The Future of the Wesleyan Church

Bud Bence has a question he often asks, a variation on Robert Frost's well known statement that he had a "lover's quarrel with the world." "Do you," Bence asks, "have a lover's quarrel with your church?"

I suppose many Wesleyans over the years have had various lover's quarrels with our church. Several decades ago the boomers had a major quarrel with legalism. Then for the last few decades many have quarreled with what they saw as a "small church mentality." Some who've gone to seminary have quarreled with what they saw as ignorance in the church. Emergents are currently quarreling with artificiality and failure to have impact on the world in areas other than just the soul.

But you can't find lasting identity in a quarrel. To endure a group needs a positive identity and not just a negative one.

In the last few posts I've selected parts of our Wesleyan past that I personally find attractive and worth further pursuit. I've not intentionally skewed our history, but it's clear at the same time that our story could have been told much differently by someone with other priorities.

In a few days I'll go back to my old habits of posting on whatever happens to suit my fancy at the moment. But I'd like to recap some of the things that I am enthusiastic about in our tradition. In some cases I am trying to create self-fulfilling prophecies for the future, even if I believe my starting points are true to our tradition. I hope someone out there will embrace them too and work to "make it so." In particular, a Wesleyan seminary could take on these kinds of values from its very inception, creating a focal point of Wesleyan identity among (hopefully) many others.

Here are some of the core points I think are apt for our future:

1. Wesleyans have a head, but our hearts and attention to the Spirit have always taken priority and have led the way. We would far rather your doctrine be a little off than your heart. Do you love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength? Are you serving Him according to the light you have? Does your life show that you "do all to the glory of God"?

For me this last comment is perhaps the very essence of our values and identity. When we are committed to doing all to the glory of God, then we are certainly not sinning intentionally (the systematic theologian here notes that it is only by God's grace and the Spirit's empowerment that any of this can take place).

And in our affirmation of the possibility to live above sin, we are expressing an optimism and hopefulness for individuals and the world that stands at the heart of who we are. No one and no area of any human's life is beyond redemption. We are Arminians and thus believe that anyone can be saved. We are proto-Pentecostals who believe in healing and miracles. I think it would be possible to rewrite all the values I have tried to express here as the outworking of this one principle of doing all to the glory of God.

I know it might "technically" be wrong to approach such core matters from the human perspective... A systematic theologian--perhaps even Wesley himself--would begin with God or the Trinity or prevenient grace. But in some strange revivalist, pre-now-post-modern, quasi-pietist way, I think the flavor of our heritage starts with this basic dictum: "You must completely belong to God. You already do, for God is God. Are you willing, by the grace of God at work within you, to consent to that which is already true?" We might reflectively place a thousand pages of theological prolegomena to get us to this point, but the real beginning of my becoming is the first moment when I give the most limited consent to this question.

And since none of us does theology outside of our individual I, no individual's theology can properly begin apart from the birth of this question in his or her life.

2. In the light of our heart orientation, we have a limited but significant "generous orthodoxy." We allow for some breadth of understanding when it comes to things like baptism, end times, communion, and even in how we understand the particulars of inerrancy. Because our identity is centered in the heart toward God, we by-pass some of the thornier theological divides of history.

3. We are a Bible-focused church, but not in a modernist way. We value the original meaning but recognize that the biblical meaning that has always been authoritative has been a matter of a Spiritual common sense mediated through the church of the ages and the particular understandings to which God has led our tradition. Whether we like it our not, the Fall has made it such that particular interpretations are more determinative than idealogical affirmations.

4. But we do have beliefs and they cohere with our hearts. Some stand in strong continuity with John Wesley. Thus we believe in the power of God to give victory over temptation, that a Christian does not, indeed must not, sin willfully. We believe further in the power of the Spirit to heal our "bent to sinning" in this life! We believe that the Lordship of Christ means Lordship over every part of our lives.

5. We believe in the Great Commission and the call to make disciples of every nation, including our own. We do not view the local church as a hide out or retreat for a few but as a place where communities are changed and the kingdom of God grows.

6. We affirm full salvation well beyond our souls. We believe that the Spirit can speak as authoritatively through a woman as through a man. We believe that God wants to change the world through the church now and not just in the judgment.

These are things that I am proud of about our tradition. They are the picture of a church with which I would have no need to quarrel. More significantly, they are to me the picture of a church that God can use powerfully to change the world we live in, the kind of church that the world sorely needs.