Soul Searching

Dying to Self

 

I’ve always been a “why” person.

 

I remember sitting in the library at Spring Arbor while in college and finding one of the books written by BT Roberts that explained why we dressed plainly, why our churches were simple, etc. It was to be inviting to the poor. So that all would feel comfortable in our churches and with our people. It was because we were putting others before ourselves. As a Sociology major ministering to inner city teenagers at the time, I was thrilled to find this amazing history of my denomination.

 

As I see it, I grew up towards the end of the extreme legalism era. Thankfully my parents were people who simply loved Jesus and wanted others to love Him as well. Interestingly, a pivotal moment in my teenage years as it relates to my parents and the church was when I asked if I could get my ears pierced. I will never forget my parents’ response. They said, “Let us think about it and get back to you.” When we revisited the topic, they said frankly, “There are people in our church who believe that Christians should not wear a lot of jewelry. If we were to allow you to get your ears pierced it would cause a problem with those people. We don’t believe that it is a matter of salvation but for the sake of our position of leadership we don’t feel like we can give you permission to do that.” I was very disappointed and of course annoyed that people thought that way. But I appreciated my parents’ honesty.

And in retrospect, I think my parents modeled the same principle that BT Roberts set forth long before. We make choices about our behavior and lifestyles for the sake of others. A true friend lays down her life for her friends. We often read this only as it applies to dying for someone else. But maybe it is far simpler than that—choosing not to do something that we would otherwise have no problem with simply for the sake of another.

And isn’t this perhaps what sanctification is about? Dying to self. It seems that our churches and our culture could use a little of this teaching and practice. I don’t believe in rules for the sake of rules. When I turned 17, I got my ears pierced. No one left the church and eventually they even ordained me, ears pierced and all. Now there are other things I refrain from doing and things that I do that I don’t particularly enjoy. Why? I’ve been crucified with Christ. I become all things to all people that I might invite others to join me in letting Christ live in me.

Thank you BT Roberts for founding a church with that principle and practice. Thank you Mom and Dad for continually modeling it for me.

--Joanna DeWolf

Soul in Massachusetts

If you are looking for the soul of Free Methodism, try joining us this week, April 23-25 for CUE 2008 (Continental Urban Exchange). Our theme is Urban and Free. We are meeting at the First Spanish Free Methodist Church in Lawrence, MA. You can find all the pertinent information at http://fmuf.freemethodistchurch.org/.  You can register online or just show up.

For the modest cost of only $50, you will hear from Bishop David Kendall, veteran church planter and pastor Rev. Hector Fernandez of the First Spanish FM Church in Passaic, NJ, and a vibrant new voice, Rev. Tasha Hodgens Pryor, church planter in DC. Perhaps you heard Tasha at General Conference last  year. Besides these challenging speakers workshops and ministry tours are offered, and meals are included. It's the best $50 you'll ever spend!

The urban pastors of our denomination face the cutting edge of ministry to the poor and disenfranchised. If you are on that front line, come for encouragement and fellowship. If you are ministering in a different setting, come catch the passion these pastors share.

Hope to see you this week!

Kathy Callahan-Howell

From a Monument to a Movement

I remember vividly watching the 1998 film adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables and seeing the young idealistic student Marius Pontmercy standing atop a box in the middle of a crowded street.  He proclaimed the dawn of a new era for France and encouraged young and old alike to join him in the revolution.  As I watched, something within me envied this young man.  He had a cause and he believed in it; he had found something worth living and dying for.

As a young idealist myself, I long to be part of a movement that is radical, edgy, and nonconformist – one that challenges the status quo and invites its members to a place of radical (and dangerous) action.  And, much to my delight, as I have studied the history of the Free Methodist Church I have found that this is exactly what we once were. 

According to Donald Dayton, B. T. Roberts “pushed his followers to a radical discipleship that affirmed simple lifestyle, polemicized against the ‘modern, easy way of people getting converted, without repentance, without renouncing the world,’ and insisted that such renunciation of the world include such social sins as ‘slavery, driving hard bargains, and oppressing the hireling in his wages.’” The tone of the early Free Methodist movement carried seeds of dissent from the increasingly bourgeois church of the late nineteenth century leading its followers to a radical simplicity of lifestyle for the sake of the poor.

The dual concern for complete holiness and social justice lies at the heart of Free Methodist DNA.  Our founders were convinced that these two were completely inseparable.  For holiness means nothing more and nothing less than perfect love and this perfect love will drive us to “follow in the footsteps of Jesus... by seeing that the gospel is preached to the poor” (B. T. Roberts).  Unfortunately, the 20th century convinced us that we must choose between doctrinal purity and what is now called the social gospel movement – creating a split which still haunts us to this day.

This young idealist in his late twenties wishes to see the Free Methodist Church denounce the unholy divorce of personal and social holiness as demonic and return to our roots – to a place of radical self-denial and sacrificial love which motivates not only our prayers, but our pocketbooks as well.  We must reject a hyper-spiritualized gospel which tells us that God only cares about souls and not about physical needs as well.  We must embrace holistic ministry which meets people where they are and presents them with the fully-orbed, robust gospel of Jesus Christ in all of its personal, social, and political glory. 

In many ways, the Free Methodist Church has become that very denomination against which we rebelled.  We have become a “respectable church” rather than a church on the margins and on the fringes of society.  We have traded in the plain dress and unadorned church buildings of the early Free Methodists for middle-to-upper class luxuries and padded pews. 

I suggest we take our cue from the founders of the church of the Nazarene (close relatives of ours) who wrote the following: “We can get along without rich people, but not without preaching the gospel to the poor... Let the church of the Nazarene be true to its commission; not great and elegant buildings; but to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and wipe away the tears of the sorrowing; and gather jewels for his diadem.”

- Greg Coates

Finding Our Soul

            What is the essence of the Free Methodist soul? To take it a step back, the essence of Methodism? To minister to the poor and disenfranchised. Wesley often found the converted found themselves more solvent, as they abandoned various vices they grew stable and employable and comfortable. Sadly at times, too comfortable. I fear this has been our path, to become too comfortable with our middle and upper class lifestyles to dirty ourselves with the poor and downtrodden.

            Robert’s heart burned for the poor, the impetus behind his push for free pews. Our denomination broke off from the mother church championing these issues. Through the years we have abandoned our focus for middle class comfort. I believe we lost our soul through our negligence of this first priority.

            As a denomination we have recently readdressed this issue. We have celebrated churches who reach the poor. That is a start in the right direction. Jeremy Thomas suggests we need to return to a methodology. Perhaps that will help. But for me in my neighborhood, the methodology is simple, love the poor.

Drive them to the social worker. Sit with them in court. Visit them in prison. Pray for them while they are sick. Hold their children. Baptize their babies. Preach their funerals. Comfort them in when their children are shot. Celebrate their graduations. Receive their love.

It’s hard to lose your soul when you are busy finding other peoples'. That’s my suggestion.

Kathy Callahan-Howell

Where is Our Soul?

Welcome all bloggers and readers to this, the new Free Methodist Soul Blog, sponsored by the Free Methodist Historical Society. Our purpose is to interactively engage Free Methodists in thinking about how our history has shaped and continues to shape us and how this history can inform and guide our future. Gerry Coates and I (Jeremy Thomas) will be moderating, but we are hoping for a fairly free flowing environment stimulated by your contributions and responses.

To get the conversation going, I want to begin by reflecting once again on the perennial question of where did the Free Methodist soul go? It seems like it's been missing for quite a while, and after our trilogy of recent search expeditions, we still haven't found it. Therefore, I want to suggest a different search tactic.

My hypothesis is actually quite simple: when we find the Free Methodist method, therein, we will find the Free Methodist soul.

The irony, though, is that this seems like the last place on earth that most of us would ever look. Indeed, as our recent General Conferences have enacted and as our local congregations are evidence of, the once rich set of methodological particularities that Free Methodism embraced and identified around have now been replaced by layers of spiritual abstraction and laissez-faire practice. Somehow we became convinced that adherence to specifics of lifestyle and worship is our Achilles heel--which might not have been an all bad conclusions--but then we made the astounding decision to eliminate this vulnerability by removing it from the body! Moreover, in typical American spirit, this radical and debilitating procedure has been justified under the guise of freedom. After all, it's argued, we're free: free from sin, free for the Spirit, free from secret societies, free for the poor...free from the bonds of methodology, generally speaking...and above all free from the pernicious evil of particularities!

Ahh...but if it were only that easy! Unfortunately, cutting out our Achilles heel, has not made it easier for us to walk. Instead, we will shortly arrive at the 150th anniversary of the Free Methodist Church to discover that we are only an anemic and crippled version of our old self. So, what happened? Where did we go wrong?

Well, I suggest to you that our thinking was not all wrong. Methodology and its derivative forms of legalism had indeed become a problem. It was true that our particular methods were no longer serving freedom, but freedom was serving our particular methods. We had made the mistake of letting a particular version of our methodology become sacrosanct and static, instead of continuing to invigorate it as dynamic and instrumental. Hence, it became crystallized around specific cultural and historical forms, and as that culture and history changed, our methodology became less and less effective, until we came to the unfortunate conclusion that methodology itself was the problem.

I propose to you, then, that the solution to our denominational malaise is to recapture a sense of dynamic specificity. As human beings, we need methods, and as the community, we need particular methods that will form us and shape us and allow us to become the people that our theology believes is possible. Certainly this was both Wesley and Robert's experience, and yet for some unfathomable reason, we have abandoned our historic wisdom to travel down paths of contemporary delight. Is it any wonder, then, that entire sanctification and general holiness have become but skeletons in our corporate closet that we drag out for the occasional required performance, but whose lifeblood was long ago thoroughly ensanginuated? I urge us, therefore, to put flesh back on our bones. Let's reinvigorate our Wesleyan theology with a Weslyean methodology. I, for one, know that I make a lousy Christian by myself. I need the community. I need the structure. I need an introspective methodology that holds me accountable and pushes me on. Hence my simple hypothesis: find our method, and we will rediscover our soul.

Okay, I've given it a stab. Let's have some dialogue, now. What do you all think?

Jeremy Thomas