Walls Crashing Down

Children’s Sermon

The fun as a kid of smashing stuff…little padded blocks. set them up, knock them down. Even better to knock down sin, death, disorder with the power of Christ through the Holy Spirit!

Scripture

Ezekiel 37:1-6 - God came upon me and he lifted me out by the Spirit of the Lord. He set me down in the middle of a valley full of bones. He led me all around and among them and there were a bunch of them! And, they were very, very dry. God said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” Lord God, I answered, “Only you know that, God.” Then God said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and tell them, “Dry bones, hear the word of God!” Then God said to the bones, “Look! I will give you breath, and you will live. I’ll put meat on your bones, cover you in skin, and give you life, and you’ll realize that I am God.”

Engage

Several years ago, I read a fascinating book about the Johnstown Flood by one of my favorite authors, David McCullough. The flood happened on May 31, 1889 when the South Fork Dam in Pennsylvania failed spectacularly after years of neglect. The dam break released 14.55 million cubic meters of water, something around the average flow rate of the Mississippi River. The flood killed 2209 people and accounted for nearly $500 million dollars in damages in today’s dollars. Amidst the destruction, there were miracles and graces.

Most of the buildings in Johnstown were destroyed, but a few were saved by the presence of the big, stone, Methodist Church. The church was one of the first sizable buildings struck by the giant wave of water. Not only did it hold, but it split the wave and thereby served as a shield for the buildings behind it. A story is told of a voice in the dark saying, “We’ve been saved by the Methodist Church,” whereupon another voice answered back, “Only the Catholic Church can save!”

Encounter

Last week, in the first part of this message, I talked about how solitude squeezes like walls closing in and how the environment of 18th century England was ripe for revolution. Sin, sickness, despair, violence, and other signs of a society on the edge were everywhere. Of course, by this time, there were a multitude of churches in England…almost all of them associated with the Church of England, aka the Anglican Church. But the Anglican church, as so many do, had turned it’s evangelistic zeal of days gone by inward. One of the complaints John Wesley often got about his Methodist movement, himself an Anglican priest, was that it might disturb the thriving Church of England. What thriving church, he would answer.

In Plain Account of the Methodists, he wrote, “Look east or west, north or south; name what parish you please. Is this Christian fellowship there? Rather, are not the bulk of the parishioners a mere rope of sand? What Christian connection is there between them? What discourse in spiritual things? What watching over each others’ souls? What bearing of one another’s burdens? What a mere jest it is, then, to talk so gravely of destroying what never was! The real truth is just the reverse of this: we introduce Christian fellowship where it was utterly destroyed. And the fruits of it have been peace, joy, love, and zeal for every good word and work.”

As I introduced last week, George Whitfield and, ultimately, John Wesley weren’t welcome in virtually any Anglican parish. So, they preached the Word of God outside. And God blessed it. I mean God BLESSED it. Not only were they bringing the powerful gospel, but they were bringing it to some of the most downtrodden, oppressed, suffering people in England. And God rewarded them with fruit, as John said above. But there was a key difference between the methods of Whitfield and Wesley…Whitfield was content to preach to huge crowds and then just move along, not setting up any sort of structure to sustain impact. Wesley and his co-workers noticed that as the gospel sank into people, their lives changed. And the fact that their lives changed wasn’t always appreciated by the people in their lives. Don’t take religion too seriously, they often heard. They needed mutual support and encouragement, and a way to grow together.

So, John and his coworkers began to setup a structure. A Method, if you will. As an aside, Methodist was originally intended to be an insult…until it was embraced by John. The Methodist movement served as a shield against a massive tidal wave of sin and violence. Wesley’s methods are designed for Jesus to breathe life into dry bones. Whitfield was a spectacular preacher drawing massive crowds…John preached, but it was the Methodist structure that ended up having far more impact than any single sermon or set of sermons.

Here’s a sketch of the structure setup by the people called Methodist. They started with societies, larger groups…I’d think the people of St. Luke, in general, or perhaps even each worship in particular, might qualify as a society. Then, as societies needed smaller gatherings, Wesley created classes. The class meeting served as the heart of the Methodist revival. The idea of the Wesleyan class is to grow larger, in discipleship and outreach, by becoming smaller. Class meetings promote an active faith. The main idea of the Class is simple, “watch over one another in love.” These started around 1742 and grew like wildfire. They became so important that membership in the church required regular class meeting attendance. We won’t go that far, but they did. Wesley came to see the class meetings as the very root of Methodism.

Dr. Kevin Watson, an expert on early Methodism who was a professor at Emory until recently (he gave up his tenure to actually DO this stuff at a large church in Waco), compares Methodism without the class meeting to a runner. A runner who goes and buys books on running, buys shoes on running, studies running, watches runners, buys the right clothing, researches when races are, and then....never actually runs. They enter a marathon but never jog even a step. Our faith is intended to be ACTIVE, not static.

We mustn’t let perfect be the enemy of good. The key is to just start doing stuff, trying to preach and live the gospel.

What do I want you to do? Pray about whether you’d like to be part of, or perhaps lead, a Wesleyan class. There are signup sheets out in the gathering area. I’ll leave them there for a couple of weeks, at least. But there’s no deadline. Pray until you get an answer from Jesus himself. On November 28 @ 4pm, I’ll lead a first brief training for the leaders of groups and anyone participating is welcome to attend as well.

Now, you might be wondering something. I know I did. If this movement flourished so much, and it did (we’re here as a result), what happened to the societies, classes, and bands that Wesley himself said were the root of the movement? At John’s death in 1791, there were somewhere between 75-100K people in societies in Great Britain. Wesleyan societies, classes, and bands led to all sorts of fruit…schools, hospitals, clinics, libraries, universities, you name it.

So how’d the root begin to die? The short answer is through curriculum. There’s nothing wrong with curriculum in itself…but as the Sunday School movement grew, it was mostly program and information driven…Information driven groups and affinity groups slowly strangled the class movement into almost non-existence. Until, that is, many mostly Baptist and non-denominational pastors re-discovered the genius of it…and began using the methodology afresh. We can too...

Empower

John Wesley and the people called Methodist blazed a trail for us. In many places and in many ways, the trail is overgrown. But it’s still there. All that is to be done is to lay down new tracks to bring the beauty of transformation back to life, to breathe the breath of Jesus into dry bones.

One of my favorite little slices of heaven lies in Comfort, Tx, not far off of Interstate 10. In fact, if you look carefully, you can see it from I-10. It’s now called the Haven River Inn. It’s an inexpensive retreat center particularly designed for people in ministry. Originally, though, the estate was purchased and developed by Albert Steves in 1910. Albert was a lumber tycoon who lived primarily in San Antonio.

Here’s a modern day picture of the Haven River Inn from Google satellite photos. The spring fed sources of the Guadalupe River are not far from the Haven River Inn…it’s quite beautiful. Now, here’s a photo with my edit. See the big red circle? Well, ol’ Albert was quite wealthy. So wealthy, in fact, that he had a private railroad built from San Antonio to his doorstep in comfort. There lies the old mound where the rails sat and the train delivered Albert, his family, and his guests to his country haven. Pretty slick, eh?

John Wesley has given a timeless method, a track if you will, to disciples of Christ that guides us into the kinds of fruitful discipleship, the lively bodies instead of old dry bones, that Christ longs for us to experience. Because in that discipleship, there is JOY!

Pray