A new hymnal for a new day, Our Great Redeemer’s Praise: A Hymnal for All God’s People is finally here after years in the making!
Available in red and navy blue, this truly pan-Wesleyan hymnbook is distinctly oriented around the Apostles’ Creed. It’s shipping now, and first-run print copies are going quickly. We look forward to worshipping together!
Every year we gather together to be restored, refreshed, and reignited by the Holy Spirit. We invite you and your family or team to join us!
A Discipleship Band is a group of 3 to 5 people who read together, pray together, and meet together to become the love of God for one another and the world.
A series of short talks on theological topics from a wide variety of Christian professors, pastors, speakers, and theologians.
We constantly find ourselves in need of the mending of our own hearts, souls and spirits.
Through a catalytic combination of teaching, training, and engagement with one another, this retreat will resource our great need for wisdom and courage, for healing and equipping, and all for the sake of our shared work of sowing for awakening in our age.
“Like divine sovereignty, predestination is not a Calvinist doctrine, it is a biblical doctrine. And indeed, as a theologian steeped in Scripture, Wesley not only affirmed the doctrine, he affirmed a very strong version of it…”
The sovereignty of God is a vitally important truth Wesleyans badly need to recover. This is not only because it is crucial for understanding the biblical drama, but also because many Wesleyans have tended to neglect it because Calvinists often give the impression that it is one of their distinctive doctrines. But the sovereignty of God is not a Calvinist doctrine, it is a biblical doctrine, and no one who wants to be faithful to Scripture can afford to ignore or downplay this great truth.
Jesus often did things that drew – or repelled – people towards or away from himself. Once he grabbed their attention, Jesus would frequently respond with parables. That Jesus spoke in parables is highly significant. Jesus didn’t speak theological jargon; one of his primary forms of communication was…parables. He acted in highly symbolic fashion, eliciting questions, to which he told strange, cryptic stories about how God’s dominion was making its impact on earth.
David understood the important of leaving a legacy. He understood that each generation should stockpile resources for the next generation. He accepted that his own failures and inadequacies would prevent him from accomplishing everything he wanted to do during his own lifetime, but he used that fact as a motivation for the future success of those who would come after him.
Here is the part that has surprised me. Guess where God has led me to start with this cultivation for renewal in our church and world? Not where I would like to begin. I wish it began with those persons who get on my nerves. (Most of us have a few such persons in our lives – just as we are usually that in the lives of one or two others!) But I have come to realize that cultivation for renewal does not start with “them.” It begins with me. Cultivation for renewal starts with you and me.
If it is true that many are gravitating to more historically resonant forms of worship, Methodists should know the resources within their own liturgical history…The forms of Methodist worship, when embraced with “heart, mind, soul and strength,” allow for reverent spontaneity and holy emotion. The use of liturgical forms, for Wesley, actually led to freedom in worship—a fact quickly lost on his American descendants.
Back then, he was inviting us to understand and accept a concept of marriage that the Church, in faithfulness to Scripture, could not accept. Now, I suppose, he is inviting us to understand and accept divorce, which we should, but not without reminding ourselves that had we been more faithful to Jesus’ teaching on divorce, marriage and family would be much stronger in our culture today.
Why did they leave him at the gate? Why not take him all the way in? Did they not understand that he had spiritual needs as well?
They buried him in that tomb; they sealed him up, completely closed away in the box, so they would never have to worry about him again. And then three days later he was more free and alive and powerful than he had ever been before! You remember that when you get boxed in! You hold on to the one who was triumphant over every box this world can put you into!
Compassion comes from a deliberate identification with another person until we see things as he sees them, and feel things as she feels them. That’s the place to which God seeks to bring all of us.
I often talk about “speaking faith,” which for me means (among other things) giving life to our ideas and beliefs by speaking them aloud. Moving them from the realm of our personal, interior selves to an external realm where they can become infectious and dynamic. That’s the kind of thing I want to happen to my prayers, to my fasting, to whatever self-denial I decide to undertake.
This is what Incarnation means. Its not just our theology. It’s our ecclesiology. It’s the way we do church. We seek to make known the unknown, by building bridges. Chuck Swindoll has said, “People who inspire others are those who see invisible bridges at the end of dead-end streets.” That’s what it means to be a witness, to build invisible bridges, so that the unknown God becomes known!
