A salute to the “methodicals”

Steve Addison blogs on the early and formative years of the Methodist movement and provides some very pertinent insights for church planters of today. In “Following up the punch” we learn about how variety and adaptability created “space” for the Holy Spirit to move, yet “structure” for the movement to be sustainable. I have been challenged by these two factors – We learn that Wesley provided a flexibility for the Holy Spirit to move and empower within a local context, and yet he also organized systems through which the fledgling movement could be sustained, replicated and multiplied.

Some of his notable (shocking?) insights are as follows:

Wesley’s brother Charles was a cultured poet and musician with high church aesthetic tastes. Yet he laid aside his preferences and wrote hymns to the tunes of the common drinking songs being sung in England’s pubs!

Ouch! Mr. Addison, don’t you know that hurts my religious bone big time?!?! But there are more gems, observe…:

Wesley picked up the idea of open air preaching from Whitefield. The idea of accountability groups came from the Pietists via the Moravians. It was Wesley’s genius to unite these concepts, add some elements of his own such as his circuit riders and form a mass religious movement.

Wesley was fond of saying, ”I will not strike a blow (preach) unless I can follow up the punch (organise people in societies and groups).“ Wesley was not interested in manifestations of the power of God unless he could channel them into a lasting legacy through effective means and functional structures. At the same time he would not tolerate church structures and tradition that impeded the outpouring of God’s power for salvation.

The Methodists proclaimed the message of individual freedom, autonomy, responsibility and achievement. As a result, more African Americans became Christians in ten years of Methodist preaching than in a century of Anglican influence. Methodism did not suppress the impulses of popular religion—dreams and visions, emotional expression, preaching by blacks, by women, by anyone who felt the call.

He ends with the challenge:

How about for you? What wins? The cause or the the way we’ve always done things around here?

Tags: Church planting, Methodists, Methodism, John Wesley, George Whitefield

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