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The Asbury Connection: Why I Joined and You Should Consider Joining Too

27 Thursday Aug 2026

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On May 24, 2026, Asbury Church started a new ecclesial network we are calling The Asbury Connection. The name is in honor of Francis Asbury, the father of American Methodism. 

On that day, I participated with Rev. Andrew Forrest, the senior pastor of Asbury Church, in a service of ordination where we ordained four of our pastors deacons and three of them elders. We also recognized the ordination of one of our pastors, who was previously ordained in the Wesleyan Church.

Considering that I was ordained in the United Methodist Church and was teaching in a United Methodist seminary not that long ago, this was a big step for me that I did not take lightly. 

In this post, I want to share why:

  • I decided to do this.
  • I am excited about what is happening at Asbury Church.
  • I am hopeful about the future.
  • You should consider joining us.

Before I share these things, let me offer the clarity that this post is an articulation of my own views. I am not speaking on behalf of Asbury Church or the Asbury Connection.

Why I decided to transfer my ordination to the Asbury Connection

I moved to Tulsa soon after Asbury Church voted to withdraw from the United Methodist Church. I missed some of the first conversations we had with various denominations that we considered partnering with after disaffiliation. But I was present and participated in most of the conversations over the course of a 3.5-year discernment process.

During that season, we asked: Which denomination or group or structure is asking the right questions? What group would best set Asbury up to reach the nations for Christ? Where would we be most fruitful and faithful? Which structure is best suited to help churches fulfill the Great Commission in 21st-century America?

I agreed with the discernment of the leadership of Asbury Church that the right connection or denomination did not exist for Asbury. And so, we came to the conclusion that it was our God-given responsibility to start the new connection that we ourselves have been searching for.

I have always had a hard time ignoring the elephant in the room. The most obvious place for Asbury to have joined, by far, was the Global Methodist Church. For now, I will just say that we invested significant time and energy trying to find a path that would work for us to join the GMC. Ultimately, what would have worked for us did not work for the GMC. Deciding not to join the GMC was not a flippant decision that was made lightly. 

I am at peace about that. I have many friends in the Global Methodist Church. I am for them and for their ministries. And I will continue to do what I can to serve the GMC as I’m invited to do so.

I stood with Andrew in ordaining our pastors because I believe it was the next right step for us to take. If you are interested in why I am convinced bishops are not necessary for ordination in the Wesleyan tradition, check out this post.

Why I am excited about what is happening at Asbury Church

Asbury is growing and there is a lot of energy and excitement around the church on Sundays in particular. It is fun to be leading at a healthy and growing church.

This weekend, we had 2,993 people in person in worship. That is an 11.2% increase from 1 year ago.

At Asbury Church, we work hard and it is good for staff morale when there is tangible evidence that we are winning. 

A brief explanation about how we count attendance: We have overhead cameras that take photos of the room and we count noses. The noses we count are literally the noses in the room in worship, not adult education classes, student ministry, or children’s ministry. We do not count online views of livestreams or recordings of worship services in our attendance numbers. In fact, at Asbury we say, “Online church isn’t.” This is an important clarification because many churches do include online numbers in the way they report attendance, which can give a very different mental picture of what is happening on a Sunday morning than what you would experience if you showed up in person. When we say we had 2,993 people in worship last Sunday, we literally mean we counted 2,993 people in the room during our four worship services.

This is a big deal for me and a great example of why I am excited about the Asbury Connection. I do not want to be a part of an institution that encourages disembodied and gnostic spirituality by encouraging people to think of watching a screen as participation in the Body of Christ. And I do not want to be part of an institution that encourages dishonest or manipulative speech that distorts reality. The tendency in denominations I’ve been a part of to encourage counting online views of livestreams of worship, or to count every person who comes into the church at any point for any reason as part of the worship attendance numbers, feels too close to manipulating or distorting reality for my comfort. (We do track attendance in our Adult Discipleship Communities and our children’s and student ministry. We simply do not count it in our worship attendance, because that is not what it is.)

All that to say, I am excited to be at a church that is honest and straightforward in how it counts worship attendance.

As soon as you talk about numbers in terms of growth, especially at larger churches, there will be someone who offers a critique like: “Oh, so, you only care about numbers?” 

No. We care about numbers because each number is a person.

Decline happens. It sometimes happens when everyone involved is doing the best they can, but the demographic trends are all working against them. My issue was being a part of an institution that had seen decline every single year of its existence and had come to frame its slow death as a virtue.

In some interactions outside of Asbury Church, there is an assumption that we think we are better than everyone that is smaller than us. We don’t. We say all the time that large churches are not better than medium and small churches. And we mean that. I pastored a small church right out of seminary. I learned a ton. The people were amazing. And because of their context, they are never going to be a large church. That church was faithful and it was not less faithful because of its average attendance numbers.

Large churches are not better than small churches. But they are different. We think about the difference in many ways in terms of stewardship. There are things that large churches can do that small church cannot do. For example, we can host large events well because of the size of our facility and because our staff has experience hosting large events literally every single week. We can also hire staff who specialize in a particular area of gifting in a way that is more difficult in smaller churches, especially churches that only have one fulltime staff member, the pastor.

Ok, so I am excited to be a part of a church that is experiencing healthy and significant growth. I am also excited about the opportunity I have been given to develop a discipleship pathway for our church. Since I have been here, we have started a New to Asbury Brunch. This gives us a chance to meet folks who are checking out Asbury and wanting to know more. It gives me the chance to set the culture of our church on the front end that helps people decide whether they want to stick around and get to know us better.

Related to that, I am really thankful to be at a place where there is spiritual covering to speak clearly about what we believe, because it is what the church believes. When I was teaching in United Methodist theological education, I was always surprised by how much of a physical toll it took on me to articulate orthodox sexual ethics in the classroom or in events outside of the seminary. I remember feeling tired and just overall worn out for weeks after a conference at the seminary I was at after the 2016 General Conference of the UMC before the Special General Conference in 2019. I felt the same after I participated in a debate with a colleague from the same seminary about the Bible and same sex marriage. 

At Asbury, we believe that clarity is kindness. We work to use plain speech and to say what we mean. We do not believe in manipulation and working to lead people without them knowing exactly where they are being led.

And so, I tell everyone who attends the New to Asbury Brunch that we are not woke and we are conservative regarding sexual ethics in every respect.

People are sometimes surprised that we are so clear about where we stand, and they appreciate it. I think this is because there are far too many church contexts that are like an experience of the children’s story The Emperor’s New Clothes. It is refreshing and a relief to be part of a culture where clarity and straightforward speech is valued.

For me, it is a breath of fresh air to serve at a church where I am encouraged to be direct and candid in what we believe, and that I am in sync with all of it. Not only do I not feel tired after speaking at a New to Asbury Brunch, it is energizing. 

I think this is the difference that spiritual covering and properly aligned authority structures makes. 

Why I am hopeful about the future

As I have written elsewhere, I believe the next season of ministry in the United States is going to be hard. It is going to take our best effort. And yet, I am genuinely and deeply hopeful about the future. In fact, I am most hopeful about the future that I have ever been in ministry. Here’s why:

I believe that the coming years are going to see significant changes in the American church. In particular, I think there are going to be surprising and exciting realignments as mainline denominationalism continues to decline both in terms of its size and its influence in the broader culture. 

I think the future will bring increasing cooperation and networking among non-denominational churches that are open to the person and work of the Holy Spirit.

I could be wrong, but I am hopeful.

And I hope the Asbury Connection will be a part of this realignment. 

I think we are seeing openness to New Testament Christianity, including the fullness of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, becoming mainstream in American evangelicalism. I also think churches that have kind of stumbled back into openness to Spirit have learned from the excesses and mistakes of some Pentecostal and charismatic churches.

I am hopeful about the future here because I have seen Asbury Church become more open and hungry for the fullness of the gospel. We have had prayer and healing services, with more response and hunger than I expected. And, thankfully, virtually no resistance or pushback. I see our pastors stepping into greater authority and wanting more for our people. It fires me up to hear people scheduling prayer sessions to spend time in prayer with someone who needs breakthrough from a particular bondage or addiction.

I am hopeful because I do not feel like we are striving or trying to force something. In the times I’ve been asked to lead, I have just tried to give space for the Lord to do what he wants to do in our midst. And it has been a blessing to witness.

I am also hopeful because Asbury has the strongest tangible commitment to raising up the next generation of leaders for the church that I have ever seen.

This summer we hired 6 high school students to work as interns in our student ministry. It was SO FUN to see high school students praying for their own ministry and teaching the Bible to their peers. It was a blessing to see them planning, preparing, and executing their own vision over the summer. One weekly summer event, a boys Bible Study, doubled in size compared to last summer. And it was entirely through the work of our student interns.

Our student interns also helped start a student leadership team for this year, which will continue the work they started over the summer. I cannot wait to see what the Lord does through them this school year!

We also hired three college students to work as mission interns over the summer. They brought energy and joy to our work as a staff. Rodney Adams, our Executive Pastor, led a group of 6 of our staff to attend Acton University this summer. 2 of our college interns went on that week-long trip and it was great to get to know them better.

The biggest investment we are making in raising up the next generation of leaders for the church is our Fellowship Program. It is now in its second year, which is hard for me to believe. We saw a significant increase in interest this year compared to last year. I am proud of our Fellows and excited to see how the Lord will use them in the church after they complete their Fellowship. For me, simply having Fellows in the room reminds me of the stakes of what we are doing. Formation is always happening. And those coming up after us will not appear out of thin air. We must intentionally invest in the next generation. We are literally putting our money where our mouth is by hiring people for 2-year Fellowships that are full-time staff positions.

Finally, we made a commitment to start a School of Ministry when we launched the Asbury Connection. Last week, I started a pilot project to begin to build out the Asbury School of Ministry. It will serve as the last stage in our discipleship pathway, because, while there is always more Christians can learn, Christian discipleship should not be thought of as a never-ending university seminar. I have known that for a long time, but I’ve had a hard time figuring out what the end of a discipleship pathway should actually look like. When it is fully released, this will be a rigorous and intense period, most likely 2 years, where people will leave knowing they’ve been equipped to serve in the church. They will then focus on being on mission for Jesus in their lives, feeding themselves and others as spiritual parents. 

The Asbury School of Ministry will also be a key piece of the way we form our candidates for ordination as deacon. Many of these candidates have or will attend seminary, which we fully support. (After all, we have an Asbury Theological Seminary Extension Site on our campus.) Formal theological education will be required for ordination as an elder.

Why you should consider joining us

There are several groups of people I think should consider joining us.

If you are following leaders at Asbury Church because you like what we are doing and find it helpful to your work, you should join what we are doing. I have been surprised and encouraged by the folks who reached out immediately when they found out about the Asbury Connection who I had no idea were even watching us.

You should consider joining us if you have felt like you haven’t found your people yet and you think you might like to follow us, or you want to row with us. I’d love to connect you with folks on our team so you can learn more about the Asbury Connection and where we are headed.

You should consider joining us if the existing denominational options weren’t the right fit for you, but you also would like to have more connection and not less with a body of believers outside of your local church. 

Our model is a hub and spoke model. We will have large regional churches with small churches connected to and resourced by them. The Asbury Connection will not be a denomination with a large and unwieldy bureaucracy. The Asbury Connection will have a faith statement and common ordination standards.

To give one example of the distinction: The Asbury Connection will not take on itself the responsibility to provide health insurance for every employee of every church in the Connection. We believe this goes too far in terms of removing authority and responsibility from the local church. (As it happens, denominational insurance also has a major financial penalty on small churches and their employees at the order of tens of thousands of dollars per employee per year.) 

The Asbury Connection will also not have a trust clause. (I cannot imagine any church that left the UMC ever deciding to join anything with a trust clause.)

On the other side, the Asbury Connection will value and enforce doctrinal conformity and adherence to ordination standards across the connection.

There is so much going on in the aftermath of the collapse of the UMC. It will take a while before the dust settles and we can really see what has happened. 

Here is the short version for me for why I am excited for the future of the Asbury Connection: The available denominational options have felt too much like the United Methodist Church that I chose to leave. But the alternatives that have arisen don’t feel like they have strong enough ties that bind.

The timing of Pentecost this year, when we launched the Asbury Connection, was particularly sweet, because it was on May 24th, which is also the anniversary of John Wesley’s famous Aldersgate Street experience where he testified:

I felt I did trust in Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

For me, this felt like a symbolic connection to our theological heritage. Our goal is not to depart from the tradition we’ve been a part of. Rather, it is to enter more fully into it. We want to see the Lord breathe new life into the best of the Wesleyan theological tradition through our new Connection.

As I close, I’m thinking about John Wesley’s last words. They give me hope and joy as I move into the future:

The best of all is, God is with us.

Indeed, he is.

Parenting Conference with Keith McCurdy in Tulsa

11 Tuesday Aug 2026

Posted by in Christian Living, Ministry, Parenting

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Asbury Church in Tulsa, OK is hosting a parenting conference in September. It will be led by Keith McCurdy, who offered a similar workshop a few years ago. It was extremely well received. So, we are bringing Keith back!

I have read Keith’s new book Raising Sturdy Kids. It is wise, practical, and applicable. He sees the challenges kids are facing right now and is a helpful guide for engaging the cultural chaos of the moment in way that is rooted and grounded in the gospel. I wish I’d read his book when my daughter, who is headed off to college soon, was on her way to preschool.

This event is being organized and led by Rev. Graeme Collett, a colleague and friend of mine here at Asbury. Graeme has a vision to invest in pastors, school administrators, teachers, and others who lead the next generation outside of our church. If that is you and you are in the Tulsa area, or can make it to Tulsa, we are bringing Keith in to meet specifically with you to serve you and bless you.

The description from the registration page for this event is below. Lunch is provided, but registration is required. Register here.

This will be worth your time. I hope to see you there!

P. S. You are welcomed to register to attend the parenting conference itself. It is September 11 from 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm and September 12 from 8:30 am to 3:30 pm at Asbury Church in Tulsa (6767 S. Mingo Rd. Tulsa, OK 74133). Three meals are included with registration. The cost is $60 per adult. Register for the parenting conference here.

Friday, Sept 11 | NOON—1:30 PM
Hosted at Asbury Church, 6767 S. Mingo Road, Tulsa, OK

Asbury Tulsa is honored to host a special luncheon for community leaders featuring nationally respected family counselor, educator, and consultant Keith McCurdy.

The topic for our luncheon is “Leading the next generation in the midst of cultural chaos”.

This gathering is designed for those who are investing in the next generation every day—school administrators, teachers, counselors, church leaders, nonprofit staff, coaches, and community partners. Together, we’ll explore the unique challenges facing today’s children, teenagers, and families, while gaining practical insights for leading, serving, and supporting young people in an increasingly complex culture.

Keith McCurdy is a Family and Parenting Educator and Consultant, Licensed Professional Counselor, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. Drawing from decades of experience working with families, schools, churches, and organizations across the country, Keith brings a thoughtful, practical, and faith-informed perspective on developing resilient young people. His work emphasizes the importance of healthy struggle, emotional resilience, and cultivating environments where children and students can thrive.

Whether you lead in a classroom, a church, a nonprofit, or another community setting, you’ll leave encouraged and equipped with practical tools, a broader understanding of the challenges facing today’s generation, and renewed vision for the important role you play in shaping their future.

Lunch will be provided, and there is no cost to attend. Registration is requested as seating is limited.

We hope you’ll join us for this meaningful opportunity to learn, connect with fellow community leaders, and invest together in the next generation.

Who Do You Want to Work with on Hard Things?

01 Friday May 2026

Posted by in Asbury Church, Christian Living, Church culture, Ministry

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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.

Join the Asbury Church Fellowship Program

04 Wednesday Mar 2026

Posted by in Asbury Church, Class Meetings, Fellowship Program, Ministry, Underground Seminary, Wesley

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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 Things https://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.

Upcoming Events at Asbury: What to Know

09 Friday Jan 2026

Posted by in Class Meetings, Ministry, Teaching, Underground Seminary

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Happy New Year!

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.

Francis Asbury statue at Asbury Church in Tulsa, OK

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.

Reflections on Teaching and Learning at Asbury

24 Thursday Apr 2025

Posted by in Life, Methodist History, Ministry, Teaching, Underground Seminary

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I have previously shared here about my conviction that the culture or atmosphere of the classes I teach is more important than being sure I say all the words I want to say or get all the content in before the class ends. 

I am not sure I always get this right. Actually, I’m sure I don’t always get this right. 

However, I am increasingly confident that students are most impacted by the things that happen in my classes because I intentionally create an atmosphere that is open to the Holy Spirit than they are by the lectures that I give. And maybe even more than that, I find that students are more willing to listen to what I have to say when they are convinced that I care about them. So, I think that prioritizing the culture or atmosphere of classes I teach enhances student learning and engagement with the content of the course.

And I don’t think this goes the other direction.

This week, I’ve found myself reminiscing on the things I saw the Lord do over the past month. I wanted to share a few highlights here.

I taught back-to-back intensives a few weeks ago. And they were such a blessing!

Before my Basic Christian Doctrine class, I put together the second Underground Seminary event. We called it “What They Don’t Teach You in Seminary.” It was led by Rodney Adams, the Executive Director of Asbury Church. Rodney gave a detailed behind the scenes look at how a large church like Asbury is run, the strategic decisions he makes as Executive Director, and the challenges of leading that are particular to a church. (You can read about the original announcement here.)

From my perspective, it was a fantastic success. There were 23 people who came to this meeting, which was immediately before a class that had 16 students. I am encouraged both by such a strong turnout and that the Underground Seminary idea is building energy for what is happening at Asbury-Tulsa. It is energizing to me to have people in the building talking to each other about ministry. I am best at inviting people to things I passionately believe in. Asbury Church is one of those things for me.

During the class itself, I had a sense that the Lord wanted to minister in some ways to the specific people in the room. I am still learning and growing in how to lead and take risks appropriately in this space. These students were so gracious and hungry for Jesus. It was wonderful. The highlight of the weekend for me was checking in with someone at the end of class that I had particularly felt a burden to pray for and they said, “I feel like myself again for the first time in a year.”

Thank you, Jesus!

Several students stayed with members of Asbury Church. On Sunday morning, one of the students ran into the family that had hosted them, and they were so excited to see each other. The hosts sat with the group of students and my family in worship. I was so blessed by such a tangible connection of my church loving my students well and seeing church and academy connected in such a lovely way.

The next week I had another hybrid. First Methodist Church in Tulsa hosted a Holy Spirit Conference that was amazing. I was invited to lead a breakout on spiritual parenting. This is something I have thought a lot about and am passionate about but had not had a chance to teach on to a group of people. I learned a lot in preparing and was challenged and blessed in thinking it through in order to lead the workshop. I drove straight from First Methodist to Asbury to prepare to teach my second intensive in two weeks, The Theology of John Wesley (with 23 students).

I love getting to teach this material. It has been a blessing to systematically read through Wesley’s sermon corpus in a short window of time. (I highly recommend this if you are a leader in a Wesleyan context and have not done this.) The biggest gift for me personally was rereading two great books by one of the academics I most respect, Dr. Kenneth J. Collins. The two books are core texts for The Theology of John Wesley (which is a required class for every major at Asbury Theological Seminary) and I highly recommend them both. Read Collins’s John Wesley: A Theological Journey first to get a sense of Wesley’s life. It is a great book because it unpacks Wesley’s own life and legacy, but from a rich theological lens. 

After you read this, you should read The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace. In my opinion, this is Collins’s masterpiece. Reading this book in preparation to teach helped me teach with greater clarity than the last time I taught this material. Collins does a masterful job explaining core concepts like justification, the new birth, and entire sanctification. He is fearless in his fidelity to the witness of Scripture and Wesley’s understanding of it.

In addition to this class just being a delight, there were some powerful moments where the Spirit met us. Rev. Graeme Collett, one of the associate pastors at Asbury Church, preached for the Asbury Seminary chapel service on Friday. Graeme has become a good friend and one of the best surprises in our move here to Tulsa. And unlike any sermon I’ve experienced here yet, the Lord gave Graeme a clear word for this specific class at this specific time. (And this is saying something, because we’ve had an embarrassment of riches in terms of the quality of preaching we’ve had in our chapels here!) The highlight was Graeme’s burden to anoint students to remind them of their callings and to seal the work of the Holy Spirit in them. I believe every single person in the room came forward for prayer at some point. Lots of beautiful Holy Spirit tears and ugly crying. It was one of those times you are just aware the Lord is doing deep work in people right before your eyes. I am so thankful for Pastor Graeme’s leadership and for the Spirit’s presence with us in chapel.

We lost track of time and went more than thirty minutes over, but that is one of the special things about these intensives. It didn’t matter! Sometimes people will say in ministry that “the trains have to run on time.” The great thing about the intensives I teach is that there is one train and we’re all on it! So, we got where we were supposed to go when we were supposed to get there.

The second highlight of the Theology of John Wesley hybrid was a word I felt like I got from the Lord on Saturday morning, before the last day of the intensive. As I was praying that morning, I had the impression that the Lord wanted me to start the day by inviting people to share testimonies to what they had seen the Lord do so far in our time together.

I need to admit that this is often hard for me. Sometimes I’m afraid nobody is going to say anything, and it will bomb. I’ve gotten more comfortable holding space as time has gone on, but it is still an area I’m growing in. And I felt that Saturday morning. 

Goodness was I wrong to be concerned. There were so many wonderful testimonies people were ready to share about how the Lord had met them. God is so good!

That part went so well, the Lord nudged me to notice the second thing I had written down as I had been praying that morning: 

“Deliverance?”

In part, I think this came from witnessing a powerful deliverance at the Holy Spirit Conference the Wednesday night before my class started. I also think it came from reflecting on how important deliverance ministry was in John Wesley’s own ministry. (For more on this, see Dr. Peter J. Bellini, Thunderstruck! The Deliverance Ministry of John Wesley Today )

I gave what felt like a pretty timid invitation to receive prayer for deliverance if someone felt like they needed it. I am not going to go into details here for a variety of reasons, except just to say that the Father, again, showed me His desire to communicate with His children. I also experienced the power and authority of Jesus Christ in a deeper way that I don’t think I can adequately express. It was just a blessing.

I have so much to learn. One thing that I have found really helpful is thinking about my classes as laboratories. Here is what that image means to me: in a lab, you do something real but you also reflect on it and can interrogate the experiment itself. So we can meet in a small group in my Wesleyan discipleship class and talk authentically about the state of our souls. And we can also then ask how the conversation felt, what could we do differently? Was there something that felt unhelpful or could have been more helpful? Lowering the stakes and explicitly thinking of the time together in class as a learning environment gives permission to make mistakes and raises the expectation for pursuing excellence. I love that combination.

I’ve seen this with prayer for healing in my classes. I’ve seen this with seeking to hear the Lord’s voice and be guided by the Holy Spirit. And I’ve seen it in lively classroom conversations about deep matters of theology. It is challenging. And it is fun.

I can’t wait to see what the Holy Spirit does next!

P.S. Did you know that I am launching a Fellowship Program at Asbury Church? We are hiring two Fellows that will be paid full-time positions, with benefits. Starting this August. More details about the Fellowship Program and how to apply here.