With the formation of the Global Methodist Church, a reclaiming of the Methodist heritage is in order. Many voices are submitting ideas with respect to the particulars of Methodist identity. I have my own thoughts, which will be spelled out in a series of articles. This is the first of at least twelve. I introduced this series last week. You might read that article first in order to know how I have thought through this project and why I care about it.
This article is written and published immediately after the close of the United Methodist General Conference of 2024. I have hosted a successful live stream review of the conference, joined in my thousands of participants and viewers. I issued an invitation to all of them to join me in a prolonged effort to reclaim Methodism after the tragic failure of the UMC. Half of the people receiving this in email form are new subscribers, having joined up from that call. I hope this plays a role in you either reclaiming the Methodist heritage in your personal life, or at least better appreciating this heritage that has been so compromised over time. Thanks especially to those who chose to fund my work when you subscribed. I hope I do not disappoint!
Eternal Truth, Christianity, & Methodism
God is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8). He does not change. A changing God would be a terror to those who would want to follow him, as it would be impossible to read his mind from age to age. We would need multiple christs in every generation to steer us rightly through the development of that god’s feelings, beliefs, wants. One gets the impression that this is indeed the god that many worship today. Such a faith is, at root, self-referential and idolatrous. True religion is oriented to an unchanging, eternal God.
The Christian faith speaks in an informed, though not perfectly comprehensive, way about the identity and agenda of this eternal, true God. We can do so because he has appeared in the flesh, done ministry among us for many years, died and raised before our eyes, and continues to be encountered through his scriptures, his church, and especially his Holy Spirit. This was all recorded in scriptures that are perfectly reliable.
Methodism & Primitive Christianity
Methodism in its original pure form was a reclaiming of the culture and beliefs of the early church. John Wesley and other reformers and revivalists were not innovators at heart, but were actually quite reluctant to adopt new practices. Field preaching, a new practice of the time, was only embraced by John Wesley, who called the act itself “vile,” when its need and efficacy became apparent. Utilization of women in ministry was only done because of need and the exceptional giftings of some of their women. While many today see John Wesley as an innovator, we should more appropriately see him as somewhat of a theological reactionary luddite, moving a church that had grown too modern and lukewarm back in time, so to speak, to reclaim the virtue and power of the first generation of Jesus followers. We need to reclaim that same project today if we are to talk with a straight face about reclaiming Methodism.
The way this principle concern for the primitive should be understood is: Whatever early Christians did is what Methodists should also do. If the bible says the first generation of believers believed certain things or lived in certain ways (Read Acts of the Apostles, the Didache, and Apostolic Tradition), then that is what Methodists should believe and do. If someone does not do or believe as early believers did in the days and years after Pentecost, then they are estranged from Methodism. Any Methodist local church should be a place where Jesus followers can happily and readily practice first century Christian faith. Today’s generation of Methodists should be culturally recognizable to the first generation of Methodists. If we have changed the faith so as to be unrecognizable to that first generation, or if we prohibit things that were acceptable in early Methodism, then we have done something wrong. John Wesley would not be able to make it through the ordination process in a couple “Methodist” denominations today. For that reason, they are not properly understood at authentically Methodist.
John Wesley and his contemporaries in the Methodist revivals preached no new doctrines, nor did they read the scriptures through a new interpretive lens. Their emphasis on grace and love, care of the poor, hymnody, sanctification…all of these things had several iterations in the church, going back to the very beginning of the faith. Even the “grand depositum” of the Methodist doctrinal tradition, Christian Perfection, was basically established in the Eastern doctrine of theosis.
Wesley spoke more than once of his fidelity to the early church. Here is a key quote:
“What is Methodism? What does this new word mean? Is it not a new religion? This is a very common, nay, almost an universal supposition. But nothing can be more remote from the truth. It is a mistake all over. Methodism, so called, is the old religion, the religion of the Bible, the religion of the primitive church, the religion of the Church of England.”
- John Wesley’s Sermon ‘On Laying the Foundation of the New Chapel’
Ryan Danker made the case for this relatively recently in his The Genius of Wesleyanism. Here is a key takeaway from that article: “Methodism is not new. We are not doing a new thing. Methodism at its best does old things and does them well. Like so many in our own day that yearn for an expression of the faith with substance, Wesley wanted Methodism to be “the old religion.”…Methodism at its best is primitivist, old school, steeped in the historic patterns of Christianity.” He makes the case very well in that article, such that I need only refer you to that writing if you do not yet agree with me.
Dr. Ted Campbell of Duke Divinity School published a book called John Wesley and Christian Antiquity: Religious Vision and Cultural Change. It reconstructs the popular Anglican understanding of the early church during Wesley’s day, and then track’s his development of thought with respect to the early church. Here was Campbell’s conclusion:
“I have found that John Wesley conceived of Christian antiquity as a period in which an ideal of Christian individual and community life was realized. The “ideal” Wesley believed to have been realized in Christian antiquity was that to which he referred as “true” or “genuine Christianity,” and whose paradigm he found in Christ and in the Christianity of the New Testament…this religious ideal was “realized” in post-canonical Christianity, especially in the ante-Nicene period, and thus he could call upon Christianity in the first three centuries as a vision for the renewal of “true” Christianity.” (P. 5)
Catholicity & Eternal Truth
So far, I have mostly dealt with the primitive nature of the faith that the early Methodists claimed. But what of the universal or catholic faith? Catholic literally means universal, if you didn’t know. While there is a worldwide church in Rome that claims to be THE catholic faith, we respectfully (most of the time) disagree.
The Methodist Revival sprung up within the Anglican Church, which was a via media (middle way or synthesis) between Roman Catholicism and Puritanism. While Anglicanism was a sort of reformation, it was not necessarily a Protestant movement. It did not reject all of the hallmarks of Roman Catholicism, but only those that were clearly repugnant to scripture,
“The Romish doctrine concerning purgatory, pardon, worshiping, and adoration, as well of images as of relics, and also invocation of saints, is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warrant of Scripture, but repugnant to the Word of God.”
- Article XIV in the Articles of Religion
Western Protestantism has been prone to toss out the baby with the bathwater, doing away with anything that smacks of Roman or Eastern Christianity. Wesley and the early Methodists did not necessarily sympathize with this approach. They were known to use the Book of Common Prayer, a liturgical book largely utilizing ancient prayers and patterns of worship. Wesley even held to doctrines like the perpetual virginity of Mary, which I would consider somewhat unnecessary, for the sake of catholicity. He only rejected those doctrines and practices that could not be justified by the scriptures; all others he retained. He did not leave the Anglican church, nor did he lead the Methodist Revival with the intent to do so. He understood himself to be heating back up a pot of water than had grown lukewarm. Or rather, working with the Holy Spirit as he lit the fire.
It a strange and narcissistic concept that God is somehow obligated to bless every new movement that claims to follow him. Some imagine that God has to follow them wherever they go.
We forget that the Christian faith is centered on the Lord; not on us. If God does not change (and he doesn’t), and he is the center of our lives (which he is), then our lives are only rightly lived with obsessive interest in going to him, rather than assuming he comes to us. Whenever people talk about God “doing a new thing,” or say that the “Spirit is still speaking,” that is only true in some ways. This is much more often code for self idolatry that leads to hell. We need to be less certain about God’s coming to where we are to bless what we are doing and much more concerned about making sure that we are seeking God where he may be found. People take too much comfort in the fact that Christ condescended to be with us in the flesh. Instead:
“If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.”
- Colossians 3:1-3
Regarding the word ‘consensual,’ the key notion there is ‘consent.’ Methodists were not interested in creating division based on difference. Rather, they were a society interested in reclaiming those fundamental doctrines that were to be found throughout the ages of the church. In recent decades, John Wesley’s sermon ‘Catholic Spirit’ has been tortured to mean that antinomianism and doctrinal amnesia are okay if people have good intentions. Kevin Watson, in his (Mis)Understanding Wesley’s Catholic Spirit sets the record straight: “Wesley is arguing for certainty in the specifics of one’s faith that comes from careful thought and examination of the options and not a devaluing of the role of doctrine in order to have a bigger tent.”
Methodism thrived because it understood itself to be tapping into the source of the Christian faith, going back to the very beginning in what was believed and how it was lived out corporately. New things do not last. Too many churches bear the name ‘Methodist’ while hopping on every new thing. Fads and trends fade away.
Those who think that local churches have to adopt contemporary fads in order to stay ‘relevant’ are not going to be helpful in reclaiming Methodism. They lack the discernment to maintain the authentic nature of Christianity, much less Methodism. They will lead any group they are a part of to betray our heritage at some point or another in the name of reaching the youngest generation. We should have learned this lesson by now.
Practical Application
If we are oriented towards the primitive, then we are not inclined towards new things. We are, rather, much more concerned with tried and true practices and doctrines. We do not get carried away with every new wind of doctrine:
“Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:
- Ephesians 4:13-15
As Mark Driscoll sells a book proclaiming new doctrines of the Jezebel spirit, or Side B Christianity begins to sanctify homosexuality as a new legitimate cultural expression of Christianity, Methodists at their best hang their hats on historic doctrines of the church. And as The United Methodist Church and other “modern” “churches” continue to go headlong into rootless liberal theology, true Methodists maintain our doctrinal center in the Christian canon (scriptures).
If the Global Methodist Church, or perhaps another Methodist body, is to truly reclaim the Methodist heritage, then it should prioritize reclaiming early Christian practices and teaching what the church has always taught. If it is new, innovative, niche, or internecine, we should be turned off to it. Keep in mind, this is written by a pastor who live streams worship, has a podcast, and is writing on Substack. Even so, our disposition should be against anything new. [I could be wrong in adopting these practices; these are experiments on my part, much akin to Wesley with the field preaching] Our churches should be entrenched against doctrinal innovations, at least, if not also innovations in evangelism, worship, and polity.
And while John Wesley was clear to say that modes of worship should not divide us, we should be wary about forms of worship that separate us from other believers. If it cannot be done without a certain budget or a certain expertise in niche fields, then we should not make it central to the worship experience. Too many Methodists do not know how to worship in their homes because what they do when they assemble with their spiritual families (churches) cannot be done at home. This is a real shame.
Methodism must guard against that attitude that regards doctrine as trifling or burdensome. That view of doctrine could not be more wrong:
Correct doctrine should be of great concern to Methodists. A lazy, sloppy, shabby disposition towards doctrine cannot yield fruit good and pleasing to God. What we believe and teach informs how we live. This is what the author of Hebrews was so frustrated with when he said, "
“Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing. For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.
- Hebrews 5:11 - 6:2
These doctrines listed in the quote from Hebrews were considered milk, baby food, for babies in the early church. Today we would consider them advanced and cumbersome. We have grown flaccid and weak. We should again not just work towards, but expect, a mature doctrinal understanding among all those who are to be considered adults in the people called Methodist.
Methodists canNOT reproduce the sin of the UMC again. We must reclaim and insist upon doctrinal fidelity. This must be expressed in the way that we comport ourselves in the local church and in all connectional affairs. We must take joy in learning about the early church and the historic doctrines of the church, such that we actually have a shared identity, not only with those with whom we currently share in covenant community, but also with those generations of Methodists who came before.
Yes, Reclaim the Basics
A good deal of pushback has been issued in response to my list of essentials failing to include doctrines of love and grace. It is here that the scripture way of salvation and the essential nature of love should be emphasized. These were not new doctrines, but reclaimed doctrines, that came to be so central in Methodism.
Grace must be understood as a singular phenomenon issued from our Triune God: preventing, convicting, justifying, sanctifying, and perfecting. Love must be understood as the chief Christian virtue, the principle and personality under which everything we do is organized and undertaken. The culture of Methodism must be defined by and saturated with grace and love. Without these theologies firmly ensconced, any Methodism rebuilt will be no Methodism at all.
This is Good News
The wonderful thing about the church is that it is directly linked to the eternal truth of the ages. We alone are the community of saints who are the legitimately-adopted children of the Father of Lights. We are a peculiar people, light in the darkness, salt in blandness. When the world encounters us, they should encounter something they perceive to be weird. This can only happen when we cling to the universal culture of the Kingdom rather than the temporal cultures of men. We have lost this discernment. We need it back.
We are not great because of our uniqueness as special individual snowflakes. That is rank worldliness. We are only great because of any identity we have in Christ. All those scriptures about being of one heart and mind in Christ are quite literal. The scriptures about submission and obedience are, again, literal. We need to be much less focused on self, on feelings, on difference, and much more focused on that which binds us together in a shared identity in Christ. For that reason, authentic Methodism should reclaim an uncompromising fidelity to the primitive church and to the universally true doctrinal teachings of the scriptures. Without these things, we will be an exercise in vanity.
I think I am now a substack payer. I don’t know. It’s confusing to me.
Jeffrey, I’m with you 100 percent on the need for Methodists to reclaim their heritage. Although, I see this need for the entire institutional church to do the same thing. I believe that the time has come for “The Remnant “ of true believers to re-examine how far we’ve really strayed from the ethos and practices of the early church. In your reference to Ephesians chapter 4, just two verses prior, Paul wrote that the purpose of church leadership was for “equipping the saints for work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ, until we all reach unity in the faith, and in the knowledge of God’s Son, growing into maturity with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness. This form of every member ministry was one reason for rapid expansion of the early church in the pre-Constantine era. Most surveys now find that only 20 to 30 percent of most congregations are active in some sort of individual ministry. The so-called “Priesthood of all believers “ is given a lot of lip service, but not really enacted. In my opinion, this is something that begs to be addressed.