I often hear that Methodists are Arminians, rather than Calvinists. This is true, but only in a limited sense. Wesley did publish the Arminian Magazine later in life, though he and Calvin had far more in common than we often acknowledge. His indebtedness to Arminius, moreover, was particularly related to notions of grace, free will,…
I recently read through Scott J. Jones’s excellent book, John Wesley’s Conception and Use of Scripture (Kingswood, 1995). I’d read parts of it before, but I’d never made my way through it cover to cover. It’s a very informative work. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in Wesley and Scripture. Especially since the emergence of…
Our family dog, Boots, died a few days ago. He was a good dog, a giant, slobbering, super-friendly, food-stealing behemoth. When we first saw him he was with a litter of pups in the back of a steel trailer on a farm in Texas. He was lying in the food dish, on top of the…
So… I’m in a band meeting now. What, you may ask, is a band meeting? It’s a form of spiritual discipline where groups of men or women come together to confess their sins, pray for one another, and hold one another accountable. My wife has been in a band for a long time, and after…
This is my son, Luke, sitting with his adoring younger brother, Sean. Luke is a good kid. He’s smart and kind, though he is developing some concerning Calvinistic tendencies as a result of his education in a Reformed Episcopal context. Like many teenage boys, he is rather aloof. He is minorly obsessed with basketball, and…
This year I attended the New Room conference for this first time. I’d always heard great things about it, and I wasn’t disappointed. There was a diverse group of insightful speakers. The worship, led by Mark Swayze, was powerful. There were plenty of great books for sale, along with opportunities to meet and converse with…
Holiness is an attribute of God. It is not something we human beings have on our own, but something that must be imparted to us from God. Nevertheless, Christians have long believed that there are practices by which we open ourselves to the gift of holiness. When Wesley said that there is no holiness…
Let’s face it: no one really knows what’s going to happen over the next few years within The United Methodist Church. Division? Restructuring? Fragmentation? Slow demise? Despite widespread conjecture and one or two wild conspiracy theories, your guess is as good as mine. The Wesleyan movement, however, is much larger than The United Methodist Church.…
The following is an excerpt from my forthcoming book with Seedbed, Scripture and the Life of God: Reading the Bible to Grow in Faith. Several years ago I had the privilege of meeting Randy Clark. Randy was the principal preacher during the Toronto Blessing, a massive revival that began in 1994 and launched him into international…
Have you ever noticed that Paul rarely talks about Satan? Jesus, particularly in the Synoptic Gospels, engages Satan directly or indirectly quite often. Paul does not. The role that many Christians assign to Satan, Paul seems to assign to Sin. To be clear, he isn’t so interested in particular sins (though he does address these…