John Meunier

From Orthodoxy:

Morality did not begin by one man saying to another, “I will not hit you if you do not hit me”‘; there is no trace of such a transaction. There is a trace of both men having said, “We must not hit each other in the holy place.” They gained their morality by guarding their religion. They did not cultivate courage. They fought for the shrine, and found they had become courageous. They did not cultivate cleanliness. They purified themselves for the altar, and found they were clean.

Kevin Watson is starting a series of blog posts about creating Wesleyan class meetings in the 21st century.

I plan on following it. If you are interested about being Wesleyan in the 21st century, I encourage you to join the discussion as well.

From the Wesley Study Bible, the Wesleyan Core Term, “Analogy of Faith”:

The word analogy comes from a Greek word that means “proportion,” an analogy of faith draws from the idea of proportion and harmony. Protestants since the Reformation have used the phrase to convey the idea that there is a deep pattern in the message of Scripture that helps us interpret it. Individual passages of Scripture are read in relation to each other according to how they fit into this pattern. What guides our understanding is not any single statement but a sense of the whole shape of Christian faith. For John Wesley, that “sense of the the whole” was reflected in how he understood the way of salvation: humans have a problem that God overcomes in Jesus Christ, so that our sin is forgiven and we are able to live a new life of inward and outward holiness. The basic framework guided his reading of Scripture, as well as formed the structure for the way he proclaimed the gospel.

I wonder what different analogies of faith we would find guiding Scripture interpretation in the United Methodist Church if we could collect them. What different kinds of “senses of the whole” do we bring to the Bible and individual texts?

Of course, I anticipate someone will say an analogy of faith is part of modernity and we post-moderns have no use for it.

My wife had her gallbladder taken out last week.

On Monday, she came down with sudden nausea and abdominal pain. It persisted through Tuesday when we got her some medical attention. On Friday she was on the operating table. She is recovering now and feels better each day.

The surgeon said there were signs of previous attacks – scars on the organ – and two small stones, which caused the last attack.

The evidence of previous attacks was a bit like a light bulb going off. She had had over the last several months some days where she just felt bad – a bit queasy and sore – but not bad enough to seek help. It turns out, her gallbladder was acting up but she did not know it. And – in the end – the only cure was to take it out.

Okay, so now the analogy/metaphor to justify the post: The United Methodist Church has been experiencing chronic and repeated “attacks” for many years now. We try to tweak it by cutting the fat in our diet or improving our exercise routines. What if the real issue is that we need to go under the knife?

We have treated the problems of the denomination something like a smoking problems or a weight problem. We act as if a better lifestyle, healthier habits, and some willpower will fix what ails us.

Could we benefit from thinking of our problem more as a case in need of surgery?

If you were going to suggest a painful but precise change that would cut out the diseased organ(s) in the UMC, what would it be?

This is going to be a really long quote masquerading as a post.

Michael Mather at Broadway UMC in Indianapolis posted a really interesting comment on Dan Dick’s blog about his vision of impact-making ministry.

I found it so interesting, that I wanted to share it here. Read the rest of this entry »

I still keep a proportion wheel in my desk. It is useless these days. It’s original purpose was to assist in calculating percentages for adjusting the size of photographs for print publications. This is from the days of blue pencils and wax paste up. In these days of Photoshop and digital publication, the proportion wheel is not even useless. It solves a problem that does not even exist any more.

Which has me thinking about the General Rules.

According to the General Rules a Methodist society was “a company of men having the form and seeking the power of godliness, united in order to pray together, to receive the word of exhortation, and to watch over one another in love, that they may help each other to work out their salvation.”

In the contemporary United Methodist Church we debate and wrestle with the proper understanding of the General Rules and the relationship between the early societies and our institutional church structures. This is all good and a sign of a healthy engagement with our Wesleyan roots.

One commonplace in these discussions is the low bar set for admission to a Methodist society and class meeting. As Wesley’s rules stated, the only prerequisite was a desire to “flee from the wrath to come.” This is often translated to mean that there were no standards for admission.

But was that the case?

The society is described as a company of men (and women) who have the form and seek the power of godliness. In other words, to join the society, you must be willing to live in outward ways that conform to Christian standards even if the true power of holy living might be absent. Indeed, part of the very purpose of the society was to build up and support people in living outwardly as Christians as they sought and prayed for the inner power and assurance that was the very heart of Christian faith as Wesley understood and taught it.

“Small groups” were created not as a place to explore faith or gather around non-religious interests in the name of faith, but for the express purpose of more effectively watching over the society members and discerning whether they were working out their salvation.

People joined such groups and submitted to having class leaders check up on them because they earnestly desired redemption and salvation. As Wesley wrote in the rules, they were aware of the “wrath to come” hanging over their heads. That little phrase we often skip over was the powerful motivating force that gave the societies their energy and power. Those who were not “deeply convinced of sin” would not welcome the rules and arrangements of Methodist discipline.

Having more or less abandoned the theology of the “wrath to come” and dropped almost entirely the language of sin, I wonder if we can even understand – much less adapt – the Methodist society, class meeting, and bands to the contemporary context. They are tools to solve a problem we do not even recognize as a problem.

One of the jobs of Methodist travelling preachers used to be to visit families in their homes and check up on them. As with all things, John Wesley provided some specific advice on how best to proceed.

The preacher should take the children aside and find out how well they have memorized the “Instructions for Children,” which would have been left to the family before. Then, the preacher would pull aside each family member for private one-to-one conferences. In these, the preacher would test the person’s knowledge of the basics of the faith and inquire about the progress of their souls. Instruction, advice, and reproof would be offered as needed.

I’ll confess right now, I’ve never done anything remotely like this.

But I see its value. Elders in the United Methodist Church are charged to teach house-to-house still.

The preacher today probably does not have the authority to conduct himself or herself in this manner. And many would argue that such an approach would be too authoritarian even if it were possible. But the practice does make me wonder how well we monitor and discern the knowledge and spiritual vigor of the souls – to use the old phrase – “entrusted to our care.”

My observation is that much of this kind of discernment take the form of of informal and laity-instigated contact.

Is there room for anything like the old pastoral visits that Wesley and Richard Baxter before him envisioned?

Go read Taylor Burton-Edwards’ analysis of the Great Commission in different translations and the ancient Greek.

One of my favorite John Wesley sermons is “Catholic Spirit,” but only recently did I read the text this sermon cites as its source.

2 Kings 10:15 is about two men with a common heart coming together to pursue a common task. Wesley uses that well to speak about the need for Christians to share in common spirit.

But – and this just floors me – the common task in the Scripture is a mission to wipe out all the descendants of Ahab. Wesley’s great sermon about Christians extending hands of common purpose to each other is plucked from a story of murderous rampage against people whose only sin was being the descendants of a bad man.

Here is the virtue and the peril of one-verse preaching.

Dan Dick and Taylor Burton-Edwards are having another great – in many ways repeated – go round about the nature of the church and the role of the congregation as a sub-unit of the church.

Trust me, it is more interesting than I just made it sound. You should go read the thread on Dan’s blog.

One of Taylor’s (sorry to be so informal, but first names are less awkward for these two gentlemen) points about the congregation gets me thinking every time I read it.

He argues that the congregation was created and has served for 1,500 years to do a few things well:

• public worship
• basic theological education
• mutual care of members
• making a positive impact in the local community

Taylor is quick to point out that many churches do not do these four things well, but he wants to circumscribe the tasks of the local congregation against claims that it should be “transforming the world” and serving as an incubator for high-intensity Christian discipleship.

His basic point is that the congregation is designed to do a certain set of things and is set up – when healthy – to do these fairly well. But the congregation is just one part of “the church.” It is the mission of the church as whole  to transform the world and create ways for “ordinary” Christians to pursue the “more excellent way.” He just wants to keep that from being the mission of each local congregation.

Dan pushes back on Taylor’s argument and the exchange they have is worth reading and consideration.

I find the list of four basic tasks of the congregation that Taylor suggests quite challenging in itself. I do not know many churches that do all four of those tasks really well. Perhaps doing “congregation” better is itself a worthy goal for a pastor.