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Why I am (even yet!) a United Methodist
By Will Willimon

Each year thousands of United Methodists use a little book that I wrote a few years ago, Why I Am a United Methodist (Abingdon, 1990). The book seems to be popular in new member classes, inquirers groups, or among folk who, though they have been United Methodist for some time, want to know more about their church. Recently, one of those people wrote me a letter that asked, “I’ve read some of your ideas for church reform, as well as your criticisms of the church in Good News magazine. Considering all the ways that you are unhappy with United Methodism, why are you even yet United Methodist?”

Her question deserves an answer and, since Good News is about the only United Methodist related publication that is interested in my notions of reform, here is my answer. In Why I am a United Methodist, I called being born and bred into United Methodism an act of peculiar grace. Unlike some of you, I did not decide to be a United Methodist; I was put here before I had any chance to check out Presbyterianism or to respond to overtures from the Baptists. I call it “grace” because grace means “gift,” something that God does rather than something that we decide or do. I also call my United Methodism grace because, despite any lover’s quarrel I might have carried on in print with my church (Rekindling the Flame: Strategies for a Vital United Methodism, Abingdon, 1987), I can still pray, on most days, “Thank you Lord for putting me here.”

To that misguided bishop who tried to get Abingdon Press to squelch the book I wrote with Andy Langford (Reinventing the Connection: The Reform of the United Methodist Church, 1996) because he felt that such criticism of the church is “disloyal,” I say that it is love that makes me want a better church than we have created. And it is grateful loyalty that keeps me deciding to stay happily United Methodist. Perhaps “happily” is an overstatement.

Here are my present reasons for staying sometimes unhappily and sometimes happily United Methodist:

1. We are conversionist Christians. Wesleyans have, deep in our bones, the story of a priggish little Oxford don named John who was set aflame for Jesus. We believe that though Jesus takes us singing, “Just As I Am,” he never leaves us just as we are. New Birth is at the heart of a Wesleyan witness to the gospel. The good news is not only that I must change, but that I can, by the grace of God, change. Our logo is the cross and flame. We are a great church for people who want more from their lives, from their worship, and from their discipleship than the same old tired path they have been walking.

In my attempts at church reform, one of the saddest, most “unwesleyan” responses I receive is, “I don’t believe the church can change.” With Jesus risen from the dead, and the Holy Spirit loose, it is theologically impossible to deny the possibility of change. I realize therefore that my most trenchant criticisms of our current polity are deeply Wesleyan. I really believe in the possibility of new life, radical reorientation, detoxification, and conversion.

Don’t tell me people can’t be radically changed. I believe in mind-blowing, wild, born again conversion because it happened to me.

2. We are a gracious blend of the Catholic and the Evangelical, sacramental and biblical traditions. Wesley managed to mix, in his own theology and life, those polarities that make United Methodism a rich, diverse expression of the Christian faith. Our worship can be the best thing about our life together with its historic focus on the preaching and reading of Scripture blended with eucharistic practice. Our Hymnal and its various supplements enable us to experience theology as something we sing.

Last year I preached at a glorious, rich, almost too rich, two-hour service of ordination in the Baltimore-Washington Conference at the borrowed National Cathedral. We had a vivid baptism, a high, mystery-laden Eucharist, an ordination and just about everything else we could think of that had to do with the Lord. Finally, at the conclusion of this great, formal, sacramental service, we stood and sang “Here I am Lord.”

Bishop May interrupted us after the first verse saying, “I believe that someone here has felt the hand of the Lord upon them! Somebody here is being called into a life of service to Christ and his Church. I know it! I want you to get up, come from where you are, and join me here at the altar and let’s pray about what God wants you to do.”

We resumed singing, people streamed forward, there were tears, the entire cabinet had to join the bishop at the altar. We kept singing for another twenty minutes. It was wonderful. It was too much. It was a work of the Holy Spirit. It was very United Methodist.

3. Christianity is about a relationship with Jesus Christ. Recently, I spent more than an hour with a student who is trying to decide whether or not Christianity is worth believing or only a bunch of superstitious hooey. I explicated for him our major beliefs. I contrasted this faith with some other faiths. I pointed to the centrality of Scripture. Finally, I told him, “Look, when it comes down to it, it’s all about Jesus. It’s about being summoned by Christ to work for him and with him in taking back the world for God. The rest of this stuff is ancillary, subsequent, and secondary. It’s about trying to walk with Jesus.”

Among all the things that the infamous “Jesus Seminar” is wrong about, they got this one thing right: it’s about Jesus. Against all vague New Age spirituality, evangelical Christians know that we can’t make Jesus over into anything we want. Against all biblical fundamentalism that would remake the faith into a desiccated system of abstract ideas, we see our job as (in Wesley’s words) “to offer them Christ.”

Jesus never said, “Agree intellectually with me.” He said, “Follow me.” John Wesley’s heart-warming experience at Aldersgate is deep within our Wesleyan imaginations. That teaches us that we are at the heart of this faith when we can say, with Wesley, that “I knew that Jesus had died for my sins, even mine….”

So last Sunday, a student emerged from Duke Chapel saying, “You are such a Methodist!” I asked this Midwestern Lutheran what he meant by that. “Lutheran preachers explain things to you. You never explain anything. In your sermons you always go for the gut, always expect the congregation to have some sort of experience, to get intimate with Jesus. That’s so Methodist!”

Guilty as charged, by the grace of God.

4. Clergy collegiality. For those of you who are not clergy, the fact that United Methodist clergy are members of annual conferences, that we have a laborious system of clergy accreditation and accountability may mean little to you, but it ought to mean more. I can show you denominations with more congregationalist polity than ours whose churches are in big trouble because their clergy have become floating free-agents, free to impose their own clerical imperialism upon a hapless congregation.

Though our requirements for clergy collegiality don’t always work as well as they ought, by God’s grace they do work. At its best, our system reminds us that the Church is more important than we are, that my work is to be judged by how well I serve the mission of a congregation, and that the bishop and Annual Conference hold me accountable to standards higher than those of my own devising.  

5. We are organized. Having sat through the unproductive tedium of two General Conferences, the expensive irrelevancy of three Jurisdictional Conferences, and the sheer boredom of more Annual Conferences than I can count, it pains me to admit this but I must: United Methodist polity is a gift of God.

When asked, by a seminarian, “Why have you wasted so much time in meetings and in writing books about church reorganization?” I replied, “I’m a United Methodist.” God forgive us when our organization, our modes of clergy deployment, and our missional funding mechanisms become dysfunctional and unproductive.

A peculiar genius of the Wesleyan movement was its penchant for organizing to beat the Devil. We have the means to raise large resources for benevolences, to get the message out to millions of believers, and to mobilize for mission. We are famously adept at creating new institutions for education and service.  We actually believe that it is possible for the Holy Spirit to be incarnate in our institutional life.

If I grieve over the cutbacks by our Board of Global Ministries from mission, if I castigate the church bureaucracy for its waste and inefficiency, if I say, holding a copy of The Discipline in my hand, “If it doesn’t work, then fix it!” my only defense is, “Forgive me. I can’t help being United Methodist.”

So, if you see me at Jurisdictional Conference, if you run into me on the way down to the altar for prayer, or if you hear my voice joined with yours in “O For a Thousand Tongues,” don’t look surprised. I am, even yet, United Methodist.

William H. Willimon is Dean of the Chapel and Professor of Christian Ministry at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina and the author of Pastor: The Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry, published this past year by Abingdon Press.



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