The Wesleyan way of being church

Is there a distinct Wesleyan way of putting together a church?

A friend gave me a pamphlet with a of a transcript from a lecture by William Abraham at the University of Indianapolis last year. In the lecture, Abraham argues on behalf of a Wesleyan ecclesiology.

Abraham argues that there are two primary models for church – Catholic and Magisterial Protestant. Neither of these, he says, is a good option for United Methodism. (It is worth noting, perhaps, that John Wesley’s Anglican Church is famously devoted to be a middle way between these two options.)

Abraham says that United Methodism should stop trying to be one or both of these options and instead embrace what it represents, a third way of being a church.

That ecclesial identity is “thoroughly Trinitarian in orientation but … looks to the Third Article, to the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, as the originating, sustaining, directing, and authenticating source of true Christianity. … As a third option, we honor both Catholicism and Magisterial Protestantism, but we ultimately stand with monasticism, mysticism, pietism, revivalism, and the saner forms of Pentecostalism as the bearers of the deepest life of the Church, the life of God himself in the soul of humankind, fully incarnate in Jesus Christ the Son, and fully present now through the inimitable working of the good and life-giving Holy Spirit.”

Abraham argues that United Methodism – and other Wesleyan strains of Christianity – need to stop letting themselves be judged by the ecclesiology of the Catholic and Magisterial Protestant churches.

I’m not much of a ecclesiastical scholar, so I find Abraham’s idea intriguing but am not well placed to analyze or critique it. I’d be interested in the thoughts of others.

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