Tag: United Methodist Church

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.

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.

When the roll is called up yonder

Is it better to have more people in our church or fewer people?

On one hand, the answer is obvious. Jesus Christ calls us to make disciples of all nations. He calls us to seek the lost and bring them in. We want everyone to come to faith in Jesus Christ and connect to a local body of Christ.

But both the Bible and the early Methodist movement don’t answer that so simply. They both seemed more worried about more than just counting bodies. They were worried about holiness and righteousness. God wanted a holy people, not merely a big crowd.

John Wesley was a bit obsessed on this point. In the journals he wrote and the accounts he made of the origin and growth of the Methodist movement, the removal of members from those societies was a regular topic. Here is one such entry in his journal from December 9, 1741.

God humbled us in the evening by the loss of more than thirty of our little company, who I was obliged to exclude as no longer adorning the Gospel of Christ. I believed it best, openly to declare both their names and the reasons why they were excluded. We then all cried out unto God, that this might be for their edification, and not for their destruction.

Imagine that meeting for a moment.

Could you imagine that happening at our church?

Something a little like that happened this week, actually.

On Thursday, our Church Council voted to remove 78 names from our membership roll. These were all names of people who had not attended our church, participated in our ministries, our supported us financially for more than five years. We reached out to them with invitations to reestablish participation in our church. We did this two year in a row and anyone who responded, we took off our removal list. We started with more than 78 names, but after multiple years of inviting people back into the life of our congregation, we wound up with 78. This we, we voted to remove those names.

It really was nothing more than a recognition of the truth. Those individuals had ceased to be members of our church even though their names remained on our records. We still love them. We would rejoice to have them back, but we cannot force anyone to remain in fellowship with us.

Church members make promises to the congregation and to God. They pledge to support the ministries of the church by attending worship, praying with and for each other, working in our ministries, and supporting that work with their tithes and gifts. To treat those vows as if they do not matter makes light of a solemn promise made to and in the presence of God Almighty. It actually is an insult to God when the church acts as if those vows had no meaning. If they have meaning, then we need to act like that is so.

Does that mean it is a happy thing to remove names from our membership list? Of course not. Like John Wesley, we are humbled by the need to do so. In some way, it is a sign that our fellowship has failed. Brothers and sisters we vowed to watch over and nurture in Christian love wandered away and we either contributed to that or did too little to stop it. Every soul matters to God. We pray each on of these people find their way back to us or to another church and to a deeper faith in Christ.

At the same time, I urge us all to reflect on our own baptismal and membership vows. Being a Christian comes with obligations and responsibilities. This is not a game we are playing. It is not a social club that we are a part of. I pray we can encourage and build each other up in our faith so that those we have now and those who will join us in the future remain part of this church until they join the church eternal and see the glory of Jesus Christ. May we all find our names written in the Book of Life, which is the only roll call that actually matters in the end.