By Rev. Jay Therrell
February 14, 2023
Part of my role as president of the Wesleyan Covenant Association includes staying abreast of the ever-changing news cycle inside The United Methodist Church. I attempt to follow everything so I can continually offer the best guidance to churches and clergy navigating the disaffiliation process around the globe. Toward that end, I recently watched a video from the Virginia Annual Conference featuring an interview of Bishop Sue Haupert-Johnson and her thoughts on disaffiliation.
While I disagreed with almost everything she said about disaffiliation, there was one part of the interview that struck me as particularly sad. Towards the end, she said, “Moving into the future, time has a way of resolving everything. And you know people will accuse me that I’m caving into culture, but I’m just stating a reality. [The] latest Gallup Poll [says] 72% of the people in the United States support same-sex marriage. So, we can stand on this as a huge issue, and stand on this and refuse to budge, but I think the sands of time are going. And whatever your opinion is, this is not something that is going to serve the church well 100 years from now. The church has always moved and shifted with the times.”
As I reflected on what Bishop Haupert-Johnson said, my heart broke. I was sad for her and sad for anyone who truly believes what she espoused. I was sad because I truly believe that standing for orthodoxy is exciting, hard, challenging, and right. I think standing for a changing, shifting, progressive church is boring, easy, and bankrupt.
The Thrill of Orthodoxy
Recently, a dear friend of mine shared with me a podcast put out by The Gospel Coalition. The podcast was called “What’s More Exciting Than Heresy?” and was hosted by Christian author, Trevin Wax. Doctor Wax has also recently published a booked entitled The Thrill of Orthodoxy: Rediscovering the Adventure of Christian Faith. Having listened to Dr. Wax’s arguments, I’m convinced more than ever that one of the church’s primary missions in this post-modern age is to ensure that the orthodox faith handed down to us is still intact as we hand it down to those who come after us. It’s one of the main reasons the Wesleyan Covenant Association was started, and its why we’re working so hard to help churches get to a place that allows them to fulfill that task.
Making new followers of Jesus is always the church’s primary mission. It is the essential purpose on which we stand. Ensuring those new followers of Jesus are well-discipled and spiritually formed is our next most important work. Only then can those followers of Jesus go into the world, filled with the Holy Spirit, and become salt and light. We must not tire at promoting the orthodox Christian faith regardless of how hard the world comes against us. Using our unique Methodist brand of holiness and grace, pastors and church lay leaders must boldly share the Gospel – all of it – and constantly evaluate how they can do so more effectively.
The Boredom of Progressivism
In all honesty, I find progressive theology to be quite boring. The very foundation on which it rests means that doctrine and theology must change with whatever the issue of the day is. As the ever-shortening news-cycle combined with the ever-changing whims of pop culture moves to a new topic, progressive theology must move with it. It shortens the theological attention span and requires the follower of Jesus to spend more time staying on top of the zeitgeist rather than diving deeper into their faith-walk with Christ. The faster cultural change moves, the easier we get bored with Jesus and the orthodox doctrine of His bride, the church.
As Trevin Wax pointed out in his book, The Thrill of Orthodoxy, “The problem with this [progressive] mindset is that it puts the world in the driver’s seat and stuffs orthodoxy in the trunk. Christians are along for someone else’s ride, and our beliefs are baggage. Such a strategy gives the world a veto over our confession of faith and the power over what we will or will not say.” It all gets very boring.
One day culture decides we should all be concerned with the woke sexual revolution and accordingly our orthodox doctrine should bow to it. Tomorrow the world decides we should be concerned with radical environmentalism and again, our orthodox doctrine should change correspondingly. The following day pop culture gets bored one more time and moves on to yet another topic. Once again, progressivism holds that our orthodox doctrine should bow to that topic du jour, leaving the bride of Christ and her Lord vapid and bland. As Wax points out, “Heresies, no matter how much they may be marketed as expansive and inclusive, are always smaller and narrower than orthodoxy.”
The Excitement of Orthodoxy
The Church is alive and brimming with excitement. This is true, by definition, because the church’s Lord is Jesus who is alive, resurrected, and victorious. This is true because the church is fueled and led by the Holy Spirit who is at work in the world in powerful ways every minute of every day.
Following the crowd and keeping up with the “in” topics is easy. It certainly doesn’t take much energy. You simply allow the whims of the day to blow you in whatever direction they are heading. Standing up for what is right and true no matter how it’s received is far more challenging and interesting. It’s what we’re called to do as followers of Jesus. It acknowledges that Jesus is the author and perfector of our faith, not us. Jesus decides and teaches through His word, the Bible, and His bride, the church. We don’t. We accept and share the Good News. As Wax put it, “The key phrase of the Christian is not ‘I create,’ but ‘I confess.’ What we believe matters. By confessing our faith, we are saying not ‘I build a religion’ but ‘I believe in revelation.’ Not ‘I invent,’ but ‘I receive.’”
It also means that we embrace and share ALL of orthodoxy. Yes, orthodoxy means that we worship Jesus Christ, the Son of God who died so that everyone without exception could receive salvation. Christianity is radically inclusive! It also means we worship Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who taught us that the way to follow Him is narrow. It means calling Him Lord and following His teachings and putting no one or thing before Him. Not following Jesus as Lord excludes us from salvation. Christianity is also radically exclusive! It’s exciting to sit in the tension of the both/and. It’s challenging to live it out on a daily basis led by the Holy Spirit. It’s boring and easy to simply see what the world has decided is the hot topic for this week and how we can bow to it regardless of what Jesus and scripture might say.
Marriage and Gender Issues Matter
Lastly, I want to say to Bishop Haupert-Johnson that how the church understands marriage and gender matters. Allowing the culture to define marriage and biology runs counter to what God created marriage and gender to be. It can’t be a matter of agreeing to disagree. As Wax pointed out, “The Bible begins and ends with a marriage ceremony, the first in a garden between a man and woman, and the last in a garden city when the church is united to Christ the bridegroom, and heaven and earth are reunited forever.” And while Dr. Wax may disagree with me that women can and should be in leadership in the church (all Methodists hold to this position based on sound biblical understanding), we certainly agree that marriage is one of the basics of Christian doctrine.
The culture has decided that the sexual revolution is right and that we should be ever more open and permissive in just about all things. Has anyone inside the church ever stopped to consider that stance takes us back to the Old Testament instead of the New? As Wax points out, it’s the Old Testament where we encounter “…polygamy, adultery, men who took wives and concubines, and extraordinary laxity for divorce. The moral demands are stricter in the New Testament, as Jesus points us back to God’s original intent in creation. Jesus’ comments on marriage were so strict, they surprised his closest followers!” The WCA has offered outstanding work on these topics from our Sexual Holiness, Wholeness, and Brokenness Task Force, and I commend its report to you and your church so we can engage this topic better.
Stand Up for Jesus
It’s boring to give into the ever-changing progressive agenda. It’s exciting to stand up for what God intended and to help people find the beauty, grace, and love of living inside it. Jesus and His teachings define us. We don’t define Him or them. Culture may say we’re wrong, but followers of Jesus are called to be faithful. We don’t bow to the whims of culture. We show love to the culture by teaching it the beautiful Good News that Jesus came to offer.
I’ll choose that excitement every day.
The Rev. Jay Therrell is the president of the Wesleyan Covenant Association and an ordained elder in the Global Methodist Church.