How Can This Blog Help You Use Blueprint for Discipleship?

31 Monday Aug 2009

Posted by in Christian Living, Ministry, Technology

≈ 2 Comments

I have been considering different ways that this blog can be used as a further resource for those who are using A Blueprint for Discipleship: Wesley’s General Rules as a Guide to Christian Living in a small group setting this fall. I have considered a series that works through the book chapter by chapter. I have also wondered if it might be fruitful to accept questions from readers or group leaders and each week I could post a video response to the question. I am open to other possibilities as well.

If you will be using the book this fall, or if you have experience leading small group studies, how do you think this blog could best be used to make the experience that people who use the book have even better? I am very interested in your thoughts.

Surrendering the Legacy of Entire Sanctification

28 Friday Aug 2009

Posted by in Book Review, Christian Living, Methodist History, Wesley

≈ 17 Comments

In The Holiness Revival of the Nineteenth Century, Melvin E. Dieter discusses the tension that developed as the holiness revival progressed amongst its Methodist adherents over “come-outism.” This term referred to Methodists who left (or came out of) Methodism to pursue a purer form of holiness fellowship or association. Dieter argued that there were many Methodists who were advocates of the importance of holiness and who felt that it was essential that this movement stay connected with Methodism. In fact, some seemed to have seen this connection as crucial to Methodism’s future vitality.

Dieter goes on to discuss a parallel debate within Methodism over whether entire sanctification was Wesleyan. According to Dieter, “critics of the revival often had charged that the preaching of the Christian perfection which became characteristic of the revival was un-Wesleyan because the context of American revivalism tended to create significant variations from Methodism’s standard teachings of the doctrine” (256).

Interestingly, though, this argument was actually not all that persuasive or effective. Dieter argues that the holiness movement was “so closely identified with traditional Methodism and Wesleyan doctrine and life that Methodist opponents of the revival were forced to distance themselves from Wesley and the standard authors of prevailing Methodist theology to resolve the struggle with the holiness elements within the church” (256). In other words, those who opposed the holiness revival recognized that they could not win the argument by appealing to Wesley’s authority, so they looked for other sources of authority, and even a new heritage.

The Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church South, then, shifted strategies. Instead of looking back to their heritage and the tradition that they were living out of, they looked forward “to the new and greener pastures in more modern teachers and theologies” (256). And so Dieter argues:

The legacy of entire sanctification, with whatever modifications may have been made to it during the course of the American deeper life revival, was now being surrendered, in large part, to the holiness movement; it had become difficult for the tradition to survive within its original Methodist Episcopal Church and Methodist Episcopal Church South home. (256)

Oddly, or perhaps hopefully, the MEC and MECS did not entirely officially abandon its connection to the doctrine of entire sanctification. For example, this morning I verified that the historic examination questions for admission into Methodist ministry are included in every MEC Discipline from 1884 until union with the MECS and Methodist Protestant Church in 1939. These are the very questions that are asked today of every person who presents themselves for ordination in the United Methodist Church as an elder or deacon. The second, third, and fourth questions are: Are you going on to perfection? Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life? Are you earnestly striving after it?

Yesterday, I asked the students in my United Methodist History class if any of them had ever heard a sermon preached on entire sanctification or christian perfection. Not one of the nineteen students present had. As United Methodists, we seem to be living in a strange tension. In many ways we seem to have surrendered the doctrine of entire sanctification to other Wesleyan holiness groups, while still officially holding to the teaching in our doctrine and Book of Discipline. Or perhaps we have not surrendered the doctrine, just our commitment to teaching and preaching it. Somewhere along the way the very thing that Wesley believed to be one of the very reasons God raised up the people called Methodists became an embarrassment to later generations of Methodists.

I wish more ordained United Methodists would become uncomfortable with the fact that they have publicly affirmed their commitment and expectation that, by God’s grace, they expect to be made perfect in love in this life. United Methodists should not become familiar with this teaching only if they go to seminary. It should be preached in every Methodist pulpit, as the result of every UM pastor’s wrestling with what Wesley did and did not mean by “perfection,” and their efforts to present this to their parishioners in a way that they can understand. May we reclaim this “grand depositum” that God has entrusted to those who faithfully live out of the Wesleyan heritage.

Pulling the Plug on Twitter and Facebook

25 Tuesday Aug 2009

Posted by in Life, Technology

≈ 7 Comments

I am going to pull the plug on Twitter and Facebook. I am not going to delete my account on either one, but I am going to stop updating them.

I wrote my first “tweet” on January 28, 2008… and then did not tweet again for more than a year. This May I started tweeting with some consistency. I also began using Facebook when I realized that I could use TweetDeck to update Facebook and Twitter at the same time. To be fair, there have been many things I have enjoyed about using Twitter and Facebook. I have a connection with many people I might not otherwise know. I have also been able to keep up to date on what is happening in the lives of some friends I don’t see as often as I would like to. What felt like the most sophisticated moment in my tweeting life was when I set up a meeting for coffee with a friend while in Tulsa.

Occasionally I would read a tweet that was too sarcastic for my liking, or expressed a total lack of understanding of a position it was uncharitably attacking. However, for the most part I was a convert to the world of tweets and twitpics and ReTweets (though it took me awhile to figure out what RT meant). I know that I was a convert because those words stopped sounding silly to me. I didn’t bat an eye when Derek Webb referred to his followers as “Tweeples” or when someone else referred an in person meeting of “tweeters” as a “Tweet-up.”

But a few nights ago, as I was trying to go to sleep, my mind was bouncing back and forth from one thing to another. I’m not sure exactly how or why, but I began thinking about the frustration I felt the week before in trying to get back into the rhythm of reading and studying after a week of vacation. Throughout the week I felt distracted and struggled to concentrate. (I also during the day almost always had TweetDeck running on my desktop.) Twitter and Facebook began to look like things that were not valuable, or at least neutral tools. They began to look like unhealthy distractions that had contributed to my lack of focus. As I fell asleep, I came to the conclusion that I needed to pull the plug on Twitter and Facebook. Here are a few reasons why:

First, my ability to concentrate for extended periods of time seemed to decrease the more actively I used Twitter and Facebook. This is what bothers me the most and is the main reason I am pulling the plug. Obviously this is a problem for someone who is working on a Ph.D. However, I hope it would bother me if I were still the pastor of a local church. I am convinced that the ability to carefully read and think about the argument of a well written book (like the Bible!) is an important, though underrated, virtue that is worth cultivating. I feel that I have been awakened to the ways that my consumption of technology really is shaping the way my mind works.

Second, in my personal experience, I have not often seen Twitter or Facebook used in ways that advance discussions about the most important or most controversial issues that are facing the church. Instead, I sometimes felt that people were using these media to take cheap shots at their opponents and to set up straw men. These are not conversations that I find it helpful to be a part of.

Third, while I have on many occasions enjoyed being able to read an update from someone I have not spoken to in a while (it is great to see wedding pictures, or a picture of an old friend’s first child), I have not found Twitter or Facebook to be media that lead to forming or sustaining meaningful relationships. In fact at times I have felt that Twitter and Facebook allow me to have the illusion that I am keeping in touch with someone, when in fact I am really just eavesdropping (with their permission) on the highlights of their lives. In other words, I may not feel as strong of a need to actually call up my old friend and find out what has been going on with them, because I feel like I already know. But the things they might most need to talk about could very well be things that they would not write updates about on Facebook.

Here is a quick example that illustrates what I am trying to get at: People write updates and often post pictures when they get married or have a child. However, they hardly ever do the same thing when they get divorced or have a miscarriage. I think Facebook and Twitter can actually lead us to invest less in some friendships. As a result, we fail to support each other when we need it most. It can even be, perhaps unintentionally, a way of insulating ourselves from the pain and suffering in one another’s lives.

Fourth, during the time that I was active in using Twitter and Facebook I was less active and consistent in blogging. I rarely felt like I had something important to tweet about, but I often did it because I hadn’t updated in awhile. For me, blogging cultivates the kind of disciplined focus on one topic that is beneficial to me personally and which I hope has a beneficial contribution to make to those surfing the internet.

So there it is, that is why I am pulling the plug on Twitter and Facebook. I hope that I will be able to blog more regularly as a result. And I hope that you will continue participating in the conversation by commenting here.

Finally, I would like to clarify that I am not writing this to make you feel guilty or like you need to defend your use of Twitter and/or Facebook. I am sure that there are many positives which I have not thought of or experienced. I am sure there are valid reasons to use these media. Yet, as I have written this post the phrase in 1 Corinthians 10 has been repeating itself in my mind: “All things are lawful, but not all things are beneficial.” I am open to the possibility that I will become convinced that the positives do outweigh the negatives, and that as a result I will plug back in. But for now, for me, Twitter and Facebook may be lawful, but they are not beneficial.

Campus Ministry

18 Tuesday Aug 2009

Posted by in Christian Living, links, Ministry

≈ 1 Comment

For those who are not either college students, or campus ministers, campus ministry can sometimes be easier to take for granted than to actively support. Yet, it seems to me that it would be very difficult for a committed Christian to make an argument that campus ministry is irrelevant or unimportant.

Ashlee Alley and Creighton Alexander have given us the opportunity to actively support United Methodist campus ministries through prayer. Yesterday began forty days of prayer for United Methodist campus ministries as they begin a new year of ministry with college students across the country.

You can read Ashlee’s post about it here.

You can find the prayers each day here, or follow them on twitter here.

Will you join me in praying for United Methodist campus ministries?

United Methodist History Readings

07 Friday Aug 2009

Posted by in links, Methodist History, Wesley

≈ 1 Comment

For those of you who may be curious or interested, here are the books I will be using this fall for the United Methodist History course I will be teaching at Perkins School of Theology:

1. Wesley and the People Called Methodists, Richard P. Heitzenrater.

2. John Wesley’s Sermons: An Anthology, edited by Albert Outler and Richard P. Heitzenrater.

3. Taking Heaven by Storm: Methodism and the Rise of Popular Christianity in America, John H. Wigger.

4. The Methodists: Student Edition, edited by James E. Kirby, Russell E. Richey, and Kenneth E. Rowe.

5. The Methodist Experience in America: A Sourcebook, edited by Russell E. Richey, Kenneth E. Rowe, and Jean Miller Schmidt.

6. The United Methodist Hymnal.

There will also be a few other articles and primary source readings that we will read throughout the semester.

Strong Convictions of Sin: Earnestly Inquiring after a Savior

27 Monday Jul 2009

Posted by in Christian Living, Methodist History, Ministry, Wesley

≈ 3 Comments

Saturday was a good mail day. The copies of volumes 2 and 3 of A History of Evangelicalism arrived (The Expansion of Evangelicalism: The Age of Wilberforce, More, Chalmers, and Finney, and The Dominance of Evangelicalism: The Age of Spurgeon and Moody). I was prepared to be let down by volume 2, because I enjoyed volume 1 so much, and volume 2 is not written by the same author (vol 1 is written by Mark Noll and vol 2 is writte by John Wolffe). However, I am really enjoying The Expansion of Evangelicalism. The purpose of this post, however, is not to review the book. It is to point to a thought that I had as I was reading the second chapter which describes revivals which occurred in Britain and the United States from 1790-1820.

Wolffe cites several primary sources that report the ways that folks experienced the revivals that they were a part of. As I was reading a few of these brief quotations, I began to feel as if I had read all of this before. Yet I knew I hadn’t, because Wolffe was writing about revival in a part of Britain (Scotland) that I have not studied much. (As Wolffe notes, the revivals in Scotland “owed nothing to Methodism which… remained a small movement with barely 1,000 members and did not expand at all during the 1790s” (53). Wolffe cites Alexander Stewart’s account of these revivals in Scotland:

“Seldom a week passed in which we did not see or hear of one, two, or three persons, brought under deep concern about their souls, accompanied with strong convictions of sin, and earnest enquiry after a Saviour” (54).

This process of becoming concerned about one’s spiritual state, then becoming convinced of one’s sin, seems to have led to “earnest enquiry after a Saviour.” Part of the reason this sounds familiar to me is because it does seem to be a common refrain for people who were describing the revivals of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This was the language that they spoke. John Wesley used similar language in the “General Rules” when he wrote, “There is only one condition previously required in those who desire admission into these societies, ‘a desire to flee from the wrath to come, to be saved from their sins.'”

It seems to me that part of the reason that there were periods of revival in Britain and North America during this period was because there was general agreement on the basics of the Christian message, at least among those who were involved in the revivals. Traveling preachers who could not agree on other things, were able to agree that it was essential to wake people up to the reality of their standing before God and to lead them to sorrow for their present state. All of this was so that these preachers could point people to the hope of salvation, to the one who is both able and willing to save.

In public settings, from field preaching, to camp meetings, and other venues, there seems to have been a broad consensus and a deep passion for the importance of convincing people of the basic truth of this message. Historians have pointed to other factors that contributed to the potency of the evangelical revivals, but this seems, at least, to be one key factor.

Today, there seems to be broad consensus that renewal, even revival, would be a wonderful thing for United Methodism to experience. A difficult question facing United Methodists, however, may be: Are we able to agree on what the basic message is that we should hope to share with those who have not heard the good news? Indeed, it seems that we even sometimes disagree about whether or not we should even try to share our faith.

For those who yearn for renewed vitality in our denomination, we may have something to learn from our spiritual forebearers. They seem to have had passionate and convicted answers to these questions: Why is salvation important? What do I need to be saved from? What do I need to be saved for? How can I be saved? It seems to me that an important initial step to our efforts to find renewal and reverse the recent pattern of decline in our denomination will be to decide what our message to a broken and hurting world is and to share it with excitement, passion, and conviction.

The Rise of Evangelicalism

20 Monday Jul 2009

Posted by in Uncategorized

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A few weeks ago I read The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield, and the Wesleys by Mark A. Noll. I found this to be a very well written introduction to the beginnings and development of evangelicalism in Britain and America in the 18th century. Several times as I was reading the book I thought, “This would be a very good book for someone to read who wants to learn more about how John and Charles Wesley fit into the broader movement that they were a part of.” This was also one of the best written and enjoyable books I have read in awhile. This book is the first in a projected five volume series “A History of Evangelicalism: People, Movements and Ideas in the English Speaking World.” Volume 2, “The Expansion of Evangelicalism: The Age of More, Wilberforce, Chalmers, and Finney” by John R. Wolffe and Volume 3, “The Dominance of Evangelicalism: The Age of Spurgeon and Moody” by David W. Bebbington have both been published. Volume 4, “The Disruption of Evangelicalism: The Age of Mott, Machen and McPherson” by Geoff Treloar and volume 5, “The Global Diffusion of Evangelicalism: The Age of Graham and Stott” by Brian Stanley have not yet been published. Today I ordered volumes 2 and 3 simply on the strength of the first volume. For what it is worth, I would highly recommend “The Rise of Evangelicalism” to anyone generally interested in the history of evangelicalism, or who is interested in the relationship of John and Charles Wesley to other key eighteenth century evangelical leaders (most notably Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield).

Fellowship

14 Tuesday Jul 2009

Posted by in Accountability, Life

≈ 4 Comments

Last night I was blessed to experience the kind of fellowship that my soul yearns for and rejoices in when I experience it.

A good friend from seminary sent me an unexpected text message yesterday morning letting me know that he would be coming through Dallas on his way back from a mission trip to Shreveport, LA. The group he was traveling with would be in the Galleria (a mall) for an hour and a half. We had not had an in-depth conversation in a few years, as far as I can recall. But within a few moments, I was reminded that there are some friends with whom you just pick up where you left off. The passage of time does not seem to harm the strength of the friendship.

Last night I experienced the best of Christian fellowship. I was a participant in a conversation where we shared our deepest dreams and hopes, where we questioned and encouraged each other, and where we exhorted one another to seek God through the peaks and valleys of life. As I was driving home last night, I was aware of how blessed I am to have these kinds of friendships and how important they are to my growth as a follower of Christ.

So thank you Andrew for the gift of friendship and fellowship. Thank you for being a means of grace to me. I pray that God will bring us together again sooner, rather than later.

Oklahoma Conference Constitutional Amendments Results

23 Tuesday Jun 2009

Posted by in links

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Today the Oklahoma Conference published the results of the vote on the proposed amendments to the United Methodist denomination. The results can be viewed by clicking here.

It looks like the two issues which generated the most controversy failed to receive the number of votes needed in order to change the constitution.

Interestingly, the amendment which received the most overwhelmingly negative vote was the amendment relating to the committee on investigation. I think this was solely due to Grayson Lucky’s very convincing speech against the amendment, where he argued that the amendment would introduce fundamental inconsistencies into the Book of Discipline.

Birthday Books

23 Tuesday Jun 2009

Posted by in Life, links, Methodist History

≈ 5 Comments

Last week was my birthday and I received several books that I am really looking forward to reading. (And one that I couldn’t put down until I ran out of pages.) Here are the books I will be reading in my 28th year:

1. The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield, and the Wesleys, Mark A. Noll. This is the first volume in IVP’s series The History of Evangelicalism

2. The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism, Harry S. Stout

3. Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge, Dallas Willard

4. Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People, Jon Butler

5. Reluctant Saint?: A Theological Biography of Fletcher of Madeley, Patrick Strieff

6. Unexampled Labours: Letters of the Revd John Fletcher to Leaders in the Evangelical Revival, ed. Peter S. Forsaith. My friend and colleague in the Ph.D. program at SMU also wrote several footnotes for this volume.

7. Real Church? Does it Exist? Can I Find it? Larry Crabb

What are you reading?