What we are for isn’t good enough. It just isn’t.

In fact, I’m not even sure that within The United Methodist Church there is consensus about what we are for.

What horrifies me is that I’m not sure United Methodists are capable of coming up with a vision that meets the demands of our own faith. I am afraid we may have lost faith in anything other than ourselves.

When I have experienced the UMC at its broader levels of organization, it has been very discouraging. I am saddened to witness good, sincere, and wonderful people trying so hard to show the rest of the church that God has been at work in our midst. It makes me sad, because I usually feel like most people don’t believe the hype.

When we are most passionate, we are too often talking about what we have done for God, not what God has done for us.

It is not good enough to be in favor of doing nice things, even for God or in the name of God.

We are dying. And it is because we are not certain we believe the world needs Jesus. But if the world doesn’t need Jesus, it surely doesn’t need us.

The world doesn’t need us to do something for it. The need is far more desperate and devastating than that. We are not enough. We never have been enough, even in our glory days. The world needs – people need – a relationship with God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Far too often, an agnostic theology is lurking behind our actions. At our worst, our service seems to be motivated by a sort of guilt about our privilege. It becomes a kind of bargaining chip, and a sophisticated one at that! We make peace with our affluence, or at least try to, by doing something for someone else every once in a while.

There is no hope for The United Methodist Church unless what we are for is adequate to the gospel that justifies our existence.

We should stubbornly and persistently be for this very gospel. The good news is that in Jesus of Nazareth the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God’s grace has been unleashed on a broken and hurting world.

I am almost tempted to say that United Methodists should fast from doing things for God. Instead, we should relearn how to talk about what God has already done for us. We need to start by telling ourselves about Jesus, about what he has already done for us and which we cannot do for ourselves – practicing it until none of us are embarrassed or hesitant to say the name of Jesus. We need to state clearly that we are all desperate for God’s grace, that without it we are utterly and hopelessly lost.

We should be for conversion. We should be unapologetically in favor of calling people to turn away from sin and towards God’s grace, because we are certain that this is the hope that we can offer them. We need to state clearly that we are justified by faith in Christ, not by our works. We need to know that we cannot save ourselves.

We need to be for holiness. Not because we are confident in our ability to make ourselves better, but because we believe that the resurrection of Jesus from the dead means that sin and death no longer have the last word and no longer should inhibit our hope for what is possible now by the grace of God.

We need to quit carelessly denying the possibility of complete freedom from sin in this life. Instead, we need to be honest and broken by our complicity with the ways of sin and death. Rather than endorsing sin by thoughtlessly saying “nobody’s perfect”, we need to recognize that sin continues in our lives because we will it to continue. We sin not because we must, but because we choose sin over the freedom that God gives us from sin.

Methodists who are worthy of the name should be unabashedly in favor of Christian perfection. What is at stake is not a vague theological principle. Our hope is at stake. Where is our hope? If it is in ourselves or human capacity, then we would be foolish to preach Christian perfection. But if our hope is in the One who has shattered sin and death’s hold on all who are created in the image of God, then why would we, how could we, tell anyone that God does not want them to experience complete freedom from all that keeps them from abundant life in the triune God?

The message of entire sanctification is not going to be extinguished before Jesus returns. When the MEC persecuted and expelled B. T. Roberts, largely because of his proclamation of Christian perfection, the Holy Spirit raised up a new people. Ultimately, this is God’s message and not our own.

I could be wrong, but I am afraid that United Methodism is where it is because we have not recognized the extent to which we are beggars in need of mercy, and we have not offered a message with sufficient sustenance to a world starving for the fullness of God’s grace.

We probably need to reorganize. We probably need to be more adaptive in leadership. But none of this matters if we don’t really believe the message we are proclaiming. Do we really believe in a risen savior? Do we really believe he is enough for a broken and hurting world? Do we really believe that the Holy Spirit is active, bringing healing and wholeness?

We are dying because what we are for is not enough. Our imagination and energy have drifted away from proclaiming the gospel with passion, energy, and conviction. When we encounter broken people, too often we are unsure if Jesus is enough.

Jesus is more than enough. And the truth is that he is all that we really have to offer. Thanks be to God, in Christ we are offered forgiveness of real sins, and freedom from sin’s pull on our lives. And as long as we are alive, we have the incredible opportunity to share this message of reconciliation and healing with the world.

Seattle Pacific Seminary, the seminary at Seattle Pacific University, has been added to the list of schools approved for United Methodist candidates for ordination by the University Senate of The United Methodist Church. I was thrilled to receive this news from my Dean earlier this summer, because it means that God has provided a way for me to live into a major part of my sense of calling – to pastor United Methodist seminary students who are preparing to become pastors. I am so grateful to get to teach and prepare future United Methodist pastors!

While I am ecstatic for personal reasons, I am even more grateful for the affirmation that SPS has received from The United Methodist Church because I strongly support SPU’s general vision and commitments as a university and its more particular mission as a seminary. The main purpose of this post, then, is to try to help get the word out about SPS and our ability to train UM students for ordained ministry.

The key foci of Seattle Pacific Seminary are affectionately referred to as the AAA model. Our vision for seminary is that we should be an academy, an abbey, and an apostolate. Here is how it is described on the website:

The interplay of scholarship, spiritual edification, and service defines our unique vision for educating both undergraduate and seminary students – all informed by our Wesleyan heritage that joins “knowledge and vital piety” as a means of changing the world.

Academy

SPU is known for its rigorous yet supportive academic environment. Whether you are an undergraduate or a seminary student, you will learn in close collaboration with faculty colleagues from many disciplines across the University. Our professors are outstanding biblical and theological scholars who value academic excellence, research, and teaching in service to the church, and have a deep Christian faith.

Learning goals of the Academy

We teach so that you and other students will:
• Develop an informed and reflective faith.
• Develop confidence in the Christian faith.
• Be able to interpret Scripture deftly and thoughtfully.
• Understand how the divine revelation of Scripture and the canonical tradition are informed by reason and the experience of the Holy Spirit.
• Learn and evaluate different worldviews operative from the perspective of Christian faith.

Abbey

In the School of Theology, we stress accountable discipleship, and provide opportunities for you to worship and fellowship in intentional Christian community. Our purpose is that you and your professors will be formed more and more in the image and likeness of Jesus Christ.

Learning goals of the Abbey

We teach so that you and other students will:
• Shape your life around Christian character and values.
• Cultivate personal spiritual disciplines in your life.
• Engage others of different beliefs in civil discourse and with a catholic spirit.
• Be able to nurture others in Christian faith.
• Recognize your membership in the body of Christ, entering into the moral and theological discourse of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.

Apostolate

The School of Theology is also an “apostolate” — a place of sending forth. As a student, you will participate in service activities (acts of mercy and justice), especially with the poor. And you will sometimes find yourself stretched beyond your comfort zone — for the sake of the gospel — through urban or global multicultural experiences. In the School of Theology, prayer, and service provide you with the seedbed for scholarly study, vocational exploration, and preparation for leadership in the congregation, the campus, and the classroom.

Learning goals of the Apostolate

We teach so that you and other students will:
• Be prepared to discern, own, and be equipped for your vocation.
• Be deeply rooted in the worship and ministry of a local congregation.
• Articulate your faith in a winsome and engaging manner, in order to share it with others.
• Be prepared to engage in global and intercultural settings.

I will say more in another post about why I think SPS is a great place for United Methodist who are preparing for ministry. For now, I will say that my favorite way that we seek to bring the abbey piece to life is by having all of our seminary students participate in a weekly Wesleyan class meeting. (If you are unfamiliar with class meetings, you can read more about them here.)

The goal of the class meeting requirement is to provide a place for students to experience the Wesleyan understanding of “social holiness” as they care for one another and pursue continued growth in their relationship with the Triune God. This experience will also equip students to organize and lead class meetings in their future ministries. My hope is that by being a part of this kind of communal Christian formation students will both continue to grow in their faith during their time in seminary and be prepared to help others experience transformational small groups in the local church.

Why do bad things happen to good people?

This is a question Daniel Castelo, my friend and colleague at Seattle Pacific Seminary, wrestles with in his new book, Theological Theodicy. As is characteristic of Castelo’s writing, this book is well-organized and accessible to the educated reader, without cutting theological corners or providing pat answers.

Castelo begins by outlining intellectual shifts that have changed the tenor of asking the “Why?” question about the existence of evil and suffering in the world. “Theodicy, as it shifted in modernity, became a rationally legitimating warrant for atheism” (9). Castelo then fleshes out the logic of the approach that raises the “Why?” question in order to justify a rejection of the existence of God, challenging many of the assumptions that are often smuggled into this approach. He then brings the first chapter to a close by noting that theodicy often falls short philosophically because “the key terms in question, ‘God’ and ‘evil,’ are often insufficiently developed or nuanced because they are usually devoid of a theologically substantiating context” (19). Castelo, rightly in my view, challenges the idea that Christians can answer questions about why bad things happen in an abstract way, without a careful consideration of who the triune God is.

In the second chapter, Castelo analyzes two different approaches to the “god” of modern theodicy, those of deism and dualism. Both approaches are found to be wanting, and the reader is reminder that neither “god” adequately represents the God of Christian faith. Castelo then moves to several dogmatic proposals for a Christian account of a creator God. After laying out these proposals, he concludes, “creation is good because it comes from a good Creator, and the degree that it can be evaluated as good is based on the measure with which it references its Creator” (54).

Among the topics addressed in the third chapter, I particularly appreciate Castelo’s discussion of death and where it fits into Christian theology. In contrast to those who often attribute positive roles for death in God’s ordering of creation, Castelo argues:

What one can observe is that death is the denial of life, and as such, it has been deemed by the Christian tradition as the primary and most determinate consequence of the fall. Death is not a good thing; although it may be a resting place, the cessation of suffering, and although it may be viewed as a rite of passage into eternal life, death is not something good in and of itself.” (75-76)

Castelo begins the fourth chapter in an arresting way:

Interestingly enough, we are outraged by evil, suffering, death, but we are not similarly outraged or shocked when we are beneficiaries of positive arrangements beyond our control… the American rate of consumption and waste, the use of energy and the like, are all impossibly available to the entire human race. And yet, outrage is normally not directed at these kinds of ‘luxuries’ or discrepancies; rather, Americans often use the language of being blessed, lucky, or deserving of such arrangements because of their work ethic, ingenuity, religious fervor, or some other reason. The hypocrisy here is that we often ask the ‘why’ question when things go horribly wrong; we rarely if at all ask it when things play out exceedingly (and unfairly?) in our favor. (80-81)

Finally, Castelo summarizes what can be said about what God has done (particularly through the way that Jesus takes on suffering in the passion) and is doing (particularly through the mission of Christ’s body, the church) to engage the reality of suffering. Ultimately, Castelo makes the case for a “pragmatic theodicy,” one that focuses on the healing and repairing of creation. He also provides a helpful reminder that in Scripture, “the call of discipleship” is not “associated primarily with answering questions… Rather, the call of discipleship is to reach the lost and needy with the good news of healing and repair that Jesus Christ proclaimed and embodied.” (94) Thus, when Christians are confronted by evil, sin, pain, and even death, the response “is not to explain but to feel for the purpose of being moved to action.” (94)

In this gentle, yet probing summary of the challenges that are posed by the problem of evil, Castelo is at his best when he gives the reader permission (even encourages) to avoid offering definitive explanations for why bad things happen. Rather than explaining, in thoroughly Wesleyan fashion, Castelo suggests that “the Christian life is one of bearing other’s burdens.” (97)

While Castelo is willing to honestly acknowledge and recognize the presence of suffering, because it is a Christian account, he is compelled to make sure that the last word is one of hope. “The creation has a hopeful future because its future is God.” (102)

This book provides excellent pastoral guidance to all who have taken on the name of Christ and seek to bring the riches of their tradition to bear as they seek to stand with others who experience pain and suffering. I heartily recommend it to anyone who has asked “why?” or felt unable to answer this question when it was asked by someone else. Those who have been reluctant to offer simple explanations for deep questions, which are usually asked with deep personal urgency, will find comfort that the Christian’s job is not to answer questions or defend God against every possible accusation. However, readers will also be made uncomfortable as they are reminded that much of the evil that is present in the world is allowed to exist because people choose to ask how a good all-powerful God could allow this to happen, rather than stewarding what God has entrusted them with to make a difference.

Regarding my personal interest in small group formation, I believe this book has a real contribution to make to small groups like the Wesleyan class meeting and band meeting. Small groups are often shallow and group members struggle to enter into one another’s lives in meaningful ways. When groups do enter into the “deep end” of each other’s lives, they often do so with little to no preparation to sit with someone who experience agonizing loss and is grasping for explanations. Castelo’s work can help people to be prepared for just how hard bearing one another’s burdens can be, while providing a reminder of just how desperately important it is.

After almost five years of blogging under the title “deeply committed” I have decided to move my blog to vitalpiety.com. The main reason is frankly embarrassing. With my first year of teaching full-time at SPU and finishing my dissertation, I neglected my blog for a few months and did not realize that the domain registration was about to expire. I had no idea that there was an industry that tries to pull people’s domains out from under them for a variety of reasons. In any event, when the domain registry expired someone else immediately purchased it. They appear to be using it to try to drive traffic to links on the blog that have nothing to do with Christianity. It is disappointing to me and if you were familiar with my old blog, my preference would be that you not visit the old site. I want to be clear here that I have absolutely nothing to do with it and cannot control what is posted there. Also, all of my previous blog content is now here at vitalpiety.com.

On a completely different note, I must admit I was always a bit uncomfortable with the title deeply committed. After I began blogging, I was often concerned that the title suggested that I was deeply committed to my faith and others were not. I settled on the title because I was pastoring a local church at the time and this was the best way I could concisely state my passion for renewal with United Methodism.

When I lost control of my prior domain, a friend suggested vitalpiety.com. I immediately thought that this name was so perfect for someone interested in the Wesleyan tradition that it had to have been taken already. When I discovered it wasn’t, I just kept thinking about the title until I finally decided to make the switch.

So, why vital piety?

The phrase comes from a hymn that was used when the early Methodists opened a school in Kingswood:

Unite the pair so long disjoined,
Knowledge and vital piety:
Learning and holiness combined,
And truth and love, let all men see
In those whom up to thee we give,
Thine, wholly thine, to die and live. (Works 7:644)

My passion as an ordained elder in The United Methodist Church and as a professor at Seattle Pacific University is to reunite rigorous academic work in Christian theology with a desperate search for a holy life. Particularly in my work with United Methodist seminary students, my calling is to train them to understand the depths and riches of our heritage as members of the one, holy, catholic, apostolic church and more particularly as people committed to the broader Wesleyan family. I am convinced that this work is integrally connected to “vital piety.” In other words, as we learn more about God, this knowledge should enable us to better love the God we know. And the more we love God the more we will love our neighbors.

The past nine months have seen many changes in my life and so it seems fitting for me to start a new chapter in my adventure in blogging.

Welcome to vital piety! I look forward to the (continued) conversation.

(If you have not previously subscribed to my blog you can automatically receive future posts via email by clicking here, or you can subscribe in a reader by clicking here.)

I began blogging nearly four years ago. I initially began blogging because I started seeing the word used more and more frequently in various media, and I didn’t know what it was. I decided the best way to learn about blogging was to blog. The experience has been better than I hoped! My favorite part of blogging has been the interaction I have had with you, those who read deeply committed.

Recently, I have been trying to think about the many ways that people find their way to this blog and how I can better connect with all of you. And so, the purpose of this post it to point to some ways that we can further connect.

Here are a few ways that you can connect with me:

Subscribe to deeply committed by email by clicking here. (The subscription is free! All you have to do is click on the link, enter your email address and then verify the subscription by opening an email that will be sent to your email account. Note: it may be sent to your junk folder if you have a high filter on your account.)

Subscribe to deeply committed through a reader. I use google reader, which is free and easy to set up. (After you register for google reader, just click on “add subscription” and then type “deeplycommitted” and click subscribe.)

Follow me on twitter by clicking here.

You can also email me at deeplycommitted@gmail.com

Finally, if you like what you have read here and want to read more you can read my published writing. I have written a book on the General Rules and Wesleyan discipleship called A Blueprint for Discipleship. I was one of the co-authors of an introduction to John Wesley’s theology, as seen through his sermons, called Reclaiming the Wesleyan Tradition. I have just had a chapter on small group discipleship published in Generation Rising. All three of these books were written primarily for the church, with the hope that they would be used in small group settings. You can also read an academic piece I wrote, “Forerunner of the Early Methodist Band Meeting”, that was published on-line in Methodist Review.

Most important, please keep reading and commenting! For those of you who know much more about online communication and social media, I am sure I have missed something. What advice would you give me about how I can better connect with you and others?

Thanks for the continued conversation!

I have previously recommended Gareth Lloyd’s Charles Wesley and the Struggle for Methodist Identity. When I reread the book during my research trip at the special collections of the John Rylands University Library in Manchester, England, I was struck by a couple of references that Lloyd made to the area of Charles Wesley life that he is best known for – his hymns and poems.

Lloyd writes, “The lasting value of Charles’ poetry is well recognized, but it is worth remembering that most people during the early years would have known Charles better as a preacher, pastor, and leader.” (39-40)

Later Lloyd also notes that the Church of England was much slower to accept the use of hymns in worship than was Methodism, not fully embracing hymns until the end of the nineteenth century (see p. 74).

The thought I had as I read these passages was that Charles Wesley may not have realized the extent of the impact that his hymn-writing would have on the Church. Perhaps Wesley wrote each of the thousands of hymns he wrote, not because he knew they would be popular, but because it was one of the ways he praised God. And yet, many of the hymns he wrote have become classics, not just in Methodism, but throughout Protestantism.

This is where I spent the majority of the past four weeks. Do you know where or what this is?

I am looking forward to getting back into the rhythm of blogging, more to come.

Things are a bit hectic in my life right now, with the end of my last semester of coursework looming, a field exam in mid-May, and the birth of my second child expected in early May. So, my blogging activity will be less frequent from now until the end of May.

In the meantime, I would like to hear from you. There is so much talk about what is wrong with The United Methodist Church. It seems to me that there is less passionate conversation about what positive changes should be made. So, here is the question I would be interested in reading your response to: If you could change one thing about contemporary United Methodism, what would it be? Or what one change do you think would make the most difference in contributing to a brighter future for Methodism?