What is a Methodist?

A question that I often get, especially from visitors or new members of our church, is some version of “What is a Methodist?”

That is a good question. Unfortunately, if you search for “United Methodist Church” on Google these days, you are likely to get a lot of different answers to that question. For me, the best answer to such questions is to look back at the beginning of the movement that would become the Methodist church. It started in the 1700s in England with John and Charles Wesley and a small group of young men who were convinced the church needed renewal.

One of John Wesley’s writings that I most appreciate is a tract he wrote to answer the questions people still ask. What is a Methodist? Are we different from other Christians? What makes us different. Wesley wrote “The Character of a Methodist” to speak to his fellow Christians who were confused by this energetic new movement in the church.

His initial description of a Methodist is simple on its surface: “A Methodist is one who has ‘the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost given unto him;’ one who ‘loves the Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his strength.'” Such a person is filled with the joy of God. Such people are full of thanks and hope and peace.

They take Scripture as their guide in all matters of faith and practice. They pray without ceasing. Their hearts are purified by the love of God so as to banish all envy, malice, wrath, and pride from them. They are humble and possessed of a single desire: to do the will of God in all things, to avoid all things that God has forbidden and to do all things that he has commanded. They do good to all men and women, especially by attempting to save the lost and build them up in faith.

These are the marks of a Methodist, Wesley writes. To Wesley, these marks should not be remarkable at all among Christians. Indeed, he never understood himself to be establishing a new sect or denomination within Christianity. What he preached and taught were, he thought, just plain and simple Christianity itself.

He understood Methodists to be very sharply distinguished from the unbelieving world around them. By “unbelievers” Wesley meant not only atheists but also Jews, Muslims, Hindus, pagans and all other forms of non-Christian belief. He understood there to be a clear distinction between Christians and non-Christians. Among the believers, his desire was for there to be no distinction between Methodists and all other “real” Christians, those who are inwardly and outwardly conformed to the will of God, who think, speak, and live according to the word of Jesus Christ, who are renewed in an image and righteousness of God, and who walk as Christ walked.

To be clear, Wesley believed there were a lot of people who went by the name of Christian who were not Christians in the only sense that mattered. There were many who had the outward form of Christianity but they had not the power of it. They had neither the power that declares them righteous before God nor that triumphs over sin in their own lives.

In the end, his pamphlet is an appeal for unity among the true Christians in England who shared a Savior but might differ when it comes to modes of worship or church governance or other non-essential matters.

I think all Christians, and certainly all Methodists, should be able to “amen” that. We believe there are true Christians in every expression of Christianity. We also believe that in every denomination and church there are those who bear the name of Christian but do not bear the image of Christ. The true unity of the church has less to do with formal agreements among the institutional structures of the various denominations. The true unity is when Christians recognize, pray for, pray with, and share in gospel work with other Christians regardless of what building they worship in on Sunday morning or what non-essential differences may keep them from regular fellowship.

What is a Methodist? Perhaps the best simple answer is a Methodist is a Christian who is determined to follow Jesus in all things. We Methodists don’t want to build walls between Christians who go by other names — Presbyterian, Catholic, Baptist, Pentecostal. We want to open the doors of fellowship with all who bear the unremarkable biblical marks of true Christianity.

Because He is holy

I am the LORD, who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God; therefore be holy, because I am holy. Leviticus 11:45 NIV

Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to by holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. Hebrews 12:14 NIV

What is the point of Christianity?

How you answer that question is going to shape a lot of what you think about the church and what you do as a Christian.

As a Methodist, my answer is this: Christianity is about making what is unholy holy again. It is about changing me. It is about God working in me in such a way that I come to bear the image of Christ in my mind, body, and soul.

This is the primary thing. This is what Christ came to do. We often miss this, however, because we confuse the secondary effects of what God does in us for the purpose of his efforts.

For instance, in the early days of Methodism, the impact of Methodism on villages in England could be seen in the ways the men of the village changed under the influence of the Holy Spirit. They quit their all-day drinking and neglect of their families. They became industrious. Crime and violence went down. Children were fed. Homes were not terrorized by drunk and desperate fathers and husbands. The whole tenor of the place changed.

These are all wonderful things, of course, but they are the side effect of the main point. The point of Christianity is not to reduce the rate of social ills or promote social goods. The point is certainly not to uphold Western Civilization. The point is to make people into Christians, to make them holy. When you do that, the beneficial social effects follow as naturally as the harvest follows planting and growing.

If we would practice here in Sheridan a kind of Christianity that the Bible presents to us, then we will seek to be made holy in this life. We will pursue those means God had given us to grow in holiness, and we will let go of practices in the church and our lives that get in the way of this, the goal of our faith.

The first step is simple. Believe that holiness is the point of our faith. Agree with each other that the point of what we are doing together as a church is seeking God’s help so that we might be remade in the likeness of Jesus Christ himself.

The point of the church is not to create community. It is not to preserve a tradition. It is not to provide comfort when days are hard. It is not to overturn unjust social systems. It is to make you and me holy, to make us into the creatures who God intended us to be from the beginning. The point is to stamp on our very being the image of Jesus Christ.

This is the work God wants to bring to completion in every one of his creatures. God does the work. We simply make ourselves the clay in his hands. The first step, the first thing we do, is to affirm that this is the point of our faith. For if we do not accept this as true, then we will chase after other things, more obtainable things, things that we can bring about without God.

Let us choose instead the higher things of God, and let us not be discouraged from this choice merely because it seems impossible for sinners like you and me to attain it.

And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. 2 Corinthians 3:18 NIV

Scattered for the kingdom

“So his master said, ‘Go out into the country lanes and behind the hedges and urge anyone you find to come, so that the house will be full.'” (Luke 14:23, NLT)

I was listening to a program today about the Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago and its massive influence on the shape of American Christianity. It is an hour long, but worth a listen if you are interested in how the church has become what it is today.

One of the many interesting ideas that stood out to me in the conversation was the idea that the church is not meant to sit back and attract people to it. The church is meant to go out and find the people who God is drawing to himself.

The Willow Creek model of church was once called the “Seeker Sensitive” church. The idea was to make church attractive to people who did not like church. Every element of the Sunday service, every element of the programming of the church, was and is carefully thought out and managed with excellence. Attending Willow Creek or any of the myriad of churches that have been influenced by its methods was and is unlike anything the church had ever seen. And make no mistake, this model has been wildly successful.

In the program I linked above, one of the hosts points out the model gets something very wrong if we take the Bible as our guide. Jesus did not model or teach the attractional model. He did not wait for people to come to him. He went out to the people. He sought them out. His goal was not to attract seekers. His goal was to seek the lost.

I would argue that was also the model of Paul and the apostles, for the most part. There is any interesting exception in the Book of Acts. After Pentecost and the initial rush of new converts, the Jerusalem church did appear to gain a lot of converts by attractional means. The people were in awe of the church and the signs and wonders it produced. God did keep adding to their numbers, but at some point, it appears, God decided a change was in order.

With the arrest of Stephen and his martyrdom, the pattern changed. The church was forced to obey the command of Jesus that it spread out from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria, and all the world. It was forced to do this by persecution and death. God gave us a push, whether we wanted it or not.

Perhaps today that is what is happening in the American church. Perhaps we are being pushed out of Jerusalem. Perhaps God is breaking and shaking so many churches and church leaders these days because the settled ways we have developed for being the church in America is failing to reach people outside our walls.

I really do not know what future God has for us. I suppose those Christians who were scattered by persecution in Jerusalem did not either. They were not so much heroic pioneers as holy refugees. But through them, God did some pretty amazing things. Perhaps he still has similar things in store for us.