Rebuilding and Defending United Methodism Today – Part 2 of 9: Biblical Groundedness

on December 11, 2013

The following is an excerpt from the text for a speech delivered by UMAction Director John Lomperis on Thursday, November 21 at historic Boehm’s Chapel.  The gathering near Lancaster, Pennsylvania was hosted by the Eastern Pennsylvania Evangelical Connection. That evening included lively discussion with the audience. For the convenience of online readers, the speech is divided into nine sections here.   

Part 2 of 9: Biblical Groundedness

In deference to my location this evening, I’ll cite the EUB Confession of Faith, part of our denomination’s core Doctrinal Standards, Article IV: the Old and New Testaments are “to be received through the Holy Spirit as the true rule and guide for faith and practice.”

In the words of Scripture, in 2 Timothy 3:16-17: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

Americans today have far more entertaining options than our Sunday services.  We are also, not completely, but increasingly coming out of the days when you could count people coming to church for the sake of social respectability.  Now people don’t need church for that, either.  Churches that only offer unimaginative echoes of secular culture do little to motivate people to drag themselves out of bed on Sunday mornings.

So let’s just embrace the fact that the one thing that Christian churches have to offer that people can’t find anywhere else in our culture is Scriptural Christianity.

In his “Thoughts Upon Methodism,” John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, very directly identified the “fundamental doctrine” of Methodism as “That the Bible is the whole and sole rule both of Christian faith and practice.”

As one who regularly travels across our denominational connection, it seems to me that so much of our denomination is suffering from a widespread famine of biblical illiteracy, and not only in the very liberal activist fringes of the UMC.  And we often make the problem worse by assuming and treating our members as if they are much more biblically knowledgeable than they really are.

Friends, we are guilty of an inexcusable dereliction of duty if our churches are not “equipping” our people with “thorough” knowledge of Scripture.  Without this, they will lack a firm, lasting foundation for their faith.  Without this, we cannot trust that they can have the immune systems to avoid poisoning from such influences as the media or secular friends – especially if they spend many more hours a week listening to secular commentators on social and moral issues than they spend consulting the word of God.  Without a thorough knowledge of Scripture, our people will not be sufficiently equipped to obey their obligation, in 1 Peter 3:15, to “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.”

But the more our people know the Scriptures, the more they can be used by God to spread His Gospel and grow our churches, the more they can know how to relate to others in a God-honoring way, and the more they can understand the character and the will of God in their lives.

So since I am not the director of UM History or UM Theory but UMAction, here are some practical actions you can take in your local congregation, whether you’re a pastor or a layperson:

First of all, stop assuming people know the Bible well.  Recognize that even some of our strongest members often know the Bible less well and study it more infrequently than we would like to believe.   We all have an obligation, by teaching and example, of promoting a culture in all of our congregations in which members are expected to have DAILY times of at least 15-20 minutes of personal prayer and systematic Bible study.  We need to promote the expectation that it’s the norm that you have read the entire Bible cover to cover at least once if you’ve been a Christian for more than a few years.

In the sanctuary, are Bibles placed on every seat for people to follow along during the sermon?  If the only way people receive the Word of God in the service is by hearing someone else read it, think about what you’re training them to do.  We need to promote the habit of people looking into the word with their own eyes, rather than just relying on what they hear others say.  When United Methodists train people to just trust what a preacher says the Bible teaches rather than checking on their own, we should not be surprised when some people may actually believe Mr. Talbert when he claims that he is somehow following the Bible.

If you are serious about reaching new people, is your church regularly stocked up on visibly accessible Bibles to give away, free of charge, to anyone who needs one?

Look systematically at how your church programming gets members into the word.  Now I’ve learned a lot from also reading folk like Wesley, Bonhoeffer, and Lewis.  But our churches are missing the point when we have all sorts of gatherings to watch movies, discuss interesting issues, read contemporary writers, talk about our lives, have fun activities, and focus on anything and everything BUT the Scriptures we need to evaluate all of that other stuff by.

Then there’s preaching.  So much of United Methodist preaching around this country seems mainly focus on the preacher’s personal opinions about some particular topic, albeit sometimes with occasional reference to a Scriptural text that seems treated as a subordinate proof text to supporter the preacher’s own pre-conceived agenda.

But what about straight exegetical, biblical preaching – going completely through one book of the Bible for a sermon series?  I have seen this done very well.  Preachers, after you select the books, alternating testaments and genres, this takes the pressure off of having to continually invent an extra-biblical foundation for every sermon.  It will help your people have a richer understanding of Scripture, as over the course of several weeks they understand biblical teaching in context.  Just try it sometime and see what God does with it.

Most importantly, preaching through an entire book of the Bible protects the congregation from the pastor.  A pastor’s job is to ground people in Scripture rather than in anyone’s personal ideas. We all have our blind spots.  But preaching through an entire book forces pastors and laity alike to listen to what God has to say to us in not only the fondly familiar passages of Scripture but also in those challenging, counter-cultural passages we may prefer to avoid.

Part 1: The Need to Rebuild Our Church Cultures

Part 2 : Biblical Groundedness

Part 3: Oriented for Conversion

Part 4: Covenant Accountability, Counting the Cost of Church Membership

Part 5: Covenant Accountability: The Obligations of UMC Membership

Part 6: Why United Methodist Liberals are Now Focusing on “Biblical Disobedience”

Part 7: The “Biblical [Dis]obedience” Siege vs. the Basis for Unity in the UMC

Part 8: The Latest with Melvin Talbert

Part 9: Where Do We Go From Here?

  1. Comment by Kevin Condon on December 11, 2013 at 4:14 pm

    Bravo, John. Clear as a bell. Well written and exciting prose. Your vision is exactly what we need to take forward.

  2. Comment by Michael Pitts on December 14, 2013 at 11:57 am

    Keep up the good work, John! I was raised in the UMC, but didn’t hear 1 Tim 3:16-17 until I was in the Navigators as a college student. I also rarely heard anything from the Gospel of John either. I recall hearing much more about all the “good” deeds Jesus did, rather than the more contiversial statements equating himself with God.
    May God bless your efforts to return the UMC to a more Biblical place of discipleship.

  3. Comment by John Lomperis on December 16, 2013 at 6:11 pm

    Thanks for y’all’s kind words! FWIW, my own conversion came from reading through the Gospel of John, a text which my teen years in the UMC had left me rather unfamiliar.

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