Soul Searching

Connecting the past and the future

    The East Michigan Conference has a training institute for those considering entering pastoral ministry. As there has recently been a change in the director, I have had the privilege of reviewing the content and brainstorming ways to expand the offerings.

    In looking over both what East Michigan offers as well as what is required by our denomination, I saw a gaping hole. The poor. Where do we teach our pastors in training about the Free Methodist’s heart for the poor and disenfranchised?

    Our church’s historical commitment to the poor kept me in the Free Methodist church as a college student in the 90’s. Doing research in the library, I read through one of BT Roberts’ books. I knew that one meaning of our “Free” was free pews to avoid the practice of the rich getting the closer seats or any seats at all. (Whatever happened to everyone wanting the seats in the front?) I read that we dressed simply so that the poor felt comfortable among us. I read that even our church buildings were kept simple for the same reason. I read that BT Roberts charged us with continuing to live what we believed. As a graduate of an inner city high school and the leader of an outreach to troubled teens, my heart was strangely warmed.

    Now in 2008, I read that pastors in training needed Wesleyan Theology, Inductive Bible Study, Leadership, and Church Administration. Frankly, other than maybe a different kind of theology class, I didn’t see much different on a list than perhaps an Episcopal priest or a Southern Baptist probably would get. Don’t get me wrong, most people would tell you that I’m ecumenical and I don’t desire to draw lines of division. However, the downside of focusing on those “core issues” is that we can lose some of the very things that make us unique.
    Identification with the poor is just one issue. What about women in ministry? There are still churches in my conference who refuse to have a woman even fill their pulpit for a Sunday. What about freedom of the Holy Spirit? Do our churches allow and expect the Spirit to move in their services and consequently in their lives? Or are we planned and programmed so much that we wouldn’t recognize the Spirit if he stood up and yelled our names during a Sunday morning sermon?

    Perhaps in order to find the soul of the Free Methodist church it starts with our pastors. If our pastors don’t know and have not been taught to preach and practice the peculiarities of Free Methodism, we surely can’t expect the broader church to do it. I’m not sure that on overview Free Methodist Doctrine and Polity course at the beginning of their education track will truly ignite their passion for living the uniquely Free Methodist method of following Jesus. We have the opportunity to train up the leaders among us who will begin leading others. The process of ordination has undergone several changes over the last few years. Maybe it still needs to be changed.

Joanna DeWolf

Fair Play

     Most of us have embarrassed ourselves by forwarding an email purporting a supposed disastrous danger only to find it to be false. I still find myself caught offguard at times but mostly I remember to check a website like Snopes.com to be certain of the validity of a claim before panicking everyone in my address book.

     During this political season I have received numerous emails about Barack Obama. One such proposes he is an active Muslim who was sworn into the Senate with his hand on the Koran, which actaully happened to a totally different congressman, not Obama. The most recent supposedly quotes from his books and suggests he is a racist and Muslim as well.

     The quotes are taken out of context, don't exist or are reworded. His actual comments about white people come from his struggle as a biracial child to understand his identity. The misworded comment about Muslims comes from his suggestion that after 9-11 we need to avoid the kind of racial panic that caused us to intern the Japanese Americans during WWII. I hope we as Christians would all agree with that stand.

     This whole smear campaign offends me on several levels. First, as voters most of us don't like negative campaigning. We say we want to evaluate the candidates on their positions, not on their attacks on their opponents. So why would we participate in such a negative tactic ourselves?

     Second, the accusations are false or at least twisted. Obama's has created a website to clarify the truth, http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/factcheckactioncenter . But if that seems too one-sided, the same website I use for urban legends, which is politically  neutral, also addresses these issues, for example  http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/ownwords.asp. At least check it out before forwarding it.

     Third, if we are not careful, we will unwittingly contribute to the racism that threatens to focus the attention of this election on something other than the worthiness candidates and their positions. In unjustly accusing Obama of being a racist we are contributing to the problem ourselves.

     I pastor a church of both whites and African Americans. Because of this we are naturally more politically diverse than most churches. I am extremely careful about what I say politically, even one on one, and mostly stress tolerance and understanding. We are all entitled to our political opinions and agendas.

     But as Christians I don't believe we are entitled to spread slander against anyone, especially someone running for President. BT Roberts worked actively for political causes, and so should we today as Free Methodists. But whether we are supporting the Democrat or Republican candidate, we should not contribute to the misunderstanding and slander that will poison our opinion in such a crucial race in our nation.

    My prayer is that this election will not bring out the worst in us, but instead will help us take a hard look at ourselves and our nation and consider how we can rise above pettiness and decide our future based on the real issues at hand.

Kathy Callahan-Howell

Celebrating Our Multicultural Ministry From Paul's Perspective

Paul championed the mission to the gentiles. From the very beginning of his conversion, he received the revelation that the field of his calling would be in a gentile –multicultural– context (Acts 9).

One of the bigger battles that Paul had to fight was with the judaizing Christians who believed that gentiles, in addition to converting to Christ, should also keep the religious and cultural way of life of the Jews. The more radical judaizers would teach that to become part of the people of God they had to become Jews.

We must be careful that in our evangelistic or missionaries efforts we be not only “americanizing, hispanicizing, africanizing, etc.” people of other cultures. It is true that for practical reasons, it is important for people of other cultures to be assimilated within the dominant culture, but that is secondary to Pauline doctrine of justification by faith. In his mission to the gentiles, Paul did not require them to be assimilated into Jewish culture. No matter how reasonable and advantageous the process of integrating into another culture may be, for the effects of reaching people for Christ in multicultural contexts, they do not have to be as I am, culturally speaking, to be converted to Christ or to be good Christians.

As biblical Christians, we should get our identity from our relationship with Christ and not primarily from our ethnic identity. When Paul defines himself, he says that he has “no confidence in the flesh” that is, in his rich Jewish background as a Pharisee. He says about all his religious and ethnic labels that he “counts them as garbage.” Paul has a new pivotal point around which his life revolves. That new pivotal point is Christ and the gospel. Paul gets his identity from these (Phil. 3).

Humanly speaking, nobody can deny that cultural backgrounds close or open doors (Paul himself sometimes used his Roman citizenship as recourse). Nobody can deny the reality of “technologically developed or underdeveloped” regions. However, as Christians, we are called to surpass the human criteria that determine the way we perceive ourselves and the way we see and treat others.

We should see ourselves as part of a “new creation” in Christ and not use the standards of the old creation. Paul says in 2 Cor. 5:16 “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.” In Colossians 3 Paul says that we should “put to death our members which are of the earth.” The reason to doing so is that now we are part of a new creation in Christ. This new creation in Christ is the new humanity that God is forming in us. This is the new community of the Spirit where: “There is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.” All this teaches us that as Christians we no longer treat our brothers and sisters based on nationality or social class labels but based on our unity in Christ. National identities are important, but in a multicultural context, these identities should be integrated in the larger identity of God's international family.

- Guillermo Flores

Free is a Verb

     Last week urban pastors and workers from Massachusetts to Portland gathered to celebrate urban ministry. Bishop David Kendall set the tone with a stirring call from the bishops stating the primacy of urban ministry in our denomination.

     During the closing address, Tasha Hodgens Pryor mentioned that while sitting observing the sign for the conference which mentioned the Free Methodist Urban Fellowship, God told her that for too long we had let the free in our name be an adjective, and it was time for it to be a verb.

     This simple principle can help us return to the soul of our denomination. We are not about being Methodists that are free. We are to free others from bondage. We are not to continue to only celebrate the freedoms of the past, from rented pews to slavery, but to continue to free people from materialism and sin, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

     Whether we serve in city, town or country, we can ask God who needs to be free in our midst. Who is bound that needs to be released? How can we live out the principles of Isaiah 61 in our ministry, whether clergy or lay, and see that the poor hear the good news, the captives are set free? May we all hear God's call to change our passive adjective affirmation of our past victories for a new, live, up to date, active voice of change and freedom.

Kathy Callahan-Howell

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

Soul Searching the Church - From Symposium to Blog

As explained in the call to the first symposium, the gatherings were focused as follows:

PURPOSE: To stimulate reflection on and renewed commitment to the identity and mission of the Free Methodist Church.

RATIONALE: The Committee on Free Methodist History and Archives became increasingly aware of a buzz of concern and interest across the church about Free Methodist identity today. We wanted to provide a place and time where we could worship, pray, and share our ideas and insights. We envisioned simply a conversation — no declarations, resolutions, or proposed action. What might the Holy Spirit do if interested people met to think and pray about the life and vitality of the Free Methodist soul?

INVITATION: We welcomed all interested Free Methodists, especially those for whom this question struck a deep chord. We wanted to bridge the generations — young and old, and those in between. We felt wisdom was found in intergenerational dialogue.

OBJECTIVES:

1. Celebrate the witness of the Free Methodist Church,past and present.

2. Explore honestly the contours of FM identity — the pluses and minuses; what we have done well; where we have failed; what we can learn.

3. Seek God’s face for a fresh touch of his Holy Spirit.

4. Learn from one another’s stories.

5. Renew our commitment to God’s work through the Free Methodist Church.

6. Provide insights that will help the Historical Center in developing its ongoing work.

We have now moved from gathering to blogging.  What do you think?