Our practice of the Lord's Supper

I haven't linked to any columns I've written in the United Methodist Reporter recently. I'm in the middle of a column series on the means of grace, and I had planned to do one post that pointed to the whole series when I was finished with it.

Then I had to go and write about Holy Communion. It's a topic that gets me in trouble every time I take it up.

The column - which you can find here - is a call for reform of our Eucharistic practice in a number of ways. But a certain part near the end has caught some folks' attention (to, in my opinion, the neglect of the whole). It is my critique of that un-Scriptural, un-historical, un-ecumenical quasi-doctrine that so many Methodists just love: the "Open Table" practice of inviting anyone in earshot to receive the Lord's Supper with a "y'all come!" enthusiasm. The Open Table ethos as many pastors and congregations practice it today presents the Eucharist as a meal where anyone is welcome - Christians, non-Christians, confessed adherents of other religions, unbelievers, agnostics, and atheists.

That such an approach to the sacrament of our Lord's body and blood is an utter novelty in the history of the Christian Church, without any biblical foundation or support in Wesleyan theology or widespread support in the church catholic, does not seem to factor into the consideration of those who consider it to be amongst the fundamental marks of Methodism.

And so it is incumbent upon us to preach and defend the gospel. As the Church's shepherds, pastors and theologians are called to be faithful in their teaching and preaching regardless of the shifting temper of the times. As the Apostle Paul instructs Timothy and all presbyters of the Church,

"Preach the Word: be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage - with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. The will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry" (2 Timothy 4:2-5, NIV).

Regardless of how well-meaning its advocates might be, the truth of the so-called Open Table is this: it is, in the true sense of the term, false teaching. The radical version of the Methodist practice of Open Table does violence to the institution of the most holy act of worship we have been given and disregards the salvation of the unbaptized. And there is not one word of the preceding sentence that is an exaggeration.

If this doesn't seem to make sense to you, then read on. To better explain, I'm going to edit and splice in a big chunk of a lengthy comment I left on John Meunier's blog when he posted about my column yesterday:

Whenever I write a column or put up a blog post on this issue, I inevitably take a lot of flack. Sometimes people act as if there is a deep arrogance at work in even engaging the issue of participation in Holy Communion, as if exercising a holy discipline over the sacrament were the equivalent of making a value judgment the intrinsic worth of persons. And sometimes people will act aghast that the Church would ever make a statement suggesting a standard of ministry or discipleship in anyway, because we are all supposed to bow at the altar of "inclusivism" - a concept that apparently means we never say 'no' to anyone, at anytime, for any reason.

Here's what I would offer in response: There are about 2 billion Christians in the world, and probably 1,980,000,000 of them have an understanding of Eucharistic practice that suggests one should be baptized before coming to the Supper of the Lord. Throughout the two millennia of Christian history, practically all Christians have had that understanding. That means there are, at present, a few million Methodists (and, I assume, probably a few million more sacramentally lackadaisical Protestants in other ecclesiastical communions) who do what we do.

Now I would ask this of anyone who happens to be reading this post: What in the world do we have to show as evidence to suggest that our doctrine is right and the ecumenical and historical consensus of the rest of the church catholic is wrong? A misquoted Wesley citation that gets regularly pulled out of context? Incoherent statements about 'prevenient grace' that get applied to the Eucharist in ways that could literally define the term, 'non-sequitur'? Fruits? Does our Eucharistic practice bring glory to God and serve as a means of grace such that those who partake are demonstrably affected in their journey of sanctification? In this last question (which is the type of thing liable to get indignant "of course it does!" replies), I would only say that, if we think we're being faithful to God and to Christ's institution of the sacrament in the shabby way we practice it now, I think we would be amazed at what the Holy Spirit would do with us if we committed ourselves to a greater faithfulness in our practice of it.

I like the way John Meunier poses the questions about the propriety of the Open Table in his post because I think he poses it as a question of doctrine. And indeed, as a doctrinal question, it should be engaged via rigorous theological examination. Charles Rivera, one of his respondents, points to the seriousness with which the Apostle Paul instructs the Church to practice Eucharist in 1 Corinthians. I'd suggest three other Scriptural images in addition: First, in the Great Commission (Matthew 28), Jesus' instruction to the disciples is to go into all the world to make disciples of every nation, and his single teaching to describe the way by which disciples are made is through baptism in the name of the triune God. Second, in the book of Acts, the apostles' response to converts who hear the Word of God and believe is "Repent and be baptized" (Acts 2:37-38). And third, throughout the NT epistles (e.g., Romans 6, Colossians 2, 1 Peter 3), it is clear time and time again that the manner of incorporation into the body of Christ is through the sacrament of baptism.

Moreover, in the early Church, new believers never received Holy Communion until they had been baptized. Actually, they weren't even admitted into the presence of the Eucharistic celebration until after baptism. And despite all the doctrinal differences that arose in later centuries over exactly what happens at Holy Communion, in the matter of what was requisite for participation in the Eucharist the divided Church was in agreement: baptism and repentance of sin.

Now one of John's respondents cited the This Holy Mystery doctrinal statement (passed by our General Conference and currently to be found in the Book of Resolutions), and on the whole, I think that is a fine piece of sacramental theology for our Church. But in the matter of which we are speaking, I can tell you that some on the study committee that developed it were vexed at the larger Church's attitudes over the radically "Open Table" ethos. Prof. Ed Phillips, who chaired that committee, recounts this in his article, "Open Tables and Closed Minds," in the journal Liturgy back in 2005. He writes (on p.28):

"What becomes curious to me is that attempts by some of us on the committee to do careful biblical and historical reflection (both from the perspective of the church catholic and the Wesleyan tradition) was often strongly discounted. Here is a typical response to my own attempt to explain to one individual why a totally open table is neither biblical nor Wesleyan: 

'Of course, we can go round and round about what Paul or the Gospel writers meant, . . . I just think one can make a strong theological case for an open table using prevenient grace (a primary theological contribution by Wesley via Augustine). I also think that . . . an open table appeals to our American sense of inclusive democracy.'

This is a significant key to what contemporary United Methodists in the West find so problematic about a disciplined table: it is undemocratic. It flies in the face of liberal freedom."

I'm well aware that advocates of the Open Table are sincere and well-meaning, and in most cases, they probably think that the Open Table stance is compassionate. The problem is that it isn't compassionate at all. Baptism and Eucharist are the difference between life and death. And when we ignore the clear teaching of the Scriptures and the tradition of the Church so that we can make either into whatever we want it to be, we are doing violence to the gospel entrusted to us. When we practice the Lord's Supper in as non-chalant a way as the Open Table implies, then we deny the saving gifts of God that should be at the heart of our evangelistic ministry. Salvation is not a series of isolated acts from which we can pick and choose at will; it is, rather, a reality into which God beckons us and is made manifest in our lives through our submission to the Holy Spirit in Christ's Holy Church. Baptism is the way we are initiated - no, incorporated - into that blessed reality.

I'm as serious as I can be when I say this: When we find ourselves to be in sin, the realization of that sin is a gift of the Holy Spirit, insofar as it is an invitation to repent and return to Christ in faithfulness. And that is exactly where the people called Methodists find themselves with their practice of the Lord's Supper.

John Meunier's post speaks of "shooing the unwashed from the Lord's table," but that's truly not what the orthodox practice of Eucharist does. Located within a form of ministry that embraces all the means of grace, it rather pursues the lost with an evangelical love, beckoning them to come to the living waters of baptism that they might die and be raised. And through those life-giving waters, it draws them toward the great feast that awaits, so that - once incorporated into the body of Christ and catechized through the preaching and teaching of Christ's holy word - they might then receive the body of Christ and know that it is the bread of heaven given to them for their salvation. We have all been offered the life that is a way of life, and there is a deep & profound logic to that journey.

Anything less than this is a commodification of the sacrament. That's something we could rightly do if we owned it, but we don't. Vicit agnus noster.

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.

What is our chief end?

According to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, it is "to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever."

I look at how that affirmation should affect our approach to worship in my new United Methodist Reporter column.

Worship is a funny thing. There are some people who don't feel like they've really been to worship unless the service follows a very formal liturgy, the clergy are wearing vestments, and the Eucharist is celebrated. For others, that bores them to tears.

On the other hand, there are people who don't feel like they've been to worship unless there is a plugged-in praise band, preaching w/ PowerPoint, and a mid-service drama to illustrate the Scripture reading.

The church I currently serve doesn't fit in either of those categories. We follow a recognizable liturgy - either the Service of Word or Service of Word & Table according to the rubrics of the United Methodist Book of Worship. But we also take "liturgical time" twice, at the beginning and middle of the service, to share stories, announcements, prayer concerns, and testimonies. I don't wear clerical vestments, but I do wear a clerical collar (which the congregation thinks is important). We sing hymns out of the hymnal, but we also have church members offer anthems that you might call either praise or gospel music. Sometimes our service lasts an hour, and sometimes it lasts an hour-and-a-half.

So what is the "right" or "best" way to worship?

Some people might offer a theological argument for how worship should be done. But my sense is that most people would say that the best way to worship is the way that "feels right to them."

And that's our problem. We don't do much theology anymore. We mostly do anthropology. We think that the right worship is the worship that inspires awe in us, or gives us a powerful experience.

We should all repeat this phrase before walking in the sanctuary on Sunday morning: "God does not care about my powerful worship experience." I think it would do us a world of good.

If our chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, then that means our worship is first and foremost about the praise of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Beyond that, our "enjoyment" of God means being made like God so that we can know him through Jesus Christ. And that means, in turn, that worship should be seen as a means of grace for our transformation.

Sometimes worshiping in ways that glorify God and open ourselves to transformation by God will involve a feeling of awe or a feeling of upwelling power. And sometimes it will feel mundane or even difficult. Learning to run a marathon is not always a bucket of peaches and rainbows; neither is being conformed to Christ always like getting our "felt needs" met through the worship that we always dreamed we'd get to experience.

Ever heard someone say that they left a church because they didn't like the preaching of the new minister, or because the music changed and they just "had' to go somewhere that offered music they liked better? I have. A lot. And I think the fact that such sentiments are common in contemporary Christianity is downright tragic.

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.

General Conference fear & trembling

General Conference will take place in Fort Worth, TX, from April 23rd to May 2nd of this year. Our church's website begins its description of GC by stating, "General Conference is the top policy-making body of the United Methodist Church." The second sentence invokes the makeup of GC according to "church law".

Now, if I were a non-Methodist and I saw a statement like that about our church's largest gathering, it would send me screaming in the other direction. Heck, if I were a typical, relatively uninformed Methodist it would send me running away. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why church bureaucrats think that the rest of the church wants to conceive of, read about, and proclaim the church in bureaucratic terms. If all General Conference is going to be is a "policy-making body," then we ought not to spend the millions of dollars it takes to put it on and give that money for hunger relief.

The church does not "make policy." The church interprets Scripture, and from that interpretation, gives doctrine to the faithful. There has been a lot of talk over the past year about how everyone wants the General Conference to be a more prayerful, worshipful time - a time where the delegates can truly engage in holy conferencing together. The prospects of that happening are not helped when our official website uses such impoverished language to prepare us for what to expect.

If whoever it is that writes and posts information on umc.org wants to find out what Wesleyan conferencing is supposed to be about, that person ought to go to the sources and read a little bit about our tradition. Ignorance of it is a large reason why our church is in a state of slow dissolution. And if Methodists are truly more interested in policy-making than in holy conferencing, Washington D.C. is a much better place to do it than the General Conference.

I started this post with the intention of talking a little bit about my own hopes for General Conference, which I outline in an open letter to the delegates in The United Methodist Reporter. And now I don't think I can do that.

A framework for the means of grace

My current column series in the United Methodist Reporter has been looking at the means of grace in Christian practice. I began by laying out how, in a Wesleyan sense, we understand the means of grace. I then went on to look at both works of piety and works of mercy. Works of piety orient us toward the love of God and consist of those worship and devotional practices that help us learn to love God better. Works of mercy orient us toward the love of neighbor. When we engage in them through acts of compassion and justice, we learn how to love our fellow human beings better.

It is crucially important to understand the means of grace as formational practices. We can't learn what it means to live the Christian life simply by sitting alone in a room and privately reading our Bibles. We have to have Christian friends who can help us, pushing us to really live out our discipleship, encouraging us where we fall short, and reflecting God's grace in our lives. In that sense, even those acts of discipleship that we undertake as individuals ultimately find their fulfillment in community.

Thus, I wanted to finish off the column series by offering a practical way to live into the means of grace in the context of community. The absolute best way I have seen that done is through the particular type of small group called Covenant Discipleship, which is an updated form of the early Methodist class meeting. I look at Covenant Discipleship groups as a means of grace in my latest Reporter column. For any person deeply attracted by the prospect of engaging the means of grace daily, but who is not quite sure how to do that, a Covenant Discipleship group offers a great way. It provides the framework necessary to live out discipleship to Jesus daily. And if you are a little numb to the small group craze that has swept the church in the past few years, don't be fooled. CD groups are different than most any other small group model I've seen.

In the past few decades, there have been a handful of pastors and scholars who have examined the purpose and function of Wesley's class meeting in the hopes of reinvigorating Methodist discipleship. The development of Covenant Discipleship is a direct result of their efforts. The primary person behind this work has been Dr. David Lowes Watson. Currently, Dr. Steve Manskar at the General Board of Discipleship is the leading force behind promoting Covenant Discipleship groups in the life of the church. The Office of Accountable Discipleship, which he heads, provides leadership and resources for starting and maintaining CD groups in local churches. If you'd like to find out more, visit the website here.

The four columns in the Reporter series can be found here:

1) "Finding faith through the means of grace"

2) "Transformed through holy habits"

3) "Loving your neighbor a real 'means of grace'"

4) "Covenant Discipleship helps us wait on God"

Manna and Mercy

God wants to transform us. To heal our brokenness. To cleanse us from sin. To redeem us. To restore the image of God within us. To give us the same mind as Christ Jesus.

And the means of grace are the way he has chosen to do that.

The means of grace are those signs, words, and actions that God uses as channels through which to pour grace in our lives. I have been writing a column series on the means of grace in the United Methodist Reporter. I began the column series with an overview of the means of grace, dividing them as Wesley did - into works of piety and works of mercy. Then in the second installment, I focused on works of piety - those acts of worship and compassion which draw us closer into the life of God.

Hand in hand with works of piety are works of mercy. I write on this topic in this week's column. These are those acts of justice and compassion that express our love of neighbor. When we engage in works of mercy, we are both reflecting God's loving mercy for us and extending that mercy to others. Works of mercy are a form of the church's witness to the world. And that is crucially important. But they do something more - they work to sanctify us as we engage in them. Like works of piety, the works of mercy help us to receive God's grace. They thus shape our character and transform us into the people God wants us to be.

God has extended manna and mercy to us. He asks us to give that gift on to others. And when we do, we show the world what it means to live as members of God's own kingdom - in the here and now!

Holy Habits

A couple of weeks ago, I began a column series on the means of grace. In that first column, I gave an overview on the means of grace in the Wesleyan tradition. We can understand the means of grace as spiritual disciplines, so long as we realize that - in a Wesleyan sense - spiritual disciplines encompass both those works of piety and works of mercy that are constitutive of the love of God and neighbor.

In my second installment of the series, I look at works of piety. It's a pretty old-fashioned sounding name, I admit, but works of piety are nothing more than those holy habits that draw us closer to God through regular worship and devotion practices. For practicing Christians, this is pretty familiar territory: Bible reading, Holy Communion, prayer, fasting, Sunday worship, etc. But I think there is also a great challenge in approaching works of piety in a true Wesleyan sense, and that is to do it with a high degree of rigor and commitment. I know that I am nowhere near I would like to be in my personal holiness. But I also know that I stand in a tradition rich with the resources to help me better respond to the grace the Christ offers me daily.

In the next two columns in this series, I will look at works of mercy and Covenant Discipleship. Stay tuned.

Channels of grace

My current column in the United Methodist Reporter is on spiritual disciplines as means of grace. This is the first column in a planned four-part series, which will examine the theology of spiritual disciplines from a Wesleyan perspective. A little personal background:

One of the most effective means of growing in grace that I have ever experienced is participation in a Covenant Discipleship Group. I was a member of a CD Group (or some similar type of accountability group) every year from my first year in divinity school until last year. Having that regular relationship of accountability with brothers and sisters in Christ is crucial in battling sin and growing towards Christian maturity. Once you get used to it, it is a real spiritual lifeline.

Then my wife and I moved to Durham so I could go back to graduate school, and I had to leave my CD Group in Searcy, Arkansas, behind. The first year we were here, I met with a friend each week to discuss issues in our faith and pray together. Those weekly meeting were crucial touchstones for my faith as I dove headlong back into the books. But it wasn't the same as a CD Group.

But that's changed in the past couple of months. A number of students at Duke Divinity School are interested in incorporating a Wesleyan spiritual discipline into their lives, and the result has been the formation of two CD Groups - a group of five men and a group of five women. I am helping to resource these groups, in addition to participating as a member myself. And I can't tell you how great it is to be back involved in Covenant Discipleship. I have encountered no better way to receive the grace that sanctifies.