From: "Alleganwesley" [email protected]

I was comfortable in my little egg carton ecclesiology until you brought this subject up in my mind again.

I was requested by my professors to pursue this question for my master's thesis. Since you and I are in the same denomination, our struggles are similar.

I came to the same conclusion that a denomination may hold membership requirements that are extra biblical. My thesis was similar to the arguments you put forth. Membership isn't about the kingdom of God, it is about keeping order within a sub-group of the kingdom.

In the end, I abandoned my thesis. I could defend it, but I didn't want to defend it. The tension between the Bible and the unity of the church seemed to be the ruling factor in this debate. Who is right? All have valid points. That isn't easy to say when I believe in absolutes.

My comfort zone has been stretched many times by this issue, and will continue to be stretched I'm sure. Thanks for raising the question in my mind once again.

Mark A. Schlechty

From: [email protected]

Hey Keith!

Not bad! If we would adopt all your suggestions (and I am not attempting to suggest there is anything wrong with them) we could bypass any effort to merge with other "Holiness" churches (Nazarene's in particular) and go right into a merger with The Roman Catholic Church! Wouldn't Hans Kung be pleased!

Joe Watkins -- Vancouver, WA

 From: "Jonathan White" [email protected]

Brilliant article.

Jon

From: Mark A Inman [email protected]

 This issue seems to be at the forefront of the Wesleyan church at present and deserves some discussion. As a pastor I have viewed this issue from two different perspectives. As a lay person, before entering the ministry, I felt very strongly that some of these practices should not be in the church mainly smoking and drinking. There was no question in my mind that if I had to live a life free from certain indulgences to be a member that it made simple sense to me that others should hold to that same level of expectation. I was viewing things from an individualistic approach which many lay people can do. We are not responsible to find Sunday School teachers and departmental leaders to man our churches. We don't have to worry about getting enough people to join the church so that our original members can find some relief from doing all the work.

As a pastor I see the other side of the coin and struggle with what I sense as a dilemma which faces our church today. Many people are very happy and content to not join. To join means that now you will be expected to serve within the church and many people today aren't interested in service. They have to work long hours and drive long distances in order to have comfortable lifestyles. So rather then join the church they are attendees who will help out if the need arrives but they haven't devoted their lives to full time service, they simply want to worship on Sunday morning. Thus comes the problem. There aren't enough people willing to serve God. The older members have done their time and the newer generation doesn't seem to want to join. I have asked myself why, several times, and it seems that membership isn't that important anymore. When we put the least amount of pressure upon them to give up habits they simply find another church down the road where they can worship. They also see the discrepancies that occur. "I can't smoke, but someone else can break the Sabbath week after week, after all which one of these is actually forbidden in the Bible? Of course it is the breaking of the Sabbath." "I can't take an occasional drink, but other members get on the phone and spread discord among the brethren." Which of these is mentioned as wrong in the Bible?" We know that answer also. Don't get me wrong I don't practice either of these habits nor do I think that they are healthy, but I can also see that someone who has allowed themselves to get fat is in great danger of dying from a heart attack or many other health problems. Is that obese person not doing the same thing to their body? I recently lost 20 lbs because I realized that it was very difficult to talk about our bodies being the Temple of the Lord and giving the Lord a much larger Temple then He desired.

I agree that any organization has the right to develop any rules that it wants, but should the Wesleyan Church reject people from membership for doing things that God will accept in Heaven? People don't come to Christ perfect, but they do receive salvation. The thief on the cross was not given time to go and make restitution, but Jesus accepted him anywise. I am not sure there is a clear answer, I am not sure that all of our rules should be demolished either. Some of them determine who we are as a holiness denomination. The question must be asked though, are we legislating ourselves out of a denomination?

I have been asking some pastor's in other denominations what their membership requirements were and was shocked to find out that ours are actually some of the toughest. Even a Baptist church, which at times can be accused of being legalistic, didn't have anything in its membership commitments about smoking. Although we have the right to make the rules, will people come into our churches with all the rules? I guess that is left to be seen. --

From: Mark Mason [email protected]

I am sure we would agree that the Holy Spirit would not be the author of confusion. Would he not be confusing people if he said one thing then (to the N.T. writers) and another thing now (to the modern church)?

Maybe the Holy Spirit is confused with why we think he has changed his mind about divorce/remarriage, wealth, and women's leadership roles, for instance. How is such an attitude any different than that of the Mormans, who argue that they have received an "additional" revelation in the latter days? Is it possible that what is whispering to us or guiding us today is not really the Holy Spirit but the spirit of our age, the spirit of postmodernism - a spirit that the Holy Spirit charged us in explicit terms NOT to be conformed to?

Just thinking... - Mark Mason - Vienna, Wva

From: "Wainer G." [email protected]

What do I think? Was it ever different? Was not and is it not men, and our institutions, who have decided what is to be canon, even from within what we have accepted as canon?

Aren't our various denominations the proof that we, humans who see in certain ways, the "authoritative body" over even what is authoritative in the book?

Don't we, the church, decide who and how we do baptism, for example? Why most of the Hispanic evangelicals, for instance, having great difficulties with infant baptism?

It is clear to me that even our own Divine book is "used" by us, individually and as a denomination, according to our own perceptions and understandings. Although we are sincere and can quote to each other that our opinion is not our own opinion but the Bible's truth.

In Brazil to smoke is a reason for exclusion from the Baptist church... at least the one I grew up in.

Some missionaries from Brazil went to Portugal and decided to attack the drinking of wine; the National pride and at the table of every good Christian evangelical and Catholic Portuguese.

The church, people together, have defined, always, what is to be validated. We have interpreted the Scriptures according to our biases, cultural tendencies, and experiences.

I don't mean to say that all our interpretation are all right and can be biblically justified. However, perhaps is the variations we can find in the Scriptures a Divine design so to allow more "windows" of connections to people. The great variety within the Body of Christ, in my opinion, is one of its greatest reason the church can appeal to so many different people and reach right wing and liberals who, although accuse each other, are convicted of believing in the same book and being followers of the same Jesus.

Above all I thank God that salvation does not depend on having an A on Bibliology but an open heart to embrace Jesus and a mouth that says it so and that He is still working in new ways in and through those who are not afraid of following the Holy Spirit and go with the wind... --Wainer G.

Dan LeRoy From: "pastordan" [email protected]

 The Wesleyan Church stands at the open door of what can be one of the most critical choices of its history. It is a choice that most of the local churches in the denomination have already made. It is the decision to move from being a sect to being a church.

The 2000 General Conference offers the denomination the opportunity to officially complete our transition. The opportunity comes in the form of the debate over membership structure in the church.

In every other area of expression, the transition has already been made. We no longer have a prescribed dress code. (Modesty is still a virtue among us, but we essentially dress like everyone else around us.) We no longer have a prescribed hairdo for men and women. We no longer have a list of acceptable and unacceptable automobiles. (Buicks were okay, Cadillacs were not. Now some of our people even drive Jaguars. Imagine.)

We have come to realize that there were no real moral issues in these areas, only our preferences, our interpretations of biblical principles, and cultural stipulations regarding our lifestyles.

The one remaining sectarian expression among us is that of our membership commitments.

I believe we have confused membership with discipleship in this church. In our tradition, they are the same thing. I believe that biblically they are different. I speak with conviction, balanced by caution and respect.

What makes us sectarian is that we have set our entry-level requirements higher than others around us. That may not always be bad. What is bad is to set them higher than the Bible sets them. I believe we have done that.

I understand our history and how we got to where we are. I know that our model for discipleship, which we have adopted as our model for ‘church’, is the class meeting used by John Wesley to nurture believers into disciples. The problem with that model is that the class meeting was not intended to be a church, it was intended to be a small group for discipleship. On this matter, we have out-Wesleyed Wesley.

As a result, we find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of wrestling with our heritage (our ‘tradition’) in light of contradictory direction from the Word about who is a ‘member’ of the church.

If I were a newcomer to this fellowship, it would be difficult for me not to ask the irreverent question, ‘How can we say to people that they can be members of God’s church, but not ours? Whose church is this, anyway?’ As irreverent as that question may appear to be, it is at the heart of the issue, and is the one, fundamental question The Wesleyan Church must answer honestly in order to move forward toward a more Bible-based concept of church membership.

We do have a discipleship mission. It is the reason we exist as a church in The Church. It is our niche. No one is debating that. The debate is over the role of membership in that discipleship process.

If we would be a New Testament church, then we would be compelled to accept as members those God has accepted into his family (which is what the church on earth is supposed to be). We are then compelled to nurture them into being fully devoted followers of Christ, a process all disciples are undergoing to become more and more like him and less and less like the person we used to be.

The New Testament church required four things of its members at the point of entry into the fellowship of believers. The entry requirements were 1) a personal conversion to Christ, 2) baptism, 3) acceptance of the Apostles’ teaching (note acceptance of the teaching at point of entry, not mastery of a lifestyle that reflects the teaching prior to being permitted to belong), and 4) a covenant of allegiance to the church body. These are clearly reflected in the book of Acts. The record is clear that the New Testament church took its mission seriously to disciple the converts (members) into mature Christians (disciples). And they did it in that order.

Our membership concept is understandable, rationally and historically. But it is not defensible biblically. Where the New Testament believers tenderly cared for the new converts by receiving them into the fellowship and nurturing them into growth, our particular misapplication of this matter has tended to cause us to hold people out of the church instead of letting them in.

I believe that is wrong. I believe we have sinned against them. I believe we need to change.

We have expectations that we hold before the members of our church to help them measure their growth in Christlikeness. That is illustrated by what is currently known as our list of covenant membership commitments. It is a good list. It is a biblically sound, responsible and accurate expression of the sanctified life.

I think it is one of the best expressions I have seen as a description of what we want our Wesleyan Christians to be. But it is not a proper entry-level expectation. It is more proper as a description of maturity in spiritual growth, attainable through the power and grace of the