Warning: Don’t read Shane Raynor’s interview with Bishop William Willimon on the The Wesley Study Bible
Bishop Willimon on the Wesley Study Bible
27 Tuesday Jan 2009
Posted in links
Category Archives: links
The Class Meeting and Itinerancy
26 Monday Jan 2009
Posted in Book Review, links, Ministry, Wesley
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In continuing to read Norwood’s The Story of American Methodism
The high point of the class meeting coincides with the heyday of the circuit rider. Its decline dates from his dismounting. As long as the traveling preacher was on the go around his circuit and from appointment to appointment, the place of the class meeting was secure. The class leader was needed to perform those pastoral functions which are part of a balanced ministry. But when the preacher settled down in a parsonage as a stationed pastor, the class leader… became, at least so it seemed, an unnecessary wheel. Inadvertently, because of the settling down of the traveling preacher, Methodism lost one of its strongest supports, the active ministerial participation of the lay people. (132)
This is not portrayed by Norwood as a positive development. Norwood concludes the chapter musing that “Ever since, Methodists have been trying to decide whether they would be a great church or a holy people.” When I first read this, I thought: Are the two mutually exclusive? I guess it depends on your definition of a “great church.”
The important point, it seems to me, is not that we should work to return to a truly itinerant ministry. Instead, it is that there is something vital missing when the active ministerial participation of the lay people (to use Norwood’s phrase) is missing. I see the class meeting as a key to renewing, strengthening, and empowering a lively lay ministry.
History of American Methodism Reading List
22 Thursday Jan 2009
Posted in Book Review, links, Wesley
This semester I am looking forward to an independent study with Dr. Ted Campbell in the history of American Methodism. My first assignment is to come up with a proposed reading list for the semester. Here is what I have so far:
Methodism and the Shaping of American Culture
Perspectives on American Methodism: Interpretive Essays
The Methodist Conference in America (Kingswood Series)
The Story of American Methodism: A History of the United Methodists and Their Relations
Taking Heaven by Storm: Methodism and the Rise of Popular Christianity in America
Early Methodist Life and Spirituality
A Little Heaven Below: Worship at Early Methodist Quarterly Meetings
The Methodists and Revolutionary America, 1760-1800: The Shaping of an Evangelical Culture
Methodism: Empire of the Spirit
The Methodist Experience in America: A Sourcebook
Other than the source book above, I will also be adding several primary source readings:
A Compendious History of American Methodism Abel Stevens
Doctrine and Discipline the one that is annotated by Asbury and Coke
Selections from The Journal and Letters of Francis Asbury
The Sunday Service
This should be a great class!
UM Social Media Experiment: The Results
21 Wednesday Jan 2009
Posted in links, Ministry, Technology, Wesley
Today concludes the two week time line for the experiment in Methodist social media exposure. There were 759 views of the YouTube video promoting Reclaiming the Wesleyan Tradition: John Wesley’s Sermons for Today
Blake Huggins was surprised at how well the experiment was going in a comment he left on my post about the experiment at one week. Henry Neufeld, on the other hand, was disappointed with the results.
I am not exactly sure what to make of the results. I think the experimented would have been more successful if the video that was circulated had not been promoting a book generally, and promoting a book I co-authored more particularly. I noticed comments on several blogs that expressed that they were disappointed to find at the end of the video that it was just promoting another book. (Though I was also surprised that so many people seemed to feel that United Methodists have so much information out there about their books. I have tended to feel the other way, that not very many people know about United Methodist publications outside of a very committed group.) I was also a bit disappointed that the views of the video decreased so rapidly in the second week.
On the other hand, I was surprised that more than 25 bloggers linked to the video in some way on their blog. And I do think it is significant that simply passing on a video was able to revive a video that was basically dead on YouTube. A change from 44 views in 6 months to 715 views in 2 weeks is a significant change. I think that this experiment does show that there exists a significant group of Methodists who are willing to work together in some capacity to raise awareness and get the word out. The big question is: Get the word out about what? Over the last few weeks I have found myself dreaming about the ways that the blogosphere could be used as a resource for helping to better get the Wesleyan message out there – not just to other Methodists, but more deeply into the emerging church and other places where meaningful conversations are happening about what it means to be a Christian, how to live faithfully, the meaning of life, etc.
As I indicated in the original post about this experiment, I will write a letter to the folks at Discipleship Resources and the General Board of Discipleship letting them know about the experiment and encouraging them to think about ways to use the internet as a means of communication and ways to work with Methodists who already have a presence and audience on the web. I will pass on any response that is appropriate to publicly communicate.
In the meantime, what are your thoughts about the experiment? Do you see anything more than this can point to or lead to?
Update: Experiment in UM Social Media Exposure
14 Wednesday Jan 2009
Posted in links, Technology, Wesley
After one week the YouTube video about Reclaiming the Wesleyan Tradition
Here are the folks who have contributed: Hit the Back Button to Move Forward, Step by Step, Friar’s Fires, McKinney Methodist, Divers and Sundry, Stress Penguin, A Walking Paradox, Sunday’s Child, A United Method, Speaking of Grace, UM Portal, Adventures in Revland, Methoblog, Threads from Henry’s Web, My Ramblings, Thoughts of Resurrection, Thoughts from Nick, Accountable Discipleship, Matt Judkins, A Long Obedience, BlakeHuggins.com, Craig Adams, Ramblings from Red Rose, Fuzzy Thinking
The experiment was also mentioned at The Wesley Report, and Allan R. Bevere
If you have not participated in this experiment and would like to, all you have to do is post the you tube video below on your blog.
The original post about this project pointed to a desire to see how much attention Methodist bloggers could bring to one thing if we collectively talked about it for two weeks. As this has developed I have found myself hoping that this will help folks at GBOD, Discipleship Resources, and other folks who are trying to get our message out there realize that there is a tremendous resource in the Methodist blogging world. (Though, this is certainly not to say that the methoblog is a promotional service for Methodist agencies, just that it might be a good idea to keep us in the loop.) At perhaps a deeper level I have also found myself wondering if there are ways that we can work together to raise awareness of our Methodist/Wesleyan heritage. Are there ways that we can focus on what unites us and together build even more momentum and more of a presence on the web? I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
(Full disclosure: I co-authored the book that is promoted in the video. If you want to see how this video was chosen, or why this experiment was started you can read the original post I wrote when I found the video on YouTube and the post that Gavin then wrote – which was what gave me the idea to do this.)
Seeking Feedback on Asbury Biography
13 Tuesday Jan 2009
Posted in Book Review, links, Wesley
Last week, in studying for my upcoming field exam in 17th and 18th century Church History, I realized that Francis Asbury was probably the person who was a key figure in the 18th century who I had the least amount of information about. So, I did a few quick searches and came across America’s Bishop: The Life of Francis Asbury
The book arrived yesterday and it appears to be a serious and substantial biography of Asbury. The text is 362 pages followed by an additional nearly 20 page Bibliography and more than 50 pages of notes. However, there are a few things that make me wonder about this book. First, I could not find any academic reviews of it on the major search engines through Bridwell library. It seems to me that what appears to be the first in depth biography in decades would have been reviewed in a journal somewhere. In other words, why aren’t academics saying anything about it? (On the other hand there is an endorsement from Russel E. Richey on the back cover of the book, and I could have just missed the reviews.) Second, it is published by Francis Asbury Press. At first glance this seems very fitting for a biography of Francis Asbury. However, I would have guessed that Abingdon or someone of the like would have jumped at the chance to publish a major biography of Asbury. And finally, I would have guessed that a book like this would have been written by an expert in American Methodism, rather than someone with a PhD in psychology and religion.
None of these mean that the book isn’t going to be a terrific study of the life of a key figure for American Methodism, they just have made me wonder if I am missing something. So my question is, have you read this book or heard anything about it? Am I missing anything? And are there other biographies of Francis Asbury that you have read and would recommend?
Methodist Bloggers Unite!
08 Thursday Jan 2009
Posted in Blogroll, links, Technology
One of the things that is great about blogging is that you can find out if an idea is terrible simply by the deafening silence that greets a post. Yesterday, when I posted about an experiment to raise awareness of the Methodist blogging presence, I wondered if this would be one of those ideas. I wasn’t even sure if I would hear a calm still voice… though I hoped if nothing else my closest friends would post the video because they felt sorry for me.
Twenty-four hours after posting the invitation to post a YouTube video promoting Reclaiming the Wesleyan Tradition: John Wesley’s Sermons for Today
Thanks to these bloggers for posting the video:
Hit the Back Button to Move Forward
The original post was also mentioned on this morning’s Morning Report on the Wesley Report.
I am interested to see what the results of this experiment will be. If nothing else this will have been a success, because I have discovered a few Methodist blogs I didn’t know existed. If you haven’t posted the video yet, it is not too late. You can read about the experiment and copy and paste a sample post here. Thanks again to all who have participated.
An Experiment in Improving UM Social Media Exposure
07 Wednesday Jan 2009
Posted in links, Ministry, Technology
I would like to find out how much of an impact Methodist bloggers can have on spreading the word if we all join together. How big of an impact do you think we could have? To get an idea, and to hopefully gain some concrete evidence of how Methodist bloggers can help get the Methodist message out there, I invite you to participate in an experiment with me.
This past Saturday I posted a link to a YouTube video that I recently discovered promoting a book that I co-authored called Reclaiming the Wesleyan Tradition: John Wesley’s Sermons for Today
All of this has stuck in my mind over the last few days. I have been wondering if people at Discipleship Resources and other arms of United Methodism that are involved in publishing and communications understand what a resource they have in all of the Methodists who maintain great blogs. My guess is that they don’t realize the potential that exists for bloggers to be a serious avenue for getting the Methodist message out there.
Now let me say that while I would certainly like to see folks like Discipleship Resources and Abingdon have more success in selling books in mainstream venues like Barnes and Noble and Borders, this is about more than selling books. I believe that the Wesleyan tradition has an important contribution to make to the Church and to the world. Currently, I think that institutionally the United Methodist Church could be doing a better job communicating our message.
So, I would like to try an experiment to see what potential Methodist bloggers have to spread the word and get a message out there. I would like to see how much we can increase the views of the Reclaiming the Wesleyan Tradition YouTube video in two weeks. If you are willing to help here is what I would suggest: First, post the video on your blog. (The link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ISKTrScpzQ) Second, write a post that either links to this post or summarizes in your own words the experiment to see how much social capital Methodist bloggers have. Third, one week after posting the video write a follow-up post that reminds people about the video and the experiment.
If this experiment has significant results, I plan on trying to get in touch with the folks at Discipleship Resources and the GBOD to let them know the difference that plugging into the Methodist blogging world made. I would also suggest they create a forum from learning from you all about how they can better communicate through social media and the internet.
So, here is the video:
———————————————————————-
If you would like to save time, you can copy and paste this as the post: (you can also change any part of it that you would like to)
Kevin Watson at https://deeplycommitted.wordpress.com has started an experiment to see how much social capital Methodist bloggers have. This experiment was prompted by the feeling among some Methodist bloggers that United Methodism does not always do as good of a job as it could at getting the Wesleyan message out there, particularly on-line. So, he wants to see how many views a YouTube video can get if Methodist bloggers work together to promote it. The experiment is to see how many hits the video will receive in two weeks.
If you want to participate you can: First, watch the video below. Second, copy and paste this entire post into a new post on your blog and post it. Third, remind people about this experiment in one week.
Based on the results of the experiment, Kevin will get in touch with the folks at Discipleship Resources and let them know the ways in which Methodist bloggers are often an underused resource.
Here is a link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ISKTrScpzQ
Is the Emerging Church Still a Conversation?
06 Tuesday Jan 2009
For the last few months I have been wondering if the emerging movement is still a conversation. Many in the movement have preferred to call it the emerging conversation, rather than the emerging church. This question has particularly stuck in my mind since I asked someone who is a leader in the emerging “conversation” if they knew of anyone who had offered a substantive response to D. A. Carson’s Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church: Understanding a Movement and Its Implications
I was surprised by this answer, because I did not find Carson’s book to be offensive or intentionally trying to distort the emerging message. It may be that I don’t get it, but I felt that Carson was really trying to understand and interact with his best understanding of this movement and then make a meaningful response to it. Obviously there are going to be areas where D. A. Carson disagrees with key voices in the emerging church. For my part, Carson’s book left me sincerely interested in how people like Brian McLaren (who was not the person I was corresponding with) would respond to Carson’s concerns.
To be fair, I am raising this question based on a very short response I received from one person. It would be unfair to make this representative of an entire group of people. Moreover, Peter Rollins was recently as SMU and I had the chance to visit with him for about thirty minutes after he spoke in a New Testament calss. He was very gracious and in the time I spent with him I felt that he wanted to be part of an ongoing conversation. (While I do not agree with everything he says, both of his books are worth reading: How (Not) to Speak of God
To push things a bit farther: From my perspective, there does not seem to be all that much critical reflection on what is coming out of the emerging church. I have sometimes detected a bit of a defensive posture from folks in the emerging church, such as the appendix in Tony Jones’ The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier
I write this because there has always been something that I can’t quite put my finger on about the emerging church that has attracted me. I think that there are many things that they get powerfully right. I also think their ability to get their message out and sell books in places like Barnes and Noble shows that they are meeting a real need that people have, particularly younger people – a demographic my own denomination currently has a very hard time connecting with. So I am a fan of the emerging church. I buy the new books that come out (although enough are coming out now that I can’t say I buy all of them). However, I also have some questions. Occasionally I think they get things completely wrong. I don’t think this makes them different from any other group. But because they are raising such important issues and are connecting with popular culture so well, I hope that they will not insulate themselves from constructive criticism or change. It seems to me that these were in many ways the very motives which raised up the emerging church to begin with – a desire to move the church closer to faithfulness and relevance in a changing culture.
What are your thoughts? Am I missing key venues where the conversation continues? I am interested in your perception of the current state of the emerging conversation.
Reading the Entire Bible in 2009
05 Monday Jan 2009
Posted in Book Review, links
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One of my goals for 2009 is to read through the Bible. In beginning a Ph.D. last semester, I did not consistently make time to “search the Scriptures.” This year, I intend to get back into the habit of spending time each day reading the Bible. I will read three chapters Monday through Saturday and five chapters on Sunday. According to my calculations, this would result in my finishing the Bible with a day or two to spare.
If you have gotten out of the habit of daily spending time reading the Bible, there is no time like the present! You can use my approach or check out these resources:
YouVersion is an online Bible resource that has added a plan for reading the Bible in One Year. You can view the readings for each day by clicking here.
There are also Bibles that are specifically organized into daily readings so that you don’t have to do any calculating or remember where you left off. You just have to turn to the right day and start reading. The One Year Bible Compact Edition NIV
If you have already read all the way through the Bible, I would recommend purchasing a chronological Bible, which arranges the readings chronologically. (This is a bit controversial because it involves making decisions about when specific books were actually written, which scholars are not always in full agreement on.) The advantage of a chronological Bible is that it helps you to see how the Bible is one narrative of God’s work in the world. The One Year Chronological Bible [NIV]
Are there strategies or approaches that you have used to help maintain the habit of daily Bible reading that I have not mentioned? Or is there a particular Bible for reading the Bible in a year that you have read and found particularly helpful?
Kevin M. Watson 