Author Archives: Kevin M. Watson

Conspicuous

25 Wednesday Feb 2009

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At noon today, my family attended the Ash Wednesday service at Perkins Chapel on the campus of SMU. It was a wonderful service. It was a time when I was reminded that all is not well, but that this is not the way things have to be. I was confronted with my sin, had ashes placed on my forehead in the shape of a cross, and was exhorted to repent and believe the gospel. I was confronted with my mortality and reminded of the promise of new life in Christ.

I find the Ash Wednesday service to be an important one for the Christian life for many reasons. One of the main feelings I have after the service is simply that of feeling conspicuous. Throughout the day I am aware that I have ashes on my forehead and I feel like people are looking at them, looking at me. I feel self-conscious and find that I am more aware of my actions. Now, I am not sure whether people are actually watching me any more closely than normal (they probably aren’t). But, nevertheless, I find that I give just a bit more thought to how what I am doing could be connected by others to the fact that I have a cross on my head.

Initially, this feeling is usually frustrating and annoying. I don’t want to feel self-conscious. I don’t even want to be thinking so much about myself… isn’t the point for me to become increasingly focused on God? Yet, I find grace here. I find that being conspicuous is a means of grace. When I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb and I want to hide (or go to the bathroom and wipe the ashes off of my face), I am reminded of what Christ has done for me. I am reminded of how often I don’t stick out and people have no idea that I am a follower of Christ.

United Methodists used to be folk who were known for their excitement about the Good News. They used to be conspicuous. Early Methodists were far more often accused of being fanatics or enthusiasts than they were accused of being luke warm. Today it often seems that we are best known for either being open or content – indeed, lukewarm.

Today I believe that God is asking me to allow Christ to be more conspicuous in my life. I believe that God wants to free me from the things that keep me from becoming a deeply committed Christian. I believe that God wants to enable me to love others willingly, even naturally. And today I have been reminded that God’s grace becomes more tangible to me as I faithfully practice the means of grace.

Father, during this season of Lent please pour your renewing and sanctifying grace into the lives of your people. Help us to receive this grace and do nothing to inhibit it. Send your Spirit to guide us and lead us closer to your Son Jesus Christ, who is the source of our hope and salvation. And may we be conspicuous in our love of you and in our love for our neighbor. May it be so. Amen.

3 Free Books Left

23 Monday Feb 2009

Posted by in Life, links, Wesley

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I have 3 copies left of A Blueprint for Discipleship: Wesley’s General Rules as a Guide for Christian Living. If you haven’t claimed your copy yet, here is what you have to do to receive a free copy:

1. Have a blog.

2. Be willing to blog about the book after you read it.

3. Post a comment in this post with your name and your blog url in the comment. (Books will be given to the first 25 people to leave a comment.)

4. Send an email to deeplycommitted (at) gmail (dot) com with the subject “Free copy of Blueprint for Discipleship.” In the body of the email include the address that you would like the book mailed to.

Update: The 3 remaining copies have been claimed. Thanks so much for your interest.

Free Copies of Blueprint for Discipleship

19 Thursday Feb 2009

Posted by in Life, links, Wesley

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I am happy to announce that my marketing director at Upper Room/ Discipleship Resources has given me permission to give away 25 copies of my new book A Blueprint for Discipleship: Wesley’s General Rules as a Guide for Christian Living to people who are willing to blog about it. To receive your free copy you need to:

1. Have a blog.

2. Be willing to blog about the book after you read it.

3. Post a comment in this post with your name and your blog url in the comment. (Books will be given to the first 25 people to leave a comment.)

4. Send an email to deeplycommitted (at) gmail (dot) com with the subject “Free copy of Blueprint for Discipleship.” In the body of the email include the address that you would like the book mailed to.

Also, feel free to spread the word!

Update: All 25 copies have been claimed. Thanks so much for your interest.

The Trials of Itinerancy… in 1800

18 Wednesday Feb 2009

Posted by in Ministry, Wesley

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For Methodist ministers who may have had occasion to complain about the quality of an appointment, take heart! It could always be worse.

In 1799 the salary for a full time itinerant minister was $64 a year. Apparently it was recognized that Methodist itinerants were slightly under-compensated, because the following year that was increased to $80 a year. (I don’t know what that would come out to when adjusted for inflation, but a Congregationalist minister at the same time averaged about $400 per year.)

And if you were to get into a “who has the worst appointment” contest, I am willing to guess that Henry Smith has you beat. In 1801 after preaching a funeral sermon in Ohio Smith records that “when bed-time came I was conducted to the room from which the corpse had been taken a few hours before, to sleep on the bedstead, perhaps the very bed, on which the young man had died, without the house having been scrubbed and properly aired.”

Another Smith, Thomas Smith, in New Jersey in 1807, found himself in the awkward situation of having to sleep in the same room with the body of a man who had died that morning… His hosts must have thought him quite rude when they discovered that he had decided to sleep outside next to a tree.

If nothing else, this seems to bring out a whole different idea of radical hospitality than Bishop Robert Schnase talks about in his Five Practicesbook!

(The information in this post is found in John H. Wigger’s essay “Fighting Bees: Methodist Itinerants and the Dynamics of Methodist Growth, 1770-1820”, 87-133 in Methodism and the Shaping of American Culture, eds., Nathan O. Hatch, and John H. Wigger, (Nashville: Kingswood, 2001))

More Information about Blueprint for Discipleship

12 Thursday Feb 2009

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The Upper Room bookstore has recently updated its listing for A Blueprint for Discipleship: Wesley’s General Rules as a Guide for Christian Living. You can click on the previous link to read a summary of the book and view the contents. I think an excerpt from the book will also eventually be available.

I am told that the book cannot be pre-ordered through the website, but you can pre-order through Discipleship Resources by calling them directly: 1-800-972-0433.

If I Had $359…

10 Tuesday Feb 2009

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If I had $359 I would buy a Kindle 2. Yesterday when I visited the amazon.com page, I was greeted by the news that they are releasing a new version of the Kindle, which will be released on February 24, 2009. To be honest, I am not exactly sure of the practical value of a Kindle 2 for an academic. I would guess that many of the books I would want to read on it would not be available. However, the idea of being able to take 1,000 books and magically make them all weight a total of 10.2 ounces is very intriguing.

The weird thing is that Kindles are always on back-order, but I have never actually seen one. I would be very interested to see what it feels like to actually hold one and read the screen. I don’t think I would want to read an entire book on my computer, but the Kindle is supposed to look more like ink on paper than a computer screen.

The Kindle certainly has me intrigued.

What are your thoughts about the Kindle? Have you seen one? Or better yet, do you have one?

Blueprint for Discipleship Available for Pre-Order

05 Thursday Feb 2009

Posted by in Life, links, Wesley

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My new book with Discipleship Resources A Blueprint for Discipleship: Wesley’s General Rules as a Guide for Christian Livingis now available for pre-order through Amazon.com for $10.20. According to the folks at Discipleship Resources, the book should be available through Upper Room by February 27, and will be available through Cokesbury and other vendors soon after. I will post links to Cokesbury and Disipleship Resources/ Upper Room as they become available.

You can view more information about the book, including the contents and a few reviews at my author tree website.

If You Subscribe to this Blog in a Reader or by Email

04 Wednesday Feb 2009

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When I purchased http://deeplycommitted.com I thought I needed to set up a new feed account through feedburner for the new url. That appears to be incorrect as my old feed still has many subscribers and my new feed has very few. I also think the two feeds are confusing search engines and etc. So, this evening I am going to kill the feed for http://deeplycommitted.com and update the subscription links so that they are back to the old feed. I am posting this before I do this because if you subscribed to the new feed (meaning if you subscribed sometime after mid November 2008 ) you will no longer be subscribed and you will need to re-subscribe. I have already updated the feed subscription links so as soon as you get this, you can update your subscription and you should not miss a post.

Also, if you have not yet subscribed to deeply committed… there is no time like the present!

You can subscribe to the correct feed by clicking the “subscribe in a reader” link at the top right of this page.

If you don’t know what a reader is or don’t want to set one up, you can also subscribe to deeply committed by email (which means that new posts will automatically be sent to you as an email) by clicking “subscribe to deeplycommitted.com via email” in the upper right of this page.

Richard Foster’s Spiritual Formation Agenda and Methodism

04 Wednesday Feb 2009

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Check out Richard Foster’s article in Christianity Today about his three priorities for the next thirty years.

Foster believes that Celebration of Discipline(a classic) succeeded in reviving the conversation about the formation of the soul but was much less successful in making this incarnate in the experience of individual, congregational, and cultural life. Thus, Foster points to what he believes needs to happen in the next thirty years for this to come to life: Individual renewal, Congregational renewal, and Cultural renewal.

I was thrilled (though not surprised) to see that a major focus in his discussion of congregational renewal was on fellowship and communal formation. He explicitly refers to Philip Jacob Spener’s collegia pietatis and John Wesley’s society, class, band structure.

I think Foster is basically right on, many people seem to give lip service to the importance of spiritual formation – even communal formation, i.e., small group accountability – but there often seems to be a discrepancy between our words and our actions. The early Methodists understood the importance of communal structures for individual formation and accountability. May Methodists once again lead the way in showing how to “watch over one another in love” so that we are known not just for what we believe, but for what we do – for how we live.