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Conference aims to spark revival of church heritage Tim Ghianni, Aug 6, 2010
ILLUSTRATION COURTESY OF THE GENERAL COMMISSION ON ARCHIVES AND HISTORY
John Wesley preached to Cornish miners at Trewint in southwest England.
By Tim Ghianni Special Contributor
NASHVILLE, Tenn.—United Methodists can experience revival if they rediscover their heritage, say denominational leaders organizing a Wesleyan Leadership Conference here, Oct. 14-16 at West End United Methodist Church.
The denomination became Methodist in name only by the 19th century, when it sought to become ‘respectable,’ says Steve Manskar, director of Wesleyan leadership for the General Board of Discipleship (GBOD).
“Congregations began to jettison some of the characteristics that set them apart as Methodists,” he said. In an effort to attract more people to the church, the Methodist movement’s earlier focuses on lay pastoral leadership and class meetings were de-emphasized. “It worked,” he said, “because from the middle of the 19th century into the early 20th century, the Methodist Church was the largest, most influential Protestant denomination in the United States.”
But the result is that the denomination transformed itself “from a missional movement to an attractional church,” Dr. Manskar said. The Wesleyan Leadership Conference, he said, seeks to help the church reclaim some of the Wesleyan missional distinctives it needs, especially to reach a post-Christian, postmodern world.
Scott Kisker, whose book Mainline or Methodist?: Rediscovering Our Evangelistic Mission (Discipleship Resources) is the foundation for the conference, will help lead the discussion.
Dr. Kisker, professor of church history at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., says he hopes the conference will be a step in “rediscovering the identity . . . what it means to be a Methodist in a way that can reinvigorate our ministry in ways that are biblically more faithful and evangelistically more fruitful and that we would know Jesus better.”
Dr. Kisker advocates a return to the “spiritual vitality” sparked by class meetings, field preaching and band meetings.
Class meetings brought lay people together once a week “to inquire after one another’s souls . . . with the expectation of helping each other to grow spiritually,” he said. Field preaching was a way to engage non-churchgoers with the gospel.
And band meetings, he added, were groups that met “to confess their sins to each other so that they might be healed of whatever brokenness was in them and become more holy, not through polishing the image on the outside but becoming more deeply aware of the grace of God working on the inside and our own need for grace, quite frankly.”
The conference is aimed at lay leaders as well as clergy.
“The people we want to participate in the conversation are leaders at all levels of the church, lay and clergy, particularly lay people,” said Dr. Manskar. “We want conference, district and congregational lay leaders, lay speakers, certified lay ministers, licensed local pastors and, of course, ordained elders and deacons.”
Keynote speakers will include Dr. Kisker and Taylor Burton-Edwards, GBOD’s director of worship resources, with group discussions and workshops by GBOD staffers: the Rev. Vance Ross, deputy general secretary, and Sandy Jackson, director of connectional laity development.
“It’s the laity from which this is going to happen and emerge,” Dr. Manskar said. That’s the way it happened in early Methodism. They were the ones who were responsible for forming people as faithful disciples of Jesus Christ.”
ILLUSTRATION COURTESY OF THE GENERAL COMMISSION ON ARCHIVES AND HISTORY
Dr. Kisker advocates a return to the “spiritual vitality” sparked by class meetings, field preaching and band meetings.
