Rekindling the Wesleyan Fire: The Next Methodism Summit II
If the spirit of the Next Methodism Summit II is any indication of the health and vitality of the Wesleyan movement, there is much for which to be both thankful and hopeful. The Summit took place in Alexandria, VA, Jan. 19-21, 2024, at the historic Lyceum. It was organized by the John Wesley Institute, where I serve as director. Over 75 scholars and church leaders gathered from across the Wesleyan family. We gathered with the purpose of writing a document describing holiness of heart and life, the promise of God to make us whole—to make us who we are meant to be in Christ by the power of his Holy Spirit.
It’s not uncommon for scholars to gather. They do so at conferences, faculty retreats, or other academic events, sometimes clad in academic robes. These usually involve presentations of some sort and debate followed by more presentations and more debate. One usually finds books for sale, as everyone wants to keep up with the latest resources. Job interviews might take place, book contracts might be signed, and new academic articles often find their genesis in panel presentations. But it is not common for scholars and church leaders to gather with the stated purpose of producing collaborative materials, and in this case, materials designed specifically for formation within the life of the church.
This recent Summit was not the first time the JWI has convened such a gathering. In January of 2022 nearly 60 scholars and church leaders gathered in Alexandria to write the statement that would become The Faith Once Delivered: A Wesleyan Witness to Christian Orthodoxy, published this month by Seedbed. This is an accessible document on the basics of Christianity: God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), sin, salvation, revelation, the life of the church, and the culmination of all things, written with the stated purpose that it can be used by everyday people in the church. And so this January, we gathered again to focus on holiness. It was a huge success.
The Summit itself spans three days, beginning and ending with services of Holy Communion on Friday and Sunday. On Saturday, the day begins with a Wesley Covenant Service and ends with a service of prayer and praise. In between these services of worship, the focus of the Summit is working groups, six of them divided by topic to cover the various aspects of the Summit document outline, and two keynote addresses.
After the Opening Communion service, I spoke to the full group about the vision of the Summit and its mechanics. I told a story about something that took place at my church: one of the ministers fell down in front of the whole congregation during the opening procession. Everyone stood there in shock, not moving. Instead of being surprised, and decorous in this case, what we needed to do was just to pick him up off of the floor, which a member of the congregation finally did.
I offered this story as a metaphor for the relationship of scholarship and the church. For too long, many of us have stood in shock watching what’s going on in the church rather than stooping down, as it were, to make things better. While the church has been riled by every wind of doctrine, shaped by the culture rather than shaping the culture, and often left with pop theology lacking the depth that life and its challenges demand, scholarship has stood with apparent indifference, doing what we’re supposed to as academics but not what is needed from scholars in service of the church. Some have done this their entire careers, but not all of us. This is changing. And the Summit represents that change.
I wasn’t taking any shots at scholarship or academic life, because I think they are good things. The life of the mind is a good thing. The opposite, anti-intellectualism, is a corrosive element that ultimately undermines the church’s faithful witness. Anti-intellectualism is anti-Christian. But uniting the pair so long disjoined, as Charles Wesley wrote, “knowledge and vital piety,” is a task that needs continual care and attention. This care is at the heart of the Next Methodism Summit.
As it has been for centuries, catechesis is the answer for a lack of formation in our churches. But for catechesis to take place, faithful and solid materials must be produced to present the Christian faith in its fullness in an accessible way. Accessibility is key, and the writing done at Summit gatherings is intended to be non-academic, even conversational.
I only told my parents this later, but when I spoke to the Summit, I talked to the participants about my parents, our intended audience. They are faithful Christians, Nazarenes who are engaged in and support their local church. They know their Bible and know it to be true. They care for others, volunteer regularly, and sing in the choir. They’re college educated. But if they have academic books in the house, those books will likely have my name on the cover. They’re not likely to read a 700-page systematic theology text, but they will read an accessible volume on Christianity and the life of faith by authors whose love for God is more evident in the text than any penchant for academic terminology. This helped many of those gathered at the Summit, who told me that they immediately thought of their own parents, and wrote their sections with them in mind.
The theme of holiness can be tricky for the Wesleyan family, even if it is the fire that drove the early Methodists and so many others over the course of the Wesleyan movement. After the success of the last Summit that produced The Faith Once Delivered, I thought and prayed on the question: “What does the church need?” And it struck me that Methodism—in all its variety—needs to recapture its fire: it needs to recapture the defining doctrine of Wesleyanism: holiness of heart and life.
This was the fuel of Methodism. And it drove not only the message of early Methodists, but the way that they organized themselves, and even how they approached theology itself. For Wesley, holiness was the goal, the telos, and the lodestar of Wesleyan preaching and teaching. David Hempton described this so well in Methodism: Empire of the Spirit when he wrote, “If Wesley’s theology must be reduced to a model, one that offers better explanatory power…is to see it as a moving vortex, fueled by scripture and divine love, shaped by experience, reason, and tradition, and moving dynamically toward holiness or Christian perfection.” Hempton adds to this, “Any model that lacks dynamic movement toward holiness and its growth within individuals and its dissemination throughout the world is clearly inadequate.” Holiness was the formative fire of early Methodism.
But what does it mean? What is holiness? What does it look like? How can it be attained? These are the questions that the people in the pews are asking, and these were the questions that drove the Summit and its work. We know the words of St. Paul: “May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thes. 5:23). But Paul also adds: “He who calls you is faithful, and he will do it”(v. 24). So perhaps we should say that holiness is not only the fire of Methodism, but basic Christianity.
When Wesley described Methodism’s calling, he stated very clearly that it was to “reform the nation, particularly the Church, and to spread Scriptural holiness over the land.” But in order for the Methodists to fulfill their own calling, they need to proclaim this truth to the Church and to the world. Methodism will recapture its fire when it is able to articulate clearly the promises of God.
Because holiness is so essential to the Wesleyan way of following Jesus, though, we argue about it. In fact, most splits in our movement have come about because of competing visions of holiness. And yet the Summit was tasked with finding a common voice to describe it. Before we met, I was a bit worried about how this might play out. And so I gathered other Wesley scholars in June for a conversation about the broad contours of a Wesleyan vision of holiness, a vision broad enough to include as many of Wesley’s heirs as possible. But as I told the Summit, let’s not write a Wesleyan document on holiness that John Wesley could not endorse.
The Wesley scholars who met with me agreed that this vision of holiness must be Trinitarian, it must be steeped in scripture and God’s holy love, speak to the freedom we have in Christ from the guilt, power, and being of sin, include discipleship, and avoid language developed later by some parts of the movement that is not embraced by the whole. This last part proved controversial to one or two people at the Summit, but an overwhelming number realized the vital importance of finding a common voice to describe the promise of wholeness in Christ, and they gladly embraced this unified vision.
The common voice that we found—and embraced—is a profound step forward for unity across the Wesleyan world. While it is noteworthy to gather persons from different denominational traditions, those denominations represent real theological differences and often scars from the ecclesiastical battles that spurred their creation. Therefore, this breadth represents potential pitfalls to the collaborative work of something like the Summit. At this year’s gathering we had scholars and leaders from: the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church; the Anglican Church in North America; the Church of God, Cleveland; the Church of God in Christ; the Church of the Nazarene; the Episcopal Church; the Free Methodist Church; the Global Methodist Church; the International Pentecostal Holiness Church; the Salvation Army; the United Methodist Church; and the Wesleyan Church. And out of this great diversity, a common statement has emerged, not as an official statement of any of these churches, but as a formational tool to equip the laity with the riches of their own tradition.
The new document will be called To Spread Scriptural Holiness: A Wesleyan Witness. The working groups wrote its main sections at the Summit. What takes place now is an editorial process to ensure that the text is accessible to a wide audience, includes sufficient scriptural citation, and reads like a common text rather than a collaborative one with unique voices. Once this is done, an introduction will be written and a closing section.
The major sections of text now include:
The Holiness of God: Source and Pattern
Describing the holiness of God and the work of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—in making us holy.
Scriptural Holiness: Commandment and Promise
Describing the vision of holiness found in the Old and New Testaments.
A Wesleyan Vision: The Triumph of Grace
Describing not only the universal call to holiness, but holy love (God’s love) and grace (God’s power) transforming us.
Holiness and the Church: Social Holiness
Describing the ways in which the church is organized to promote holiness and instill in us practices such as the sacraments and other means of grace to make us holy.
Holiness in Practice: The Church’s Witness
Describing the church’s witness to what holiness looks like in practice, with particular emphasis on its social repercussions.
A final section, “Holiness as the Purpose of the Wesleyan Movement,” will be written once the editorial process is complete.
Some of the highlights for me included the Communion services, hearing 75 scholars and leaders sing Charles Wesley hymns at the top of their lungs, the preaching by UMC, GMC, Nazarene, and COGIC clergy, brilliant insights on the doctrine of holiness among the church fathers, and times shared in working groups where we couldn’t help but say “Amen” when portions of the work were read out for discussion. On Saturday evening, we heard a powerful message on holiness, and I earned the title “Bossman Ryan Danker,” a moniker I will cherish.
I could fill this article with names of persons at the Summit and all of the things that they did, but the reality is that every person at the Summit, whether they addressed the entire group or not, was vital to our collective work. Everyone at the Summit was there because they were invited and because they are leaders, trusted, and faithful. With the grace of God, the very power of his Holy Spirit, I believe that our work will be a blessing to the Wesleyan movement, a faithful and formative witness to that scriptural holiness that is God’s dynamic work to make us whole, setting us free to live as he has always intended.
Ryan N. Danker is the director of the John Wesley Institute, Washington, DC and Assistant Lead Editor of Firebrand Magazine.