Staying Alive
I’ve been thinking lately about the things that keep me alive spiritually.
When I left the active ministry in the United Methodist Church I did it out of loyalty to my wife and family, and out of a disillusionment with the system under which I had been serving.
But like a lot of things that don’t start well, it has turned out well. I tell people: “I still do all the things I used to love, but I no longer go to meetings, and no longer deal with Bishops or District Superintendents.”
I never understood the concept of retirement and I still don’t.
Fortunately, I’ve managed to remain busy since I left the United Methodist itinerancy. (more…)
Albert Outler on Wesley’s Sermon ‘Christian Perfection’
Albert C. Outler (1908-1989)
Some comments from Albert Outler about John Wesley’s sermon on “Christian Perfection” — and the fears it arouses:
If, for Wesley, salvation was the total restoration of the deformed image of God in us, and if its fullness was the recovery of our negative power not to sin and our positive power to love God supremely, this denotes that furthest reach of grace and triumph in this life that Wesley chose to call ‘Christian Perfection.’
Just as justification and regeneration are thresholds for the Christian life in earnest (‘what God does for us’), so also sanctification is ‘what God does in us’, to mature and fulfill the human potential according to his primal design. Few Christians had ever denied some such prospect, in statu gloriae; few . . . ever envisioned it as a realistic possibility in this life. . . . Thus, Wesley’s encouragement to his people to ‘go on to perfection’ and to ‘expect to be made perfect in love in this life’ aroused lively fears that this would foster more of the self-righteous perfectionism already made objectionable by earlier pietists.
— Albert Outler (Ed). “An Introductory Comment” to Sermon 40: “Christian Perfection”. Works (Bic Ed) Vol 2, p. 97. (c) 1985.
John Wesley’s sermon on “Christian Perfection” (Sermon #40) was written in 1741.
John Wesley (1703 –1791)
Wesley says in his Journal:
I think it was the latter end of the year 1740, that I had a conversation with Dr. Gibson, then Bishop of London, at Whitehall. He asked me what I meant by perfection. I told him without any disguise or reserve. When I ceased speaking, he said: ‘Mr. Wesley, if this be all you mean, publish it to all the world.’ I answered, ‘My lord, I will’; and accordingly wrote and published the sermon on ‘Christian Perfection.’
You can read Wesley’s sermon here: “Christian Perfection” (Sermon #40).
John Wesley’s Support for Women in Ministry
From the “Preface” to: Zechariah Taft, Biographical Sketches of the Lives and Public Ministry of Various Holy Women (1825):
Mary Bosanquet Fletcher (1739-1815)
“Such were the high church principles, and the prejudice of education, of that eminent servant of Jesus Christ, the Rev. John Wesley, that for a season, he could scarcely give the right hand of fellowship, to any Labourers in the Lord’s Vineyard, that had not received Episcopal Ordination. But when he was fully convinced, that God had owned the labours of pious laymen in his community, he encouraged them to proceed. And he never molested any pious female, who was subject to discipline and order, in his Societies for calling sinners to repentance; but when fully satisfied that God had owned their labours, he gave them encouragement. This is evident in his conduct towards Mrs. Gilbert, Mrs. Johnson, Miss Bosanquet, Miss Mallet, Mrs. Crosby, Miss Hurrell, and some others. Indeed he could not have done otherwise according to his own reasoning in his Sermon “against Bigotry.” His argument throughout that Sermon is, that the conversion of sinners is the work of God, and whoever is the instrument of doing this work, is the servant of God. And we must not forbid such a one. His words are (Mark ix. 38, 39) (more…)