You can't
really boil a church like mine, the
The three things I love about the
1. We are pietist, not fundamentalist.
We are not really a church that feels like it has to resolve all the tensions in
our faith or nail down all the details of the "right" way to do
things. We follow the Spirit in the Bible far more than the letter in our
interpretations. We don't argue over baptism, communion, or inerrancy, and we
take as our watchword and song the words of John Wesley, "If your heart is
as my heart, then put your hand in mine." Bottom line: Faith first, truth
second. Don't get the wrong impression--we do
believe in truth and we are
interested in it. But it's more important to us that you have your heart
straightened out than your head.
There's room for mystery in the Wesleyan world because, let's face it, God's
really bigger than anything our feeble minds could capture or fully nail down.
Quote to hang it on: "If your heart is as my heart, give me your
hand."
2. We are catholic in spirit, even
though we start every discussion with the Bible
We didn't come into the world through a pure Protestant lineage. At the
beginning, many Anglicans did not consider themselves part of the Protestant
movement, and the Methodists from whom we emerged, emerged themselves from the
Anglicans. And who wants to be defined by being a "protester" anyway?
The protest is over already.
It's true that we are not Roman
Catholic. We don't feel bound to later developments in the Roman church like
the celebacy of clergy, purgatory, the infallibility
of the pope, or abstinence from birth control. But we don't hate or fear Roman
Catholics either. Every tradition has its blind spots, and the Roman Catholic
tradition is no exception. But if we take into account the sheer numbers of
Roman Catholics, surely there are way more "born again" Roman
Catholics with a personal relationship with Jesus Christ than there are people
who attend a Wesleyan Church somewhere.
I would like us to say we're more truly catholic than the Roman Catholics!
We're radical catholics! For example, on baptism,
most Wesleyan Churches baptize like the Baptists. But we're catholic,
"universal" enough to allow for every other way of baptizing except one that would say you are
automatically saved with baptism or automatically not saved if you're not
baptized.
And we say, "The body of Christ" in communion and let you decide
whether you believe it's just a remembrance or actually becoming the literal
body of Jesus in some mysterious way. The only views we don't allow are those
that would say you are automatically saved by taking communion or automatically
not saved if you don't take it.
I suppose you might call such a catholic spirit a "generous
orthodoxy" that emphasizes the core of the apostle's creed and is very
flexible on most of the things that divide the body of Christ into
denominations.
We also affirm a lot of things that aren't clear in the original meaning of the
Bible. For example, the existence of a New Testament as a collection of
authoritative texts came hundreds of years after the books were actually
written--and we accept the New Testament. We believe in the Trinity and the
dual nature of Christ even though these positions weren't fully hammered out
and agreed on until the fourth and fifth centuries. We believe you are
conscious between death and resurrection and that Christ's death was the end of
all animal sacrifice--we believe these things even though these views are only
expressed in a small part of the New Testament. They were solidified in the
church that followed. And we affirm most those parts of the Bible that looked
to the day when there would be neither male nor female. And that's where the
church is headed too, even though some parts are stubbornly resisting :) But I
know where God is taking it...
After we have noticed these things, all such
discussions begin for Wesleyans with the Bible. They do not end there because
the message of the books must be joined together (something we have to do from
the outside looking in) and the gap must be bridged between that time and our
time (something we have to do from the outside looking in). Wesley's
hermeneutic was a kind of "quadrilateral" that took into account
tradition, reason, and experience after starting from the Bible. But we are a
people of the Book and we cherish it as a sacrament of revelation, the place
God has deigned to speak, God's Word.
Quote to hang it on (the Pilgrim Holiness motto): "In essentials unity, in
non-essentials charity."
3. We are Wesley-an.
Wesleyans do not worship John Wesley by any means, and we don't we limit
ourselves to the boundaries of his way of thinking. But at the same time, we
recognize that God said a lot of true things through this man. There are things
Wesley understood that the church could sure benefit from. Here's
a couple important ones:
1. prevenient grace: God's interested in you before
you even know He's there. He's working on your behalf even when you couldn't
care less.
2. victory over temptation: Wesley rightly understood
the biblical texts to affirm victory over sin and temptation. Like the New
Testament, we recognize that it is possible to "fall away,"
"become a cast away," etc. The New Testament affirms the importance
of faithfulness to God and His holiness.
3. God wants everyone to be
saved and gives everyone a chance. By God's power, everyone could in theory
come to Christ. Not all will, but in some way God gives everyone a chance.
4. Holistic mission. God calls the church to work for the salvation of the
world on every level. This commision includes not
only the spiritual salvation of all but ministry to the poor and disempowered
of the world.
Quote to hang it on: "To spread scriptural holiness throughout the
land."
So this is the
1. Pietist, not fundamentalist
2. Catholic in spirit, starting with the Bible
3. Wesley-an