If you have hard work to do and much is unclear, what is the most important thing to get right?
First, a word about why the church has hard work to do and much is unclear. Then, my answer to what I think is most important to get right.
For several years I have thought about how much disruption and change has been happening in the culture, church, and academy.
An image I often use is tectonic plates shifting, which cause earthquakes. The rumbling and shaking from earthquakes can alter the surrounding landscape and cause significant damage to buildings and infrastructure.
Tectonic plates have been moving in the culture, church, and academy. Or, perhaps one has caused rumbling and shaking that has altered the landscape of the others.
From my seat as a seminary professor and pastor, I have been trying to articulate the challenges the church is facing. If you can diagnose the problem, then you will have an easier time identifying potential solutions.
I wrote a post a few months ago I titled: “Where Do We Go from Here?” It focused on demographic trends that show how difficult things will be for churches like mine in the coming years.
I worked really hard on that post and am proud of it. If you missed it when I first published it, I hope you’ll check it out here. The argument I’m making here, really builds on this post.
I keep thinking about one thing from that post. After summarizing demographic data from Ryan Burge and summarizing analysis from Aaron Renn and Christian Smith, I made a basic comment on what is facing the church:
This is going to be really difficult.
I think it might be particularly hard for people in my tribe (folks who were reared in Mainline Methodism). I don’t think people have yet understood just how deep and wide the culture shifts from the mid-2010s through the pandemic have been. We are not going back. The landscape has changed.
Conversion to faith in Jesus is much harder than it was a few decades ago, much less 50 years ago.
I think the way denominations have functioned, since the founding of the UMC in 1968, has been within a Positive World framework. We don’t even live in Neutral World anymore. We live in Negative World. The strategies and plays from Positive World don’t work anymore. And the evidence of that is in front of many of our faces every Sunday morning.
(If the Positive, Neutral, and Negative World framework isn’t familiar to you, I highly suggest reading Aaron Renn’s “The Three Worlds of Evangelicalism.”)
One of the reasons the work facing the church is going to be really difficult is because we are trying to understand exactly and how much things have changed while things continue to change. (From legalizing same sex marriage to fluid gender separated from biology, to woke ideology, to the gradual and then rapid rise of AI, and so on.) And while we are trying to understand (but don’t fully understand), we must make decisions and act.
It is ok to not be confident about the right answers to the variety of challenges facing the church.
I don’t think it is ok to recognize that things aren’t working and just stubbornly keep doing the same things anyway.
And I don’t think it is ok to pretend that things are just fine and continue with the work of the church with strategies that worked in the 1980s.
Again, people coming from Mainline Protestant contexts may be particularly at a disadvantage here. I’m not sure if they are worse off than Southern Baptists or Roman Catholics. I don’t know those denominations well enough to have an informed opinion.
A major disadvantage of my background was being formed in a bureaucratic and risk-averse institution that was often unwilling to acknowledge reality at all if it was inconvenient.
Let me illustrate this with one example:
At the Annual Conferences I attended, there would be a part of the conference where we had to vote to close churches that were no longer viable. They usually had less than 10 people in average attendance and were not able to pay to maintain their building. One would think this would be cause for lament or self-reflection. There was no need for shame or condemnation. But it was sad. Yet, these churches were always introduced in a way that you would have thought they were among the most dynamic and effective churches in the entire conference at sharing the gospel and the church’s mission to make disciples. One year, I leaned over and asked a friend, “If that church is doing so well, why is it closing?”
It felt like a very strange adaptation of the children’s story The Emperor’s New Clothes. (Spoiler: The emperor had no clothes on. But everyone pretended that he did, until a child who didn’t know any better articulated what was obvious to everyone loud enough for even the emperor to hear.)
So, church leaders are faced with the challenge of accurately diagnosing, and then understanding, the times in which we live (while they continue to rapidly change). And they must also continue to do the work of the church as best they can in real time.
On top of that, in many of the places I’ve been, there is a strong aversion to leaders leading. At times, the attempt to lead is itself offensive. This is often, though not always, an overreaction to the failures of a previous leader (or the failures of the system that sabotaged the previous leader). These things are complicated!
Back to the question I began with: If you have hard work to do and much is unclear, what is the most important thing to get right?
My answer: The most important thing to get right is answering the question: Who do you want to work with on hard things?
This is the best way I can explain the joy I’ve found in my work at Asbury Church. At one level, my job at the church is the hardest job I’ve ever had. But I am having the most fun I’ve ever had. I am having fun because I am part of a team that is willing to ask hard questions, refuses to settle for polite nonsense, and keeps pressing because we believe that God is not done with us and he has more for us.
We don’t have all the answers. That’s ok. No one does.
The work of the church has always been hard. And it is the best job in the world. I believe a key to thriving in this work for the long haul is finding the people you want to work with on hard things.
I found my people and I’m grateful.
P.S. If you’re interested in seeing the kind of work I’m doing with my people, check out our Pentecost service, which will launch the Asbury Connection. (It will also be available on Asbury Tulsa’s YouTube channel a few days after the service.)
Kevin M. Watson is a Pastor and the Senior Director of Christian Formation at Asbury Church in Tulsa, OK. He is also on the faculty at Asbury Theological Seminary, anchoring the Seminary’s Tulsa, OK Extension Site. His most recent book, Doctrine, Spirit, and Discipline describes the purpose of the Wesleyan tradition and the struggle to maintain its identity in the United States. Affiliate links, which help support my work, used in this post.
I am a small “c” conservative. I want to understand why something is the way that it is before I tear down, rearrange, or remove it entirely. In my work as an historian, I often find it helpful to simply reread key documents to understand why things were the way that they are and, therefore, are the way that they are.
One document I have read many times since I left the United Methodist Church and have been praying, talking with others, and seeking to discern the way forward post-disaffiliation from the UMC is the letter John Wesley wrote to “Our Brethren in America” after he took the bold step of ordaining two lay people deacons and then elders in order to launch the Methodist Episcopal Church.
As is typically the case with historical documents at key inflection points in history, there is much in this letter that is of interest. But there is one detail that I’m not sure I really understood or appreciated until it became clear to me that I would not be able to stay in the UMC. I am convinced Wesley is correct about this detail and it has been a key piece of my own discernment about what I think the Lord is doing in my life and at my church.
First, a bit of background to help you understand this letter. Wesley wrote the letter to “Our Brethren in America” after he and James Creighton ordained Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey as deacons on September 1, 1784, and then elders on September 2. Wesley and Creighton also laid hands on Thomas Coke, who was an ordained elder in the Church of England, and set him apart as a superintendent.
These actions were crucial steps toward establishing denominational Methodism, leading to the formation of the Methodist Episcopal Church, which was the first Methodist denomination in the United States.
The steps Wesley took were also controversial and radical. John Wesley was an elder in the Church of England. Elders do not ordain in the Church of England, bishops ordain. John Wesley was not a bishop. And so, Wesley’s decision to take authority to ordain upon himself required explanation. And that is what Wesley did in his September 10, 1784 letter to “Our Brethren in America.”
Here it is in its entirety:
By a very uncommon train of providences many of the Provinces of North America are totally disjoined from their Mother Country and erected into independent States. The English Government has no authority over them, either civil or ecclesiastical, any more than over the States of Holland. A civil authority is exercised over them, partly by the Congress, partly by the Provincial Assemblies. But no one either exercises or claims any ecclesiastical authority at all. In this peculiar situation some thousands of the inhabitants of these States desire my advice; and in compliance with their desire I have drawn up a little sketch.
Lord King’s Account of the Primitive Church convinced me many years ago that bishops and presbyters are the same order, and consequently have the same right to ordain. For many years I have been importuned from time to time to exercise this right by ordaining part of our traveling preachers. But I have still refused, not only for peace’ sake, but because I was determined as little as possible to violate the established order of the National Church to which I belonged.
But the case is widely different between England and North America. Here there are bishops who have a legal jurisdiction: in America there are none, neither any parish ministers. So that for some hundred miles together there is none either to baptize or to administer the Lord’s supper. Here, therefore, my scruples are at an end; and I conceive myself at full liberty, as I violate no order and invade no man’s right by appointing and sending laborers into the harvest.
I have accordingly appointed Dr. Coke and Mr. Francis Asbury to be Joint Superintendents over our brethren in North America; as also Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey to act as elders among them, by baptizing and administering the Lord’s Supper. And I have prepared a Liturgy little differing from that of the Church of England (I think, the best constituted National Church in the world), which I advise all the traveling preachers to use on the Lord’s Day in all the congregations, reading the Litany only on Wednesdays and Fridays and praying extempore on all other days. I also advise the elders to administer the Supper of the Lord on every Lord’s Day.
If any one will point out a more rational and scriptural way of feeding and guiding these poor sheep in the wilderness, I will gladly embrace it. At present I cannot see any better method than that I have taken.
It has, indeed, been proposed to desire the English bishops to ordain part of our preachers for America. But to this I object; (1) I desired the Bishop of London to ordain only one, but could not prevail. (2) If they consented, we know the slowness of their proceedings; but the matter admits of no delay. (3) If they would ordain them now, they would likewise expect to govern them. And how grievously would this entangle us! (4) As our American brethren are now totally disentangled both from the State and from the English hierarchy, we dare not entangle them again either with the one or the other. They are now at full liberty simply to follow the Scriptures and the Primitive Church. And we judge it best that they should stand fast in that liberty wherewith God has so strangely made them free.
There is so much in this letter that is interesting and even instructive for the church today. I think the second to last paragraph might be my personal favorite. I love Wesley’s humility, honesty, and willingness to lead in the midst of wrestling. He basically says, “If you can show me a better way, I would love to be convinced. I’ve thought about this for years and this is the best I can come up with. It was time to act, so I did the best I could with everything in front of me.”
I appreciate this because our assumption ought to be that this is what everyone has been doing on the other side of disaffiliation. We may not get everything right, but we must do the best we can.
As much as I like the details in that paragraph, however, it is not the detail I was referring to at the beginning of this post.
Did you notice John Wesley’s own understanding of ordination and how different it is from that of contemporary mainline Methodism?
The key detail is in one short phrase: “Bishops and presbyters are the same order, and consequently have the same right to ordain.”
John Wesley was not a bishop. American Methodism did not start with bishops as a separate office or order from elders. The elders were the overseers. This is why bishops are not ordained in the UMC, for example. They are set apart among the elders to superintend the work beyond the local church. (This is one reason that there has been debate about whether bishops in the UMC ought to be a lifelong office, or only an office one has while one is actively exercising the functions of the office.)
Here is the key detail that I believe gives warrant to elder-led ordination in Wesleyan polity and ought to at least give humility to those who follow in John Wesley’s footsteps who embrace an episcopal polity:
American Methodism did not begin with bishops as a required office for ordination. It began with an elder (John Wesley) deciding to take authority himself to ordain based on his reading of a history of the early church and the New Testament witness.
For me personally, this has made me relax about concerns about apostolic succession as a continuous line of succession of ordination that is rightly ordered that goes all the way back to the apostles. American Methodists of any stripe don’t have a claim to that because our first ordinations did not come from a bishop, but from an elder taking the authority to ordain without the blessing of his own church.
I am not saying Methodism is missing one of the marks of the church. We are apostolic in that we are carrying, stewarding, and defending the teaching of the apostles to hand it down to the next generation.
Let me also say I was ordained by a bishop. I am thankful to have been ordained by Bishop Robert E. Hayes, Jr. I do not think it is wrong for Methodists to have bishops. I also do not think it is wrong for Methodists to not have bishops. Why?
Because the beginning of Methodism as a denomination is literally built on the conviction that bishops and elders are the same order.
I believe Wesley was correct. In the New Testament, elders and overseers are the same category. In Acts 20:17-35, Paul is speaking to one audience. In Acts 20:17 Paul “called the elders (presbyteros) of the church to him.” It is to these same people (the elders), Paul says in verse 28, “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers (episkopos), to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.”
For what it is worth, when you look at the history of the Wesleyan tradition in the United States across the range of Wesleyan denominations, the office of bishop is one of the significant places of disagreement among these denominations. Again, this doesn’t mean it is wrong to have bishops. It does mean that there have been spectacular abuses of power from some American Methodist bishops. There have also been many examples of some bishop’s asserting their personal convictions over and against the clear polity of their own church.
All of this matters to me, because Asbury Church, where I serve, will hold a service of consecration and ordination this Pentecost. We will not have bishops at this service. The ordinations will be elder led. And I am going to participate. Over the past several years, I have spent a significant amount of time and energy reading, thinking, and praying about the best path forward. I have listened and tried to understand the various approaches other churches that left the UMC have taken. Like Wesley, the best I can say is, “I cannot see any better method than that I have taken.”
I am not taking this step begrudgingly or hesitatingly, though I have spent a season of watching and waiting. I am taking this step with joyful expectation for what the Lord has in store for us. If we are wrong, the Lord will make it clear to us. But with the best light I have right now, I am as confident as I can be that this is what the Lord is leading us to do.
As Asbury Church, we believe that if you are still breathing, God has more for you. This phrase comes from our Senior Pastor, Rev. Andrew Forrest. It is a beautiful contemporary expression of the Wesleyan belief in the possibility of radical holiness in this life. From womb to tomb, God always has more!
I can’t wait to see the details of that “more” coming into focus over the coming weeks and years.
Kevin M. Watson is a Pastor and the Senior Director of Christian Formation at Asbury Church in Tulsa, OK. He is also on the faculty at Asbury Theological Seminary, anchoring the Seminary’s Tulsa, OK Extension Site. His most recent book, Doctrine, Spirit, and Discipline describes the purpose of the Wesleyan tradition and the struggle to maintain its identity in the United States. Affiliate links, which help support my work, used in this post.
We are committed to raising up the next generation of leaders for the church at Asbury. We believe doing this well requires a significant investment of time and resources. One of the ways we have begun this work was by launching a Fellowship Program at Asbury Church last year.
Asbury Church Fellowships are two-year full-time paid positions, with benefits.
We are six months into the launch of the Fellowship Program and so far it has been a spectacular success! We hired Grace Hess and Caleb Starr as our inaugural Asbury Fellows and they’ve been great! We want to build on that success, so we are starting our search for the next round of Asbury Fellows. Please help us spread the word!
What is the Asbury Church Fellowship Program?
The Asbury Church Fellowship Program is a two-year fellowship in Tulsa, Oklahoma, designed to prepare future church leaders for today’s cultural context.
Fellows gain hands-on experience through rotational roles in:
Pastoral Ministry
Students/College/Young Adults
Business Administration
Outreach/Evangelism
Experience/Hospitality
Worship Arts
Communications
Asbury Classical School
Fellows will grow through mentoring and discipleship. (This is where I get to spend most of my time with the Fellows.) I meet with Fellows weekly for a Wesleyan class meeting experience, one-on-one check-ins, and a monthly book discussion. I love reading and engaging ideas and I want to introduce Fellows to the best books I’ve read on the Christian life, discipleship, the person and work of the Holy Spirit, big ideas about current issues, personal productivity, leadership, and more. The purpose of all of this will be to grow in Christ, ability to lead and disciple others, and be equipped to lead and minister in our changing cultural moment. (Some of the books we have read so far are: Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy, Aaron Renn’s Life in the Negative World, and Edwin Friedman’s A Failure of Nerve.)
Asbury Fellows will be present at all worship services (including Wednesday morning communion and Thursday evening), staff chapel, and Wednesday evening discipleship activities, with a “see a need, meet a need” attitude.
Fellows will also observe leadership meetings, attend the monthly pastor’s Bible Study, assist with pastoral care and visitations, and other experiences that serve the Fellow’s growth and development as a ministry leader.
The program is ideal for ministry-minded individuals seeking accelerated spiritual and leadership growth within a growing, evangelical congregation with Wesleyan theological roots. Fellows will be in seminary or recent seminary graduates.
Why I Am So Excited about the Asbury Church Fellowship Program
I am best at inviting people to things I enthusiastically believe in and I enthusiastically believe in what Jesus is doing at Asbury Church! Asbury Church has remarkable leadership. And really fun things are happening here.
I believe the Fellowship Program is a crucial strategy in a time of uncertainty and significant change in American Christianity. The Fellowship Program is an intentional investment in in-person formation. The problems facing the church in our day will not be solved by applying more technology. We need to invest more fully in relationships in enfleshed spaces. The people I have seen really grow and thrive in their lives in Christ all have one thing in common: They are anchored within a family of faith that provides care, nurture, and discipline. And so, Asbury Fellows will move to Tulsa to be fully present here for two years.
This is a major investment in in-person formation in order to raise up the next generation of leaders for the church. I expect this program to grow over the coming years. And I am excited to see Fellows go from Asbury Church to lead in other churches and themselves raise up leaders for the church.
We are in a time of major change in the broader culture, the church, and the academy. One of the things this means is that approaches to raising up leaders for the church are changing in real time. Some of the things that were taken for granted for the past 50 years are no longer bearing fruit.
The Asbury Church Fellowship Program is our first step to proactively addressing the need for new leaders to be formed, strengthened, and released to lead in the church. I have become more convinced over the past decade that raising up leaders best happens within the church and not outside of it.
Who is Asbury Church?
Asbury Church is a conservative evangelical church from the Wesleyan theological heritage in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 2026, Asbury has averaged nearly 2,900 people in-person in worship on average each week. (That is 13% growth compared to just last year!) We are passionate about figuring out how to do discipleship and evangelism with excellence in Negative World.[1]
(The “Negative World” framework is integral to the Fellowship Program, so you will want to familiarize yourself with it if you don’t know about it and are trying to discern whether this is right for you.)
Asbury Church has the kinds of ministry opportunities you would expect of a church of this size: a pre-school, weekly small groups, kids and youth ministry, recovery ministry, and more. We lean into big events like Christmas Eve and Easter, as well as our own made-up holiday – Celebration Sunday! We are a Bible reading church, which is expressed through Bible reading guides and all church Bible Studies (which are roughly once a month during the school year). We also host a seminary extension site (Asbury Theological Seminary, a separate institution) on our property, which reflects our commitment to theological education and raising up the next generation of leaders for the church. Our commitment to education and formation is further seen in our launch of a Classical Christian School (Asbury Classical School) that is in its second year. And we are known in our community for our commitment to missions in and beyond our community.
Who is the Asbury Fellowship Program for?
The Asbury Fellowship Program is ideal for people who have at least one year of full-time seminary experience to recent seminary graduates, who intend to go into local church ministry as their first career. The Fellowship Program is for people who are hungry for more of Jesus, want to grow, desire a deeper understanding and experience of the person and work of the Holy Spirit, and sense a calling to the work of the church.
Asbury Fellows will be people who love being around Jesus’s church, are excited by the prospect of being immersed in the life of a church for a season and are eager to serve and participate in the full worshipping life of Asbury Church. Fellows will not only be hungry for more of God, but they will come humble, ready to grow and learn, and be led for a season.
The Asbury Fellowship Program will be a season of accelerated growth for Fellows in their preparation for leadership and administration of the local church. This Fellowship is for people who know they are called to the local church in some sense but may not be sure which part of the church they are called to. This is for people who know they don’t know everything and want to learn from a large and growing church that believes God has more for everyone and is passionate about pursuing joy individually and corporately.
When will it start?
Applications are due by April 17, 2026, for a program start in August/September 2026.
Click here for full job listing and program details.
P.S. Don’t miss Underground Seminary with Asbury Theological Seminary’s President Dr. David Watson. He will discuss the book he and I wrote together that is hot off the press: Faith & Fire: Methodism as a Move of God. Click here for more details.
[1] We believe Aaron Renn’s diagnosis is accurate. The church in the United States is not in Positive World or Neutral World anymore. The dominant culture and elite taste makers overwhelmingly view the teachings of Scripture and those who unapologetically hold to them negatively. For more, see Aaron Renn, Life in the Negative World (Zondervan, 2024). For the article that led to the book, see Aaron Renn, “The Three Worlds of Evangelicalism” in First Thingshttps://firstthings.com/the-three-worlds-of-evangelicalism/
Kevin M. Watson is a Pastor and the Senior Director of Christian Formation at Asbury Church in Tulsa, OK. He is also on the faculty at Asbury Theological Seminary, anchoring the Seminary’s Tulsa, OK Extension Site. His most recent book, Doctrine, Spirit, and Discipline describes the purpose of the Wesleyan tradition and the struggle to maintain its identity in the United States. Affiliate links, which help support my work, used in this post.
Our next Underground Seminary is going to be our biggest yet! This is the first time that we will have a guest who travels in from out of state to be with us. And I am so pumped to introduce him to you.
This Underground Seminary is called Faith & Fire.
And it will feature Dr. David Watson, the President of Asbury Theological Seminary.
Asbury Theological Seminary is one of the largest seminaries in the world and is the largest Wesleyan evangelical seminary in the United States. Asbury Seminary’s headquarters are in Wilmore, KY which is where the outpouring of the Holy Spirit happened on campus in February 2023. I love getting to be on the faculty and teach at Asbury!
Who this is for:
Underground Seminary is for people who are in ministry, interested in ministry, or considering ministry. It is for people who are hungry for more of God. It is for people who want to learn how to be more effective in work in the church. It is for people who want to grow in faith and holiness.
Underground Seminary is a place for candid and off the record discussion of ideas that matter, particularly for the church in the 21st century and might not fit in a typical seminary curriculum. Underground Seminary is non-academic, not for credit, and only in person.
And my favorite part: Underground Seminary gives people considering or getting started in ministry access to great leaders. This is one of my favorite parts of doing this. I have two decades of ministry experience in the church and academy, and I know firsthand that great leaders are also in demand and have full schedules. It excites me to be able to give people access to my favorite leaders.
Underground Seminary is serious and fun.
It is inspiring and practical.
What this Underground Seminary is about:
Faith & Fire
You will get to have a conversation with Dr. David Watson, President of Asbury Theological Seminary. He and I have written a book together called Faith & Fire: Methodism as a Move of God. This will be the first time I get to talk about this book. And it is going to be so much fun!
I am going to invite Dr. Watson to start by sharing what people in ministry need to not just survive, but to thrive in their work. How should people prepare for ministry and what maintenance should they do to continue to grow in their work? What do you need to do to bring faith & fire to your seminary education, maintain it throughout seminary and your entire ministry?
Then, Dr. Watson and I will talk about our new book. For more than a century, from John Wesley’s “heart warming experience” at Aldersgate Street through the dramatic growth of the Methodist Episcopal Church through the 1850s, Methodism was a powerful move of God. In our book, David and I share the keys for a Spirit-filled movement of God in our day. David will unpack this in ways that will be relevant and insightful for your ministry.
When is this?
March 26, 2026 from 12:00-2:30 pm.
Where is this?
This Underground Seminary will meet at Asbury Church in the CLC. Asbury Church is located at 6767 S. Mingo Road, Tulsa, OK 74133. The CLC is just to left when you come in the West Foyer. We will have hosts ready to greet you and point you in the right direction from any of the main entrances.
The cost for this Underground Seminary is $10. You will receive a copy of Faith & Fire and lunch is included. In case it isn’t obvious: We are not making any money here. The church will cover the additional cost for every person who attends. (If you have dietary restrictions, please email amiller@asburytulsa.org after you register.)
You need Faith & Fire!
So does the church.
Are you ready for more? Come join us!
Kevin M. Watson is a Pastor and the Senior Director of Christian Formation at Asbury Church in Tulsa, OK. He is also on the faculty at Asbury Theological Seminary, anchoring the Seminary’s Tulsa, OK Extension Site. His most recent book, Doctrine, Spirit, and Discipline describes the purpose of the Wesleyan tradition and the struggle to maintain its identity in the United States. Affiliate links, which help support my work, used in this post.
This is a question that is good and healthy for people and institutions to ask periodically.
This question became acute for churches that left their denominations of many years, often due to the presenting issue of same sex marriage. This has happened across mainline denominations. Perhaps the most public recent separation was within the UMC.
I am now on staff at Asbury Church in Tulsa, OK. Asbury was for years the largest United Methodist Church in its Annual Conference.
Since leaving the UMC, Asbury has been in a season of discernment about the future after leaving the United Methodist Church.
Where do we go from here?
The presenting issue for the era of disaffiliation from the UMC was the decades long denominational infighting over sexual ethics, particularly same sex marriage. The breaking point, however, was when it became clear that the bureaucracy of the UMC was willing to nullify the decisions of General Conference when it disagreed with them by simply ignoring them or refusing to enforce them. The decision of bishops and other UMC leaders to impose their judgment over that of General Conference shattered the polity of the UMC, which was the very mechanism that was designed to protect unity in the midst of deep disagreement.
Some orthodox United Methodists could live with the official teaching of the church being one thing on paper and another thing “in real life” happening with no consequence.
I was not one of them.
On the other side of disaffiliation, United Methodism swiftly changed its position on sexual ethics so that its actions are now consistent with its practice. This brought the advantage of consistency and coherence. But it came at the expense of faithfulness to the clear teaching of Scripture at the main pressure point of the present cultural moment.
Some orthodox United Methodist could live with this. I don’t understand how.
If you believe that same sex marriage is not a thing that the Triune God can bless, then I do not understand how you can be “in connection” with a denomination where clergy say that God does bless them and where they regularly occur. The idea that one can be United Methodist and unimpacted by this because it does not happen in your church is either foolish or intellectually dishonest. It is at best incoherent with the basic meaning and purpose of a denomination.
Where do we go from here?
I want to talk about a recent post from Ryan Burge that brings urgency to this question. In fact, it suggests that we don’t have much time left to decide where we are going. And though I will highlight data that relates to the United Methodist Church, the UMC is not the point of this post. I would guess that the Global Methodist Church, the denomination born out of the disaffiliations from the UMC earlier this decade, is probably in a similar position as the UMC is. (Burge does not include date for the GMC in his piece.)
Most importantly, for my focus, Burge’s data is relevant to my own church. We generally fit the picture he shows.
If you are not already familiar with Ryan Burge’s work, you should be. Burge is professor of practice at the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University.
He is one of the very few positive examples I can think of where a person has gained a significant platform on social media by delivering consistently thoughtful and nuanced content, particularly regarding the contemporary church. Burge’s work is focused on demographic data, analyzing trends, and pointing to implications for the church.
Are we presuming we have a future, despite all evidence to the contrary?
The heart of Burge’s post is showing how top heavy in terms of age most Protestant denominations are.
I’ll use the UMC to illustrate, but you can see the details of other denominations in the two images I’ve included.
Look how few members in any of these denominations are young. Not one of the 20 denominations listed has more than 50% of its members under 44 years old. In the UMC, only 16% are 18-44.
Burge emphasizes this age range in his article because this is the age range of fertility, broadly speaking. That is, the rest of the folks in the group are not going to be adding to membership by giving birth to children.
He does not unpack this in his post, but another angle of this is the theology, views and values around life itself, and starting families (how soon and how big). The more progressive the denomination, the more likely it is that the fertility rate will be lower even within the age range of fertility.
21% of the membership of the UMC is between 45-59, which is more than 18-44 combined. And, at 43%, there are more than double the number of people who are 60-74 than 45-59. (And there are 8x as many 60-74 year olds as 18-29 year olds.) 63% of the UMC is 60 years and up.
This represents a demographic crisis.
I want to pause here. I doubt very many United Methodists read my work anymore. I suspect there are a lot of people who read this who are not fond of the UMC. And I think this kind of data brings a tremendous temptation to self-congratulation.
“See, this is why we left?”
And I suspect for most people reading this, you would be completely missing the point.
Is your tribe different?
Self-congratulations, posturing, or denial won’t accomplish anything positive.
I am thinking about this because this has been a topic of conversation among the staff at Asbury Church, where I serve.
So, to be as clear as I can be about the point of this post: This is not a post to celebrate the seeming demise of others.
The point is to be in touch with reality so we can ask the question I started with:
Where do we go from here?
Let’s start by stating the obvious:
If the denominations Burge lists do not figure out how to grow younger, they don’t have a future.
That is a descriptive statement, not a moral argument.
We are all mortal. I will die someday. And if no one comes behind me, the thing that I am part of will not exist anymore.
I am worried that older people will be offended by what I write. Please understand me. Age is not a moral issue. It is not immoral to grow old. It is just what happens.
But if an institution consists of primarily senior citizens and is no longer able to reach young people, then it is dying.
This is all the more difficult to talk about in a healthy way because our culture idolizes youth in ways that are damaging to young people and can invalidate the worth and value of older people. The older we are, the more likely we are to experience acutely the limitations of our bodies.
As we age, moving our bodies becomes more painful.
To young people who do not experience significant pain:
Take time to notice the literal physical pain some of the older members at your church endure to simply come to church. There are people who show heroic courage, strength, and grit by showing up. This will humble you and help you not take your own body for granted. Perhaps it will even encourage you to not take gathering with the faithful for worship for granted.
To older people:
I say to you with love, I know that talking about this can be uncomfortable. It is not at all my intent to signal that you are unimportant or lacking in value. Not at all! You are the reason we are here! My hope for you is that if you turn your hearts towards reaching the next generation (and many of you already have!), you will gain peace and joy knowing that reinforcements are coming and the mission you have given your life to will continue after your death.
This applies to me.
We are all moving towards the grave. We all ought to humble ourselves and learn from those who have gone before us. And we should all do all that we can to build up, strengthen, encourage, and bless those who are coming after us.
One of the reasons work like what Ryan Burge is doing is helpful and interesting is because it provides a more neutral way to talk about the future. It is hard to ignore or deny that a problem is coming when you look at the second image from Burge’s article.
There is, however, at least one obvious sign of hope for the future. Did you notice that there is one major exception? Look at the Church of Christ.
21% of the Church is 18-29. 27% are 30-44. This means that 48% of the Church of Christ is in the peak fertility range! It also means that the largest percentage in any one of the five age ranges is a tie for 30-44 and 60-74. So, there is a significant generational balance. It gets better. The third largest group is the youngest. Look at the Church of Christ in the second graph. You don’t want a long thin tail, as so many of the denominations included have.
You want, at a minimum, the people coming behind to be able to replace the people and resources of those who are ahead.
It took a lot of spadework to get to this point. Now, I want to share a few thoughts about this information. Fair warning, it may feel more discouraging before there is hope. But I am writing this post because I do feel hope for the future. I believe the Lord has already given us the way forward, if we would have the courage to take it.
My first thought comes from reading Aaron Renn’s Life in the Negative World and Christian Smith’s Why Religion Went Obsolete. These books are both crucial for thinking about evangelism and discipleship in the contemporary church.
I’ve mentioned Renn’s work here before. Renn argues that we live in “Negative World,” where elite culture is opposed to the core claims and commitments of the gospel. I think he is right. (I wrote a review of Life in the Negative World here.)
Rev. Andrew Forrest, the Senior Pastor at Asbury Church where I work, has written a book that show how to avoid being passive and victims in Negative World and move forward. Hint: Forrest gives away the core concept in his book’s brilliant title: Love Goes First. (I wrote a review of Love Goes First here.)
You should read all three of these books. The church desperately needs leaders who are doing the deep work to think about the times in which we live and who refuse to settle for running plays that worked in the 1950s but simply do not work today.
Here is how reading and thinking about these things came through in reading Ryan Burge’s post:
The work before the church is going to be extremely, nearly impossibly, difficult.
There is so much that could be said here. I’ll say three quick things to illustrate how hard this is going to be.
First, the Baby Boomer Generation is literally a one-of-a-kind event. The really wide parts of the second image represent this generation. There are just less people at each age behind the Baby Boomers. So that is the first demographic reality that makes this extremely difficult.
Second, over the past thirty years the dominant culture has shifted dramatically. In the years immediately following World War II, there was cultural pressure to be a member of a Christian church in the United States. Sometime in the 1990s that shifted to neutral, neither positive nor negative. And in the mid-2010s that shifted further to negative cultural pressure. So, when the Baby Boomer Generation was around my age, there were cultural incentives, or social pressures on people to go to church. Today, with this major loss of members coming in the next 10-15 years, there are negative incentives, negative social pressure on people becoming followers of Jesus.
Put simply: It is harder to “make” a convert today than it was fifty years ago.
Third, the institutions that represent these groups are sick and dying. In other words, they are not in a place to lead a resurgence or a renewal. They might have been able to do that back when I was in seminary when professors at the mainline liberal seminary I attended talked about the coming “death tsunami” that was headed for the UMC.
One of the things we talk about all the time at Asbury Church is how hard it is going to be going forward. We are looking for others who share a sense of urgency about figuring out how to lead and move forward “for such a time as this.” Figuring out how to reach people my age and younger is urgent and has to be the top priority for every church or they will not have a future.
As I was looking at Burge’s charts in a staff meeting at Asbury, someone brought the focus back to the Church of Christ: “Why are they different?”
I don’t know much about the Church of Christ. But I do know that sociologists have found that there is something of a law of church growth in the United States. I first came across this in the fantastic book The Churching of America, 1776-2005by Roger Finke and Rodney Stark.
Here is the law of church growth in the United States:
High expectation, high demand churches grow. Low expectation, low demand churches decline.
I am sure that the Church of Christ, especially compared to the other denominations Burge includes, is a high expectation and high demand church.
I spent a decade trying to get United Methodists to move away from sloppy nonsense like “open hearts, open minds, open doors.”
Methodism has grown when it has had clear expectations of its members and enforced them. It has declined when it has not.
The Methodist Episcopal Church grew from the smallest Protestant denomination in the U.S. to the largest by far from 1776 to 1850. (See The Churching of America for details.) And during this time, you were required to attend a weekly small group meeting to remain a member. If you missed more than three times in a quarter, you were removed from membership. There was a document that outlined the lifestyle expectations for members in terms of sins to be avoided, concrete actions that expressed love of neighbor, and insisted on a disciplined practice of the means of grace (practices like Bible reading, prayer, worship, holy communion, and fasting).
Today, in many churches you can join a church by standing up for a few moments during a worship service and making a few vows. And you won’t be removed from membership even if you don’t keep any of the vows you made.
As I’ve thought about where we are and where we are going, it is just so obvious: This is going to be really difficult.
In Negative World, there are no longer any incentives for people to come to a church that is more a social club than a place that is focused on Jesus Christ and helping people meet him and give their lives to him as not only savior, but Lord of their lives.
There are a variety of ways you can miss the mark in terms of high expectation and high demand. Cults, for example, are high expectation and high demand. They provide a clear sense of belonging and identity. But they do not make disciples of Jesus Christ.
You can also miss the mark by jettisoning any attempt to be Christian and simply be an activist organization. Many college students and young adults are finding meaning and identity in protest and advocacy that is cult-like in terms of the demands it makes and the all-encompassing sense of belonging and identity it gives (or demands).
When Methodism was at its best, it was a high expectation and high demand church. It was focused on the gospel and was built to ensure that no one lost sight of growing in concrete practical discipleship to Jesus Christ.
You did not have to be a member of Methodism.
But you could not be a member of Methodism in name only.
John Wesley and those who carried on his work from one generation to the next into at least the mid-nineteenth century were marked by a commitment to basic doctrine, spirit, and discipline.
Here is how John Wesley put it in the last years of his life:
I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe or America. But I am afraid lest they should only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power. And this undoubtedly will be the case unless they hold fast both the doctrine, spirit, and discipline with which they first set out. (J. Wesley, “Thoughts Upon Methodism”)
I wrote a 400-page book about what this meant and how true it has been in the history of the Wesleyan tradition in the United States.
And I have never been more convinced that this is true than I am today.
One of the things that consistently amazes me about people at my church is their desire to grow. They want to be faithful. And they are eager to be led. It is so encouraging.
In Negative World, this will only become truer.
People who come to our churches will want to know if Jesus is real and if he can make a difference in their lives. When they come to faith, they will want to learn how to follow Jesus. Nominal Christianity doesn’t make sense anymore, especially to younger people.
So, where do we go from here?
We must become churches that are serious about discipleship and formation.
The bad news is: This will not be easy. In part because the truth is that many of our churches have not been most concerned about discipleship and formation. This means that in addition to the work of building, we also have work to reform, redirect, and change.
The good news is Jesus is real. Everyone knows the Great Commission from Matthew 28. We may need to especially remember the very last sentence of Matthew’s Gospel: “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
We are not alone. We have never been alone.
Church leaders, we’ve got our work cut out for us.
This Spring is going to be awesome here in Tulsa at Asbury.
At Asbury Church we have just started our Year Through the Bible, using The One Year Bible. And we are off to a great start! Throughout Advent, we gave away 11,500 Bibles and completely ran out. We ordered 4,000 more in mid-December and they just arrived yesterday.
Among other things, we have created a website to help specifically to help people read through the Bible in 2026. I am consistently impressed with the great work Asbury’s staff is able to do on these kinds of things! Check out yearthroughthebible.com.
Today is January 9th. You can still join us! In fact, even if you aren’t in Tulsa, you can download the Life Bible App and set the start date to January 1, 2026, and read along with us for free. (Click the Life Bible App button at yearthroughthebible.com and there is a video that shows you how to sync the app up with the beginning of the year so you are on the correct reading for January 9th. Unfortunately, you cannot do this on YouVersion.)
We had more than 8,000 people attend Christmas Eve services in person at Asbury this year. It was so fun to see so many people in worship, especially extended families.
After Covid and 2020, I will never take for granted worshipping in person with people again.
This past Sunday, we had 3,074 people in person for worship at Asbury, more than we’ve had in worship the first Sunday of the year since 2014. (Though we live stream our worship service and publish sermons online, we do not count online views in our worship attendance numbers. We literally count noses in the sanctuary or chapel.)
My favorite part of life at Asbury has been getting to know individual people and seeing them take steps forward in their faith. I am in a small group with 8 people, and we are linking arms and committing to read through the entire Bible together in 2026. We met for the first time last night and I feel so excited and hopeful for what the Lord is going to do this year.
If you live in the Tulsa area, you should come and be a part of what God is doing at Asbury.
If you don’t live in the Tulsa area, I want to invite you to be part of some things that are worth coming to Tulsa for at the Asbury Theological Seminary Tulsa Extension Site.
I know this can be confusing to folks, so let me clarify that there are two Asburys. (Asburies?) Asbury Church and Asbury Theological Seminary. I get to work at both. The Church is in Tulsa, OK. Asbury Theological Seminary is in Wilmore, KY, with several extension campuses including one in Tulsa. Asbury Church hosts the Asbury Theological Seminary Tulsa, OK Extension Site.
Despite the potential for confusion, I like that the church and seminary I’m at both share the same theological heritage and intentionally express that by being named after Francis Asbury, the Father of American Methodism.
Now, back to exciting upcoming events in Tulsa at the Asbury Seminary Tulsa Site:
I am teaching two hybrid classes this Spring semester. A hybrid class is part online and part in person. This means you can complete the entire class online with a 3 day in-person intensive in Tulsa. (To state the obvious, this means you do not have to live in Tulsa to be able to take a class with me.)
These intensives are SO FUN!
I am teaching TH501: Basic Christian Doctrine. The in-person intensive is March 5-7, 2026
I am teaching TH650/SF650: Wesleyan Discipleship. The in-person intensive is March 26-28, 2026.
You should take both classes, of course.
But, if you can only take one, I am especially excited about Wesleyan Discipleship. This is my favorite class to teach. It is an historical introduction to the basics of discipleship in the Wesleyan tradition that also offers very practical guidance on how to implement the essentials of following Jesus with a Wesleyan accent. Students will learn about the theology and practice of the Wesleyan class meeting and band meeting and receive hands-on training in implementing these groups.
This will be my fourth time teaching this class. I’ve received amazing feedback from students each time about how it has changed their own faith and equipped them to lead in their own churches.
I cannot wait to teach this class!
I am also excited about this version of this particular class because Asbury Theological Seminary’s President, Dr. David Watson, is coming to Tulsa! (People always want to know if we are related. We are not.)
I was thrilled to learn of Dr. Watson’s appointment to serve as President of Asbury Seminary and am looking forward to having him be with us here in Tulsa. This is a big deal.
President Watson is going to do 3 things I want to invite you to attend:
1. He will lead our next Underground Seminary, where he will discuss the brand-new book we wrote together: Faith and Fire: Methodism as a Move of God. (More on this book in a future post.) This event will be here in Tulsa on March 26, 2026, from 12:00-2:30pm. More on this Underground Seminary here soon.
2. Dr. Watson will preach at Asbury Seminary’s chapel service for my hybrid class. That chapel service will be on Friday March 27, 2026, at 11 am in the Asbury Church Development Center chapel. This service is for the Asbury Theological Seminary community. If you are considering seminary, this would be an ideal time to come check us out. You can sit in on my class before chapel, then hear from the President of Asbury Seminary, and stick around for lunch with current students. If you’re interested reach out to penny.hammond@asburyseminary.edu.
3. Dr. Watson will be preaching at our Sunday morning worship services at Asbury Church on Palm Sunday (March 29th). Sundays at Asbury are so fun. I always encourage students to stick around for worship on Sunday if they are able. Sundays are really fun and it is a great chance for students to get a sense of how things work at a different church than their own.
It is not too late to enroll for class at Asbury Seminary this Spring! I know of a student who started the admissions process on a Sunday and received word that he was admitted by Thursday. But time is running out. You should start the application process today and then enroll in my class!
Like I said, this Spring is going to be awesome here in Tulsa at Asbury.
Kevin M. Watson is a Pastor and the Senior Director of Christian Formation at Asbury Church in Tulsa, OK. He is also on the faculty at Asbury Theological Seminary, anchoring the Seminary’s Tulsa, OK Extension Site. His most recent book, Doctrine, Spirit, and Discipline describes the purpose of the Wesleyan tradition and the struggle to maintain its identity in the United States.Affiliate links, which help support my work, used in this post.
How do you start a habit? Or, better, how do you become disciplined in doing something specific over and over again so that doing it becomes second nature?
Starting a habit is easy. Or, maybe better, starting a habit is not a habit.
Developing and sustaining a habit is difficult and requires discipline over weeks, months, and years.
Everyone knows that good habits (like daily exercise) are important and will make your life better. And everyone knows that bad habits (like eating a gallon of ice cream before bed every night) need to be avoided, or they will make your life worse.
But how do you actually do this?
I want to share my thoughts on building a habit in one specific area I’m working on for my work at Asbury Church. (The graphic below is for a workshop I’m doing this month.) The ideas here can be used more broadly to develop and sustain a habit in any area of your life.
Asbury Church is a Bible reading church. We say this all the time at Asbury!
And we mean exactly what the words say. We literally read the Bible at Asbury.
It can be easy to give lip service to the idea of reading the Bible but not actually do it. We read the Bible in our worship services. We read the Bible in our Monday morning staff chapel. We read the Bible in our midweek communion service. You get the idea.
And we work hard to lead our people to read the Bible in private daily.
We have often done this by preaching through one book of the Bible at a time. Our senior pastor, Andrew Forrest, creates Bible reading guides that we give out that have the entire text of the book we are reading through divided up into short daily readings. Andrew will offer a short commentary to help people better understand what they are reading. Andrew frequently says, “The commentary is not the point. The Bible is the point.”
You can see the Bible reading guides Andrew has written here.
In 2026, we are leaning into reading the Bible even more. We are asking our people to read the Bible in a more disciplined way.
2026 is Year Through the Bible at Asbury Church.
We are going to read through the entire Scripture over the course of the year. It is going to be hard. And it is going to change the lives of everyone who joins us!
Our number one discipleship priority for Year Through the Bible is simple: We want to see people develop a robust daily habit of reading the Bible. People who do not have a habit of daily Bible reading will develop one. And people who already have a daily Bible reading habit will strengthen it.
Given this, the most basic question in my work is this:
How can I help people actually develop the habit of daily Bible reading?
I am sure that anyone who does what I am suggesting here will develop a habit of daily Bible reading.
This will work if you do it.
The hard part, as we all know, is doing, not knowing what to do.
Here is how to install the habit of daily Bible reading into your life.
1. Decide what you are going to eliminate.
I assume your life is already full. Few people have tons of margin they are just waiting to fill with good habits. The challenge is you already feel like you have 30 hours of stuff to do in 24.
Therefore, the first thing you need to do is eliminate something you do every day that tends to be about 30 minutes. If I had to guess, I would bet that for at least 90% of people, this would be mindlessly watching television or doom scrolling social media before bed.
Is the content you are consuming making you more hopeful? Is it energizing? Is it helping you become the kind of person you want to be?
Probably not.
Reading the Bible will.
If you are serious about building a habit of reading the Bible every day, you will make the hard choice to eliminate something so you will have margin to add a new habit.
2. Decide when you are going to read the Bible every day. (This is where most people start talking about habits, but I think the previous step is important.)
I know you already know this. Again, it is the doing that is hard, not the knowing.
The first thing you need to do to “win” in developing a daily Bible reading habit is to decide when you are going to do it. You need to literally develop a concrete specific plan.
When are you going to read the Bible?
If you do not pre-decide this, you won’t do it. It is that simple.
Short cut: For almost everyone, the short cut to developing a daily Bible reading habit will be to do it first. Get up, grab your coffee, and spend the first 30 minutes of your day reading Scripture and talking with the Lord.
Let me ask you right now: Can you tell me when you read the Bible every day? If you can, congratulations! You have a daily Bible reading habit. If you cannot, you almost definitely do not read the Bible every day.
Advanced Tactic: Try to think about the difference between your consistent routines and times when the routine is disrupted. Is there a way you can frame when you read the Bible that accounts for those differences? As I mentioned in the short cut, first is what works best for me. I plan to read the Bible first thing in the morning and so I get up in time to do that first before I do anything else. And when I fail to read the Bible on a given day, it is almost always because I did not have a plan to read the Bible first.
3. Decide where you are going to read the Bible every day.
It is important that this be consistent. Is the place you read the Bible on weekday mornings overrun with children watching cartoons on Saturday morning? Then, you need somewhere else to read the Bible. Think about your environment in as much detail as you can. Where can you consistently read the Bible at the time you are planning to read it without be interrupted or distracted?
4. Decide where your Bible and anything else you need will be. Keep your Bible in the same place. You will not develop a habit of reading the Bible daily if you can’t find it! Ideally, your Bible will be where you are planning to read the Bible. If you are going to sit in the same chair every morning, then leave the Bible on the table next to the chair. This may have the bonus of being a topic of conversation with family or friends who see it in a conspicuous place. And, if you slip up and forget early on in implementing this habit, you will have a visible reminder which will give you a chance to pick it back up.
5. Do it with other people.
Join a small group to hold each other accountable and to discuss what you are learning and places you have questions.
Community is helpful in forming any habit. This is a basic part of the success of Weight Watchers (dieting) and CrossFit (exercise) to name just two examples.
At Asbury Church, we are launching new small groups that will form for the purpose of helping people read through the Bible together in 2026.
If you do these five things, you will develop a habit of reading the Bible daily. And you can apply this to any habit you want to build.
1. Decide what to eliminate so you have margin to do it.
2. Decide when you are going to do it.
3. Decide where you are going to do it.
4. Decide where the things you need to do it will be.
5. Do it with other people.
P.S. You should join us in reading through the Bible in 2026. We are reading The One Year Bible (ESV). You can grab a physical copy here. Or, you can read along in YouVersion by downloading the app and searching “The One Year Bible” in plans. (Be sure to include “The” and it will be the first search result. It is the one with a green leaf at the bottom left of the cover.) If you start the YouVersion plan on January 1, you’ll be on pace with us all year.
Kevin M. Watson is a Pastor and the Senior Director of Christian Formation at Asbury Church in Tulsa, OK. He is also on the faculty at Asbury Theological Seminary, anchoring the Seminary’s Tulsa, OK Extension Site. His most recent book, Doctrine, Spirit, and Discipline describes the purpose of the Wesleyan tradition and the struggle to maintain its identity in the United States.Affiliate links, which help support my work, used in this post.
When you are on the right track, you will often experience harassment, discouragement, or other opposition.
How do you know that this is happening?
When this happens, what should you do?
I want to answer these questions by sharing about my experience teaching the Church History One hybrid, which is the 8th in-person intensive I’ve taught since moving to Tulsa and joining the faculty at Asbury Theological Seminary. This is the in-person part of a hybrid class, where students come to Tulsa for part of 3 days. They are so great. But, can I be honest with you?
Going into this hybrid, I was dragging. I was tired. My energy was low.
In previous posts, I have shared about how hard I work to try to create the right culture in the classes that I teach. I have found that this is by far the most important thing that I do. My work is to be as proactive as I can be to set the right culture, be attentive to it as the class unfolds, and be obedient to what I think the Spirit is wanting to do.
I have shared about this in some detail in this post and especially this post. The latter includes student experience, so don’t miss that.
(By the way, I share about this work here because it is relevant for far more than seminary teaching. Culture is everything.)
I noticed something I hadn’t noticed before after teaching this class. (It came through the wise counsel of a friend.) I often feel opposition going into the intensives when students are on site. On the one hand, there is a lot that goes into these hybrid classes. And I end up teaching for 20 hours at the end of the week during time that I’m usually not working. On the other hand, I think what I experienced last week wasn’t just fatigue or stress.
I believe I experienced harassment and opposition from the enemy.
How do I know?
First, the way I felt was abnormal. It was not the same feeling as being tired. It was not the same feeling as being upset because something wasn’t going well, or I’d made a mistake. It was not the same feeling as feeling unprepared. It was more chaotic internally than these are for me. It is hard for me to describe this more precisely, but spiritual opposition is chaotic and confused. It can be helpful to zoom out and ask if the words you are using to name the experience are actually how you feel with the experience you are naming.
Second, it was changed by prayer.
I reached out to a handful of people and asked for prayer on Thursday morning, the day the hybrid began. And the Lord broke through in a wonderful way through these prayers. One of the most effective ways to combat spiritual oppression or harassment is prayer.
Third, I was fasting. I invite students to fast before our class meets. This is spiritually potent. But it also seems to nearly always connect with increased spiritual warfare. This makes sense to me because fasting is intentionally leveling up one’s focus on the things of the Spirit and denying the flesh. The enemy hates this.
Fourth, the Lord moved during my class. This is something that is seen retrospectively, but I think you can notice patterns and be prepared going forward. I have seen the Holy Spirit move in powerful ways at every hybrid I’ve taught. It is not surprising, then, that I would experience some harassment before these classes.
To provide some context, I’d like to share, with their permission, three unsolicited testimonies from students in last week’s hybrid.
I wanted to let you know of the fruit that has already ripened in my life over the weekend and during the intensive. Thursday you presented us with the words: healing, freedom, and joy. At first I did not know how those words applied to me. Thursday night I felt very joyful taking communion. Friday I shared how God has been bringing up aspects of my life to hand over to Him. This summer there has been tension between sin, little moments in my life, spiritual disciplines, and handing everything over to God. I found that time of prayer over classmates and being able to talk about our walk beneficial.
Sunday I had an experience where my heart was greatly warmed. I feel the assurance of my sanctification as strongly as I do my salvation. I now realize that healing took place first, which allowed me to experience freedom and joy—joy which I shared with others that day.
Sometimes we plant seeds and do not always get to reap the harvest, so I wanted to share what has been done this weekend. I believe the hybrid did play a hand due to you opening up the room for what the Spirit had to offer.
My heart is so full, I can barely express my gratitude for the wonderful time of study and fellowship we experienced during the in-person gathering. I learned so much about church history and a lot about myself too. Thank you for providing an atmosphere of worship and prayer. Each element of the weekend satisfied a longing in my spirit to be closer to the Lord and to his people.
Once again thank you for being obedient to the Lord during this fantastic learning and worship experience.
I just wanted to say “thank you” for creating that space for spiritual breakthrough today. I needed it. I’ve come to expect big things in my heart at these, but today was particularly meaningful. Thanks for making these more than simply academic.
These are a blessing to me to read because I know the people who wrote them and I got to see the Lord work in a piece of their story. I am especially touched by the kindness of these students to share with me things I would not have known otherwise (as the second student said so well, “Sometimes we plant seeds and do not always get to reap the harvest”). So generous!
Ok, last indicator that we might be experiencing spiritual warfare: I think it is an indication of spiritual warfare when there is ease in the moment, but there opposition before the moment arrives. I think this is related to anointing. When you are operating in a particular anointing you have, it is typically an easy yoke. You will notice an abnormal impact with ease. I have a friend who uses a phrase I love: It is like falling off a log.
Ok, so there is a description of what I experienced that can help you think about your own experience with more discernment.
The key question is: When this happens, what should you do?
I think the answer is pretty straightforward, actually.
If you are doing something that the Lord consistently blesses and you are experiencing harassment or opposition to it by the enemy, the right thing to do is obvious.
Keep going!
Going into my next hybrid, I am going to have a calm expectation that I will face opposition. I will pretty much do the same things I’ve been doing. They work.
But I am going to try to do them in the way you prepare to do a hard thing you’ve done before. Knowing it is coming will help me know the rest of what is coming. And contending to see the kinds of testimonies I’ve seen from students preparing to lead in Christ’s church is worth it!
So, when you experience discouragement, opposition, or various trials and tribulations when you are doing the Lord’s work and there is consistently fruit, do not quit.
Keep going.
One step at a time.
P.S. I am teaching two classes at Asbury Seminary in Tulsa this coming Spring. Both classes are hybrid classes, which means you only have to be on-site in Tulsa for three days for the entire class (the rest is online). I am teaching a class on Basic Christian Doctrine March 5-7, 2026. And I am teaching a class on Wesleyan Discipleship March 26-28, 2026. They are worth taking in their own rite. But they also meet ordination requirements for various denominations, including the Global Methodist Church’s new ordination requirement for a class in Wesleyan Discipleship. I love getting to teach from my research and publishing on Wesleyan small groups like the class and band meeting. And this class is not only about the ideas but equipping to do them. It is so fun! Don’t miss it. (For more information, click here, scroll down, and shoot me an email.)
P.P.S. The Wesleyan Discipleship class is going to be especially fun because Asbury Theological Seminary’s President, Dr. David Watson, is going to be preaching for our chapel service during class. We’re also working on an Underground Seminary with President Watson. We wrote a book together. I can’t wait to share more about this!
Kevin M. Watson is a Pastor and the Senior Director of Christian Formation at Asbury Church in Tulsa, OK. He is also on the faculty at Asbury Theological Seminary, anchoring the Seminary’s Tulsa, OK Extension Site. His most recent book, Doctrine, Spirit, and Discipline describes the purpose of the Wesleyan tradition and the struggle to maintain its identity in the United States.Affiliate links, which help support my work, used in this post.
A quick update this week and a short thought I wanted to share:
My CH501 Church History One Hybrid Is Meeting in Tulsa This Week!
This week is my favorite week of the semester. The students for my CH501 Church History One class are coming to Tulsa for our in-person intensive. We will have 20 hours of class time together over 2.5 days. (We will also have an Underground Seminary event with Rev. Andrew Forrest, Asbury Church’s Senior Pastor, this Thursday right before class begins. This is going to be such a blessing to students! Details here.)
I work hard to set a healthy culture that is open to the person and work of the Holy Spirit. I wrote about exactly what I do for that here. I think this work has been the most significant growth I’ve experienced during my time in Tulsa so far. Culture is everything!
Much of the work that I am doing is to enable the class together to be open to what God wants to do in our midst while we are together. Because I have seen the Lord do cool things in these hybrids, I carry a sense of anticipation and expectation for these classes when they meet. I also experience a tension when I hold space for the Lord to move. I often have a sense of what the Lord wants to do and also a profound awareness that I am not in control of what the Holy Spirit does or whether people are open to responding. By the way, I think holding this tension is one of the hardest and most important things you do in ministry.
All this is to say, I would be grateful for your prayers for this class. Please ask the Lord to enable me to think clearly, teach faithfully, hear what the Lord wants to do, and respond accordingly. Please pray for students to have safe and smooth travel to Tulsa. And pray for all of us to be fully present to Jesus during our time together. Thank you!
A Thought I often Have about the Difference between Pastors and Physicians
I am interested in the different ways various generations experience the world. This would quickly become a different post, but one way I have been marked through the culture, church, and leadership around me that I experienced is a hunger for leaders in the church who tell the truth with conviction and appropriate emotional intelligence.
I am not talking about saying a hard truth to someone in a way that is callous and hurtful for no good reason. And I am not encouraging saying something with the intention of hurting them or giving offense. That is not what I mean here.
I’d like to share an image I often use in teaching to illustrate what I’m talking about: the difference between pastors and physicians.
Let’s start with physicians:
If I go to the doctor and a test returns very bad news, what happens?
The doctor will tell me the truth in a straightforward and clear way, every single time.
In fact, if the doctor hid a diagnosis to protect my feelings, they could be sued for malpractice.
I am not a medical doctor. But I imagine that having to tell someone that they have inoperable cancer is very difficult. The response the patient has to receiving the news is hard to watch. And though the doctor has not caused the diagnosis, they are the one who is making it known.
But doctors tell the truth, whether they like the truth they have to share or not.
Now, consider pastors:
If a pastor is engaging with someone who is in denial about the impact their beliefs or behavior is having on their life, what do they do?
Well, it seems to me this varies quite a bit.
There are so many different areas of this we could explore. Pastoral care is subjective in a way that a cancer diagnosis or lab result is not, for example. I want to lay the ambiguity aside for the moment. I want to talk about when a pastor knows in their gut something about the person in front of them.
I know myself the temptation to not tell the truth about what I see because I am worried about their feelings. They won’t like what I say. Or, they won’t like me because I made them feel bad.
One common image used to describe pastoral work in the previous eras is “the cure of souls.” If pastors are unwilling to tell the truth to people they are pastoring, their work to cure souls is certain to fail.
This is hard work. I am not saying it is easy. But it is essential for the future health of the church.
I am asking the Lord to raise up a generation of leaders for the church who are so desperate to see people healed and made well through faith in Christ that they become more like physicians.
May the Lord give his shepherds strength and courage to call people to repentance when it is needed, so they can turn around, fight against sin and Satan, and find fresh victory in Jesus.
Kevin M. Watson is a Pastor and the Senior Director of Christian Formation at Asbury Church in Tulsa, OK. He is also on the faculty at Asbury Theological Seminary, anchoring the Seminary’s Tulsa, OK Extension Site. His most recent book, Doctrine, Spirit, and Discipline describes the purpose of the Wesleyan tradition and the struggle to maintain its identity in the United States.Affiliate links, which help support my work, used in this post.
One of the things I have really appreciated about my time in Tulsa has been learning about the importance of culture in an organization. I knew quite a bit in theory about this before coming to Asbury Church. But I did not have firsthand experience of an organization intentionally working on setting a healthy culture with excellence and experiencing breakthrough like I have here.
I’ve experienced this in a handful of ways. One of my favorites is the way Andrew Forrest, Asbury’s Senior Pastor, and Rodney Adams, Asbury’s Executive Director, develop and use punchy short phrases over and over again that point to and motivate desired outcomes within the staff and the Church. I’ll share some of these here from time to time because I think they will be helpful to you. Here is the first one:
“At Asbury, we do the common uncommonly well.”
This is a great phrase for so many reasons. Here are a few:
1. It changes the way we think about the things we commonly do.
There is a tendency to think that because something is common, we already know how to do it with excellence. But that is not the case. In fact, the common is often done exceptionally poorly. And that is a disaster for the culture of any organization!
Can I give you an example?
Since moving to Tulsa, I occasionally lead the first part of our worship service. When I do this, my job is to kickstart the service with appropriate tone and confidence.
If you have been to any worship service, they all have this in common. There is some moment that starts the worship service. And most of the time there is not much forethought given to that moment.
But it sets the tone for the entire service! It is crazy to not practice, rehearse, and prepare with uncommon effort for this moment.
And so, I have practiced over and over and over again in my office, in front of the mirror, and in front of colleagues. And I still have room to get better.
Boy has this been humbling.
As I’ve tried to do the common welcome and greeting uncommonly well, I have made mistakes. I once showed our staff a recording of a welcome and greeting at our Thursday evening service when I forgot to introduce myself, take off my name tag, and empty my pockets. I then showed the recording of the 11am Sunday service where I had ironed out these mistakes to illustrate the difference practice makes.
Working to do the common welcome and greeting to a worship service uncommonly well has been difficult and challenging.
And it has been SO FUN! I have really enjoyed being part of a culture of excellence and seeing myself improve in a basic skill for pastoral ministry. Growth is fun.
2. This phrase makes it obvious that we are a place that expects hard work, consistent effort, and commitment to improve.
Doing basic things with excellence takes work. It takes effort. It takes hunger and commitment to grow. It requires a willingness to receive feedback and be coached up.
And, guess what?
These are also all qualities we want to see embedded in the culture at Asbury Church.
3. Doing the common uncommonly well gives everyone the opportunity to focus on doing their work with excellence.
In church work, the Sunday morning worship service is the most important part of the week. It’s true. But this can also lead people to thinking excellence is only required at the most public facing and visible thing happening on Sunday morning, such as the music and the sermon.
Emphasizing doing the common uncommonly well helps everyone be engaged in doing their work with excellence.
Am I currently working to do the basic functions of my job with excellence? Even asking that question almost always surfaces areas where I can grow as a leader.
4. This phrase creates a disincentive to join the team at Asbury, or remain on it, if someone does not want to work with excellence.
I love the way doing the common uncommonly well puts the focus on a positive target. And so this last one may initially seem negative or off-putting to you. However, another thing we often say at Asbury is, “clarity is kindness.” We are pursuing excellence. We expect everyone on our staff to do the common uncommonly well. Therefore, I see it as a kindness to folks considering joining our team to make this expectation clear.
One of the reasons working on the culture of an organization matters is because different places have different cultures. I love being at Asbury Church! But Asbury may not be someone else’s cup of tea.
That is ok!
It just means Asbury won’t be the right place for them to work.
I am thankful for the ways Andrew and Rodney are intentionally bringing clarity to the staff at Asbury Church here in Tulsa, OK.
And I have found it energizing to think intentionally about the ways I can do the common uncommonly well in my work. Growth and improvement are fun. And I always have room for more of both in my work.
Next Step: What is one area in your current work where deciding to do basic work with greater intentionality and excellence would make a significant impact? Start with a basic and simple step and build from there.
Here is an example of a next step from Asbury:
The first practical step toward doing the common uncommonly well here was a focus on email, especially subject lines. Andrew took time in several monthly staff meetings to explain this emphasis and then walk through how to improve use of email, especially writing subject lines that provide clear communication to the sender, especially when they are for internal work at the church. Immediately after that meeting, I started thinking about the purpose of an email subject line differently, and working on writing them with greater intentionality.
P.S. Have you registered for our Underground Seminary event yet? The deadline to register is October 30th. This is an opportunity to hear Asbury Church’s Senior Pastor, Rev. Andrew Forrest, talk about his new book Love Goes First. This is one of the best books I’ve read in the past decade. If you are in the area, you don’t want to miss this. Register now before time runs out. Details here.
P.P.S. I am teaching two classes at Asbury Seminary in Tulsa this coming Spring. Both classes are hybrid classes, which means you only have to be on-site in Tulsa for three days for the entire class (the rest is online). I am teaching a class on Basic Christian Doctrine March 5-7, 2026. And I am teaching a class on Wesleyan Discipleship March 26-28, 2026. They are worth taking in their own rite. But they also meet ordination requirements for various denominations, including the Global Methodist Church’s new ordination requirement for a class in Wesleyan Discipleship. I love getting to teach from my research and publishing on Wesleyan small groups like the class and band meeting. And this class is not only about the ideas but equipping to do them. It is so fun! Don’t miss it. (For more information, click here, scroll down, and shoot me an email.)
Kevin M. Watson is a Pastor and the Senior Director of Christian Formation at Asbury Church in Tulsa, OK. He is also on the faculty at Asbury Theological Seminary, anchoring the Seminary’s Tulsa, OK Extension Site. His most recent book, Doctrine, Spirit, and Discipline describes the purpose of the Wesleyan tradition and the struggle to maintain its identity in the United States.Affiliate links, which help support my work, used in this post.
Kevin M. Watson 