The Global Methodist Church

Scripture/introduction

Ephesians 2:19–22 NIV

19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

Ephesians 4:14–16 NIV

14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. 16 From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

Pray.

I had been the youth director at First United Methodist Church Bryan for a couple months when I got an alarming phone call from my Dad. I thought someone had died or something with the tone of voice he had on the other end of the line. He said, son, I need to tell you something and I hope it does not mess things up for you.

....my mind is racing.

Then he finally says, John Wayne, I don’t think you were ever baptized.

tell the story.

Truth is I was United Methodist before I was Christian.

Well it was about the time that I was becoming a follower of Christ, really hearing a call into ministry, that I began to wonder....why the methodist church?

Started asking my family and didnt get anything convincing.

This is a story i have shared in ministry to get a few laughs but over time it dawned on me that this is both paradigmatic for a lot of Methodists and the source of some of my own struggle with the UMC.

We do not know what it means to be Methodist

Four distinctives of the GMC:

Anchored to the Historical and Wesleyan Faith

Disciplined Discipleship

Leadership restructure

Evangelistic Fervor

Anchored to the Historical and Wesleyan Faith

Bishop Lowry: “The GMC will either anchor itself at the very heart of the Christian faith or it will be stillborn.”

Ephesians 2:19–20 NIV

19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.

In this letter, Paul is writing likely a general letter but to a world of Jew and Gentile and a mix of beliefs. He has just laid out the gospel presentation:

as your you, you were dead in your sin (2:1)

Because of his great love, God made us alive with Christ even though we were dead (2:5)

It is by grace you have been saved (2:8)

Paul is saying....root yourself in this presentation, what was from the apostles.

God’s revelation did not end with Scripture though, God continue to work through people bringing the revelation and scripture to life in the baptismal covenants that contained the Creeds.

The GMC will be committed to the historic faith. If our political turmoil and COVID years has taught us anything....it is that we are not shaping and forming people to BE CHRISTIAN, to live out the Christian life, to have the Mind of Christ.

1. Catechism: anchored to the faith and teaching through the Nicene Creed. Then teaching of Wesleyan characteristics.

2. We will again focus on the New life, (real new birth) found in Christ:

Transforming life in Jesus Christ.

3. Reclaiming of our theology of sanctification and of holiness:

So much of what fills our churches today is education of the Christian life and very little devotion to living out the Christian life. Furthermore, the pursuit of holiness, which was once penned as the goal of the Christian life by John Wesley, is more an amorphous catchphrase rather than the focus of our church communities.

Wesley says this holiness is perfect love: “It is love excluding sin; love filling the heart, taking up the whole capacity of the soul. It is love ‘rejoicing evermore, praying without ceasing, in everything giving thanks’ (The Scripture Way of Salvation, I.9).

Disciplined Discipleship: Training the Body

With a renewed focus on the very doctrines that set the Methodists apart… pursuit of holiness, brings structures of discipline that were vital to the people called Methodists of John Wesley’s day.

Ephesians 4:15 NIV

15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.

Class meetings and bands for example: Empowering people to seek transformation in community with others. To be Methodist once meant you were a member of a class of 10-12 men and women gathering together for prayer and testifying to what God was doing in your life. This means of Grace is lay driven, focusing on raising up disciple-making leaders in our churches.

The band meeting is a place of confession and prayer for 3-4 men with men and women with women.

These structures, as Kevin Watson puts it, help us to begin running the race of the Christian life instead of just buying shoes and reading magazines about what it is to be a runner.

Leadership Restructure

Ephesians 4:11–12 NIV

11 So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up

Bishops

David Watson writing in Firebrand magazine:

It follows then, that we should not conceive of bishops primarily as managers. We should not hobble them with unending bureaucratic responsibilities. Rather, we should conceive of bishops as pastors, evangelists, and defenders of the faith. The bishop is an office within the order of elders, and the Spirit of governance God pours out upon bishops is for the church’s spiritual care. Let business managers handle business. Let attorneys handle the law. Let bishops lead the church in word, sacrament, and order.

District Superintendents to presiding elders

Clergy, formed in Wesleyan seminaries, committed to holiness

Laity, the work of the church

Evangelistic Fervor

Finally, and I think most important....the GMC will be committed to evangelism.

USA United Methodism is dying. It’s lost 5 million members and as of 2020 was losing 200,000 members annually. The pandemic, during which thousands of churches closed for much of if not more than a year, and the unfolding schism will dramatically accelerate this loss. The average age for United Methodists is near 60 and climbing. USA United Methodism is over 90% white and incapable of reaching non-whites and immigrants. United Methodism has almost no capacity to plant successful new churches. Instead, it closes hundreds of churches annually.

GMC leadership setting the vision to plant 3500 churches in the next 7 years. They are seeking partnerships and raising money to begin this work immediately.

Our churches will be focused on evangelism:

Example: A former church, etc.

We will be recommitted to reaching our local context, to bring people to find real transformation and new birth again.

We could talk a lot about generational trends, but let me just say a word about two demographics quickly. Boomer generation, (ages 59-77) are disappearing from the church....more boomers left the church during covid and have not returned than any other generation. And if you consider this is the largest demographic in our churches and we are not reaching the younger generations.... we are running into a stewardship crisis, a volunteer crisis, and a leadership crisis.

Generation Alpha (oldest is 13) and Generation Z (13-26) are the least churched and most spiritual. They are open to spirituality in ways Millenials were not. We will need to think clearly and quickly about ways to contextualize ministry to reach these young people.

Being a stodgy church that knows everything we are against more than what we are for will not work.

This is not a movement that excludes anyone. But a movement that is actually more inclusive because we are more clear to what we are calling people to.

Come as you are is a bait and switch. To come into community with the triune God at the center, might be to come as you are, but it is to leave completely changed.

Closing:

Chuy’s illustration (big tent):

theology

justice

holiness

discipleship

Christian education and formation of children and youth

I cannot guarantee this is the way it will be, but it will be who we are.

First Methodist Church will be a community unapologetically committed to the historic creedal faith and to our Wesleyan heritage. We will be a church committed to the formation of Christians in disciplined discipleship that positions all to walk in the life given in Jesus Christ. And we will live with a creative evangelistic fervor that humbly and boldly seeks the lost.

John Wesley, Character of a Methodist:

“A Methodist is one who has ‘the love of God shed abroad in his heart, by the Holy Ghost given unto him;’ one who ‘loves the Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his mind, and with all his strength.’ God is the joy of his heart, and the desire of his soul; which is constantly crying out – ‘Whom have I in Heaven but thee, and there is none upon Earth that I desire beside thee! My God and my all! Though art the strength of my heart and my portion for ever!’”