Blood:Water Mission, Doing Great Work

I have been trying to make some practical applications that are specific to the General Rules in my recent sermon series on Wesley’s General Rules. When I preached on the second rule, “Do all the good that you can,” I wanted to think of a concrete way for our church to “do good” to others throughout the season of Lent.

The result of this was the decision to start a campaign at our church during Lent to give to Blood:Water Mission. If you are not familiar with Blood:Water Mission, it is an excellent organization, doing wonderful work. You should go to their website in order to get the most accurate and comprehensive information available, but here is some random info about Blood:Water Mission:

• $1 provides clean drinking water for one person for one year! That is amazing, and reason enough to want to support Blood:Water Mission.
• $3,000 will build a well that will provide clean drinking water for a village. Again, this is a pretty amazing result that you could see with a generous, but for many people not completely unimaginable amount of money. (If it seems unimaginable, maybe we need to get a lot more imaginative about ways that we can spend less on ourselves and more on those who lack basic necessities like clean drinking water.)
• They also work to provide safe blood for blood transfusions. (I have to admit, I am not as clear on the “blood” side of Blood:Water Mission… but it is a part of what they feel called to work toward.)
• I believe Blood:Water Mission started due to the burden of the members of Jars of Clay, when they were faced with the need during a trip to Africa. (I am not positive that they are the “founders,” but they are definitely involved with it.)
• Did I mention that $1 will provide clean drinking water for one person (who would not otherwise have clean drinking water) for an entire year?!?

I would encourage you to prayerfully consider giving during this season of Lent (and beyond) to Blood:Water Mission. Can you find ways to cut a few corners and send the money that you save to Blood:Water Mission so that a brother or sister who is thirsty can have a cup of clean, safe, uncontaminated drinking water? You can give directly through their website here.

Pagan Christianity?

I recently read Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices by Frank Viola and George Barna. In case you haven’t heard anything about the book, Pagan Christianity? looks at many of the most taken for granted church practices in protestantism and argues that they come not from Scripture or the teachings of Jesus, but from pagan practices that were co-opted by Christians.

I found the book to be interesting, thought-provoking, and challenging. But I often got pretty frustrated with the basic premise that was, to me, applied too broadly and without nuance. To over simplify my understanding of the premise of the book: Anything that has become part of the practice of the church that did not come directly from Jesus and the New Testament is bad. (Like I said, I may be overstating it or oversimplifying the argument, but that is the best I can do in a nut shell.) Nevertheless, the authors make some excellent points about how much of what we do today in the church encourages a view of active clergy and passive laity. This is a huge problem!

In any case, I was intending to write a review of it in a week or two, in part in order to create the space to wrestle with some of the thoughts I had about the book as I read it. However, yesterday I read Dan Kimball’s review of Pagan Christianity, and it says what I would have tried to say much better than I would have said it. Kimball promises a second installment where he will post Viola’s response to the questions that Kimball raises at the end of the post. Kimball also references several other reviews in his post. If you have heard about Pagan Christianity? and you are interested in reading a review that is sympathetic yet critical, I would highly recommend this review.

For those of you who may have read this book, what are your thoughts about Pagan Christianity?

A Methodist/Wesleyan Blueprint for Becoming Disciples (Part 5)

The fifth sermon “Rule #3: Practice the Means of Grace” in the “Blueprint for Becoming Disciples” sermon series is now up. You can listen to it on my podcast here.

This sermon discusses the third General Rule “Attend Upon the Ordinances of God.” This sermon discusses those practices that enable us to fulfill the first part of Jesus’ double commandment to love God and neighbor. The sermon looks at the public worship of God, the ministry of the Word, the Supper of the Lord, family and private prayer, searching the Scriptures, and fasting as practices, or means of grace, that enable us to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Again, I would love to hear your reactions to this sermon!

Sorry for the Delay

I apologize for the lack of activity in the past several days. I had limited internet access during a trip to visit my grandparents and have not been feeling well the past few days. I am hoping to get back into the swing of things in the next day or so. So, stay tuned.

A Methodist/Wesleyan Blueprint for Becoming Disciples (Part 4)

The fourth sermon “Rule #2: Do All the Good that You Can” in the “Blueprint for Becoming Disciples” sermon series is now up. You can listen to it on my podcast here. (I do want to note that the podcast will have the most recent sermon first, and if I upload this past Sunday’s sermon soon, this one may not be the first sermon. Just check the title and if it is something other than “Rule #2: Do All the Good that You Can,” scroll down to find it. You will still be able to listen to it.)This sermon discusses the second General Rule, “Do All the Good that You Can.” The sermon talks about the second part of Jesus’ double commandment to love God, and love neighbor. This sermon provides a way to obey the command to love your neighbor as yourself.

As always, I would love to hear your feedback. What do you think are some particular areas where Methodists are called today to provide a witness in “doing all the good that they can?” Is there anything that you particularly resonate with? Anything that you particularly disagree with?

A Methodist/Wesleyan Blueprint for Becoming Disciples (Part 3)

The third sermon “Rule #1: Do No Harm” in the “Blueprint for Becoming Disciples” sermon series is now up. You can listen to it on my podcast here.

This sermon discusses the first General Rule, “Do No Harm.” The sermon looks at the idea that in order for Christians to grow in their relationship with God, they first have to stop doing things that cause them to move away from God. In other words, before you can move forward in your faith, you have to stop going backwards. I relate a way that I learned this lesson when first learning how to drive a stick shift and coming to a stop just below the top of a hill. I had to stop going backwards before I could get the car to go forward.

As always, I would love to hear your feedback. What do you think are some particular areas where Methodists are called today to provide a witness in “doing no harm?” Is there anything that you particularly resonate with? Anything that you particularly disagree with?

A Methodist/Wesleyan Blueprint for Becoming Disciples (Part 2)

The second sermon “Just the Beginning” in the “Blueprint for Becoming Disciples” sermon series is now up. You can listen to it on my podcast here.

This sermon lays the foundation for the Methodist blueprint for becoming disciples by focusing on the importance of God’s empowering and enabling grace. It also argues that once we have come to an initial experience of faith in Jesus Christ, that this is just the beginning. We have begun the journey and by grace we can actually become disciples of Jesus Christ.

As always, I would love to hear your feedback.

A Methodist/Wesleyan Blueprint for Becoming Disciples

I am currently preaching a sermon series called “A Blueprint for Becoming Disciples.” In this sermon series we are looking at the method that caused our spiritual forebears to be called Methodist. John Wesley instituted an intentional method that he believed would help people move from initial faith in Jesus to a deep, life changing relationship with God. This sermon series is based on the conviction that many people want to grow in their relationship with God, but they aren’t always sure how. This series uses the General Rules and the accountability structure of early Methodism as a guide for a contemporary blueprint for becoming disciples.

Here are the titles of the sermons I will be preaching:

1. The Method Behind the Madness (January 20, 200
2. Just the Beginning (January 27, 200
3. Rule # 1: Do No Harm (February 3, 200
4. Rule # 2: Love and Serve Your Neighbor (February 10, 200
5. Rule # 3: Love and Serve God (February 17, 200
6. Watching Over One Another in Love (February 24, 200
7. Finding the Balance (March 2, 200
8. Where Are You Going? (March 9, 200

The first sermon in this series has been uploaded to my podcast and I plan to get the second one up today or tomorrow. (I have been having some trouble with gcast, which is why I am behind.) You can listen to the sermons here. If you do listen to them, I would love to hear your thoughts, reactions, criticisms.

Vital Signs (Good Readin’ Part 2)

Today I would like to offer a quick look at another book I have recently read: Vital Signs: A Pathway to Congregational Wholeness by Dan R. Dick.

Vital Signs takes a close look at over 700 United Methodist congregations and offers a way to categorize congregations in one of 4 ways: Decaying, Dystrophic, Retrogressive, and Vital. The book discusses the attributes and characteristics of each type of congregation and offers a diagnostic tool to help church leaders determine where their congregation fits in this typology. The goal of the book is to help move churches towards vitality.

The book is organized logically and it is a pretty quick read. It is primarily useful for helping people to first see where the United Methodist Church in general, actually is at. (Only 9.6% of the churches surveyed were identified as vital congregations.) Vital Signs, secondly, will help leaders take a realistic look at where their particular congregation is at in terms of vitality.

This is a book I wish I had read at the beginning of my first appointment, as I think it would have helped me to begin to get a handle on where we are at and it would have provided guidance on helpful strategies to move forward. I would, as a result, recommend it to any pastor or church leader who would like to have a tool for assessing the vitality of their congregation.

Good Readin’ Part 1

I have been able to do a fair amount of reading lately, but I have not sat down and blogged about very many of the books I have read. So, this week I thought I would take the time to post brief reviews of a few of the books I have read lately. Today we will look at How Great a Flame: Contemporary Lessons from The Wesleyan Revival by James Logan.

How Great a Flame is a very quick read. The book is a smaller format than normal and is 96 pages. I read most of the book in one sitting. I have to say that I was a bit thrown by the Foreword, which was written by Rev. Karen Greenwaldt. Greenwaldt’s foreward made me think I was going to be reading a book that was very different than the one that I actually read. Her review on the back cover of the book has the same tenor as the forward, “James Logan offers a thought-provoking book that explores the interconnection between vital piety and social witness among those Christians who were part of the Wesleyan movement.” This would certainly be a worthwhile undertaking, but I did not find this to be a prominent focus of How Great a Flame.

Aside from the discrepancy that I found between the foreward and the book itself, I really enjoyed this book. Logan calls United Methodists to account a few times, like when he compares our desire for respectability, decency, and order to John Wesley’s. He writes, “But herein lies the difference between Wesley and us. It was ‘the cross’ he chose to bear, and the one which we leave to other churches and groups who don’t conform to our standards of decency and order” (16). Logan writes this in a discussion about field preaching, suggesting that Wesley was able to get out of his comfort zone in order to be faithful, while Methodists today are rarely willing to take these kinds of risks.

In the second chapter, Logan beautifully describes the distinctive features of the Wesleyan revival as: open-air preaching, the organizing of converts into two distinctive on-going structures, and the deployment of a two-tiered lay ministry (26). This chapter includes a wonderful description of the often gradual nature of conversion and how this related to the importance of sanctification. Logan connects the eclipse of the class meeting with the move toward altar call preaching aimed at instantaneous conversion. He writes, “With the eclipse of the class meeting, Methodists came more and more to accept and practice a truncated form of evangelism that focused exclusively upon a decisionistic, instantaneous conversion…. The eclipse of the class meeting marked a decided decline in the church’s sense of being a disciplined people. Without the class meeting the major structure for spiritual accountability was lost, and the church compromised its ecclesial identity, exchanging a missional consciousness for an institutional consciousness” (38).

In the final chapter Logan discusses some bad habits we have gotten into in relation to evangelism and then suggests some ways forward.

My main criticism of this book would be that it felt a bit unfinished. It may have been the point in which I stopped reading and then began reading again - but when I got to the last page, I was surprised it was over. It felt like more should be coming. Ultimately, that is at least a sign that he said many things that really resonated with me and I wanted to hear more.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a brief overview of Wesleyan distinctives, especially as they connect a Wesleyan understanding of grace, discipline, and Christian living to evangelism in the twenty-first century. I definitely found this book to be worth the read!

(Coming soon! Later this week we will look at Vital Signs: A Pathway to Congregational Wholeness by Dan R. Dick, Preaching as Testimony by Anna Carter Florence, and Deepening Your Effectiveness: Restructuring the Local Church for Life Transformation by Dan Glover and Claudia Lavy.)