![\"worship-1\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/447\/2017\/04\/worship-1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThere\u2019s a narrative circulating around United Methodism. It goes something like this: if preachers would just \u201cpreach the gospel\u201d and teach the \u201corthodox\u201d Christian faith, then every church would be booming in attendance. Those who circulate this narrative love to cite John Wesley\u2019s fear that Methodism will become \u201ca dead sect, having the form of religion without the power.\u201d I share Wesley\u2019s fear, but I have a different understanding of its manifestation. I think that a formulaic<\/em> understanding of the role of doctrine in spiritual vitality is itself a prime example of \u201cthe form of religion without the power.\u201d And I think this narrative is killing United Methodism.<\/p>\n What is doctrine supposed to do? If it\u2019s working properly, it inspires us to fall in love with God. The words of doctrine are only the form of religion; the love they inspire is its power. What doctrine cannot do is earn our favor with God. In fact, Christian doctrine teaches that God\u2019s favor cannot be earned since it\u2019s unconditional grace. The best way to lose the love that\u2019s supposed to be inspired by our doctrine is to use our doctrine to justify ourselves (i.e. as a substitute for God\u2019s grace). And that\u2019s precisely what people are doing who try to make doctrine into a formulaic church growth strategy.<\/p>\n Why is it a toxic narrative to say that churches will grow if their pastors will just preach \u201corthodoxy\u201d? Because it tells thousands of United Methodist pastors who serve declining congregations that they\u2019re doing it wrong even if they\u2019re doing everything right according to what they learned in seminary and what the Book of Discipline<\/em> says about what we believe. Even if they have Jesus\u2019 cross and resurrection in every sermon, their \u201corthodoxy\u201d must not be \u201crobust\u201d enough if their numbers aren\u2019t increasing. They must not be projecting enough earnestness. They must not be weepy enough when they say the words \u201cgood news.\u201d They must not be speaking slowly and emphatically enough when they say the communion liturgy.<\/p>\n Church growth is a complex sociological phenomenon. To oversimplify the solution is about as facile and asinine as saying that tax cuts will always grow the economy or spankings will cure childhood temper tantrums. And when pastors are judged for mysterious, complicated social forces that \u00a0they are only a small part of, they get anxious and resentful. Based on my decades of experience in dying United Methodist churches, I would say that undercurrents of anxiety and resentment are a much greater catalyst of church decline than the \u201crobustness\u201d of the doctrine being preached. And furthermore, confident, charismatic preachers who wave their arms in the air while preaching gibberish can draw a much better crowd than diminutive, doctrinally precise theology nerds.<\/p>\n Some growing churches are filled with people who glow with Christ\u2019s love because they know deeply in their hearts how much God loves them. Some of this learning comes in the form of conceptual knowledge received in the weekly message (that most people forget by Tuesday) but most of it is the result of lived practices, personal mentorship, and seeing Christ in each other. It\u2019s much more heart knowledge than head knowledge. A church that is genuinely bubbling over with Christ\u2019s love has created a space where people have felt safe enough to let their guards down so they can be personally smitten by God\u2019s grace. The preaching can have something to do with that, but it\u2019s not all or even most of creating a grace-filled church culture.<\/p>\n Other growing churches seem to have the same glow on the surface, i.e. \u201cthe outward form of godliness\u201d (2 Tim 3:5). Their members are eager to prove how much they love God through their zeal during worship and the pious catchphrases that fill up their Bible studies. But underneath the surface, they are \u201clovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, and abusive\u201d (2 Tim 3:2), because they haven\u2019t yet had a personal encounter with God\u2019s grace. They\u2019ve been performing too hard for each other to let God into their hearts. Most churches are a mixed bag between people who have been touched by grace and people who are putting on a performance. But I would venture to hypothesize that a church which is built around a single personality\u00a0that actively seeks to cultivate conformity to a singular message throughout its culture is going to create an environment of pressurized conformity rather than grace.<\/p>\n Some churches grow because they\u2019re filled with Christ\u2019s love, and individual members have been empowered and equipped to use their gifts and listen to the Holy Spirit\u2019s call for their ministry. Other churches grow because they\u2019re controlled by a manipulative narcissist who has created a powerful, cult-like environment where everyone is nervously trying to prove they\u2019re completely into it. And yes, most fall somewhere in between those two ends of the spectrum.<\/p>\n If we claim that church growth is contingent upon the perfect message of the guy with the lapel mic and the degree to which he has a strategically shaped chain of command of lay leaders who are zealously aligned with his perfect message, then we are subscribing to the narcissist messiah approach to church growth (which has actually proven very effective in evangelical circles, by the way). To say that it\u2019s all about \u201cpreaching the gospel\u201d means that it\u2019s all about the guy (it\u2019s almost always a guy) who is preaching the gospel. It\u2019s presuming a hierarchical power structure and minimizing the role of the Holy Spirit in the nooks and crannies of the church community where grace mostly happens.<\/p>\n Having a denomination full of leaders who are looking with wistful envy at the surrounding narcissist-driven evangelical megachurches creates a toxic environment in which to do ministry. It\u2019s anxiety-driven rather than grace-driven. We think the motivation tools of capitalist meritocracy like online dashboards that shame \u201clazy\u201d pastors for their bad numbers are a better catalyst for spiritual vitality than the grace that is actually the core of our theology. It\u2019s time for United Methodism to stop trying to ape megachurch evangelicalism.\u00a0If we\u2019re going to have a Wesleyan view of the role of doctrine in spiritual vitality, then it needs to be built upon our understanding of the three really beautiful things we claim God is doing for humanity that we call prevenient grace, justifying grace, and sanctifying grace. These three forms of grace are not only the core of our doctrine; they should guide how we understand the role of doctrine in spiritual vitality.<\/p>\n Prevenient Grace<\/strong><\/p>\n First, prevenient grace teaches us that God is constantly and relentlessly reaching out to all people with his love. This doctrine has powerful implications. If God\u2019s posture towards humanity is unconditional, proactive love, that means God is not waiting for us to say or believe the right things before he will give us the time of day. God always meets us where we are and works with what we\u2019ve got before we even know what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n If we really believe this, then people with bad doctrine should be loved into better doctrine. It\u2019s obviously different when someone in a teaching role is doing spiritual harm. But any correction needs to be very sensitive and prayerful. If I presume that God is working with another person where they are, then I should work with what they have and build off of what God has already built (1 Cor 3:6) rather than tell them they\u2019re completely wrong if I don\u2019t hear the catchphrases I\u2019m listening for.<\/p>\n A pastor who lives out the doctrine of prevenient grace will have a congregation full of people with varied articulations of Christian doctrine according to where they are in their spiritual journeys. If doctrinal uniformity is the measure of a congregation\u2019s spiritual vitality, then prevenient grace is effectively not a part of that doctrine.<\/p>\n Justifying Grace<\/strong><\/p>\n Justifying grace is the liberating centerpiece of the Christian gospel. When we accept Jesus\u2019 sacrifice on the cross for our sins, we stop justifying ourselves and gain the freedom to be wrong. That freedom is the source of all other spiritual freedom, because until we are okay with being wrong, we will resist God\u2019s spiritual transformation.<\/p>\n Now here\u2019s the problem. If we try to justify ourselves with our doctrine instead of accepting Jesus\u2019 justification on our behalf, then we\u2019ve paradoxically sabotaged the cornerstone of our doctrine. The reason it\u2019s so important to get justification right is so that we stop trying to prove our loyalty to God by having the right answers (and arguing incessantly with everyone around us who is wrong). As long as we\u2019re trying to prove ourselves right, we will resist God\u2019s grace as an embarrassing, unnecessary imposition. We may talk about God\u2019s grace all day along as a means of having the right answers, but we will not actually receive it. Only when we embrace our wrongness as sinners who need to be justified can our hearts be opened for God\u2019s grace to do its transformative work.<\/p>\n Sanctifying Grace<\/strong><\/p>\n Sanctifying grace is what happens to us when we\u2019ve embraced Jesus\u2019 sacrifice and opened our hearts to the Holy Spirit. Sanctification has little to do with the head and mostly to do with the heart. Whatever doctrine we study is only as good as the love it inspires in our hearts. Mostly we need to engage in the spiritual habits necessary to practice the presence of God. These definitely include meditating on scripture, which is one of the most powerful resources we have for seeking our perfection in love. But the goal is not conceptual knowledge. Knowledge is penultimate to love (1 Cor 8:1).<\/p>\n Sanctification is measured by the transformation of our character. People who are being filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness,\u00a0gentleness, and self-control are being sanctified, whether they can explain Jesus\u2019 cross and resurrection or not. It\u2019s more important to be crucified and resurrected with Jesus than to have perfect theology. A church that overemphasizes conceptual knowledge is focused on the outward form of religion at the expense of its power.<\/p>\n When doctrine is being used in the right way, the measure of its fruitfulness is the love that it inspires. The way you can tell it\u2019s being used in the wrong way is when people are grasping for litmus tests to measure themselves against \u201cfake\u201d Christians. Churches grow and shrink for a variety of factors. Any formula that claims to be universally applicable without consideration of a church\u2019s missional context is a form of religion without its power. Any pastor who says that his church is growing because he \u201cpreaches orthodoxy\u201d is displaying the self-justification that makes him unorthodox.<\/p>\n The current obsession with \u201ctightening up\u201d United Methodist doctrine so that we can grow like the evangelical megachurches is paradoxically a presenting symptom of the abandonment of Wesleyan doctrine. A church that is immersed in prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying grace will necessarily be a theologically diverse space for the reasons I outlined above. While neo-Calvinist-like doctrinal precision does dovetail nicely well with the hierarchical cult of personality approach to megachurch growth that has worked very well in white suburbia for the past three decades, that\u2019s not who United Methodists\u00a0are. We are the people who say \u201cboth\/and\u201d about everything (probably too much). We are the people who itinerate our pastors so that our congregations can be lay-led. We are the people who don\u2019t necessarily have doctrinally pristine testimonies but have grace oozing all over them.<\/p>\n United Methodists who are trying to mimic megachurch evangelicalism naturally look for litmus tests where they can draw lines in the sand between real Christians and fake Christians. This obsession with litmus tests are again a presenting symptom that we have lost the actual orthodoxy we have been taught. The problem with trying to emulate anxiety-driven, performance-based evangelical subculture is that its glory days are behind it. I am part of an exodus of millions of ex-evangelicals in my generation and younger who are starving for churches that actually live out the grace that they preach. Many\u00a0ex-evangelicals like me have landed in United Methodism. I really think that Wesleyan Christianity is uniquely positioned to lead the American church in the 21st century after decades of wearying toxic evangelicalism. But I fear this opportunity will be squandered by United Methodists with megachurch envy who are trying to be something we\u2019ve never been.<\/p>\n Check out my book How Jesus Saves the World From Us<\/a>!<\/p>\n Subscribe to our podcast Crackers and Grape Juice<\/a>!<\/p>\n Support our campus ministry NOLA Wesley as a patron <\/a>or one-time donor<\/a>!<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There\u2019s a narrative circulating around United Methodism. It goes something like this: if preachers would just \u201cpreach the gospel\u201d and teach the \u201corthodox\u201d Christian faith, then every church would be booming in attendance. Those who circulate this narrative love to cite John Wesley\u2019s fear that Methodism will become \u201ca dead sect, having the form of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1934,"featured_media":14896,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,23],"tags":[537,4173,3264,893,1115,1122,3263,3733,2036,2174,3732,3734,2520,2821,2881],"class_list":["post-14895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture_","category-theology","tag-church","tag-cult-of-personality","tag-decline","tag-evangelical","tag-gospel","tag-grace","tag-growth","tag-justifying","tag-orthodoxy","tag-preaching","tag-prevenient","tag-sanctifying","tag-self-justification","tag-united-methodism","tag-wesleyan"],"yoast_head":"\n