Nazarenes on discipleship

In 2006, the Church of the Nazarene adopted a mission statement to make Christlike disciples in the nations, which bears some similarity to the United Methodist mission statement of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

Here is a link to a report in a Nazarene magazine about the meaning of that mission statement and how it is lived out. I must confess there is a level of engagement with these issues and Wesleyan theology that I seldom see in official UMC media.

You can watch the same presentations in video format here.

Tending to the foundations

Here are a series of videos from the Wesleyan Leadership Conference in November. The speaker is David Lowes Watson. The topic is covenant discipleship.

Session 1: Cultural Challenge and Wesleyan Leadership

Session 1: Q&A Pastoral Power Defined

Session 2: Patterns of Discipleship

Session 3: Patterns of Congregational Leadership

Session 4: Benefits of Shared Pastoral Power

I have not watched these yet, but will as soon as I get time.  (ht: Steve Manskar)

Watson: Here comes the potentate

David Lowes Watson argues that antinomianism — disconnecting holy living from Christian salvation — is alive and well in the church.

In its most popular form, it propagates the Christian life as a relationship with God, accomplished for us by a Christ who suffered and died at a conveniently remote time and place in history; a relationship so secure and yet so free that discipleship becomes merely a matter of following one’s instincts, pursuing one’s preferences and, in response to the occasional twinge of conscience, indulging in minor generosities out of major resources. Discipleship becomes the exercise of personal options that can be worked out with Jesus on a purely individual basis, in short, a Christian lifestyle fraught with the multifarious ingenuities of self-deception.

(From a chapter in The Portion of the Poor: Good News to the Poor in the Wesleyan Tradition)

Watson argues that the antidote to this antinomian tendency is to preach and teach Christ in all his offices. Watson argues that the evangelism of our day too often preaches nothing but Christ a priest who atones for sin. This obscures Christ the prophet and Christ the potentate (a word Watson uses rather than “king”). It offers only the benefits of Christian life and none of the obligations. This, Watson writes, sets the stage for a flaccid discipleship.

First impressions count for a very great deal, and when persons are introduced to Christian discipleship primarily through its benefits, it is difficult, markedly difficult, to introduce them to its obligations at a later date.

Watson, in the end, calls for a robust evangelical preaching that features the three-fold work of Christ.

And when that message turns from words of loving encouragement to words of warning it puts primary emphasis not on the priest or prophet, but on the potentate, the ruler of all whose wrath at the treatment of his children cannot be forever put off.

Our evangelistic word of warning, therefore, is not so much the priestly admonition to repent of sin, personal and social, important though that may be, nor yet the prophetic exhortation to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God, important though that may be also, but above all the royal summons to prepare for audience with a wrathful parental potentate whose children have been neglected and starved and beaten and slaughtered for millennia. On that day of God’s anger, we shall all tremble for a long, long time.

I’ve not done full justice to Watson’s chapter — I left out a full description of his treatment of the prophetic work of Christ, for instance. It is an engaging and thought-provoking discussion of the three offices of Christ, though, which is a topic all Wesleyans should find time to consider.

Investing in disciples

Taylor Burton-Edwards has long been one of the voices in the United Methodist Church that nearly always says things that make me nod my head in agreement. Here is an example:

As the Wesleys might have put it, congregations can help people encounter Christ and maybe even begin to believe they want to follow him (prevenient and justifying grace). Congregations may provide that kind of foundation for people– and people do value that.  We can see this in Barna’s data, too– as fairly sizable percentages in every size, generation, and tradition reported  that congregations help them have a feeling of connection with God, even if they also report those feelings are infrequent.

But congregations across the board do little to help people learn actually how to follow Christ or come to “have the mind of Christ” (sanctification, moving on to perfection/maturity). That’s because congregations are not, at their core, discipling communities. That’s what discipling communities are for!

TWBE observes that asking congregations to excel at disciple-making is to misunderstand the nature of congregations. It is expecting a hammer to be a good tool for putting in screws. He calls for the United Methodist Church to start investing in leaders who will create forms of Christian community that resemble the early Methodist societies in function. They would be communities along side congregations that do the disciple-making work that most congregations are simply not equipped to do.

The great trick with this idea is that it requires resources. The logical home for such efforts would be the annual conference, but spending money from the “church tax” to pay clergy as disciple-making circuit riders will stir up all sorts of turf issues. It would require uncommon unity of vision and purpose from our clergy and congregations.

That said, I think it is necessary if we are to get serious about making disciples. I would welcome any conversations about the actual logistics and mechanics of making this vision a reality.

I suspect we have many pastors who are gifted and called to such work but who serve congregations because it is the only place they can serve as clergy in the UMC.

Bonhoeffer on discipleship

We in the United Methodist Church say our mission is to make disciples.

Here is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer says about discipleship in writing about Mark 2:14.

And what does the text inform us about the content of discipleship? Follow me, run along behind me! That is all. To follow in his steps is something which is void of all content. It gives us no intelligible programme for a way of life, no goal or ideal to strive after. (The Cost of Discipleship, p. 58)

This surely is not what we mean by “discipleship.” We are Methodists, after all. We have a program for everything. And yet, I find it difficult to dispute Bro. Bonhoeffer’s argument.

What do I do next?

Trudy Graves wrote yesterday about the discipleship process and her observations of the method at Church of the Resurrection:

When someone asks them the question “what do I do next” they are able to answer that question because they have a course path already planned out.  It’s clear, it’s concise and it’s ongoing.  The goal is to deepen their knowledge, their faith and their commitment (or as they describe it:  Head-Heart-Hands).  If members have a deeper spiritual walk, perhaps they will not feel the need to hang on to something that just doesn’t work any longer.

The way she framed that struck me.

If someone came up to me and asked, “What do I do next?” do I have an answer? Do I have a good one?

Pondering this makes me see the value in methodical Methodism. It used to be that we had the pastoral and theological tools to answer such questions. We knew what questions to ask to know where the person was. We had a vision of what the journey of the Spirit involved, and certainly what its ultimate goal looked like. We had practices and theological concepts to guide people along the way.

Most pastors have versions of these things now, but we no longer — as United Methodists — have a common tool kit. We all construct our own, more or less.

Can we — or should we — have a common set of answers to that question: What do I do next?

Is there a UMC version of this story?

In his journals, John Wesley recounts the remarkable story of Grace Paddy, who was convicted of sin, converted to God, and renewed in love in 12 hours, something Wesley reports he had never seen happen so quickly before.

Ms. Paddy reports that her she was careless about religion until one day in talking with her brother she found herself greatly agitated by her brother’s state of bliss and happiness in God.

I went to pray in my chamber and thought, ‘Why am not I so? O, I cannot be, because I am not convinced of sin.’ I cried out vehemently, ‘Lord, lay on as much conviction upon me as my body can bear.’ Immediately I saw myself in such a light, that I roared for the disquietness of my heart.

She sent for her brother, who rejoiced at her agonies, urged her to believe, and prayed over her.

In a short time all my trouble was gone, and I did believe all my sins were blotted out; but in the evening I was thoroughly convinced of the want of a deeper change. I felt the remains of sin in my heart; which I longed to have taken away.

This led to more fervent prayer and longing for God’s graceful action in her life, and again her prayer was answered with uncommon speed.

I felt an expressible change in the very depth of my heart; and from that hour I have felt no anger, no pride, no wrong temper of any kind; nothing contrary to the pure love of God, which I feel continually. I desire nothing but Christ; and I have Christ always reigning in my heart. I want nothing; He is my sufficient portion in time and eternity.

So ends the story, which maps for us the early Methodist geography of the spirit. Conviction, pardon, and cleansing we see. And at each stage, the person reports assurance. She knew her sins had been blotted out. She felt a deep inner change in her heart as she was fully cleansed of all sin.

For Wesley and the early Methodists, the speed of Ms. Paddy’s progress was remarkable. A Methodist could expect to toil under the agonies of conviction for an extended time, and the cleansing from all sin might tarry until the final moments of life. A long life might be lived waiting for what this woman experienced in half a day.

And they did wait for and expect it. Members of the society watched their own souls and were watched over for signs of movement along this way of salvation. A person might be a member of a society for some time before experiencing the pardoning grace of God. It may be even longer still before they were perfected in love.

Whether it came early or late, though, it was something Methodists sought and prayed for.

John Wesley reports several days later on the progress of one of the Methodist societies:

I rode to Medros, near St. Austle, where we had the Quarterly Meeting for the eastern circuit. Here likewise we had an agreeable account of a still increasing work of God. This society has 86 members, and all rejoicing in the love of God. Fifty-five or fifty-six of these believe He has saved them from all sin; and their life now way contradicts their profession. But how many will endure to the end?

One thing I am always struck by when I read Wesley’s journals and sermons is how much more sophisticated he was in his discussion about what we call discipleship. Where we struggle to even describe what a disciple is or how to know when you have one, Wesley had a whole system of stages with clear markers along the way. Which is not too say he was naive about the complicated ebb and flow of spiritual life.

If we no longer agree with him about the way of salvation and the major developments along the path, we should have something else to offer. We should be able to speak in coherent ways about discipleship and the process of becoming a fully formed Christian.

Too often, it seems to me, we sound as if we have not thought too much about it.

Dispatches from Nashville

Those of you not able to be in Nashville right now for the Wesleyan Leadership Conference can get a peek inside from Jen Unger Kroc, a United Methodist lay woman who is passionate about discipleship.

Her blog posts from Day One and Day Two are here.

My favorite quote from Day One’s blog post:

I called the pastors out, over dinner the first night. I did, God help me!  The conversation was starting to spin around how hard it is to get something Wesleyan going (like class meetings), and this was after we’d already spun the part about it needing to be lay-led. So I asked them all where their laypeople were. Again. A year ago right now, this journey hadn’t even started for me (but it was about to!). That cliff dive was in November. Good Lord, can that be right? Not even a year. I told my dear clergy friends that one year ago, I didn’t know my Wesley from my Willimon, couldn’t explain the first thing about early Methodism, and had no idea what a class meeting was or why somebody might want one. I told them that a year from now, I think they should each have *at least* one layperson either with them at this event. And, I told them that I’m more than willing to provide whatever encouragement, support, or help that I can to their layfolk, or to them, in the process.