Mainline or Methodist?: Rediscovering Our Evangelistic Mission

Discipleship Resources, 2008
ISBN 978-0-88177-541-9
$13.00… $9.10… 30% off until May 1

Over the years a number of books on the renewal of the United Methodist Church have appeared on bookshelves and coffee tables. Leaders from across the connection have offered a wide range of diagnoses on what ails the church at this moment in history and on what solutions portend hope. Examples include former Bishop Richard Wilke’s The Tie That Binds, Bishop Larry Goodpastor’s There’s Power in the Connection, Charles Yrigoren, et al., Methodism at Forty, Bishop Robert Schnase’s Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations, Craig Kennet Miller’s The Seven Myths of United Methodism, Tom Oden’s Turing Around the Mainline: How Renewal Movements are Changing the Church, and William Lawrence’s Methodism in Recovery. The conversation has many voices with different tones and pitches, all with overlapping concerns and challenges.

Now add Scott Kisker’s voice to the conversation. Kisker, Associate Professor in the James D. Logan Chair of Evangelism and Wesley Studies at Wesley Theological Seminary, speaks directly and passionately to the “identity crisis” facing the United Methodist Church. In Mainline or Methodist? (pp. 13-14), Kisker argues how “our ‘mainline’ identity is killing us” and how we must “surgically remove it if we are to regain health.” In fact, according to Kisker, when “we [United Methodists] became ‘mainline,’ we actually stopped being Methodist in all but name.” Furthermore, he adds, “Real Methodism declined because we replaced our distinctive peculiarities that made us Methodist with a bland, acceptable, almost civil religion, barely distinguishable from other traditions also now known as ‘mainline’… [and] we now have begun to reap the consequences.” No longer a prophetic, renewing movement in the church catholic, United Methodism is now simply part and parcel of America’s religious establishment. The “unholy alliance” United Methodists have made with American culture has taken its toll.

This point is central to Kisker’s book. What he states in the opening chapter sets the tone for what he believes is necessary to recover a “healthy, living Methodism within United Methodism” (p. 23). The goal, as he indicates, is to reappropriate “those parts of our identity we need” and to resist the urge to become “like the other nations” – i.e., like other “mainline” Protestant denominations. Kisker’s work is a clarion call to rethink and relearn Methodism’s evangelistic mission in the world.

Several points are worth pondering in light of Kisker’s exciting work. As a United Methodist pastor, I must say that I enjoyed taking to heart what Kisker proposes. I resonate with a great deal of what he writes. His turn-of-phrase and insight kept me turning the page. For example, I appreciated the honesty with which he diagnoses our present condition. In Chapter 1, he states succinctly how we as United Methodists are systematically sick. While there are signs of health here and there, our overall condition is not good. In addition, Kisker hits the nail on the head when he observes that as United Methodists we want to “make disciples” but have no earthly idea of how to know if we have actually made them. In fact, our mission statement as a church – “to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world” – only reveals how generic the United Methodist Church has become. As Kisker notes, “While there is nothing wrong with the mission statement (the first part comes from the Great Commission), there is nothing distinctively Methodist about it” (p. 117). What Christian couldn’t agree? Kisker is correct to express how we have abandoned the language and vision of “spreading scriptural holiness” (p. 116). And though Kisker does not explicitly say it in the book, the transformation of the world part of the mission statement leaves a great deal to be desired. Transforming the world, we say? We can’t even keep our children in church! Are we really organized to defeat the Devil? Maybe we are sicker than we thought. Perhaps Kisker’s statement about “playing church” is not only on target but needs strengthening, for if we are indeed “playing church,” we must also be faking disciples.

This raises another point in Kisker’s work: What would it look like to create an evangelical Methodist Order within United Methodism, or the wider church catholic for that matter? If Methodism is not a church, then what is it? What would an evangelical order look like? Kisker hints at this throughout and near the end. What would it look like to relearn and rethink our missional task in light of the General Rules, the Articles of Religion/Confession of Faith, Wesley’s Standard Sermons, the rich Trinitarian hymns and sacramental practices of Charles Wesley, to name a few? How would we receive and raise new members, believers and unbelievers alike? How would we want to go about reinstating the catechumenate in the life of the church? As Kisker writes at the beginning, key to renewal is reappropriating those parts that are central to Methodism (p. 23). What we need to ask now amidst the fragmentation of the Methodist tradition is how we may, under God’s guidance, work through the debris! Kisker has started a conversation I pray will continue.

Lastly, Kisker’s book raises good questions about the practice of evangelism: How may we regain our evangelistic vitality, and how may we, like Wesley in his field preaching, find places in our culture where we may communicate the glad tidings of Christ in all his offices? Kisker is certainly right to point out how we have lost our evangelistic fire and love. A failure of nerve persists throughout the United Methodist Church in the area of evangelism. And yet, while Kisker is right historically to state that Wesley’s step in the direction of field preaching marks a transition in the Methodist revival, and a key point of change in Wesley himself (a part of Wesley’s double conversion, in terms of evangelistic method), I don’t think we can lose the force of Aldersgate in the mix of our conversation. In terms of the practice of evangelism, we need to see the two points of Wesley’s double conversion as complementary, without falling into nostalgia for either! As Kisker shares, once we catch Wesley’s vision of holiness, the theology and practices of Methodism come together. They make sense. There is beauty to what Wesley and the Methodists sought to communicate. In fact, it makes us realize at this juncture in history how important preserving this theological heritage is! And while Wesley’s evangelistic efforts were to find ways of receiving and waking up nominal Christians, our tasks are no less challenging in waking up a dying church and engaging a pluralistic culture. The tools and treasures are definitely there, but as Kisker insightfully argues at the beginning so is our propensity to think that the mission is about us and that if we only get our act together all will be well. Pelagian, indeed!

This raises a final point. On a personal note, Kisker states on p. 112 that he writes as “someone who feels like an outsider to his own United Methodist tradition.” He writes how he feels “distant” from his own denomination, and yet finds in Methodism what is lacking in American Christianity in general. As he puts it, looking around at the other ecclesiastical possibilities: “There is nowhere else for me to go.”

As someone who has served as a pastor and teacher in the United Methodist Church for twenty years now, I can relate to what Kisker writes here. Where do we go? To Rome? To Eastern Orthodoxy? To Anglicanism or Lutheranism? To Independent forms of Christianity? To Pentecostalism? All are leaky boats! To be sure, like Kisker, I know I have certainly felt the tug to serve in other traditions. In addition, I also know the deep frustration of attending annual conference only to return home depressed, cynical, and angry. And yet, I keep asking, “What brings me back to Methodism?” What is it about our tradition that remains captivating? A unique theological heritage? A robust vision of the Christian life? A strong evangelistic and missionary tradition? While this is not the place to engage in the intricacies of the use of “mainline” as a category of thought, I think it is safe to say he is on to “something.” Perhaps there are others who feel this way as well. If so, I pray they, too, will begin to raise their voices and share in the conversation. And not only share in the conversation but to take to heart what Kisker is expressing. I have a feeling he speaks for more of us than he realizes!