Recovering Methodism’s Apostolic Heart
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I’ve always been something of a dreamer, a pilgrim. I am often captured by the “idea” or “possibility” of something, rather than the reality staring me in the face. Not one who puts down roots for very long in one place, I poured myself into a military career that allowed me to change jobs and cities every few years. And when God began to call me to ministry, I struggled to see how that calling fit into the United Methodist Church in which I was raised. The gifts and passions which God had planted in my heart for dreaming new possibilities just did not seem to align with the priorities and structures of the UMC.
Then I came across a book by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come, which gave me a vision to see the world, and the Church, in a radically new way. Hirsch and Frost argue that a holistic vision for ministry leadership in the church is laid out in Ephesians 4: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. All these kinds of leaders have a key role in shaping and building up the body of Christ for ministry in the world, but in recent years the Church has privileged only two: pastors and teachers. Think about it for a moment: of all the gifts required for ordination, which are more likely to be lifted up as essential? This privileging of pastors and teachers is common among most Protestant denominations, and it’s no surprise that the UMC’s leadership deployment process also neglects a vital role for apostolic, prophetic, and evangelistic leaders who, Frost and Hirsch point out, are essential to the missional renewal of the Church.
It took me years to understand that I have an “apostolic” call to ministry. An apostle is one who is “sent,” someone who pioneers new approaches to ministry or plants a new church or non-profit organization. Apostles thrive at the margins of the church and keep the church’s vision and imagination focused on the outside world. Without apostles, the Church can easily become consumed with itself, more invested in maintaining its institutions than serving the needs of those outside. While some scholars and pastors believe that only original, first-century witnesses of Jesus’s resurrection were called “apostles,” and that no one followed in their footsteps when they died, Paul’s letter to the Ephesians strongly implies a functional understanding of apostles in relation to the other leadership giftings that are essential to the healthy growth of the church towards maturity, unity, and fullness in Christ (Eph. 4:13). Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that the functional role of apostles continues to be a vital and necessary element in the Church today, and that God has called women and men to be apostles among us.
A few years ago, I brought my apostolic gifts, passions, and priorities into the UMC’s ordination process, but the Church did not really know what to do with me. To paraphrase J.B. Phillips, it seemed that the church was trying to “squeeze me into its own mold.” Perhaps more importantly, I discovered that the Church’s ordination process lacked the theology, language, and wisdom to guide me in exploring the implications of a ministry grounded in an apostolic calling and identity. And so I had to find that guidance elsewhere.
Here's the irony: the Methodist movement was born with an apostolic heart. John Wesley was an apostle, not confined to the ministry of the local church but instead called to “reform the Church” by establishing new structures of mission and discipleship across England. Wesley and his preachers were—to use a fashionable modern word—“disrupters” of the Church of England. They were frequently attacked for spiritual fanaticism and threatening the good order and discipline of the Church. The most compelling example of Wesley’s apostolic heart was his embrace (reluctant at first) of field preaching, which reached scores of ordinary people and fueled the explosive growth of early British Methodism. Wesley deployed preachers in traveling circuits to reach new people and develop structures of intentional discipleship in many different locales. In the new American nation, Francis Asbury similarly utilized circuits of Methodist preachers across the countryside. These systems of circuit-riding preachers served as an apostolic engine that reached thousands of new people as the American nation grew and expanded into the western frontier. The tales of American Methodist preachers riding horseback for miles in the rain are legendary examples of costly discipleship matched with missionary fervor. The Methodist Episcopal Church developed from humble numbers after the Revolutionary War to become the largest Christian denomination in the United States by the mid-nineteenth century.
Frost and Hirsch argue that centuries of Christendom in Europe—where the Church and the State were so closely aligned as to be almost indistinguishable—diminished the role of apostles, prophets and evangelists in the Church. In a society where everyone was considered to be a Christian, there was no need for apostles and evangelists, except for sending to far-off countries where the “heathens” had yet to believe in Christ. Missionary energy was directed toward unreached peoples but rarely toward the nominally Christian society of Europe. Bursts of apostolic fervor did appear occasionally, as in the monastic movements of the medieval era, pietism in early modern Germany, and, of course, Methodism in England and America. But those bursts were largely the exception to the norm.
The current “itinerant system” of appointing clergy in the United Methodist Church emerged from a vital and missionally oriented practice of circuit-riding preachers. What began as a missionary force zealously devoted to reaching new people with the gospel, over time, has turned into a mechanistic system that exists primarily with the needs of an institution in mind. While there are many reasons the UMC’s appointment process needs to change, let me offer just one critique: today there seems to be no place in this system for the kind of apostolic heart that was so vital to early Methodism. People with apostolic passions who come before boards of ordained ministry can struggle to articulate their call in a way that is understood by selection committees filled almost entirely with pastors of local churches.
I serve Christ in campus ministry, and I can’t imagine doing anything else. I love the transitory, even fleeting, nature of this work. I’m always connecting with new students, because the opportunity to reach them only lasts a few years. The secular, post-Christian context of the public university is a challenging but exciting place to be in ministry. Looking out over the “mission field” on campus, I see the pressing need and remember Jesus’s words: “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” (Matt. 9:37-38). I wonder why the Church isn’t giving more attention to one of the most strategic places of influence in our society.
Over the years, I’ve met other campus ministers within the United Methodist Church, many of them much younger than me, who share my frustration. They feel called to reach and serve college students, but are often discouraged from considering campus ministry as a long-term vocation. That message comes in at least two forms:
1) If you want to be an ordained elder, you have to serve a local church first. To these campus ministers, many of them with clear apostolic gifting and passion, their call is to campus ministry, not the local church. In a real sense, their campus ministry is the local church! Why can’t an apostolic enterprise like collegiate ministry be a valid life-long calling for an ordained elder? Is it really necessary for a person seeking elder’s ordination to spend their early years being shaped in a ministry context radically different than the place to which they feel called?
2) One could also become an ordained deacon. After all, aren’t deacons called to work at the margins of the Church? While that can be true, are ordained elders then excluded from working at the margins? Of course not! Sometimes I think that deacon’s ordination is the place where we put all those people called to ministry that we don’t know what to do with! This perspective seems driven largely by the fact that the UMC lacks a solid theological vision for the ministry of the deacon, and hasn’t had one since the Order of Deacon was created in 1996. We can and should have a much higher vision for the ministry of deacon than the church equivalent to the Land of Misfit Toys.
Because I serve in campus ministry and embrace an apostolic calling, I see a clear connection between the two. Not everyone views campus ministry in the same way, and certainly the other leadership giftings, like pastor, teacher, and evangelist, are also a vital element of effective work among college students. It’s also true that there are many other kinds of ministry which might legitimately be considered apostolic: chaplaincy, working intentionally with the poor, and church-planting, among others. The opportunities for energetic, innovative, and entrepreneurial ministry are plenty. Can we recognize those whom God has raised up for this kind of work?
I believe it is time to recover a Wesleyan Apostolate—a missionary order, so to speak—of laity, deacons, and elders who are gifted and called to start new ventures, explore new territory, pioneer new ministries, and reach new people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. John Wesley’s ministry was apostolic in nature, and for all the troubles he had with the Church of England in his day, at least the Church did not totally impede him from following the Holy Spirit and doing the work that launched the Methodist movement. There certainly have been lively examples of apostolic and evangelistic ministry within American Methodism in recent history, notably people like Phoebe Palmer, John Mott, E. Stanley Jones, and Harry Denman. I fear that decades of numerical decline and theological struggle have turned us inward, distrustful of one another, and eager to exert control. That is not an environment conducive to innovative risk-taking in ministry.
The Church needs to do more than just tolerate those who have a calling for apostolic ministry. We need a renewed apostolic imagination! I pray that we will learn to appreciate, recognize, and support those with apostolic gifting. That would mean making intentional space for apostles, prophets, and evangelists in the leadership development process of the Church, for both laity and clergy, and for both deacons and elders. Sam Metcalfe, in his book Beyond the Local Church, observes that the Greek word apostello, which in the New Testament is often translated “sent,” can also be translated “released.” If the Wesleyan tradition has often understood the itinerancy as a “sent ministry,” imagine what it might mean for us to have a “released ministry,” empowering laity, deacons, and elders to fulfill the ministry to which God has called them, whether that be the local church, a campus ministry, or other forms of creative outreach to a world desperately in need of the gospel.
I have a hunch that the clergy appointment process in the UMC and other new expressions of Methodism will look radically different in the future than it does today. Whatever happens in the United Methodist Church, it is my prayer that the renewed and emerging structures that arise from the current turmoil will commit to making grassroots apostolic ministry a theological and strategic priority, and that we will, with the Spirit’s leading, recover Methodism’s apostolic heart.
Mike Weaver is the Executive Director of the Bradley Study Center, a Christian study center serving students and faculty at Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, Virginia. He can be reached at mike@bradleystudycenter.org.