Global Methodists Take the Gospel “Beyond These Walls”

“I believe God is doing a new thing, and I want to be part of that new thing,” to “take the liberating Gospel of Jesus Christ beyond the walls of the church to our Jerusalem, Samaria, and to the ends of the Earth!” Thus declared the Rev. Dr. Jerry Kulah of Liberia last weekend at the “Beyond These Walls” missions conference. It drew over 600 Global Methodists and other Wesleyan Christians from around the world—including Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the Philippines—to the Woodlands Methodist Church outside of Houston, Texas. The focus was to “mobilize and equip you and your congregation through the ‘best of the best’ mission practices so you can fulfill your divine calling… making disciples of all the nations.”

The Global Methodist Church was the biggest of the April 27-29 event’s sponsors. Many of the speakers and most (though not all) participants appeared to be Global Methodists or GMC-adjacent. One keynote speaker, prominent megachurch pastor, missions leader, and advocate of “radical” faith David Platt, half-jokingly enthused, “I’m getting close to becoming a Global Methodist myself!”

It might have been understandable if Global Methodist leaders had felt they needed more time to get on their feet before moving into such outward-focused missions. After all, last week, the GMC was then not quite one year old, and the majority of ultimately GMC-bound congregations in the United Methodist Church have not yet transferred. Every week, I hear of heavy-handed United Methodist bishops crossing new lines of aggression to try to hurt and undermine this new denomination from the very beginning. One of the key organizers of “Beyond These Walls” is even a member of one of the North Georgia congregations whose new bishop is dictatorially blocking their explicit “right” to disaffiliate.

But as hard as others try to hold it back, Global Methodism is already moving forward, taking the love of God out to a world in such desperate need. 

In refreshing contrast to various United Methodist conferences I have attended over the years, “Beyond These Walls” was devoid of hijacking the church for political agendas, embarrassed avoidance of challenging but clear Scriptural teachings, and unbiblical theology.

The contrast on that last point was particularly clear in differing treatments of Acts 16’s record of Paul casting a demon out of an unnamed slave girl. Years ago, I attended a major national conference of liberal United Methodists where one plenary speaker, a seemingly obscure lesbian activist pastor named Dr. Karen Oliveto, taught on this passage. Oliveto portrayed Paul as lacking compassion for the slave girl, declared that Paul’s liberating her from the demon did not make her life better, and even concluded that on the whole, the exorcism “probably made it worse” for her. Now the no-longer-fringe Oliveto is not only a bishop, but the president of an entire United Methodist jurisdiction’s college of bishops.

At “Beyond These Walls,” Danielle Strickland offered a refreshingly different interpretation. Noting how Scripture actually identifies the demonic oppressor as a “python spirit” (read more about that here and here, as well as in some less-popular English translations), Strickland encouraged us to think of how actual pythons slowly, tortuously “choke the life out of their victims.” She contended that what “annoyed” (or “grieved” in the KJV) Paul was this demon’s hurtful oppression of its victim (about which Oliveto had expressed no concern). Highlighting the social hierarchies of that context, she emphasized how Paul interrupted his preaching to socially elevated men in order to help a “lowest of the low” slave girl on the bottom of society.  Like Christian leaders today who have been willing to effectively sacrifice doing right by a lowly victim in seeking to protect “the greater good of the church’s mission and reputation,” Paul “could have sacrificed this girl,” by ignoring her in order to “focus on the greater mission of the Gospel’s spread through Europe.” As the next few verses show, Paul’s choice to instead help the girl immediately became rather costly and painful for him as well as Silas. 

As the conference progressed, I realized that something else was missing. So much of what I have experienced at various United Methodist conventions over the years amounts to self-affirmation and self-congratulations. Even celebrating some genuinely good work done by denominational structures, which can be appropriate, can seem to convey an attitude of “aren’t God and the world so lucky to have us?”

In contrast, “Beyond These Walls” focused on the greatness of God rather than on the greatness of any people, and on world’s desperate needs, while also challenging us to recognize our own desperate inadequacy apart from God. Kulah preached powerfully on the power of the Holy Spirit to breathe new life into churches and also restore broken marriages and careers. Exploring the details of the irreverence in the Temple that famously outraged Jesus Christ, Platt warned of how we could also have “all the trappings of religious activity” and seem committed to God in personally comfortable ways, while still “missing God.” We fall into this danger whenever we lack (1) “fear, reverence and awe before God,” (2) “confessing and sorrow over sin,” (3) “faithful and forgiving prayer,” or (4) “love for all nations.” It is easy to feel intimidated by how the conference challenged us to self-sacrificially step beyond our comfort zones for the sake of the Gospel. But as Platt quipped, “If you can trust God for the next 10 trillion years, you can trust Him for the next few.”

There were multiple times where participants got to come together before the Lord to pray for ourselves, each other, and people in different parts of the globe, particularly the persecuted church and the many unreached by the Gospel. 

Dr. Krystl Gauld (née Johnson), a UMAction Steering Committee member, taught about how in today’s context, “social media is the new lampstand.” She challenged us to strategically let the light of our lampstands shine before others in sharing the Gospel as well as “communicat[ing] effectively on moral issues of the day.” 

Speakers shared about how believers with specialized practical skills, from medicine to American Sign Language, were desperately needed to support cutting-edge ministries around the world. 

“Beyond These Walls” also offered a range of workshops of more in-depth equipping for the assembled pastors and church leaders on such topics as church multiplication, addressing pastoral burnout, better connecting our congregations to global missions, “helping without hurting” in partnerships with the Majority World, contextually effective ministry with “Gen Z,” ministry amidst urban poverty (even to the point of uprooting one’s life to live in a depressed big-city neighborhood), and how Wesleyan theology can positively shape our mission and ministry. I attended one workshop about how congregations can partner with a group called Circles USA to get beyond merely managing poverty to overcome poverty and break negative generational cycles, through empowerment and social connection. 

In Luke 9:49-50, Jesus rebuked his disciples for blocking good ministry being done in His name by someone they saw as “not one of us.” It appears that most of the UMC bureaucracy will never be interested in ever joining hands with Global Methodism, the Wesleyan Covenant Association, and other evangelical Wesleyans to help sponsor anything like “Beyond These Walls” (as the UMC’s outlier seminary, United, did). But United Methodist leaders could at least stop trying to undermine, block, and greedily extract huge amounts of money from the ministry Global Methodists are now doing in Christ’s name. 

In any case, the Global Methodist Church is moving forward in mission, even as it looks forward to being joined by others who have yet to transfer in. At “Beyond These Walls,” it announced the launch of the new Wesleyan Network for Global Mission to equip and connect congregations and ministries around the world in fulfilling the Great Commission. Rather than obsessing over denominational empire-building and excluding those “not of us,” this GMC-initiated network is being made available for brothers and sisters in the entire family of Wesleyan churches. To learn more, visit https://globalmethodist.world/