Being an early Methodist preacher involved facing an astounding number of risks. John Wesley describes the fierce onset of a brutal mob on Wednesday, October 20, 1743: "To attempt speaking was vain, for the noise on every side was like the roaring of the sea. So they dragged me along till we came to the town, where, seeing the door of a large house open, I attempted to go in; but a man, catching me by the hair, pulled me back into the middle of the mob. I continued speaking all the time to those within hearing, feeling no pain or weariness. At the west end of the town, seeing a door half open, I made toward it, and would have gone in, but a gentleman in the shop would not suffer me, saying they would pull the house down to the ground. However, I stood at the door and asked, 'Are you willing to hear me speak?' Many cried out, 'No, no, knock his brains out; down with him; kill him at once.' Others said, 'Nay, but we will hear him first.' "'
Wesley's Journal describes 60 such riots, and his personal willingness to take big risks spread like Pentecostal wildfire across the early Methodist Church. One lay preacher, a powerfully-built stonemason named John Nelson, was assaulted by a mob and taken before a law officer on charges of disturbing the peace. The following dialogue between the officer and the Methodist preacher ensued.
"Why can't you stay at home?" asked the officer. "You see the mob will not suffer you to preach here."
"I didn't know this town was governed by a mob," was Nelson's ready comeback.
"Don't preach here," commanded the officer, as Nelson went on, pointing out the town's moral need.
In telling the story to Wesley, Nelson added, "But God opened my mouth and I did not cease to set life and death before h iM.192
If two words could describe the spirit which carried the early Methodist movement, they would be these, "holy boldness."
Boldness in Church Planting and People-Winning
Somewhere between the days of Wesley and the contemporary church, we seem
to have lost our nerve. We have grown hypercautious and have moved from
frontline pioneers to bringers-up of the rear. We have developed the "disease"
that church growth experts call "people blindness." That is, we
have failed to update and change our people-winning methods to adjust to
our changing society. Rather than going outside the walls of the established
church to unreached peoples, we have said to society, "Here's our church.
You're welcome to come to worship with us if you want to!"
For some reason we have also developed what I call "frontier blindness." In the beginning of the Methodist movement, circuit riders and Methodist societies could be found on the front lines of population movement. Wesley took the Gospel where it had never been heard before. Risk-taking pastors did not hesitate to preach on circuits that promised little remuneration, few people and little potential for growth.
Since then that willingness to risk has lost its appeal for our Methodist clergy. Many pastors will not voluntarily move to an appointment which does not have a modern parsonage or a higher salary. At one time one of the first buildings to be erected in a pioneer community was a Methodist church, but in recent years denominational leaders generally have expressed reluctance to plant a church unless a neighborhood of ample middle-to-upper-class houses already surrounds the site and unless fiscal success is virtually guaranteed.
On the priority of church planting, we would do well to take a lesson from our Southern Baptist friends. Jack Redford is their director of the department of Church Extension of the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board in Atlanta. Referring to a typically Baptist problem-too many churches-he lamented: "Southern Baptists annually close about one-third of their 'new missions starts.9 Only about two-thirds ever grow to congregation status. Too many do not survive."'
Redford bemoans a tendency to plant new churches with inadequate study of city demographics and population projections. One of three closes, yes. But two out of three succeed. The bottom line is, the Baptist Church is growing, and the Methodists, who hardly ever close a new church, are declining. Despite doctrinal differences, the Baptists must be tossed at least one bouquet, they apparently have not vet lost their frontier nerve. In the southwest, at least, Southern Baptist churches are still springing up like dandelions in cotton fields and on future main thoroughfares. Sometimes the buildings are army surplus Quonset huts or temporary structures. But they are churches, and many would-be Methodists are joining them simply because no United Methodist church has been planted in the area.
Before we grow by any significant degree, we United Methodists will have to swallow our denominational pride, note the lesson, gather our courage on the bureaucratic level and return to being a frontier church, which, after all, was a Methodist concept in the first place!
Bolder Membership Standards
A second front on which we seem to have lost our nerve concerns membership
standards. The early records of the Methodist societies are full of new
members. However, Wesley was not hesitant to purge his societies when members
did not meet his high standards of personal behavior. Under the date of
March 12, 1743, Wesley gives the results of his investigation in the Society
at Newcastle.
The number of those who were expelled from the Society was sixtyfour:
Two for cursing and swearing.
Two for habitual Sabbath-breaking.
Seventeen for drunkenness.
Two for retailing spiritous liquors.
Three for quarrelling and brawling.
One for beating his wife.
Three for habitual, willful lying.
Four for railing and evil-speaking.
One for idleness and laziness.
And, Nine-and-twenty for lightness and carelessness .4
Today, though, inactive or negligent Methodists may be removed from a local church roll only after a long and cumbersome process of seeking their permission for removal and reading their names before the charge conference three years in a row. Today getting onto a membership roll is very easy, but being removed is very difficult. It has become so principally because a congregation's apportionment askings are based largely on the local church's total membership. When the denomination loses members, it loses money.
The theory behind the present policy is understandable; local congregations should be reluctant to drop any living person from their membership rolls. Falling into inactivity may indicate more than ever a person's need for the ministry of the church. However, the actual result is a denomination whose local church rolls are laden with the names of thousands of uncommitted people. We have removed the Wesleyan price tag from Methodist membership to prevent membership losses. Ironically, we have lost members anyway, by the millions.
I propose that everyone interested in becoming a United Methodist be required to complete a membership orientation class before joining the church. Then, any member who fails to live up to his or her basic membership vows for a continuous period of six months and who cannot or will not show just cause (illness, infirmity, personnel crises, etc.) for such negligence will be candidate for removal by an elected membership committee, consisting of the senior pastor and eight to twelve laity. Three pastoral contacts with these members will also have been made before the nomination for removal.
If this proposal is ever considered seriously, fear will sweep over many denominational leaders who would foresee a cataclysmic dropping of membership. Indeed, an initial drop will occur. But the decrease will be temporary and the removals will be almost entirely of members who did not want to live up to the church's high standards to begin with. The end result will be the attraction of persons who applaud the new higher membership standard and become United Methodists for that reason.
A Bolder Standard of Pastoral Accountability
The United Methodist Church seems to hold the position regarding pastors
and their charges, "once appointed, always appointed." Methodist
law states: "Every effective member in full connection who is in good
standing shall receive an annual appointment by the bishop."' This
ruling offers ministers great professional security, but creates an intrinsic
problem for some local churches. Changing a minister's "good standing"
status to "bad standing" is a tedious, unpleasant process, one
which few ministers wish to impose upon their fellows.
More often, when a pastor gives indication of ineffectiveness, the inept minister receives a lecture and a warning, and then is moved to a different pastoral charge before an official step is taken to terminate his ministry. Pastors who commit colorful, flagrant sins are removed swiftly. But the pastor whose sin is simple laziness is often retained, protected, moved repeatedly and guaranteed an appointment throughout his career. The United Methodist Church has silently lost thousands of members because inadequate persons remain in leadership positions.
I propose a change from "once appointed, always appointed" to "three strikes and you're out!" If the pastor is requested to move by Pastor-Parish Relations Committees two appointments in a row, he or she will automatically fall under a probationary status and will be required to undergo a year-long review by the Probationer's Committee of the Annual Conference Board of Ordained Ministry. The review would cover an in-depth evaluation of the pastor's preaching, theology, career church growth/decline record and parish visitation practices. A group of concerned laity and clergy would be assigned to meet with the pastor once a month to discuss his problems directly. Classes in basic pastoral skills would be offered, which he would be required to complete satisfactorily. Interviews of the pastor's former parishioners seeking their views of his strengths and weaknesses would be conducted.
As a result of this process, the pastor will show marked progress in ministerial performance, or the Probationer's Committee will conclude the pastor was unjustly rejected by the two congregations. And if his third Pastor Parish Committee requests he be reappointed for three years in his new appointment, the pastor will be reinstated in "good standing."
If, however, either the pastor fails to impressively complete the assigned work, the Probationer's Committee confirms that he is indeed ineffective, or the pastor's third PPR Committee requests he be moved within three years of the previous committee's rejection, the pastor's status as an ordained United Methodist minister will be automatically terminated unless the bishop and cabinet find extreme, exceptional justifiable circumstances and overrule the termination.
Bolder Appointment-making
Wesleyan holy boldness should obviously reflect in the making of pastoral
appointments. Too often, rewards and bigger, more attractive appointments
are given not to the pastors whose churches have grown by profession of
faith conversions, but to those ministers who have demonstrated the highest
degree of loyalty to the institutional church.
In one annual conference recently, pastors were reporting a cabinet announcement-which they took to be a warning-that their appointments would be made according to the percentage of apportionments their churches had paid the previous year.
I do not underestimate the importance of denominational loyalty or the regular payment of Methodist financial obligations. Apportionment-paying, like it or not, is part of being Wesleyan. In my churches I have always insisted on it.
Still, if a pastor is faithful to the institution and seems to be reasonably accepted by laypersons, issues such as his or her record on how many new members he receives annually by profession of faith or whether his church grows or declines numerically or how closely her theology resembles Wesley's sometimes seem to take a back seat in significance. If we are to grow, bishops and their cabinets would do well to publicly, consistently and concretely reward pastors who preach powerfully, grow intellectually, conduct strong programs of visitation, organize new Sunday school classes and consistently show high annual rates of new members received on profession of faith.
Pastors who consistently lead in such ministries should be moved to the head of the line for appointment to already-strong churches, to new churches and to congregations in growth-potential areas. Conference leaders should be reluctant to promote pastors simply because they pay their apportionments, never criticize the denomination and have accrued long pastoral tenures.
United Methodism stands at a crossroad. Once we were a dynamic, growing, people-winning movement. But for many years now we have been losing ground. Unlike other organizations which simply die of old age, United Methodists can literally choose whether we live or die. Choosing life will unavoidably mean taking some courageous and costly steps. The future belongs to the brave, to the risk-takers. Do we have what it takes to return to Wesley's standard of holy boldness?
1. Halford E. Luccock. Endless Line of Splendor (Chicago, Illinois:
The Advancefor Christ and His Chiirch, 1950), p. 19.
2. Ibid., p. 37.
3. lack Redford. Planting New Churches (.Vashville, Tennessee: Broadman,
1978). p. 34.
4. Luccock, p. 22.
5. The Book of Discipline (Alashville, Tennessee: Abingdon, 1984),,p.
209.
Tom Fuller is a member of the Northwest Texas Annual Conference and is the pastor of Oakwood United Methodist Church in Lubbock, Texas.
This article was printed in Good News (September/October 1987).