What it means to me to be United Methodist

What it means to me to be United Methodist

People have accused me of overthinking things. Meh. Sticks and stones, ya know? Anyway, I'm not a (n>1) generation UM. (I am, however, a mathophile! Go ahead. Cast that stone. Haters gonna hate.) I became a Methodist…. Well, let's start with where I started before I was a Methodist. I was raised in a Mormonish church. (The family tree of the Mormon variants is almost as colorful and confusing as the Methodist family tree.) However, Mom was raised Dutch Reformed, and only became mormonish when she married Dad in 1950. So when the Jehovah Witnesses came knocking at our door c.1965, asking her if she knew how wrong her church was about the Bible, and would she like them to tell her what the Bible really said, she politely took their proffered copies of Watchtower and Awake! And then started her own search. Yes, she admitted that what she heard from the pulpit was very different from her childhood sermons, but it was also different from what she had heard at that Kathryn Kuhlman crusade in Akron, Ohio in the late '40s. She was talking about this with a co-worker one day (she was working as a part-time secretary) who invited her to a Bible study that took place in her (the co-worker's) home. There was a beginning of a pentecostal revival movement in my hometown, and this prayer group/Bible study was it. Yep, The Jehovah Witnesses saved us from the Mormons, and sent us to the Pentecostals.

Fast forward to 1984. My first marriage had fallen horribly apart, and I had begun to date Sandy. The biggest chasm of my first marriage had to do with religion, and I wasn't going to let that happen this time. Now, I have to admit that I had become somewhat disillusioned with Pentecostalism, and I knew I was never going anywhere close to anybody who thought the Book of Mormon was really scripture, but when Sandy and I got married the only Protestant church in town was (gulp) Methodist. From both Mormon and Pentecostal points of view, those Methodists (along with a list of all mainline churches) were the Church of Laodicea, that lukewarm church that made God want to barf. OK, absent a sign from Above showing me where to go each Sunday morning, I would be there to worship, but I wasn't gonna just believe anything the pastor said. Within a year the pastor was pleading with me to join the church, because they needed a lay leader, and we were the only couple under 60 years old attending.

This all happened in a little town just outside of the Denver, Colorado metro area. Does anybody remember what was the topic of discussion among Colorado Methodists through the '80s? Does the name Julian Rush ring a bell? Here's a headline from 1985 (from the Chicago Sun-Times!) http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1985-06-25/news/8502100749_1_homosexual-pastor-rev-julian-rush-church-officials

to refresh your memory. OK, I had found a church home in a little country United Methodist Church, and I had even made peace with a liberal pastor who didn't seem to have a problem using non-canonical writings as source material for Christmas Eve services. But I was NOT going to become one of THOSE people who thought a gay man could really be an acceptable pastor. Ever. But they really needed a lay leader. And after much prayer, it seemed pleasing to God that I should (shudder) become a member of The United Methodist Church, so as to serve my local church family.

Then I heard The Call.

It wasn't a sound-waves-going-through-the-air-and-into-my-ears sound, but it was an Out Loud, real Voice in my head that said, “I want you to be a minister.” It was right after I took stock of my life, and realized that God had done Great Things in the previous two years, and said, “Thank you, Father.” That was when I heard, “I did it for a reason. I want you to be a minister.” Now, remember, my background is Mormon and Storefront Pentecostal. What do I know about being a minister? So, I answered, “OK, but I don't have a clue what that means. You're gonna have to show me the way.” Now, that also included the caveat that I couldn't imagine this calling could mean being a Methodist minister, but that would seem to go without saying. Now, God is both gracious and persistent, and eventually He made it clear that He wanted me to serve Him within the structure of The United Methodist Church. Which meant that I had to figure out what it meant to be a United Methodist.

Scripture tells me that I am to be obedient to whatever authority God puts over me. OK, so where does the authority reside in The United Methodist Church? My answer – The Book Of Discipline. And the most authoritative paragraphs in the BOD? The Restrictive Rules. So, can a United Methodist really believe anything she/he wants to, and still be a United Methodist? Just about. Well, OK, there is the Confession of Faith, but that's a Johnnie-Come-Lately, added to make the takeover of the EUB palatable. What we have are Doctrinal Standards, not confessional or creedal standards. So, a Methodist isn't required to sign off on any belief statement. No, preachers have to sign off on what is authoritative to be taught. There are no standards for what they believe. There are standards for what I teach.

I had been serving my first appointment as a Licensed Local Pastor, having gone through License To Preach school but not yet having started Course of Studies, and wondering what I had gotten myself into. I found myself looking down the barrel of my first funeral, having gone to exactly two funerals in my life before this. So, I went to the Cokesbury Store. Yeah, they still had those then. I did find a really helpful Funerals 4 Dummies guide, but I also picked up a book from the closeout table: Sugden's edition of Wesley's Standard Sermons. And I started reading Wesley. I have to tell you. I really thought, “You know, if this is what Methodist believe, I'm in!” It didn't take long to realize that most methodists only have a vague idea about who John Wesley was, much less lean on his Sermons for their morning devotionals. But not long after I found my copy of Sugden I found the Restrictive Rules, and I knew that I could indeed be a Methodist.

Several years later I got my Baker reprint of the Jackson 3^rd Edition of the Works of John Wesley (in 13 volumes!) which are still a part of every day of my life. And every day I continue my (possibly quixotic) project to help recover the Methodist Movement in the 21^st Century. I'm chasing Wesley, finding a doctrine that makes more sense now than ever before. For me, that's what it means to be United Methodist.

The difficulty of United Methodist doctrine

There's much being said about the kerfuffle in the United Methodist Church surrounding the LGBTQWERTY issues. There is a current defense of the denomination's current stand, based on Article 6 of the Articles of Religion, specifically the last phrase.  Of course, this opens a debate about what defines the "commandments which are called moral."

 Unfortunately, it's a legal argument, and only based on the Articles of Religion. Our Doctrinal Standards are those plus – and if we don't spend time processing how Wesley addressed the issue in the Sermons and Notes, I think we continue to wallow in a post-modernist personal deconstruction of what these words mean, since it worked so well in persuading each other in the meaning of the words of Scripture. (Yes, I'm frustrated. At myself, at the Church, at my fellow Christians… )


Of course, the problem with deferring to the Sermons and Notes for direction on this is that Wesley wasn't either exhaustive or organized in expressing himself. Therefore, the Sermons and Notes aren't reference works where we can look up a topic, rather they are best used as a hermeneutic lens whereby we see how to understand scripture. Which means we almost have to look broadly through them to begin to see as Wesley would see. (Which, of course, was the flaw of the Quadrilateral. It could be distilled down to four bullet points, which each of us got to deconstruct and then attach our own authoritative meaning to. Then we just found ten others who came up with roughly the same construct, which convinced us we were right.)


As a start, I think we would need to sit down together and commit to reading, processing, and discussing the following sermons: Sermon On The Mount (Discourse 5) (#25); The Original, Nature, Property, and Use of The Law (#34); and The Law Established Through Faith (both Discourse 1 and 2) (#'s 35 & 36). Along with this, I would suggest “On Preaching Christ”, a letter Wesley wrote in 1751 (found in Volume 11 of Works) and “Thoughts on Gospel Ministers”, an essay found in Volume 10 (Works). But that's just my list. I suspect the group would need to be open to reading other parts of Wesley, as well.


And the sixty-four trillion dollar question is, how would we do that? What size room would we need? How big would the table need to be? How many hours? Days? Would we require everybody to agree on a final consensus statement? As I read “Minutes Of Some Late Conversations” (Volume 8, Works)(No, not what is referred to as The Large Minutes. I'm not sure how others refer to these, but in my head I refer to them as the Doctrinal Minutes) I suspect that this is what we should be doing. This would be Holy Conferencing. But it would take way too much work. And, (here comes the Eeyore in me) it probably wouldn't work anyway. Never mind.

Discipline as Doctrine

If you've been a United Methodist very long, there's a good chance that you have been confronted with this quote from John Wesley:

“I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe or America. But I am afraid, lest they should only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power. And this undoubtedly will be the case, unless they hold fast both the doctrine, spirit, and discipline with which they first set out.”

This is the opening paragraph of a short piece titled “Thoughts Upon Methodism,” dated August 4, 1786. Just to put this in context, Wesley himself was 83 years old, and had been engaged almost every day for the past 48 years in preaching, teaching, discipling, and pastoring the Methodist movement across Great Britain. Just the week before he wrote this he oversaw the General Conference at Bristol. By Wesley's own account, “everything was transacted with great calmness; and we parted, as we met, in peace and love.”
You see, in spite of the tranquility of the conference, there had been some hints that they could have had some “warm debates.” There were those who wanted the organization to embrace new ideas, get with the times, step up and demand their place in the culture. They saw Wesley's age in the lines of his face, and some just couldn't hardly wait for their turn to be in charge. Wesley knew this, and it grieved him. As he continued to write out his thoughts upon Methodism, he he brought up how Methodists came to be Methodists, and then he closed:

“[Methodism] is only plain, scriptural religion, guarded by a few prudential regulations. The essence of it is holiness of heart and life; the circumstantials all point to this. And as long as they are joined together in the people called Methodists, no weapon formed against them shall prosper. But if even the circumstantial parts are despised, the essential will soon be lost. And if ever the essential parts should evaporate, what remains will be dung and dross.”

What was it that he saw as the key to Methodist success? What was the “doctrine, spirit, and discipline” that he found to be at the heart of the Methodist movement? Although “Thoughts Upon Methodism,” being a short piece, doesn't go very deep into the details, it does start us down the right path so we can flesh out the details of what he referred to as we peruse the depth of his Works.
He summed up the essence of the doctrine that gave life to Methodism as

“the Bible is the whole and sole rule both of Christian faith and practice. Hence they learned, (1.)That religion is an inward principle; that it is no other than the mind that was in Christ; or, in other words, the renewal of the soul after the image of God, in righteousness and true holiness. (2.)That this can never be wrought in us, but by the power of the Holy Ghost. (3.)That we receive this, and every other blessing, merely for the sake of Christ: And, (4.)That whosoever hath the mind that was in Christ, the same is our brother, and sister, and mother.” He then set the standards for the efficacious preaching of this doctrine could be summed up by a focus on “salvation by faith, preceded by repentance, and followed by holiness.”

However, it was the Methodist experience that the best preaching wasn't enough. It became obvious that there had to be a way to hold each Methodist accountable for changing the way they lived their lives in response to the preached message, so that holiness truly could be the result of being a part of this movement. Out of this came the Methodist structure of Societies and Classes. This, Wesley came to be convinced, was necessary in spite of the fact that there was nothing in the scriptures that required this structure. This insistence on that which he recognized as prudential, even if not instituted by the Scripture, was an important part of what he was referring to when he wrote about the “few prudential regulations” that “guarded” a “plain, scriptural religion” and created an environment that allowed it to flourish in a culture that despised religious fanaticism.
This understanding of the need for disciplined accountability in a Christian's life for the Gospel to truly be transformative was what Wesley feared would be set aside, leaving Methodists as a people who had “the form of religion without the power.” As one reads Wesley's sermons, one becomes aware that as much as he taught about Jesus and grace, about repentance and forgiveness, about our sin and Christ's atonement, was that he also taught about how none of that meant anything unless we were willing to be changed by it. And this sanctification was something that required a cooperative effort on our part; a willingness to order our lives in such a way as to be open to the guidance, teaching, and leading of the Holy Spirit. That there were prudent ways to hold ourselves and each other accountable for this cooperation, so as to make this work of the Holy Spirit something more than what God does to us; making it something God is doing with us, and what we do with God as we respond to His love.
The doctrine of the Methodist Movement wasn't just “salvation by faith, preceded by repentance, and followed by holiness.” It was a doctrine of prudential discipline, as well. It was this doctrine that formed a people that changed the world. It wasn't a statement about sexuality, or a resolution demanding that governments do right things. It was a people who lived out a personal discipline so as to be able to be used by God.
Anybody think we might have been getting it wrong for a while now?