Over 1,000 United Methodists joined in boisterous worship and listened to preachers proclaim the centrality of Jesus Christ, a high view of the Bible’s authority, Scriptural holiness, and the need for revival in America.
They were gathered for Aldersgate Renewal Ministries’ (ARM) annual Summer gathering, this year in Rogers, Arkansas. ARM is a ministry for charismatic United Methodists and operates under the Board of Discipleship.
| Aldersgate Renewal Ministries logo (Image courtesy ARM) |
Clapping, raised hands, and healing prayer were regular features of worship. Speakers inveighed against the Devil and warned against drugs, media crassness, abortion, extramarital sex, and Wicca. According to one main speaker, “many people come to the Lord for the first time” at this annual event.
A teenage girl told attendees of her counter-cultural commitment to purity, how her boyfriend shares this commitment, and how “he recently accepted Christ.” An energetic boy briefly preached that while his generation is “radical,” “they can end up being radical for Jesus” and transforming the nation
ARM was organized in 1978 to, according to one speaker, assure “people that you can be a born-again, Spirit-filled Christian and remain a United Methodist.”
This year, ARM Executive Director Gary Moore declared, “God cares about the people in our churches.” Several speakers and participants testified of divine healings for health problems. One speaker recalled a forest fire moving away from his house and toward an uninhabited mountain in response to his prayer. Among the topics of the workshops offered were the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit, “Experiencing the Baptism of the Holy Spirit,” “Praying and Staying in Your Local Church,” “The Art of Prayer,” “Intimate Communication with the Lord,” “How God’s Supernatural Power Can Help Your Church Grow,” “Spiritual Transformation,” “Walking in Spirit Empowered Boldness,” and “Spiritual Transformation Through Inner Healing and Deliverance.”
Noting that “God is nor a God of disorder but of peace,” (1 Corinthians 14:33), ARM organizers explained that they welcomed the Holy Spirit in a context of divine order. There were no apparent spontaneous outbursts or other dramatic interruptions. Individuals who felt they had heard from the Lord were told to write it down, and the Word Gifts Discernment Team would share it with the crowd if appropriate.
ARM leaders tend to avoid “charismatic,” preferring “Spirit-filled.” In her workshop on “Understanding Spiritual Warfare,” Linda Gregorino stressed confirming alleged modern prophecies rather than immediately accepting them as valid.
Not Such a New Thing
In his workshop on “Manifestations of the Holy Spirit Among Methodists,” Frank Billman, ARM’s Director of Church Relations, explained that the charismatic movement was not alien to The United Methodist Church. He traced such “manifestations” to the apostles being filled with the promised Holy Spirit and preaching in other languages in Acts 2. Since simply speaking in a foreign language would not look like drunkenness, Billman speculated that the apostles were so overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit that they were staggering and appeared hysterical.
| “God cares about the people in our churches,” Aldersgate Renewal Ministries Executive Director Gary Moore told the gathering in Rogers, Arkansas. (Photo courtesy ARM) |
There are “whole denominations” that teach that such miraculous activities of the Holy Spirit recorded in Acts ended after the last apostle died, Billman said. But he asserted that church history refutes this “cessationist” claim, citing early church fathers. Irenaeus wrote of miraculous healings, Tertullian wrote of exorcisms and speaking in tongues, and Origen lamented the decline of signs and wonders, which he blamed on reduced holiness in the church.
Billman also asserted that growing clerical power was threatened by “spirit-filled, anointed lay people.” Also, leaders such as St. John of the Cross called miraculous healings a danger to Christian discipleship, while Augustine argued that miracles were only needed in the first century to prove Christ’s identity. Augustine later retracted his earlier arguments, claiming “healings for everything from hemorrhoids to demons to death,” Billman said. But his earlier writings greatly influenced many later key Catholic thinkers as well as Luther and Calvin.
Billman lamented that such anti-supernaturalism made Protestants “easy prey for anti-Christian enlightenment thinking.” Many “took this to its logical conclusion,” by deciding that since there are no miracles in modern times, there have never been any miracles, including in biblical times.
John Wesley “was clearly not a Reformed cessationist,” Billman said.” Billman explained that Methodism’s father wrote that Scripture never said that miracles would end before the apocalypse. And Wesley once argued with a professor for the reality and appropriateness of the gift of tongues occurring since apostolic times. A Charles Wesley hymn omitted from the current UMC hymnal includes the lyrics, “Now let us speak with other tongues / the new language of Your love.” Billman recounted how such charismatic manifestations as speaking in tongues, uncontrollable laughter, falling over, and shouting repeatedly occurred in early Methodist gatherings.
Billman said American Methodism “was a hair’s breath away from embracing” Pentecostalism in the early 20th century, when an influential Methodist magazine editor “vigorously opposed” this trend. The editor wanted to steer Methodism away from Wesleyan experientialism and towards Calvinist cessationism. “Theological liberalism” also rejected the possibility of miracles in any age, Billman regretted. Of the mainline denominations, “Methodists were the first to abandon orthodoxy” in their seminaries. Thus charismatic ministerial candidates examined by a Board of Ordained Ministry would have been opposed by both liberals and cessationist conservatives.
While the Methodist Episcopal Church was adopting its Social Creed in 1908 to address the needs of the poor, “the poor were abandoning Methodism in droves” for Holiness and Pentecostal churches, Billman said.
Charismatic renewal movements in mainline Methodism, Roman Catholicism, and other traditions took off in the mid-20th century, Billman said. To stem an exodus of charismatic United Methodists, the 1976 General Conference adopted a statement basically “saying you’re not weird if you’re charismatic.” ARM would form soon afterward.
A Refreshing Experience
The Rev. Junius Dotson of St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in Wichita, KS, was introduced as “a man who’s passionately in love with the Lord Jesus Christ, who loves the word of God, and believes it is the Word of God.” He preached on “Revealing God’s Glory in the Midst of Valley Experiences,” based on Psalm 23. While “we love our mountaintop experiences,” you “don’t build your faith on the mountain top, you build it in the ‘valley'” of life’s difficulties, Dotson said.
Dotson urged “focusing on God’s power rather than focusing on your problem.” He observed that in Psalm 23, King David shifted from speaking of God in the third person to addressing Him directly after mentioning “the valley of the shadow of death.” Dotson warned that “no part of you can be off-limits to God.”
| The Rev. Junius Dotson of Wichita, Kansas, urged the assembly to focus “on God’s power, rather than focusing on your problem.” (Photo courtesy ARM) |
The Rev. Candace Lewis preached about the importance of people of all ages to the church: “If the church is just full of old people, the church will dry up, if the church is just full of young people, the church will blow up,” but if the church has both, then it will “grow up.” She declared that The United Methodist Church should be proud of the 50 percent of its membership that is older than 60. But she urged those seniors to not use their retirement as an excuse to step back from serving, and challenged older participants to bring their grandchildren to next year’s ARM conference. She also urged the church to support teens in resisting drugs and extramarital sex.
Preaching to young adults, Rev. Barry Morton of Mt. Olive United Methodist Church in Van Buren, Arkansas lamented that many young people see the church’s rules without the “love and grace and mercy of Jesus Christ.” Morton recalled one young man in the church admitting that he had become quite “good at religion,” but knew “nothing about a relationship with Jesus Christ.”
A relationship with Christ “is the hope of everyone around you,” Morton said. Too often the church seems to demand that people be “just like us,” he lamented. Citing the beatitudes, Morton said that being “poor in spirit” means “we’re no better than anyone else, no matter what we have accomplished.” Morton concluded with the famous John Wesley quote: “Give me 100 preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergy or laymen, such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of God upon earth.”
Dr. Everett Piper, President of Oklahoma Wesleyan University called Christians to rigorous intellectual engagement with the secular culture. His passions are the “primacy of Jesus Christ,” the “priority of Scripture,” the “pursuit of objective truth,” and the “practice of Godly wisdom.” He encouraged Christians to highlight the illogical and unpleasant conclusions of alternative worldviews. Post-modernists should be asked: “If you believe in tolerance” but cannot tolerate intolerance, are you really tolerant? And “If you’re sure that you’re not sure, are you sure?” He also surmised that logical consistency would require abortion supporters also to support killing of newborns.
The Gospel offers the paradox of submitting to God’s rules to experience true freedom, Piper said. He compared this to a dog trained to recognize its master’s voice and know its boundaries before running free. This trained dog enjoys far more freedom than an undisciplined dog who needs to be caged. Piper observed that his brother had “enjoyed the freedom of the 60s” and is now in prison, while he remains “restrained by orthodoxy.” “Who’s more free here, folks?,” he asked rhetorically.
Emphasizing the importance of Christian higher education, Piper noted that Christian parents often send their children to Christian camps, but then later spend even more money on secular universities where “their faith is torn down from day one” by peer pressure and intellectually hostile professors.
The Rev. Jacquie Leveron preached, “If we want to see God’s glory displayed, repentance of sin must be part of our lives every day.” She stressed that “there’s a big difference between remorse and repentance, with the former merely amounting to saying “I’m sorry I got caught” with no intention of avoiding the same sin in the future. In many churches “we don’t want to hold each other accountable,” she regretted.
Often “we blame others for our sins” or simply sweep under the rug such matters as cohabitation or financial dishonesty, Leveron warned. But the Bible insists that “without holiness, no one will see the Lord.” While “sin brings fear, confession brings freedom,” she preached. To truly follow God, “we must develop a heart that hungers and thirsts after His presence.”
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