," is a command Jesus gave to us at a pivotal moment in his life - right before he was arrested and killed. That it is a command shows its importance on one level; Jesus' timing of it only emphasizes that importance.

Wesley argues that, if the command were all we had, that should be enough to compel us to go the Lord's table at every opportunity. But the great joy we find is that there are other reasons as well - true spiritual benefits that we receive when we partake of the Lord's Supper with a willing heart. Assuming the liturgy of a Eucharistic worship where confession of sin and assurance of pardon would be made prior to the consecration of the elements, Wesley names these benefits as "the forgiveness of our past sins and the present strengthening and refreshing of our souls."

He goes on to speak of the "grace of God given herein," and says, "As our bodies are strengthened by bread and wine, so are our souls by these tokens of the body and blood of Christ. This is the food of our souls: this gives strength to perform our duty, and leads us on to perfection." Thus, he can conclude, "We must neglect no occasion which the good providence of God affords us for this purpose. This is the true rule - so often are we to receive as God gives us opportunity."

Also helpful for our thinking about Holy Communion is Wesley's sermon, "The Means of Grace." He believes that there are many ways God makes grace present to us in our lives, but in this sermon he focuses on the "chief means" of prayer, searching the Scriptures, and the Lord's Supper. Wesley makes a point in this sermon that is worth considering: He distinguishes the means of grace themselves as practices from the power that can be received through participation in them. That is, he points out the common error of some Christians in thinking that the means are actually ends - that simply participating in them earns "merit" in the eyes of God.

But that is not only false; it is dangerous. As Wesley writes, "[A]ll outward means whatever, if separate from the Spirit of God, cannot profit at all." He goes on: "We know that there is no inherent power in the words that are spoken in prayer, in the letter of Scripture read, the sound thereof heard, or the bread and wine received in the Lord's Supper; but that it is God alone who is the giver of every good gift, the author of all grace; that the whole power is of him, whereby through any of these there is any blessing conveyed to our soul."

So why are the means of grace in general (and Holy Communion in particular) so important? If the power we receive through them is really the power and presence of God in our lives, why can't we leave off the means and simply wait for the Holy Spirit to descend upon us?

Wesley's answer is that God has ordained the means as the "ordinary channels" through which we receive his grace. It's not that God couldn't do it another way if God so chose. But he didn't! He has chosen to give us his grace through these wonderful practices of the faith. And we come to know that truth as we commit to the means of grace and allow the life of discipleship we live to be patterned by them.

We come to know Jesus Christ more fully, and we find that the Holy Spirit draws us ever closer to the Father through the Son.

In short, we find ourselves transformed.

So while the command of Christ would be enough to convince us to receive at every opportunity (as Wesley says), we have so much more than just that. We have the possibility of a transformed existence, where we find ourselves - over time - being remade into Christlike children of God.

The Way of the Cross

I've been reading The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis, a book that was important to John Wesley. As a part of that, I've been sharing some of Kempis' thoughts and reflections that are particularly striking to me. (For previous posts, check out here and here and here.)

Check out Kempis' thoughts on the Way of the Cross from the Imitation of Christ, Book II, Chapter 12:

"In the cross is salvation, in the cross is life, in the cross is protection from enemies, in the cross is infusion of heavenly sweetness, in the cross is strength of mind, in the cross is joy of spirit, in the cross is highest virtue, in the cross is perfect holiness. There is no salvation of soul nor hope of everlasting life but in the cross."

Kempis is reflecting on Jesus' teaching in Luke 9:23 (paralleled in Matthew 16:24), where Jesus speaks of denying yourself and taking up your cross in order to follow him.

Wesley focused on this passage as well. In fact, he thought the teaching it contains is crucial to our salvation. He also saw two distinct movements of discipleship in it - the first is denying yourself, and the second is taking up your cross.

In Wesley's sermon, "Self-denial," he draws the distinctions by explaining that denying yourself means saying 'no' to our own will in order to say 'yes' to the will of God: "It is the denying or refusing to follow our own will, from a conviction that the will of God is the only rule of action to us."

He goes on, "The will of God is a path leading straight to God. The will of man, which once ran parallel with it, is now another path, not only different from it, but in our present state, directly contrary to it: It leads from God. If, therefore, we walk in the one, we must necessarily quit the other. We cannot walk in both."

Wesley then explains what is meant by taking up our cross: "Now, in running 'the race that is set before us,' according to the will of God, there is often a cross lying in the way; that is, something which is not only not joyous, but grievous; something which is contrary to our will, which is displeasing to our nature. What then is to be done? The choice is plain: Either we must take up our cross, or we must turn aside from the way of God."

But Wesley is also clear that bearing the cross is not a suffering imposed by God to no end. In fact, it is quite the contrary. He writes, "It is prepared of God for him; it is given by God to him, as a token of his love. And if he receives it as such, and, after using such means to remove the pressure as Christian wisdom directs, lies as clay in the potter's hand; it is disposed and ordered by God for his good, both with regard tot he quality of it, and in respect to its quantity and degree, its duration, and every other circumstance."

Christ acts in this way "as the Physician of our souls." And if, "in searching our wounds, he puts us to pain, it is only in order to heal them."

Now read some concluding thoughts by Kempis on the Way of the Cross, again from Book II, Chapter 12, of the Imitation of Christ:

"Take up your cross, therefore, and follow Jesus, and you shall enter eternal life. He Himself opened the way before you in carrying His cross, and up0on it He4 died for you, that you, too, might take up your cross and long to die upon it. If you die with Him, you shall also live with Him, and if you share His suffering, you shall also share His glory."

In a world where the dominant cultural message we receive is to follow every urge and appetite within us, those are saving words, indeed.

A letter to Mrs. Bennis

Came across this in my research yesterday and wanted to share it:

A woman named Mrs. Bennis wrote to John Wesley in March of 1766 to ask about her religious experience and to seek advice. Wesley wrote back in a letter dated March 29th, with encouragement to share her experience with others. He also included some advice about Christian perfection.

One of the things most characteristic about Wesley's understanding of salvation is its progressive character. In fact, he didn't think it was possible to receive saving grace and then just sit still. The justified sinner either pushed forward in holiness of heart & life after receiving the new birth, or else he would backslide and lose the gift given to him. You can see that in Wesley's advice to Mrs. Bennis on the importance of sharing our faith and pressing on towards salvation:

"One reason why those who are saved from sin should freely declare it to believers is because nothing is a stronger incitement to them to seek after the same blessing. And we ought by every possible means to press every serious believer to forget the things which are behind and with all earnestness go on to perfection. Indeed, if they are not thristing after this, it is scarce possible to keep what htey have: they can hardly retain any power of faith if they are not panting after holiness."

Wesley's talking about sanctification here. And when he speaks of "perfection," he's talking about the character of entire sanctification, where the believer has been so transformed by the love of God that she no longer commits intentional sins.

His doctrine of perfection was controversial in Wesley's own day, and it has remained so ever since. But there are two important things to remember that can clear up most of the misunderstanding over Christian perfection: First, perfection is not a static state. It is a mark along the way of salvation, but it does not mean that a person will not keep growing in grace in this life. And second, perfection does not mean a person is free from ignorance, error, or unintentional sin.

Wesley makes this second point in spades in the letter to Mrs. Bennis:

"A thousand infirmities are consistent even with the highest degree of holiness, which is no other than pure love, an heart devoted to God, one design and one desire. Then whatever is done either in word or deed may be done in the name of the Lord Jesus."

The Christian character he's describing is, in terms of his own moral psychology, one marked by liberty. A person who is sanctified to the degree that, "whatever is done ... may be done in the name of the Lord Jesus," is one who is truly free. And the freedom possessed is the freedom to orient one's life toward God; it is exactly for this freedom that Christ has set us free (Galatians 5:1).

The doctrine of Christian perfection is not something Wesleyans should shy away from. In fact, our neglect of it has probably contributed to our loss of a full understanding of holiness of heart & life. We should pay attention to it, particularly since it is eminently biblical. Entire sanctification is, simply put, that form of life to which the whole New Testament points.

Coming across little gems like the letter to Mrs. Bennis is one of the real joys of graduate work. Does that make me sound like a complete nerd? Oh, well.

[If you're wondering, the letter to Mrs. Bennis can be found in the Telford edition of The Letters of John Wesley, vol. 5, p.6.]

Wesley on Kempis

I read a couple of months out of John Wesley's Journal every morning - a part of my daily reading discipline that is both spiritual edifying and helpful to my academic work. Last week I came across a reference by Wesley to Thomas a Kempis' Imitation of Christ. Wesley quotes Kempis as he reports his pastoral engagement with some struggling members of one of the Methodist societies:

Friday, May 5, 1749 - "This day and the next I endeavoured to see all the rest who were weary and faint in their minds. Most of them, I found, had not been used with sufficient tenderness. Who is there that sufficiently weighs the advice of Kempis, 'Noli duriter agere cum tentato'? - 'Deal not harshly with one that is tempted.'"

The reference comes from Book I, Chapter 13, of the Imitation of Christ. Kempis goes on to say the following in that same chapter:

"Some suffer great temptations int he beginning of their conversion, others toward the end, while some are troubled almost constantly throughout their life. Others, again, are tempted but lightly according to the wisdom and justice of Divine Providence. Who weighs the status and merit of each and prepares all for the salvation of His elect."

"We should not despair, therefore, when we are tempted, but pray to God the more fervently that He may see fit to help us, for according to the word of Paul, He will make issue with temptation that we may be able to bear it. Let us humble our souls under the hand of God in every trial and temptation for He will save and exalt the humble in spirit."

"In temptations and trials the progress of a man is measured; in them opportunity for merit and virtue is made more manifest."

"When a man is not troubled it is not hard for him to be fervent and devout, but if he bears up patiently in time of adversity, there is hope for great progress."

As I continue to read through both Wesley's Journal and Kempis' Imitation of Christ, I can see why the former was so drawn to the latter's meditation on the Christian life. He seemed to see not only a spiritual writer who spoke to his own life & ministry, but also one who offered a keen insight into the joys and struggles that all followers of Jesus face in this life.

The Imitation of Christ

I've been re-reading some books from the "holy living tradition" that were very influential for John Wesley during his early adulthood. They're good sources for understanding how Wesley was influenced in his thinking about holiness of heart & life. But the real joy in reading them is that they are all spiritual classics that offer great insight into the way of holiness for Christians today.

One of the best is the meditation of Thomas a Kempis called, The Imitation of Christ. (That's him in the picture, by the way.) Kempis was a 15th-century Dutch monk who was a member of the Brothers of the Common Life. His masterpiece, The Imitation of Christ, has inspired countless people in their devotional lives since he penned it in the early 1400s.

John Wesley talks about its influence on him in the opening paragraphs of A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, where he writes, "In the year 1726, I met with Kempis's 'Christian's Pattern.' The nature and extent of inward religion, the religion of the heart, now appeared to me in a stronger light than ever it had done before ... I saw, that 'simplicity of intention, and purity of affection,' one design in all we speak or do, and one desire ruling all our tempers, are indeed 'the wings of the soul,' without which she can never ascend to the mount of God."

I would encourage you to pick up a copy of The Imitation of Christ, which is available in a number of different versions. (The Thomas Nelson edition is good for devotional reading; it's not currently in print but is available for next to nothing from used booksellers). Keep in mind that it should be read slowly and savored. It's best read meditatively along with your morning Scripture reading, which allows you to reflect on its words throughout your daily tasks.

I'll also share a few passages from it over the next few weeks. Here's one from the opening section:

"The teaching of Christ is more excellent than all the advice of the saints, and he who has His spirit will find in it a hidden manna. Now, there are many who hear the Gospel often but care little for it because they have not the spirit of Christ. Yet whoever wishes to understand fully the words of Christ must try to pattern his whole life on that of Christ" (I.1).

Words of wisdom.

And words by which to focus our spiritual lives.

Worth getting excited about

Do you get frustrated with the church?

Do you wish we could all focus on those things Jesus calls us to care about more fully?

There's good news. This can happen.

Read on for an example worth getting excited about...

When you read John Wesley's Journal, you get the overwhelming sense that the man never stopped moving. He traveled from London to Bristol to Newcastle, again and again. He'd take time out to go on preaching tours in Cornwall and Wales. By the late 1740s, he had added Ireland to his list of regular destinations. And all the while, he was building Methodist Societies, overseeing his lay preachers, and writing sermons, essays, & letters.

The vision of early Methodism was simple and yet profound: Offer the free grace of Jesus Christ, which can save men and women from the sin and brokenness that keep them from God. Unite them in communities where they can watch over one another in love and travel the path of sanctification. Nurture holiness of heart & life in people, and they will carry it out into the world. Find the hurting and help them to heal. Seek out the lost: those who are poor in either body or spirit (or both).

And above all, show others how the grace of Jesus reshape their lives inside and out.

I'm a big believer in Wesley's vision for Christian life together and for church reform, so I always get excited about encountering people and ministries that are trying to pursue a genuinely Wesleyan mission. My current column in the United Methodist Reporter focuses on one example of that, in both a person and an organization: the Rev. Arthur Jones and the North Carolina-based ZOE Ministry.

ZOE's mission is to "Share Christ and give hope to orphans and vulnerable children in Africa." That takes place through activities as diverse as getting food to hungry children, providing crucial medical care, and training in essential life skills through the Giving Hope Empowerment Project.

Arthur recently graduated from Duke Divinity School and currently serves as the Interim Director for Church Relations at ZOE. I focus on him in the column because he's a young adult, newly commissioned into the clergy, and he offers a compelling example of how exciting ministry in the church can be. ZOE Ministry itself is headed by the Rev. Greg Jenks, an elder in the North Carolina Conference who launched ZOE in 2004 and has since expanded it to the four African countries of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Rwanda, and Kenya.

While ZOE's mission efforts started with simply providing food relief for orphans who had been victimized by the AIDS pandemic and war, it took a leap forward with the development of the Giving Hope Empowerment Project, a program that brings orphans together to train them in vital life skills and job development. The program, conceived by a survivor of the 1994 Rwanda genocide named Epiphanie Mujawimana, offers a glimpse into the reason ZOE is effective:

While the ministry's American operation provides essential resources and coordination, the actual method and implementation of the mission work is almost all led by African leaders who are members of the communities they are serving. This is responsible mission, which cooperates with what God is doing on the ground and treats American and African Christians as true partners who can learn from one another.

From my column writing and blog work, I get all kinds of e-mails from people who are frustrated with the status quo in their local churches. They know deep down that the practice of their faith should be compelling - to themselves and to others. But they live in congregations that have fallen spiritually asleep.

It doesn't have to be this way. Local churches need a missional mindset. And it's high time for all of us to answer God's call faithfully. Check out how ZOE Ministry does it. Consider partnering with them, or with some other organization that is truly committed to walking the way of Jesus.

Together let's answer the Holy Spirit's call to be transformed, so that we might go out and offer the good news of God's transforming grace to the world!

Bonus: Read Arthur's blog from his recent trip to Kenya here.

The Church's first mission

"A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross."

That was H. Richard Niebuhr's comment in The Kingdom of God in America about the view of mainline Protestantism on the coming of the Kingdom of God. He was describing the belief that society's natural progress has pretty much done away with the need to understand sin, Jesus Christ, the atonement, and salvation in the ways they were understood in previous times.

Niebuhr wrote those words in the 1930s, but they pretty accurately describe wide swaths of the Protestant church in America today.

The belief in society's progress, held so firmly by Protestant liberals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was shattered by the devastation of World War I. But curiously enough, mainline Protestant denominations in the United States didn't seem to get the message (Niebuhr and others notwithstanding).

And whereas our Social Gospeling forebears still believed strongly in personal piety, the Protestant liberalism of the mainline church today has lost even the belief that something about salvation necessarily involves personal transformation. The optimism in human progress is still there, though, and our latter-day Protestant liberalism often sees the church itself as a hidebound organization that needs to 'catch up to the times.'

I've always been curious about how we could possibly look back over the last hundred years and see progress. Sure, there's been lots of technological progress - in science, medicine, engineering, etc. We've been to the moon, and we've stamped out smallpox.

But if you look at other measures, you can see how the very same technology that looks like progress in one place looks like regress in another. How about the 20th century's wars? Advances in technology allowed us to kill more people in war than had died in the wars of all other centuries combined. And what about the state of the environment - the plants, the animals, and even the atmosphere? At the rate we're going, we'll be lucky if there are any animals left in a few decades besides us and the ones we either eat or keep as pets. Our great technology is extinguishing animals, ecosystems, and glaciers in equal measure.

So are we really progressing?

The answer is 'no,' at least not in the way that really counts. Everyone is born a heathen, crippled by sin and in need of God's grace. And so God the Father calls all of us to walk the way of salvation shown to us through his Son, Jesus Christ. And the only real progress is the progress of the Holy Spirit in our lives, as we are healed by grace and made holy in heart and life. That is a progress that happens anew with every person, as he or she is gently healed by grace and restored through the ministry of the church and participation in the means of grace.

This is the Scripture Way of Salvation. I make the case in my recent UM Reporter column that proclaiming the reality of salvation through word and action is the very reason the Methodists were called into existence by God in the first place. And it remains our true calling still today.

The problem with us Methodists is not that some want to pursue social justice while others want to focus on spiritual formation. It is that all of us have an impoverished understanding of what salvation means. And we can begin to remedy that by searching deeply into our own tradition for the rich resources that await us there.

A Blueprint for Discipleship

Jesus' call to us is to a whole new way of life. That new way of life is called sanctification, and by grace it can become a reality for each of us.

As Christian men and women in the Wesleyan tradition, if we aren't serious about sanctification we might as well find something else to do. John Wesley always believed that the peculiar Methodist understanding of justifying grace expressed through the new birth together with a lifelong pursuit of sanctification through the means of grace was the main reason God had raised up the Methodist movement in the first place.

All this is why I'm glad to see A Blueprint for Discipleship: Wesley's General Rules as a Guide for Christian Living, just out from Methodist pastor and blogger Kevin Watson.

Kevin takes Wesley's General Rules and presents them as the best way to understand God's call on our lives to be deeply committed followers of Jesus. This is a particularly good book for those in the church who would like to understand why the Wesleyan approach to faith is still the best way to open our hearts and lives to be transformed by God's grace. If you are a pastor or small group leader looking for a resource to use in your congregation, I highly recommend this book (available through either Cokesbury or Amazon).

In my review of the book in the United Methodist Reporter, I point out particular strengths of Kevin's approach. Some of these include his emphasis on the central role of grace in our ability to be transformed into holy people, his lucid explanation of the three rules as practical ways to embody the biblical command to love God and neighbor, and his later chapters on the way the rules help us balance our faith lives and call us into relationships of mutual accountability in our discipleship.

I've gotten to know Kevin over the past couple of years as we have both entered doctoral programs to pursue Wesley Studies. (He blogs over at Deeply Committed, by the way.) It's exciting to me to see an aspiring scholar who also cares about the church and wants to 'equip the saints for ministry.' That's why A Blueprint for Discipleship is an important book, and I commend it to you for reading and study.

The saints among us

In my study of John Wesley, one thing that has really stuck out at me is the way that Wesley was so drawn to individual examples of holy living. I write about this in my newest column in the Covenant Discipleship Quarterly. In a number of different genres of writing - sermons, journaling, and essays - Wesley consistently highlighted examples of sanctified lives as a public witness to others.

The reason Wesley pointed to these living saints was because of the good that viewing their lives could do for others. By seeing the living witness of a holy man or woman, others might be moved by the Spirit to receive God's grace for themselves and be similarly transformed.

Another interesting thing about Wesley's focus on sanctified lives is the diversity of those he focused upon: Henry Lascelles, an immigrant to the colony of Georgia in the 1730s; Jane Cooper and Jane Muncy, both women active in the Methodist revival; the Rev. John Fletcher, an articulate theologian and one of Wesley's ablest allies among the Anglican clergy.

I think Wesley's tendency to look at holy lives can offer us something today. The messages we get are confused, because the sources are so scattered. From friends, to media sources, to so-called "authority" figures, it can be unclear what we can trust and what should be discarded. But what does not fail is the testimony that is offered through demonstrated, holy lives. Their witness to us can be a means of grace in and of themselves.

Language matters: social holiness

In my new column in the Reporter, I focus approaching the Wesleyan meaning of 'social holiness' with reference to our use of language. My sense is that 'social holiness' is usually used in the church to describe the kind of outreach ministries that involve extending Christian love and aid to the poor and disadvantaged. Less often, the term is used to describe social justice efforts that involve changing unjust systems (whether of a legal or a societal/cultural nature).

I am a big supporter of both outreach ministries and social justice efforts, but the point I made in a recent blog post is that, when we use 'social justice' to describe such ministries, we are mis-using the term. Wesley's use of social holiness was in the context of how God sanctifies us; it was his firm belief that sanctification happens in the context of Christian community.

The reason it is important to attend to the language of our tradition is exactly because our Wesleyan understanding of salvation is wrapped up in it. As I write in my column, Practicing discipline in the use of our historical language is important. It could even help the church fulfill its stated mission - to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. Because in a Wesleyan sense we have to realize that we won't do any good transforming the world until we ourselves have been transformed from within ... That can happen to each of us through God's grace, and it always happens in community."

Here is Wesley on social holiness:

In the Preface to Hymns and Sacred Poems published by the Wesley brothers in 1739, Wesley criticizes writers among the "Mystic Divines" who recommend "an entire seclusion from men, (perhaps for months or years,) in order to purify the soul." He goes on, "For the religion these authors would edify us in, is solitary religion."

Wesley emphatically rejects this version of sanctification, writing, "Directly opposite to this is the gospel of Christ. Solitary religion is not to be found there. 'Holy solitaries' is a phrase no more consistent with the gospel than holy adulterers. The gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social; no holiness but social holiness."

Wesley's understanding of social holiness is further fleshed out in the 1748 sermon, "Upon our Lord's Sermon on the Mount (IV)," where he writes, "When I say [Christianity] is essentially a social religion, I mean not only that it cannot subsist so well, but that it cannot subsist at all without society, without living and conversing with other men."

I think what he has in mind here is the kind of prudential means of grace represented in the Methodist society and its attendant sub-structures - the band, class meeting, etc. They are the place where 'iron sharpens iron' (Proverbs 27:17) and where shared testimony, mutual accountability, confession, and exhortation help to nurture holiness of heart and life in Christian believers. That, as I understand it, is the nature of social holiness.

"... no holiness but social holiness"

Are you familiar with that phrase?

If you are a Methodist, you can probably identify it as coming from the pen of John Wesley. But do you know what it means?

If blogs, newsletters, sermons, and periodicals from the Methodist world are any indication, most people assume that, by "social holiness", Wesley meant something along the lines of what we mean by social justice or social outreach ministries.

That's just plain wrong.

A few days ago, as part of a series of posts reviewing Paul Chilcote's Recapturing the Wesleys' Vision, Guy Williams over at Gen-X Missional Wesleyan brought up the issue of social holiness. (Guy uses the term correctly, and you can read his post here.)

I commented on that post, which got my mind buzzing on this subject and particularly on how it is so often misused ... which really stuck in my craw, which connected to a paper I'm writing currently on the practical theology of the class meeting, which led me then to call Dr. Randy Maddox to discuss the issue, which led me finally to start writing a column on it for the United Methodist Reporter that I'm tentatively calling "Language Matters".

Some people might say that I'm splitting hairs - that Wesley really did care about what we would call social justice and that, since he uses the phrase social holiness in other contexts and it seems to fit our purposes, we can just allow it to do double duty.

But that's the kind of undisciplined use of language that just drives me nuts. Look, for instance, in the United Methodist Hymnal from pages 425-450, which are the hymns and prayers under the section, "SOCIAL HOLINESS". These are not social holiness hymns in the Wesleyan sense of the term; they are rather for various forms of social outreach, social justice, and world peace.

So why can't we just reorient the term to the way we see fit? Here's why: If we don't practice and preach a strong doctrine of sanctification, then we tend to fall into the typical Enlightenment mistake that we are born with our reason and will already in good shape, and that all we have to do is employ our reason to see what good needs to be done in the world to make it a better place.

But we Methodists believe in the reality of the depravity that comes from Original Sin, and we believe that it is only through God's grace that our reason and will can be restored enough to the point where we can recognize the good and pursue it in the world. We become healed of the presence and power sin through the process of sanctification.

And that happens through social holiness. Real social holiness.

When we use language loosely, because of the desire to sound Wesleyan (even when we don't know what that means), then we start messing with our entire doctrinal structure. And that's a bad idea. Besides, using Wesley to justify our own ideas because his name has authority is a lazy practice, which can approach intellectual dishonesty. If we want to invoke our founder's name and ideas, we should make sure we know what we are talking about.

By the way, if you are interested in reading about Wesley's understanding of social holiness, the two primary sources are the Preface to Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739), which can be found in volume 14 of the Jackson edition of Wesley's Works, pp. 319-322, and the sermon, "Upon Our Lord's Sermon on the Mount (IV)," which can be found lots of places, including online.

Wesley Matters

I'd like to discuss some Wesley matters.

Namely: Does Wesley matter?

There has been an ongoing lecture series here at Duke Divinity School entitled, "What is Duke theology? Or ... How did we get here?" The series is co-sponsored by the Socratic Club and the Women's Center at the divinity school, and it is billed as, "A series of lectures/discussions on the various influences on professors and general milieu here at Duke Divinity School. Professors will lecture on significant theologians and theological movements and how Duke has tended to react against these or in line with them."

The series has been really interesting so far, and it has included Dr. Allen Verhey on H. Richard Niebuhr, Dr. Curtis Freeman on Karl Barth, Dr. Mary McClintock-Fulkerson on Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Dr. Amy Laura Hall on the Yale School. Upcoming lectures will include Dr. Fulkerson on Feminist Theology, Dr. Stanley Hauerwas on Stanley Hauerwas, and Dr. Richard Hays on Biblical Studies.

Some of the topics listed here are personal to the professors giving the lectures, and others relate to some of the major influences on the so-called "Duke School," a term I categorically reject but which is increasingly used by theologians and graduate students at other universities to describe what goes on around here.

But what is most interesting to me about this list is that there is no lecture entitled, "Dr. _________ on John Wesley" or "Dr. __________ on the Wesleyan tradition".

Now keep in mind that this is Duke Divinity School, the school that prides itself on being the flagship United Methodist seminary and that also has the largest concentration of scholars doing work in the Wesleyan tradition of any school anywhere. Why would it not occur to two of the most active student groups on campus to include a professor speaking on the importance of Wesley or the Wesleyan tradition in shaping the school's intellectual culture, spiritual life, and missional calling?

I am here as a doctoral student studying Wesley, so my opinion is naturally going to be skewed. An M.Div student might well give a compellingly affirmative account of Wesley's importance to the life of the school. But I fear that the lack of Wesley in a lineup like the current lecture series is reflective of Wesley's status as necessary to the institution but not to the lifeblood of theology here.

If so, that is truly unfortunate. And I wish I knew how to help future clergy understand the central importance of Wesley to everything we do. I would also be curious to know the status of Wesley on other UM seminary campuses.

Does God predestine us to salvation?

Ok, so I said I wouldn't be blogging as much. But I received an interesting e-mail from a reader who wanted to know my positions on predestination and free will. I have worked this out from time to time in other settings, but this e-mail gave me the chance to try and condense it into as few words as possible. My sense is that in Protestant evangelicalism, Calvinist predestinarians vastly outnumber Wesleyan Arminians. In the mainline church, people generally don't get into such potentially divisive issues as the manner of election. But since I come from a mainline church with an evangelical wing in it (and since I have some evangelical leanings myself), I think it's important to take this issue up. There's a lot at stake, after all.

Here is the gist of the response I sent to my reader:

The problem of election and predestination is, indeed, one of the biggest theological conundrums the church has had to face. It goes back at least to St. Augustine, over 1500 years ago. I am not a predestinarian, and in this I follow Wesley's Arminian take on Calvinist election. I'll explain where I stand as best I can, but I also want to point you to a couple of excellent Wesley sermons where he makes a case much better than I can. They are "Free Grace" and "The Scripture Way of Salvation." The first sermon argues against predestination as contrary to the character of God, and the second gives a positive explanation of how God's grace works preveniently, in our justification, and in our sanctification.

The problem with predestination begins with how far you take it. Some have argued that God predestines all to eternal salvation. This is called universalism, and it has never been accepted by the church (although contrary to what some people think, it is not a modern invention. Very respected church fathers such as Origen and Gregory of Nyssa subscribed to a form of universalism). But if you reject universalism, you are forced to deal with how and why God elects some to salvation and not others. Most predestinarians who follow the logic of predestination all the way through (and Calvin was one of these) admit to what is called "double predestination", meaning that God elects some to salvation and others to perdition. That is, if we take God's sovereignty seriously, we must admit that he is in control of everything. By his will, some are eternally saved and others are eternally damned.

And it is at this point that Wesley disagreed based on the character of God. It doesn't really work to just cite Scriptural texts back and forth. Those texts (particularly from Romans) that speak of predestination can be easily countered by other texts that support the opposite point of view. For instance, free will theologians take Psalm 145:9 very seriously: "The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works" (KJV). Or they point to 1 Timothy 2:1-6, which reads (in part), "This is good, and it is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony to which was borne at the proper time" (RSV). But again, prooftexting only gets us so far. The question is, how to we interpret these texts?

Wesley, and Wesleyans (like myself), cannot abide by the notion that a God whose name is Love (1 John 4:8) would elect some of those who he created in his own image to eternal perdition. Indeed, the notion of creating beings in order to cast them into the fire makes God into a monster. "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23, RSV).

How, then, is salvation possible? Surely human beings who are corrupted by sin do not have the ability to choose God on their own. Left to our own devices, we will always choose Death over Life. And in fact, Scripture is adamant that our salvation is a gift from God and not the result of our own works (Ephesians 2:8). But the nuance that it is important to make is in how God's grace works on us. Grace does not begin to work in our lives when we accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. That may be the moment of our new birth, but it is the result of something God has been doing preveniently since the moment of our conception ("Before I formed you in the womb I knew you" - Jeremiah 1:5, RSV). That grace heals us to the point where we can respond to God's call upon our lives. When we accept Christ, it is only because we have been restored by grace to the point that we can take those first tentative steps of faith. But when we received God's justifying grace and thereby are born anew, we can begin to walk the path of sanctification that brings about a more fully restored will within us.

You'll often hear Wesleyans talk about prevenient grace, justifying grace, and sanctifying grace. They're not talking about three different kinds of grace that have qualitative distinctions between them. They are rather speaking about the instrumental working of grace in our lives. And it is through God's prevenience that our free will is restored to the point of accepting the free gift God offers us of salvation.

Yancey on Wesley

Philip Yancey has an interesting column in the current issue of Christianity Today. In it, he describes taking John Wesley's Journal along on a speaking tour of England. (The article is here.) Yancey challenges Wesley's reluctance to 'stop and smell the roses,' coming close to accusing him of not appreciating the beauty of God's creation in the here-and-now in his relentless quest to bring the saving message of the gospel to needy people.

Now I'll be the first to admit that Mr. Wesley could be overly intense much of the time. But I don't think it was because he was so heavenly focused that he was of no earthly good. Instead, I think he was trying to do what St. Augustine spends so much time talking about in the Confessions. Namely, that as we express our love for the things of this world, we should love them in God. We should not love the creation as an end in itself, but rather as an expression of the glorious God who made it. And we should not love people as ends in themselves - that does neither us nor them any good - we should rather love them because they are made in God's image and because in loving them we learn better how to love God. A proper orientation for our love (which is, I think, what Wesley was concerned with) helps to make sure our love does not turn us toward idolatry.

Yancey writes that he is interested in looking at the balance "between our investment in this world and in the next." I'm not sure that's the right way to frame it. Because if we love the creation in God, our love for it does not distract us at all from our focus on eternity. In fact, it prepares us for it by showing it to us in the present.

What is a Methodist?

That's a good question these days. Is there anything distinctive anymore about claiming the name "Methodist" as a part of your Christian identity? Should there be?

I ask the "what is a Methodist" question in my most recent column in the Covenant Discipleship Quarterly. And let me be clear: I don't think this is just a fun exercise to go through. It is of dire importance.

There are large segments of the United Methodist Church that don't want there to be anything at all distinctive about Methodist identity. In fact, they don't want there to be anything much distinctive about being a Christian at all. The 'inclusivity crowd' takes the open invitation of Jesus and turns it into the defining mark of the church. These are the same folks who howl with protest when anyone dares to question the wisdom of, I don't know, a church marketing slogan that aims at the lowest common denominator in trying to stop the slide in church membership numbers. (Whether the church's membership slide might be a direct result of our pathetically weak sense of discipleship is a question for their open hearts and open minds to consider.) To them, the church is all about open acceptance and not at all about those other things that have always been bedrock parts of our faith: repentance, the new birth, sanctification, and sacrificial discipleship.

It is not clear right now which direction the UMC will ultimately head. It may well continue down the path of lukewarm, milquetoast faith. But we should never mistake such an easygoing, worldly Christianity with the Methodism of John Wesley. For Wesley, Methodists were those who took the commands to love God and love neighbor and actually put them into practice. All day. Everyday.

The point is this: Jesus doesn't just want you in the church. Jesus wants you in the church so he can literally, physically, spiritually, and actually change your life. And if all you are doing is showing up for worship occasionally, and you are not allowing God to transform your life, then church is a bad place for you. Your salvation is in jeopardy. People in that position should leave the church, so they do not get lulled into the false sense of security that they are actually walking the way of salvation.

What is a Methodist? To Wesley, it is someone who is committed to holiness of heart and life. Who loves God and neighbor. Who cares for the poor. Who is inwardly and outwardly conformed to the will of Jesus Christ.

If that's not you, then you're not a Methodist. You may be a member of a United Methodist Church. You may have a cross & flame lapel pin. But you ain't a Methodist. Not according to Mr. Wesley.

How big is your church?

Church growth strategies are based on the notion that there is something redemptive about the numerical size of a congregation.

The error of church growth strategy is teleological. That is, it aims at an improper end. Church growth talks about discipleship and mission, but it puts these in the service of increasing the size of a congregation. Its logic is ground in the belief that large congregations, by virtue of their success in attracting worshipers, must be faithful churches.

I believe the church's fixation on church growth is related to our culture's fascination with megachurches. Americans are impressed by size. Ask any Texan. So when we see a Saddleback, or a Willow Creek, we think there must be something great going on there.

Don't get me wrong - I have no doubt that there is powerful ministry that happens everyday in megachurches. But their "success" causes the whole church to believe that its success is dependent on becoming the next megachurch. So we have a whole lot of pastors and congregations who spend all their time trying to increase membership, as if getting 1000 people in worship on Sunday will hasten Jesus' return.

My reading of Wesley lately has convinced me that he would be scathingly critical of church growth strategy. He was interested in bringing people into saving relationships with God, which can only happen in the context of a Christian community that is focused on disciplined participation in the means of grace. That really has nothing to do with size. It has to do with the right intention, followed by right belief and practice.

The other day I came across a quote in Wesley's "Thoughts Upon Methodism," where he distinguished between the essentials of Methodism (holiness of heart and life) and the circumstantials (the disciplined practice that nurtures such holiness).

He writes, "The essence of [Methodism] is holiness of heart and life; the circumstantials all point to this. And as long as they are joined together in the people called Methodists, no weapon formed against them shall prosper. But if even the circumstantial parts are despised, the essential will soon be lost. And if ever the essential parts should evaporate, what remains will be dung and dross."

Clearly, for Wesley the power of the Methodist approach to Christian faith is bound up in practices that allow people to experience the saving grace of Christ. That has every bit to do with the quality of a community, and nothing to do with its size.

We are called Methodists for a reason

Perhaps my column in the Reporter this week is too strongly worded. But I don't think so.

All the so-called "experts" say that denominationalism is dead. They say that people don't want to identify with a denomination anymore. They say that denominations will be much better off pretending like they aren't denominations anymore.

I dismiss all of that "expert" opinion. Every bit of it.

We are part of a story - a history and a tradition that makes us who we are. As I have been reminded myself lately, we don't get to choose our own story. We are born into it, shaped by it, and we find our identities in it.

Our story is the story of Methodism. It is the story of a people who arose out of a response to an extraordinary call of the Holy Spirit. As I write in my column, "Originally intended as an epithet, the name [Methodist] came to be associated with a people who shunned religious pretension, practiced a rigorous discipleship, sought furiously after the way of salvation and relentlessly carried the gospel to the poor and lost."

Frankly, that's not an identity I particularly want to lose, anyway. Our recovery as a church - and by that I mean The United Methodist Church - will only come when we stop trying to follow what the culture identifies as the latest trend and start practicing the kind of discipleship that John Wesley instilled in his early followers.

Don't get me wrong. Christ ultimately desires unity for his church. And I think that is both a physical and a spiritual unity - one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. But that unity is not achieved by forsaking the distinctiveness of our tradition in favor of a bland, happy-go-lucky megachurch. Such a model only serves to imitate the surrounding pagan culture dressed up in religious language.

If we Methodists started acting like the Methodists of 1742, 1784, or 1824, it would be scary what the Holy Spirit could accomplish through us. That calling has never left us. Who will answer it in this day and age?