John Meunier

From a letter John Wesley wrote to a critic of his teaching on perfection:

You easily observe, I therein build on no authority, ancient or modern, but the Scripture. If this supports any doctrine, it will stand; if not, the sooner it falls, the better. Neither the doctrine in question nor any other, is anything to me, unless it be the doctrine of Christ and his Apostles.

To me, this is what we mean when we say in our doctrinal standards that the Bible serves as a guide to faith and practice.

If you’ve ever wanted to hear Elaine Heath, I have two opportunities for you.

First, Steve Manskar has posted links to her presentations at the Wesleyan Leadership Conference in October.

Second, coming up Saturday, March 17, she will be coming to Indiana as a guest of The Wesleyan Connexion Project. Details will be coming from the project, and I will post here once registration is open.

Mark Driscoll: Jesus loves church mergers

From Richard Heitzenrater’s Wesley and the People Called Methodists:

Wesley was convinced that his position on justification and sanctification was crucial to the goal of spreading scriptural holiness. His preaching and organization had taken on quite a different shape from those of Whitefield over the years, in no small part because evangelism itself takes on a different form when holiness is the goal. … The possibility of perfection in love through grace was the distinctive and defining message in Wesley’s revival, and the very organization of the movement itself, as a network of disciplined small groups, was designed to nurture that hope of perfection in the lives of the Methodists. The fact that many Calvinists and Evangelicals, within and without the Church, could not agree with this doctrine did not deter Wesley from his single-minded vision of reforming the land.

 

I heard a preacher on the radio yesterday repeating that common line: No one is perfect. We never will be perfect. But we can be authentic.

Henri Nouwen writes something similar at the end of his book The Wounded Healer.

It is a commonplace idea.

And it is one that the entire Wesleyan project was set against.

No, I cannot achieve perfection through my own efforts. Not even with the help of God will I overcome the weakness of the flesh that gives rise to errors and mistakes. But, by the grace of God, Wesley preached, I can be perfected in love.

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

To speak Wesleyan is to understand that the words “perfect,” “holiness,” and “sanctification” all describe the same thing. Scholars may well point out shades of difference, but they are mere shadows. The central thrust of Wesley’s ministry was to spread holiness — that is perfect Christian love — across the land.

Open air preaching, itinerant preachers, societies, classes, bands, hymnals, pamphlets, conferences, and all the other apparatus of Methodism came into being to accomplish this mission.

Of course, not everyone shared Wesley’s zeal. He spent a great deal of energy trying to prod, goad, and pummel Methodists into being Methodists. They settled in.

But to claim the Wesleyan mantle and to name him on our theological geneology should require of us an awareness of the very thing that made Wesley Wesley. We believe men, women, and children can be made perfect in love by the grace of God. We expect it. We preach and teach it. We live it.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Fred Craddock profile on CNN.

Fascinating podcast from Great Britain about Methodism’s essentials and its practice today.

David Flavell said Methodism is marked by an “evangelical heart,” “a social conscience,” and “a great pragmatism to do whatever it takes to win people to Christ.”

Key thoughts were:

• Open air work is essential
• Contemporary music (if we want to be truly Methodist, we would not sing Charles Wesley hymns)
• Middle-class Methodism is the cause of our crisis
• The more you emphasize the gospel the more people will come
• Wesley would have been online
• Organs are the death of music

On the argument that traditional hymns and worship styles feed people: “What’s the point of providing worship for people who say it’s feeding them … but there is no evidence of it?”

“The real Jesus is far more … scary than the Methodist Church Office.”

“The preacher’s job is not to say, it is easy to follow Jesus. … It is the preacher’s job to say follow Jesus and he’ll lead you to the cross.”

Gary Wake shares this on his Facebook notes. I hope you can get to it. It is a testimony about the struggles of ministry and the power of God to save even clergy. (Link here)

As I have thought about it these years, I believe I was captive to the false gospel of Gnosticism (though one could perhaps speak of Donatism). Gnosticism is found in every church basement, and no seminary is free of it. Among other things, Gnosticism is our dualistic longing for a pure church and our unwillingness to believe that God works through the messy, often unfaithful, flawed body of those people we behold every Sunday morning. It is finally a denial of the Incarnation. We see the church’s fleshy ways but are blind to its wonder and joy. In a word, I believe I suffered a form of unbelief, sophisticated as it was.

Okay, so the song confuses John Wesley and his brother Charles, but this is still a fun little song.

The Arminian: Forget Rethinking the Church

Paul’s advice to Timothy:

This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. For this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher, and for this reason I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him. Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from from, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.