Worth reading, part II

Earlier this week I explained that I am going to spend the next few posts looking at a number of great resources - both in print and online - that specialize in the Wesleyan tradition and contemporary Methodism.

I want to point first to an interesting new online journal by the name of Methodist Review. I highlighted MR back in August in this post. MR is the successor to Quarterly Review, which was published for about 25 years by the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry of the UMC as a journal of theological resources for ministry.

Basically, that meant that its articles tried to bridge the gap between the academy and the church. Its authors included scholars as well as pastors and laity within the church. And its articles represented a wide variety of topics in theology and ministry. By the way, the entire QR archive is available for free online at this link.

I'm excited about Methodist Review for a number of reasons. First, it fills a need that was created by the demise of QR after it ceased publication five years ago. We need a journal that is committed to publishing broadly in the area of Wesleyan and Methodist Studies, particularly around issues of practical theology and ministry that find purchase in both academy and church.

Second, MR is free! All that is required is a quick and easy online registration. After that, subscribers have access to all of MR's content, which can be read from your computer or printed out in pdf format.

Third, MR is a "peer-reviewed" journal, which means that submissions are read and judged in a blind review process to determine suitability and fitness for publication. So while MR, as a journal, wants to fit a niche not occupied by most scholarly journals, it is committed to maintaining a high level of quality in the articles it accepts because of the peer-review process. That also means it can serve as an outlet for publication for those of us who write essay-length works in Wesleyan theology or Methodist history - both because it helps to distribute our ideas to an audience and because it can help in securing teaching positions and tenure status.

Fourth and finally, as an online journal, MR is at the front end of a trend in academic publishing in general, which is moving away from expensive print formats and going to online publishing. Some people see that as lamentable, and it may well be. But academic journals are expensive to print and have to rely on notoriously small subscriber bases. So going online is really about developing a model that is sustainable for the future. In that sense, MR is helping to give shape in an area of academic publishing that, no doubt, many other journals will be moving into in the coming years.

One reason I started with Methodist Review in this blog series is that I think it could be of significant interest to a wide variety of committed Wesleyan Christians. Look, for instance, at the table of contents for Volume 1, which was published last year. The articles range from a consideration of the nature of Wesleyan theology, to a retrospective look at the UMC's first 40 years, to an analysis of certain aspects of John Wesley's thought.

Those are all topics with relevance both to academic theological reflection and grounded Christian practice!

And as an added bonus related to MR's online format, I was glad to find out that it is not limited either in page length or publishing date. That means it can feature articles both longer and shorter than that which would be standard in a print-based journal. And articles can also be added to a given volume throughout the year by simply continuing with sequential pagination. Those two innovations, in and of themselves, show immediate benefits to having a specifically online journal in the world of Wesleyan theology and Methodist history.

So read and enjoy!

Worth reading, part I

I'd like to spend a few posts pointing my readers to excellent resources for reading in the Wesleyan & Methodist tradition. Here's why:

-- While there are a lot of good Methodist-related blogs these days (see Shane Raynor's Wesley Report for a regular rundown of solid content), it's important to read deeper than what you can get in a blog post. Christians identify with a particular tradition because of the understanding that it offers of the Christian faith. The Wesleyan tradition, I believe, offers a compelling account of certain key parts of the Christian life: the doctrine of salvation; the understanding of grace; the nature and work of the Holy Spirit; the evangelistic calling of Christian ministry; the nature of sanctification; and the importance of participation in the means of grace. Learning to grow as a disciple of Jesus Christ within such a tradition means immersing oneself in that tradition's resources.

-- I often get requests about where to go to find information on this or that topic. While you can and should look for guidance on specific topics when they arise, I think a better way to come to a mature understanding of Wesleyan theology and Methodist history is to read regularly out of the best resources available. That will often come through new books that are written by pastors and theologians in the Wesleyan tradition. But it can also come through regularly engaging top periodicals and journals.

-- There are good resources available to us on both an academic and popular level - and I'll be recommending resources from both categories. Increasingly, these resources are available in both print and online editions. I have no doubt that most (if not all) will eventually be available primarily in online formats. The cost of printing and distribution is simply so high that it is driving print-based publications out of business. (And the move for academic journals, which have very small circulations, to go online has already started.) But the problem is that nobody has figured out how to make money with web-based publishing yet - and after all, making money is essential if a publication is going to survive. So in the resources I am going to recommend, I'm going to advocate not just free online reading, but actual subscriptions. That may sound a bit controversial, but I think it's important. If we want these publications to keep on going, we need to support them as they continue to evolve and develop publishing models that are sustainable for the future. For the sake of full disclosure, I'll let you know the ones for which I have subscriptions myself.

-- Many of us see the potential for revival of the Wesleyan tradition these days. In fact, in some ways a revival has been going on since the development of modern critical Wesley Studies in the 1960s. But for that revival to have a wide impact, it needs to be engaged by a breadth of interested laity, committed pastors, and dedicated scholars. So I'm going to be an advocate for that, here and in the posts to come.

Questions? Comments? I hope you'll stay tuned.

Is God with us?

"They will call him Immanuel, which means, God with us."

The doctrine of the Incarnation is central to the Christian faith. It states that God has come into the world in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the one who did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but instead emptied himself and took the form of a servant - being born in our likeness and suffering for us on the cross (Philippians 2:5-11). Through his life, death, and resurrection, he has opened the way to our reconciliation to God's own self and our restoration in God's own image.

The season of Advent is the time when we remember and re-tell the story of the Incarnation. It's a story that can border on sentimentality if we're not careful, so I sometimes think it's helpful to think of both Philippians 2 and John 1 when we're reading from the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke. The One who was born to Mary is none other than the eternal Word of God, who was there at the very beginning and through whom all things were made.

But wait - there's more.

Intimately connected with the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ is the gift of the Holy Spirit. Before he ascended into heaven, Jesus promised us that he wouldn't leave us alone. Indeed, he poured out the Holy Spirit onto the Church so that we could be taught, counseled, encouraged, and transformed.

An emphasis on the persona and work of the Holy Spirit is one aspect of Wesleyan theology. As Wesleyans, we understand the Spirit to be essential to the affirmation that - yes! - God is still with us.

John Wesley writes in his Letter to a Roman Catholic, "I believe the infinite and eternal Spirit of God, equal with the Father and the Son, to be not only perfectly holy in himself, but the immediate cause of all holiness in us: enlightening our understandings, rectifying our wills and affections, renewing our natures, uniting our persons to Christ, assuring us of the adoption of sons, leading us in our actions, purifying and sanctifying our souls and bodies to a full and eternal enjoyment of God."

That's a strong statement of the importance of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life. And Wesley echoes it elsewhere, particularly in relation to the work of the Spirit in salvation. For instance, look at this comment by Wesley in his sermon, "The Great Privilege of Those that are Born of God," where he speaks about what he calls, "the life of God in the soul of a believer."

Wesley writes, "It ... implies the continual inspiration of God's Holy Spirit: God's breathing into the soul, and the soul's breathing back what it first receives from God; a continual action of God upon the soul, and re-action of the soul upon God; an unceasing presence of God, the loving, pardoning God, manifested to the heart, and perceived by faith; and an unceasing return of love, praise, and prayer, offering up all the thoughts of our hearts, all the words of our tongues, all the works of our hands, all our body, soul, and spirit, to be an holy sacrifice, acceptable unto God in Christ Jesus."

Our election is, it turns out, conditional. It is conditional upon the action of the Holy Spirit upon us, and upon our willingness to be swept up in that wonderful work of grace upon our souls. Wesley's statement captures that aspect of salvation beautifully. What he's describing, in essence, is what it means to be perfected by grace.

Considering the presence of the Holy Spirit with us here & now, in my mind, adds something significant to how I think about Advent.

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.

Putting my vocation into words

I was filling out a 'profile' statement this morning, and I found myself wanting to name my sense of calling in a few short sentences. For me, that calling is both to academic research & writing and practical ministry. And the substance of the calling is the same in both areas, even if it gets expressed in somewhat different ways given the different contexts of university classroom and local church.

Here's what I settled on:

My vocation is centered around exploring and reflecting on how the church can live into a more faithful way of being through disciplined participation in the means of grace. I try to embrace that vocation personally through reading and study, writing for both academic and church audiences, teaching and preaching in both university and church settings, and - perhaps most importantly - through the practical ministry to which I am dedicated as a presbyter in the church of Jesus Christ.

I am drawn to this vocation out of a strong belief that it can help the church live into its calling to be the people of God. That is, I believe most challenges that Christians face in the present era - from the need to embrace fully our identity as disciples of Jesus to the calling to renew the church in its witness and ministry - are dependent on our willingness to pattern our lives in those graced practices given to us by God for our sanctification in faith and the mutual upbuilding of our common life.

I have known of people who spend their entire working lives in occupations they dislike but feel compelled to pursue for one reason or another. In fact, that might describe the majority of the population. And so I'm doubly grateful to be able to approach each day's work as a labor of love, finding great joy and fulfillment in that which God is giving me to do.

Check out Methodist Review

A new online journal featuring articles on Wesleyan theology and Methodist history is just out. Its title is Methodist Review. And I think its presence in the world of Methodism is really important.

This journal just went online a few weeks ago - check it out here - but it already promises to occupy a very important place in the space between the halls of academia and the pews of the church. Methodist Review (or what I'll call MR) is the successor to a journal called Quarterly Review, which ran in print format from 1980-2005. Quarterly Review (or QR) was published by the UMC, and you can access its archives free of charge at this site.

My understanding of the passing of QR and the birth of MR is from conversations I've had with people over the past few years, so I may not be right on every detail. But I think QR was shuttered due to the combination of cost (i.e., printing and distribution) and declining readership. Its demise was seen as a real loss by the groups that read and wrote for QR: clergy with a more academic bent and scholars with a commitment to the church. The search soon began for a way to provide the kind of church-oriented theological reflection that QR offered but in a way that could be sustained over the long term. The result - a few years later - is MR, which will exist entirely in an online format.

Why am I telling you this? For two reasons.

First, the mission of Methodist Review is important. We need a journal that prints articles aiming at scholarly quality (e.g., MR is "peer reviewed," which is an important criterion for academic respect), while still orienting its content at issues that matter to the church. The description on MR's website says it will be publishing "scholarly articles in all areas and eras of Wesleyan and Methodist studies." That may mean that it will lean more toward the academy than the church (as opposed to QR, which often did the opposite). But the articles in its first issue are all about the church - specifically, a number of retrospective views of the first 40 years of UMC history and a critical conversation about the nature of Wesleyan theology. This kind of content occupies a crucial and much-needed space for scholars, pastors, and laity in the Wesleyan tradition.

Second, Methodist Review is online and free. That means that the Methoblogosphere can tap into it with the ease of a mouse click. All you have to do is register and you can have access to pdf's of any article from any issue. With the exception of professors and graduate students, we'll probably never get church folks to subscribe to expensive printed & bound journals again. But if we can direct them to a website, then we can continue the important work of Wesleyan theological reflection as a whole church.

Handing out the kudos: The support for MR comes from the Perkins School of Theology (SMU), the Candler School of Theology (Emory Univ.), and the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry (UMC). Its editors are Prof. Russell Richey and Prof. Rex Matthews of Candler, and Prof. Ted Campbell of Perkins. I imagine that it took a lot of work to get this new venture off the ground, and the people & institutions that have made it possible should be recognized for the service they are doing for both academy and church.

I'm going to add a link to MR in my right-hand sidebar. I hope you'll consider becoming a regular reader (and maybe a contributor, too!).

What's in a mission statement?

In the Book of Discipline, the United Methodist Church's book of canon law and doctrine, the mission of the Church is described as follows:

"The mission of the Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world" (par.120, p.87).

There are ways in which I think that statement is apt and helpful as local churches seek to focus their ministries to reflect the work of followers of Jesus charged with witnessing to his gospel through word and deed.

But in other ways I'm not such a big fan of the statement. For one, I'm not sure that an ecclesiastical communion like the United Methodist Church needs a mission statement. It seems simplistic and far too indebted to a marketing culture better at selling commodities than spreading the good news. I mean, why can't our mission statement simply be the Apostles' Creed?

Another way that I'm ambivalent about the Church's mission statement is the relatively recent prepositional phrase attached to the end of it: "... for the transformation of the world." This is difficult to explain fully in something the length of a blog post, so let me offer a Stanley Hauerwas aphorism instead: "The first task of the Church is not to make the world more just. It is to make the world, the world."

That is, God the Father has called a people together in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ. This people is known as the Church (1 Peter 2:4-10). And it is the community called Church that is serving as a light to the whole world, beckoning people to follow the way of salvation (Matthew 5:14-16). Through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Church is able to glorify God and mediate the saving grace of Jesus Christ to all those come within her bounds - namely, via the sacrament of baptism (Galatians 3:27-29). From within the covenant community, men and women are able to experience the transformation that brings them from sin to righteousness, from death to life!

The Church is charged with making the world see itself as the world, because only then can the world know a better form of life than the life that worships death. And through that very conviction, those who are lost in the wilderness of the world can be drawn to the salvation known in the Church.

So what does this have to do with the United Methodist statement? Simply put, I don't think we are charged with transforming the world. That's God's job, and God has promised to do it in God's own time (2 Peter 3:8-9).

We are charged with building the Church through the Holy Spirit's guidance, baptizing believers and forming them in holiness of heart and life.

Will those believers go out into the world and do works of justice and mercy, spreading the love of Jesus Christ in the world's institutions and structures? Absolutely! And thank God for it.

The teleological thrust of Christian discipleship, though, is not some kind of Pelagian transformation of the world into the kingdom of God. The belief that we can actually do such a thing is the tragedy of Protestant liberalism, which has led to a watering-down of both doctrine and the lived reality of the Church's life. It is an erroneous belief that still infects the Church, and I fear that our current mission statement doesn't help things in that area.

Colin Williams wrote John Wesley's Theology Today in 1960, at the height of the mid-20th century ecumenical movement. His presentation of Wesley's thought aims at providing Methodists with a theological basis from which to engage in dialogue with Christians of other traditions. The particular ecumenical moment in which people like Williams and Albert C. Outler were prominent Methodist actors has passed, but the heart of Williams' analysis holds up remarkably well.

At the end of a chapter on Wesley's nuanced understanding of justification by faith, Williams offers a passage that can serve as a corrective to our short-and-sweet mission statement:

"Our hope is in Jesus Christ, not in the transformation of the world or even of ourselves. Consequently our hope is not destroyed by the failure of the kingdom of God to become visible or even by our own failure to make visible progress to the goal of Christlikeness. Nevertheless, Wesley laid great stress on the fact that because our faith relation is in Christ, we live under the promise of present transformation and are able to move forward in creative, ethical endeavor because Christ continually offers his transforming presence to believers, and, through the Church, to the world" (p.73).

Williams' quote predates our current mission statement, of course, but it is superior to it in content and articulation.

What to do about our 'graying church'

Woody Allen once said, "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying."

Ah, if only. But since Woody's desire doesn't seem to be a possibility for any of us, we have to make plans for what is going to happen to the people and the communities we love after we pass on. In the church, that means making sure that there are younger generations of people who will carry on the torch of the gospel and help to make disciples for Jesus Christ. But for many Protestant denominations in this culture, church members seem to be dying at a much faster rate than they are being replaced.

My own church is in this predicament. So I ask myself, "How can the United Methodist Church attract more younger members? How can we keep from being a 'graying church?'"

I've got some ideas on that, as I'm sure you do. But whatever solutions any of us thinks would work, we could all agree that having a toolkit with useful information about the church's demographic makeup - and trends - would be a big help.

As they have in the past, Lovett Weems and his staff at the Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., have come through for the UMC. They have just released a new report that looks at the church's aging in the United States as compared to the overall population, which you can access here.

The methods in the report are creative and unorthodox, and they deliver results that I think are probably pretty accurate. The church is aging everywhere, though there are wide differences between regions of the country. And there are interesting differences in aging rates between annual conferences within the same jurisdiction as well. As you might imagine, the church is aging slowest in the South (i.e., in the Southeastern and South Central Jurisdictions), which is also the region where some annual conferences report modest growth at times. It's aging most quickly in the West, Midwest, and Northeast regions of the country.

Just based on the statistical data, there is nothing to suggest that predictions about a precipitous decline in church membership over the next few decades is off the mark at all. So the question then becomes, "What do we do about it?"

I offer my own views on this report in my new column in the UM Reporter. Feel free to check it out and share your own views. I appreciate the section of the Lewis Center report that makes suggestions about starting new churches and growing existing congregations. But ultimately I think those suggestions are fairly useless until they are informed by prior theological work.

The church will not grow again until we proclaim a gospel that reflects the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. If we are willing to proclaim that gospel and embody it in our common life, I suspect the Holy Spirit will bless us with fruits. If we do not, then Jesus will do what he says he will do to the church at Laodicea. I for one believe that the proclamation of the true gospel was the very reason God raised up people called Methodists in the beginning. And God can use us still, if we are willing.

So the real question for us is not really how we get younger, not-so-gray heads in our pews. It is rather how we can once again preach and practice the gospel once entrusted to us to save souls, reform the church, and spread scriptural holiness across the land.

My vision for church reform

Okay, so this is a pretty long post. But if you were interested in what I wrote last week, you might be interested in this too.

My last blog post looked at the viability of the United Methodist Church's future as a denomination. That future is by no means certain. With declining numbers in the American church, an anemic sense of evangelism and mission, a lack of commitment to Wesleyan doctrine, and a movement afoot to split the church into regions based on national and regional boundaries, the church is at a crossroads. In addition to that, the stiflingly bureaucratic forms of church government we have adopted are seriously inhibiting our attempts to carry out our primary mission, which is to proclaim and practice the gospel so that we make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

There were several questions directed to me in the comments section of that last blog post, so let me address them first:

1. One respondent asked why we would spend time and energy trying to repair a broken institution when we could be spending that time making disciples one-on-one. That is a great question, and it points to the driving issue I was trying to get at in my recent article in Faith & Leadership. Jesus has called us into his church. That means that the church is, first and foremost, the community of Jesus' disciples. But over time, the community gains an inescapably "institution aspect" to it. And that ain't a bad thing. Because we believe that the church witnesses to the gospel throughout history, we believe there is a continuity to the Christian community from the time of the apostles to the present. That continuity is evident in the church's historic doctrine, the church's ministry (including the ministry of both clergy and laity), and the church's mission. If you don't accept the church-as-institution, you very quickly begin to suffer from a form of historical amnesia that ungrounds you from the Christian tradition. That's bad for basic Christian theology and can lead to a shallow biblicism. It is also a peculiar temptation for Americans, who tend to see everything in "newer is better" terms and want to discard anything that appears not to work well.

2. Another respondent asked how viable I think the UMC is over the long term, and to what degree I am committed to stay in it. The first part of this question is, in a sense, THE question for Methodists. Clearly, the growth of the church in Africa and the Philippines (and in parts of Europe) shows that the Holy Spirit is working through our church. But the church in the U.S. is a different issue, where we seem to be tearing ourselves apart over differences in moral doctrine and seem to have lost the will to evangelize in a robust way. I can't answer the viability question with any certainty, although I'll make some suggestions later in this post. As far as the issue of my own commitment is concerned, I was baptized, confirmed, and ordained in the UMC. I took vows that commit me to a ministry of Word, Sacrament, Order, and Service in its midst. I believe our church has the resources within its tradition to be a powerful witness for Jesus Christ in the world. So I ain't going anywhere.

3. Yet another respondent asked about my views on the proposed constitutional amendments that would initiate a process of structural reform in the UMC as a whole. If you aren't aware of these proposed amendments, you need to read up on them. As a starter, see this post from Wesley Report. This is a complicated issue, and I am working on an essay that addresses it right now. I'll let you know when I'm finished. Until then, I would only say that I think the restructuring is a very bad idea. The issue most often raised to support it is that the General Conference is too "Americentric" (meaning too focused on the concerns of the U.S. church). But all that is needed to remedy that is discipline and patience. The discipline would come in the form of limiting the number of General Conference petitions submitted that focus on peculiarly American concerns and structuring the agenda more equitably. And the patience would come in simply waiting a few years as the size of the church outside the U.S. grows. Since delegations to the General Conference are proportionally-based, the dominance of the U.S. delegation will eventually even out. And that will happen sooner than you think. Restructuring of the church is overkill. And it would open the door to the separation of the church into national or regional constituencies, thus reinforcing the nationalism that has led to innumerable problems over the past few hundred years.

4. Finally, a question was asked about how to go about extricating ourselves from a bureaucratic approach to ministry and recommitting ourselves to the missional task of making disciples for Jesus Christ. That's what I want to take up in the remainder of this post, so consider what follows my humble attempt at addressing this most crucial issue.

First, there are quick changes we could make to the way we go about some our vital tasks that would make a huge difference. I'll mention two. One is to reshape the agenda of our annual conference sessions so that they are almost entirely centered on worship and equipping. Have all your awards and recognitions done at the bishop's office in the weeks leading up to conference. Film them and put them on a DVD, which you then distribute to the conference delegates. Also make the commitment not to spend time debating and voting on resolutions, which are among the most counterproductive activities that an annual conference does (with an exception made for the year before General Conference, of course, when the annual conferences have the ability to submit petitions). Then take all the new time you've got to worship (perhaps getting a 2 or 3 sermon series from your bishop casting a vision for the conference's ministry) and equip clergy and laity for ministry (through substantive workshops on doctrine, mission, evangelism, etc.). This may sound simplistic, but don't underestimate the potential that annual conference culture change represents. Remember that there was actually a time when Methodists looked forward to annual conference as a time when the Holy Spirit renewed the church.

And as another easy change we can reclaim the ordination process as a personal experience rather than a bureaucratic nightmare. This can start immediately by a new attitude from clergy mentors, who often see themselves as cogs in the wheel rather than real contributors to spiritual formation. If mentors will commit to get involved in the lives of their candidates and stay involved, it can have an immediate humanizing effect on the process. (I'm not blowing hot air here. I have done that with a candidate of my own, and I think it made a difference.) Beyond that, annual conferences can do whatever possible (given the Book of Discipline regulations) to further humanize the ordination process by de-emphasizing the bureaucratic elements of it and accenting the human contact. Getting the candidates and the probationary clergy together with the Board of Ordained Ministry registrar (apart from the annual retreat) to go over processes and troubleshoot questions in a supportive setting would be a start. All of these things take time commitments from the clergy involved, but all of them are do-able without official action by a governing body. Again, it may sound simplistic, but don't underestimate the difference young clergy can make when they are optimistic rather than cynical about the church and their place in it.

Second, we need to think carefully about what we want our annual conference ministry staffs and our general boards and agencies to do for us. And I want to be careful here, because I think the folks who make up these staffs are committed disciples who pour out their hearts for the church. But in general, I think the more we can reduce the size of the church bureaucracy, the better off we'l be. Take the issue of top-down programming, for instance. Because these staffs are expected to generate programming, and local church pastors and laity are expected to attend, it gives us the erroneous notion that "connectionalism" consists primarily of us all doing our duty by attending programmatic events that are often ineffective or inapplicable to our settings in ministry. Moreoever, the programming I have been most impressed with has never come from 'on high,' but has rather been the vision of a pastor or a church who have shared it with the rest of us. If the time and energy spent on conference and general church-level staffs doing programming was handed over to congregations, then it just might happen that congregations in geographical proximity to one another would reach out and join together in true connectionalism for common ministry and mission. But so long as your attention is focused on the next mandatory thing coming down the pike from your district superintendent or bishop, or from the conference ministry staff, then you will never think to look laterally for how you can cooperate with sister congregations near you.

I also believe we need to seriously re-think the role of general boards and agencies in setting the agenda at General Conference. I don't know this for a fact (and I would appreciate someone who does enlightening me), but my understanding is that the proportion of General Conference legislation that originates with general board and agency staffs is quite large [UPDATE: In the comments section of this post, Steve Manskar from the General Board of Discipleship offers some corrective comments on this point. I thank him, and welcome anyone else shedding further light on the extent to which general church structures 'set the agenda' at the General Conference]. I don't mean this harshly, but that amounts to the entire church's agenda being driven by bureaucrats who may not even be in touch with what is going on in the church 'on the ground.' And the result is that the church becomes committed through the legislation that passes to certain courses of action, which require lots of money and which are (not surprisingly) often carried out by the same general boards and agencies that originated the legislation in the first place. It is also no wonder that church bureaucrats would tend toward the belief that the church's problems could be legislated away. That's the mindset of someone who works in a bureaucracy, whereas I would argue that the church's problems are best solved through the Holy Spirit's work in local congregations. Like annual conference sessions, the General Conference could actually be something that people look forward to with something other than fear and dread. But change has to start somewhere.

Third, I believe reform has to entail a re-commitment to Wesleyan doctrine. Look, if we do not believe that our Wesleyan heritage offers something unique to the church catholic, then it becomes very difficult to make an argument that we should exist as a separate church at all. I wrote my current UM Reporter column about the importance of grounding ourselves in our doctrine. The trouble in the church now is two-fold. First, those who do invoke Wesley or Wesleyan teaching often betray a lack of serious reading in Wesley (and you can see this particularly in the way terms like 'catholic spirit' and 'social holiness' and 'Wesleyan Quadrilateral' are misused). And second, many don't even bother with our particular doctrine and instead work from a combination of shallow pop theology and the therapeutic junk - which is easier but does nothing to form mature discipleship. Our congregations are starving for solid doctrinal content that could open up their lives to the reality of God's revolutionary work in the world, and we make them settle for hearing about how to be a nice person. It doesn't have to be this way. But it's going to require us to read seriously out of the tradition and stop trying to turn Wesleyan discipleship into a lukewarm mushy bowl of 'open hearts, open minds, open doors' oatmeal.

So that's it. A few practical changes. And a few changes in the way we approach ministry. It's not the total solution. But it would make a difference.

Is 'mainline' Wesleyan?

Scott Kisker, a professor at Wesley Theological Seminary, recent published a book entitled, Mainline or Methodist? Rediscovering Our Evangelistic Mission.

I review this book in the current issue of the United Methodist Reporter.

Considering that many United Methodists take pride in the description of their church as "mainline," Dr. Kisker's thesis is a bold one. He argues that our claim of mainline identity is deeply connected to our sense of wanting to be acceptable to the broader American culture. And in that sense, it is un-Wesleyan and un-Methodist.

Dr. Kisker has done a good job in several ways through this book, which is published by Discipleship Resources and is intended largely for a lay reading audience.

He writes about both early Methodist history and Wesleyan theology in a style designed to be accessible to the general church. And he attempts to explain how very counter-cultural the original Methodists tried to be. They weren't trying to 'fit in.' They were seeking passionately after salvation, a reality that is often dependent on not fitting in with what the broader world says is the way we should live and relate to one another. And a large part of their mission was to offer a different way of life to others, which can only come about when discipleship is not treated as equivalent with cultural conformity.

This is a timely book, not least because the church still tries desperately to be treated as acceptable to the broader culture in so many ways. And when we do that, our gospel is rendered tame and our discipleship is rendered toothless. Dr. Kisker is simply trying the church to look around and realize how far we have strayed from our original mission.

It is a message we would do well to heed.

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.

The United Methodist Way

Taylor Burton-Edwards has a provocative piece in the United Methodist Reporter this week. He comments on a paper presented by Dr. Randy Maddox during a retreat at Lake Junaluska, NC, last winter that brought together bishops and district superintendents from all over the connection. The paper, which is entitled, "The United Methodist Way," looks at Methodism's origin as a flexible, Holy Spirit-led revival movement that incorporated people into a way of life marked by progressive freedom from sin through holiness of heart & life. This process was possible because of the working of God's grace, which first reaches out to sinners and empowers them to respond by shaping their lives around holiness through participation in the means of grace.

The paper (downloadable here as a pdf file) suggests that the United Methodist Church today is, ironically, in much the same shape as the Church of England in John Wesley's day - "marked by much nominal commitment and spiritual lethargy." But it also argues that the means for responding to the Holy Spirit's call are already present within the church's tradition. It suggests such common features of church life as Disciple Bible Study, Covenant Discipleship, and Volunteers in Mission are examples of Wesleyan ministry that have the power to really be transformative. And it suggests that, when individuals and congregations commit themselves to such practices, the Holy Spirit is given the place to work.

Now this is my own interpretation of the paper's central intent, and it is admittedly loose. But Burton-Edwards offers a critique that, surprisingly enough, seems to suggest that the church as a whole is ill-equipped for the type of renewal the paper is advocating. In particular, he asserts that:

-- John Wesley and the early Methodists "did not try to reform the Church of England per se" but rather set about to engage in mission (what he calls "a bias toward action").

-- "[O]ur current denominational and congregational institutions are simply not designed to make missional Christians, much less deploy much of what early Methodists were up to."

-- These same "institutions" are "continuity structures and supply houses, not on-the-ground missiologists."This response begs the question, "Then who can respond to the Holy Spirit's call?" Claiming that the structures he's referring to are not the answer, Burton-Edwards goes on to suggest what (or who) is. He responds: "You are."

Now I don't want to belabor this point, but what Burton-Edwards is saying, what he is not saying, and what he is saying wrongly are all extremely important for anyone who cares about the future of our church.

First, Burton-Edwards is incorrect in a historical sense when he suggests that Wesley wasn't trying "to reform the Church of England per se." In point of fact, it was always Wesley's hope that the revival experienced by the Methodists in their societies would spread to parish congregations more than it did. His stated mission for the Methodists was that they "reform the nation, particularly the church, and to spread scriptural holiness over these lands." Frank Baker has an informative chapter concerning Wesley's many attempts to form a coalition of evangelical Anglican clergy serving parishes in John Wesley and the Church of England (see "Uniting the Evangelical Clergy," pp.180-196). As an historical anecdote we might also think of the way in which Wesley intended to hand over the leadership of the Methodists to the ordained priest John Fletcher, who was ensconced in a parish as the vicar of Madeley. Though by the end of his life Wesley realized that a good proportion of the Methodists would probably separate, it was always his hope and his aim to reform the church rather than separate from it.

Second, Burton-Edwards seems to suggest that the paper itself claims renewal must take place in a top-down manner. It is vague what he means by "denominational and congregational institutions" but it seems that he is thinking on the level of general boards and agencies, as well as bishop-led conference ministry staffs. Interestingly the paper never suggests that either general boards & agencies or annual conference ministry staffs need to be at the vanguard of the types of Wesleyan ministry it advocates. (An appendix at the end of the paper suggests ways that bishops can be involved in nurturing this ministry, but I actually read it in an anti-programmatic way.) Instead, the paper focuses on Wesley's three-part exhortation from "Thoughts upon Methodism" where he advises that the Methodists must hold fast to the "doctrine, spirit, and discipline" with which they were formed as a body of faithful Christians.

Admittedly, the General Conference as one of those top-down institutions must ensure that orthodox doctrine is maintained so that the church remains faithful to Scripture and the catholic tradition of the church. But beyond that, doctrinally-faithful practices constitutive of Methodism's original "spirit" and "discipline" as suggested by the paper seem almost wholly to be located at the local level. (As a pastor with experience in campus ministry and the local church, that is at least how the paper seemed to come across to me.)

Ah, but there's the catch. Burton-Edwards lumps general church-level and annual conference-level institutions together with congregations themselves ("denominational and congregational institutions"). It is a confusing aspect of his commentary in general (Does he mean the heart of congregational life? Does he not? And if he does, why does he assume congregations are so inherently deaf to the Spirit's call?). But regardless, the claim that congregations are somehow incapable or ill-equipped to nurture the United Methodist Way - as the paper describes it - is a serious one that drives at the heart of our polity.

As you can probably guess, I disagree. Local congregations are the perfect places to nurture the kinds of disciplined practices that early Methodism knew and fostered. If it can't happen in the local church, it can't happen anywhere. To answer the question, "Who or What is the answer?", with "You are", is to miss a very important point. There are no solitary Christians. In fact, there are no more "holy solitaries" than there are "holy adulterers" (Wesley's own claim). We are only Christians in community. And the community we are called to be a part of is a local congregation.

In some ways, I think I understand what Burton-Edwards is saying in regards to top-down renewal. He's a staff member at the General Board of Discipleship in Nashville, and seeing church bureaucracy from the inside he wants to warn us away from thinking it holds the answers to our deepest ecclesial problems. He resists any suggestion that the GBOD or any other bureaucratic structure can bring about renewal, and I applaud that. In fact, his point in that regard is essential to anyone who thinks large programs are God's answer to the need for true revival.

But lumping local congregations into that same category? And suggesting that the Wesleyan approach to revival or renewal is not centered on local church life? I think he's wrong there.

We shouldn't underestimate what God can do in a local congregation. God works miracles there. And one of the miracles God might be preparing to work is the renewal of the People Called Methodists.

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.

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.

Albert C. Outler (1908-1989)

I first encountered Albert Outler during the video presentations for the Disciple I Bible Study series back when I was a kid. In those videos, he is an elderly, slightly rumpled, distinguished-looking scholar in a dark, three-piece suit. He carries on an on-screen conversation with Bishop Richard Wilke, where his wit and playful personality are evident. And he makes the bishop look positively youthful.

I'm not positive about the date of that video, but I believe Disciple I came out around 1987 (someone correct me if I'm wrong). Outler died in 1989, which means he would have been in his late 70s when those videos were made. But he still displays plenty of energy, and it is clear he is enjoying what he is doing.

Having been studying Wesley at Duke for the past 18 months, it is amazing how much of the contemporary resurgence in Wesley Studies owes its existence to the influence of Outler. I have heard both Dr. Richard Heitzenrater and Dr. Randy Maddox comment on Outler's key role in putting Wesley back in the forefront of Methodist theological conversations (with Dr. Heitzenrater's personal anecdotes being particularly interesting). It's probably not too much of an exaggeration to say that the work of people like Heitzenrater, Maddox, and the other top scholars in Wesley Studies would not have been possible without Outler and Frank Baker.

In the current issue of the United Methodist Reporter, Mary Jacobs has this article, which explores Outler's legacy from the standpoint of many of his more famous former students (among them, SMU professor Dr. Ted Campbell and Bishop Scott Jones). Their comments give a good sense both of Dr. Outler's legacy and his personality.