Well, the
kids went back to school this past week.
So, we thought it was time for the rest of us to go back to school,
too. Welcome to United Methodism 101. I hope you’ve all brought your number two
pencils, because there will be a test at the end of class.
What we’re going to do in this
sermon series is take a look at what United Methodism is and what makes it
different from other Christian denominations.
Now, in doing that, it’s not our intention to say that Lutherans or
Catholics or Mennonites or Presbyterians or any other Christian denominations
are somehow unholy or unworthy or anything like that. The point here is not to put down any other faith. The point is to say that, as United
Methodists, this is how we tend to look at things.
To know where we are, though, we
need to know where we started from. So
we’re going to start by looking at the early days of what has come to be called
the United Methodist Church. That means
starting with the founder of what is now the United Methodist Church, John
Wesley.
John Wesley was a priest in the
Church of England, what’s sometimes referred to as the Anglican Church, in the
1700s. Wesley really did not have a
problem with the doctrines or theology of the Church of England. The problem he had with the Church of
England was that he thought it had gotten too far removed from the people, and
was not really living out what it said it believed. It had gotten too dependent on ritual and formality. It was just opening the church doors and
waiting for people to come in. The
trouble with that plan was that people were not coming in.
Wesley believed that the church
should go to where people were and be part of people’s lives. He believed the church not only should
address people’s spiritual needs, but also should address people’s physical
needs, the way Jesus had done. Wesley
believed all of that was part of our call to live a holy life. In fact, his movement was sometimes called a
“holiness” movement.
Wesley thought we all need a method
for doing this, and so his views became known as “Methodist.” That method involved frequent prayer and
Bible study to help one live a holy life.
It involved doing charitable work, going to prisons, hospitals,
factories, anywhere there were people who needed the gospel and who needed help
with their lives. It also involved
being part of small groups that would regularly meet to study the Bible and how
it applied to their lives. Every
Methodist was expected to be part of one of these small groups, and every
Methodist was expected to attend regularly.
If you did not, you could be kicked out of the group.
As time went on, people joined
Wesley’s groups. He started organizing
them. He still did not consider them to
be a separate church. They were just
groups of people within the Church of England.
They believed what the church believed, they just wanted to live that
belief. Eventually, though, Wesley and
his “Methodists” upset the status quo.
A law was passed that essentially made Wesley either register his group
as a church or stop meeting. So, he
registered his group as a church.
Wesley, though, remained a member of the Church of England until he
died.
This period of time, the
1700s, is of course the time when England was colonizing America. As English people came here, Methodists
came, too. They had some success, but
then the Revolutionary War broke out.
Methodists, as we said, were affiliated with the official Church of
England, and so were not too popular among the revolutionary colonists. A lot of them went back to England.
As the Methodist church became a
separate church, though, this link became less of a hindrance, and the church
started growing. Wesley appointed
Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke as the first two American bishops. The United Methodist publishing house,
Cokesbury, takes its name from those first two bishops. As the country grew, the Methodist church
grew, too. It’s said that at one time
there were more Methodist churches in this country than there were post offices.
We’ve talked about how we came to
be called “Methodists”, but what about the “United” part? Why are we called “United” Methodists? After all, if you’ve ever been to a conference
meeting and heard some of the arguments, you might think we’re not very
“united” at all. That “United” part,
though, is an important part of our history as a church.
It comes from a merger in 1968
between the Methodist church and the Evangelical United Brethren, or the E. U.
B. church. Some of you may remember
when that merger took place. Some of
you may even have attended E. U. B. churches.
That church started around 1800 and also had a strong emphasis on
holiness. When the churches merged, we
became not just the Methodist church, but the United Methodist Church, taking
that work “united” from the Evangelical United Brethren.
Over the years, there have been
various splits and off-shoots from the Methodist church. Some of those came from disputes over how
the church is organized, which we’ll take up later in this sermon series. Some of them, sadly, came over the issue of
slavery. Just as slavery divided the
country, it also divided the church.
Various predominantly African-American churches were formed over that
issue, especially in the south.
Current denominations that consider
themselves part of the Wesleyan tradition include the Church of the Nazarene,
the Wesleyan church, the Free Methodist church, and the Evangelical Methodist
church. There’s a branch of the E. U.
B. church that did not merge with the United Methodist church in 1968, and it
still exists, too.
I could go on, but at this point,
some of you are probably saying “So what?”
I mean, we should probably know a little about our history and
everything, but what does knowing any of this stuff mean for us today? How does it help us to know these things
about the history of the United Methodist Church?
Well, I think it helps us in a
couple of ways. For one thing, some of
the things John Wesley was concerned about are still problems for us
today. We’re still tempted to just open
the doors and wait for people to come in, rather than going to where they
are.
We still need to find ways to meet
people’s needs, both their spiritual needs and their physical needs, the way
Jesus did. We still need to find ways
to live a holy life, and having a method in place, a method that involves
prayer and Bible study and meeting in small groups and going out to help
people, is still a really good way to live that holy life.
There are plenty of people right
here in town who are not attending church anywhere. They may or may not be affiliated with some church, but they’re
not going there. If you don’t think
that’s true, just think about the number of people who live here, and then
think about the number of people who are in church on an average Sunday. Is it half?
Is it a third? Is it even a
fourth? There are lots of people here
in town who need what our church offers.
But we cannot just open the doors and expect them to come in. We’ve done some things to reach out beyond
our doors, and that’s good, but we’ve only scratched the surface of what we
could do, if we only make up our minds that we’re going to.
Here’s the other way I think this
helps. You’re probably aware that, if
you look at the numbers, the United Methodist Church in the United States is
declining. We’re not the only
denomination that is, of course, but that does not make the decline any better
or give us an excuse. Many of you can
probably also remember a time when this church had a lot more people in it than
it does now, too.
I believe what our history shows is
that the United Methodist Church was and is part of God’s plan. Before the United Methodist church existed,
there were needs of people that were not being met by the church. The United Methodist Church was formed as
the answer to meet those needs.
There are still needs of people
that are not being met by the church.
And the United Methodist Church is still the answer to meet those
needs. That’s true whether were talking
about the worldwide United Methodist Church or the United Methodist Churches of
the Wheatland Parish.
As long as the United Methodist
Church is needed, it will continue to be part of God’s plan. As long as the United Methodist Church is
part of God’s plan, it will continue to exist.
Again, that’s true whether we’re talking about the worldwide United
Methodist Church or the United Methodist Churches of the Wheatland Parish.
If the United Methodist Church ever
stops being part of God’s plan, then it will no longer exist and there won’t be
anything we can do about it, because God is stronger than we are. As long as the United Methodist Church is
part of God’s plan, though, it will continue exist, because God is stronger
than we are. If we do our part to work
for the church and for God, though, the United Methodist Church will not only
continue to exist. It will start
growing, and it will keep growing.
What our history shows is that this
church is here to meet people’s needs, both their spiritual needs and their
physical needs. Let’s do everything we
can to help meet those needs for the glory of God.
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