Noted author and scholar David McKenna celebrates these simple, yet distinctive foundations and shares with enthusiasm the chalenges facing present-day Wesleyans in his timely new book.

The demands of congregational ministry are many, the rewards sometimes seem few, and burnout becomes a real possibility. Small wonder, then, that churches become stuck in a state of arrested spiritual development. When the pastor is functioning in a survival or maintenance mode, the church's vitality is often the first casualty. Yet Wills's own experience demonstrates that churches can turn around; the wind of the Spirit can be felt anew. This happens when the congregation is infected by the vision of what God is doing in their midst--a vision which the leaders, particularly the pastor, must bring before them.

In Waking to God's Dream, Richard Wills shares the spiritual disciplines and insights which he believes account for the transformation of the congregation he serves from a large church in decline to one that is growing and reaching out to its community in a variety of creative ministries. Detailing the steps and initiatives that led to this turnaround, Wills demonstrates how personal commitment on the part of the congregation's leaders and ministers have been the key to the work they have accomplished.

This volume in the United Methodist Studies series challenges United Methodists to engage in life-transforming practices. The author explains a theme and underscores major emphases within the United Methodist denomination. This adult study is divided into four sections with suggestions for group discussion, and can be completed in 4 to 8 sessions. No leader s guide is needed. The sections are: Living from the Heart - This chapter examines the essence of prayer and devotional life for United Methodists: holiness of heart and life. The chapter is divided into two sections to enable this examination: Communion (heart) and Compassion (life). Read and Pray Daily - Exploring these two central disciplines in Christian formation and the Wesleyan Tradition guides readers into practical expressions of what it means to read devotionally (lection divina) and pray continually (the life of prayer). Get Connected! - The idea of "connectionalism" is a significant part of our tradition. This chapter examines this idea from two vantage points of classic formation principles and the concrete structures Wesley used in early-Methodism, which still contain implications for today. Go On! - The cultivation of prayer and devotional life in United Methodism is not about "attainment" but rather about "journey." This chapter examines the pilgrimage motif through the two lenses of the biblical doctrine of Christian perfection, and the practical development of that message through an action/reflection model of Christian formation. "

In the late 1920s and early 1930s "Bishop Cannon" became a household word in much of America. Methodist bishop James Cannon, Jr., was probably the most influential southern clergyman between the Civil War and World War II and certainly the most controversial. A paradoxical figure, he seemed as comfortable in the world of business and public affairs as in the church, and critics condemned him as an exemplar of the materialistic values of the 1920s.

Plunging into politics in Virginia and the nation to secure and protect prohibition, Cannon dramatically broke the taboo against preachers in politics. Often he bested the professional politicians at their own game. Cannon represented the older America of rural and small-town life, Victorian morality, and Protestant hegemony. Best known for leading the South in revolt against Al Smith in the 1928 presidential election, he symbolized the struggle against an increasingly urban, pluralistic society.

Intense, outspoken, and combative Cannon engendered fierce loyalty and deep enmity. His moment of triumph in 1928 was short-lived. Celebrated by his followers as Protestant America's foremost champion, he was denounced by critics for his anti-Catholicism and nativism. Beginning in 1929, political enemies and disaffected churchmen, notably Virginia senator Carter Glass, accused Cannon of stock-market gambling, adultery, and embezzling campaign funds. For the next five years, Cannon became the center of several scandals that generated sensational headlines across the country.

Prohibition and Politics reexamines Cannon's long, controversial career as a churchman, reformer, and politician. The result is a fresh, comprehensive, and balanced portraitof one of the most fascinating figures in twentieth-century American history.

These sermons are written to be preached. They are inspired, practical, and filled with fascinating illustrations that keep members of a congregation listening for more.
Leonard Mann writes that the ..". purpose of this small book is] to examine some preludes to Pentecost. By these God was anciently leading his people into larger places of spirit and mind, giving them insights for living, incentives for growing, ever making them ready..."
Sermon titles include:
Pentecost: Postscript or Prelude?
The Glory Of Being Human
The Anatomy Of A Journey
Does God Bother About Our Troubles?
Getting A Fix On The Future A Right Use Of Angels
... and more
Leonard Woodson Mann served as pastor of United Methodist churches for 37 years. Now in retirement, he is involved with special occasion preaching, research, and writing. He has written nine books, has been the editor of two volumes, and has been a major contributor to the preaching journal "Emphasis." He received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Ohio Northern University and serves as a life member of its Board of Trustees. During his active ministry Mann was senior minister of some of Ohio's largest Methodist congregations.

8 sessions. This study helps adults understand better the goals and beliefs of the United Methodist Church. This study book includes leader helps, ideal for classes that prefer shared leadership.

John Wesley: Holiness of Heart and Life is a six-week study on John Wesley, the major themes of his theology, the spread of Wesleyanism to North America, and renewal in the Wesleyan tradition. Chapters include reflection questions. The Study Guide offers step-by-step plans for each session.

The purpose of this book is simple -- to reclaim a vision for church leadership from the great spiritual awakening known as the Wesleyan movement. Yet the way one goes about this work, contends Lovett H. Weems, Jr., is anything but simple. It involves walking a tightrope between continuity and change. The task is neither to repeat the past, nor to ignore it. Rather the need is to locate the genius behind the achievements of the past from which we can learn for our day. It is to choose selectively those themes and emphases of the Wesleyan movement that can best inform the practice of ministry today, and to seek to grow into them. In order to achieve this, Weems identifies such principles of early Wesleyanism as beginning with where people are, focusing on service, and remembering the poor. He then enumerates practices of Wesleyan leadership, such as leading from the center and the edge, living in tension, and making "connection" happen. Finally, he names the core passions of the Wesleyan spirit: knowing God, proclaiming Christ, and seeking justice.

Histories of women and American religion have tended to focus on women's religious activities rather than on women's religious lives. Studies of early American religion and spirituality have usually depended on the journals and sermons of male preachers. In order to understand the religious lives of ordinary Methodist women, Jean Miller Schmidt has looked at their diaries, letters, spiritual autobiographies, and the accounts of their pious lives and holy deaths that appeared as obituaries in publications like the Methodist Magazine. These powerful stories of faith are part of the shared history of Methodist people.

A rare discovery, A Mysterious Life and Calling is the autobiography of Charlotte Levy Riley, who was born into slavery but after emancipation achieved a fulfilling career as a preacher in the South Carolina Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, schoolteacher, and civil servant. Although several nineteenth-century accounts by black preaching women in the northern states are known, this is the first memoir by a black woman preaching in the South, both before and after the Civil War, to be discovered. Born in 1839, Charlotte Riley recounts her unusual experiences growing up as a young slave girl in Charleston under the protection of her parents and the dominion of her wealthy owners. She was taught to read, write, and sew, despite laws forbidding black literacy, and while still a slave married a free black architect. Raised a Presbyterian, she writes in her memoir of her conversion at age fourteen to the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, embracing its ecstatic worship and led by her own spiritual visions. After the war, she separated permanently from her husband, who objected to her call to preach, and despite poor health pursued a career into the early twentieth century as a licensed minister of the AME church, a powerful preacher at multiracial revivals, and a school teacher and principal. She contributed to the civic development of South Carolina in the post-Reconstruction era and early twentieth century, including appointment in 1885 as postmistress of Lincolnville, an all-black incorporated town in South Carolina. She published her autobiography around 1902. Crystal J. Lucky discovered Riley's forgotten book in the archives of the Stokes Library at the historically black Wilberforce University in Ohio. She provides an introduction and notes to the narrative, explaining Riley's references to contemporaries, events, society, and religious practice throughout her childhood and the turbulent years of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Lucky also places A Mysterious Life and Calling in the context of other spiritual autobiographies and slave narratives.

A work that will inspire cross-cultural sensitivity, this practical guide provides a road map to the basic worship practices of the major ethnic and cultural groups in North American Protestantism.

"In Worship Across Cultures, Kathy Black reports information about actual Christian worship practices gathered in collaboration with persons who come from and minister with churches in twenty-one different cultural contexts in the US. This book is a uniquely valuable resource whether for pastors who regularly lead Christian worship in cultural contexts beyond their own, or for persons visiting worship in another context to attend a marriage or a funeral. By approaching the study of worship through description of actual practices, it will inspire cross-cultural sensitivity, as well as providing food for thought and new ideas for worship. I heartily recommend it for laity, pastors, and seminary classes."--Ruth Duck, Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary

In a time when the United Methodist Connectional System is being questioned throughout the denomination, this volume explains the roots of the system, its rationale, and its success. Chapter essays: Connectionalism and Itinerancy; Constitutional Order in United Methodism and American Culture; African American Methodists; Methodist Identities and the Founding of Methodist Universities; Redesigning Methodist Churches: Auditorium Style Sanctuaries; Wesley's Legacy of Social Holiness; United Methodist Campus Ministry; The Effect of Mergers on American Wesleyan Denominations; Determinants of the Denominational Mission Funding Crisis; and others.

These new essays summarize the latest research by highly respected United Methodist scholars, exploring the distinctive doctrines and discipline of the denomination. Essays include An Untapped Inheritance: American Methodism and Wesley's Practical Theology; The Scripture Way of Salvation: Narrative Spirituality and Biblical Praxis in Early Methodism; Theology, Religious Activity, and Structures of the Lives of Ordinary People; The Doors of Opportunity: Methodist Theological Education, 1866-1925; What Makes "United Methodist Theology" Methodist?; The Church as a Community of Moral Discourse; and Exploring Both the Middle and the Margins: Locating Methodism within American Religious History."

A Wesleyan Spiritual Reader provides resources for a 26-week devotional experience. The volume includes Scripture, spiritual readings (primarily quotes from the writings of John Wesley), and an essay by the author. This material is woven into a pattern for daily prayer and reflection. This devotional experience will lead readers to live with Wesley's ideas and spirit as a window or vehicle for reaching God. Among the 26 themes explored are: Scriptural Christianity; Life in Christ; Reaching Out to the Poor; The Means of Grace; Holiness of Life; Justifying Grace; The Ministry of All God's People; Sanctifying Grace; and God's Love and Ours.

While intended for devotional use by both clergy and laity, pastors will also find this a helpful resource for sermon preparation. This wonderful guide to deeper spirituality will become a cherished companion for all who seek to grow in faith and knowledge of God.

One of the most surprising developments in contemporary Methodist theology is the degree to which leading Methodist and Wesleyan systematic theologians are reengaging John Wesley, finding his works instructive, provocative, and stimulating for their own theological reflection. Such a broad and purposeful dialogue with Wesley by theologians of the Wesleyan heritage is unprecedented in this century, and much rarer in the previous century than is popularly believed. This volume presents a set of original essays that represent and embody this new engagement allowing the reader to see how several prominent theologians are self-consciously reexamining and reappropriating their theological tradition.

Commissioned by the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry for use in United Methodist doctrine/polity/history courses.

Runyon sets Wesley's own discussion of the "way of salvation" in the larger context of Christian doctrine, beginning with the Creation (and the Fall) and moving through the drama of salvation towards its eschatological fulfillment in the "new creation" of all things.

"This is for me the Wesley book at the end of the century, with new perspectives for the next millennium. Reliable in historical research, brilliantly written, it offers the social witness of John Wesley for today's crises. Professor Runyon gives a coherent picture of Wesley's theology for the Christian oecumene and far beyond. I am very grateful for this book."--Jurgen Moltmann
The New Creation has been translated into 5 languages: Korean, Portuguese, Russian, German, and Spanish."

Founded by free people of color in Philadelphia in the aftermath of the American Revolution, the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church emerged in the nineteenth century as the preeminent black institution in the United States. In 1896, the church opened mission work in South Africa, absorbing an independent ""Ethiopian"" church founded by dissident African Christians a few years earlier. In the process, the church helped ignite one of the most influential popular movements in South African history. Songs of Zion examines this remarkable historical convergence from both sides of the Atlantic. James Campbell charts the origins and evolution of black American independent churches, arguing that the very act of becoming Christian forced African Americans to reflect on their relationship to their ancestral continent. He then turns to South Africa, exploring the AME Church's entrance and evolution in a series of specific South African contexts. Throughout the book, Campbell focuses on the comparisons that Africans and African Americans themselves drew between their situations. Their transatlantic encounter, he argues, enabled both groups to understand and act upon their worlds in new ways. |Discusses the interaction between the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and in South Africa, arguing that each group influenced the other to understand and act on their worlds in new ways.

In this fourth edition, the bibliographies define the basic resources for students and instructors of seminary-level courses in United Methodist history, doctrine, and polity, as determined by the Advisory Committee of the Division of Ordained Ministry of the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry of the United Methodist Church.

This essential, completely updated reference tool provides basic bibliographies for students of the Methodist movement and Wesleyan heritage. It identifies standard texts with emphasis on the best modern critical interpretations available. Materials are arranged topically, each entry carrying an item number, with an index for cross-referencing.

According to The Book of Discipline, Wesley believed that the "living core of the Christian faith" is revealed in Scripture, illumined by tradition, "vivified" by personal experience, and confirmed by reason. The thesis of Wesley and the Quadrilateral is that the Church needs serious conversation about reappropriating the Quadrilateral in a manner that is consistent with historical Methodist identity (beginning with Wesley), a conversation that takes the church's past identity with the utmost seriousness while recognizing present and future cultural trends.

With a historian's precision and a passion for social justice, Alice Knotts shows in this book how the activities of the Methodist women's movement for civil rights developed decade by decade. Their activities were rarely in the public eye, yet they were shaping and being shaped by events and public opinion.

An astute and insightful history, Fellowship of Love documents the contributions of white Methodist women in the American civil rights struggle. The research for this volume has won the Jessie Lee Prize from the General Commission on Archives and History of The United Methodist Church. It documents in one volume otherwise disparate information important to understanding the contributions of women in the Methodist Church to race struggles in 20th-century America. 0687030870671 Many pastors are stymied by lack of activity, the barring of doors, and the erecting of barriers. They want to make a change. They know that change is necessary to break through gridlock and conflict, but they do not know what skills and techniques are needed to deliver the desired results.

In Unlocking Church Doors: 10 Keys to Positive Change, Paul Mundey provides

For almost 200 years, the city of Birmingham has been a key location for the training of clergy. From 1828 Anglican clergy studied at the Queen's College and in 1881 the Methodist Church developed their own training facility at Handsworth College. In this book, Andrew Chandler tells the tale of these two colleges. This is a history not simply of the creation and evolution of these two religious institutions, but a study full of significance for the wider history of Christianity in British society across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The foundation of both colleges occurred in a confident age of civic progress and reform and their subsequent histories reveal much that was at work in the experience of the British churches at large. They were at first expressions of denominational identity and a determination to educate a class of clergy. In time they found themselves negotiating new prospects within the ecumenical currents of a later age and the deepening realities of secularization. In 1970 they united. This is a book which blends local, national and international dimensions and also shows how the two theological colleges came to embrace all kinds of intellectual, cultural, social and political history in a period of restless change.

In the Methodist lexicon, 'conference' refers to a body of preachers (and later, of laity as well) that exercises legislative, judicial, and executive functions for the church or some portion thereof. 'Conference, ' says Richey, defined Methodism in more than political ways: on conference hinged religious time, religious space, religious belonging, religious structure, even religiosity itself. Methodist histories uniformly recognize, typically even feature, conference's centrality, but describe that in primarily constitutional and political terms. The purpose of this volume is to present conference as a distinctively American Methodist manner of being the church, a multifaceted mode of spirituality, unity, mission, governance, and fraternity that American Methodists have lived and operated better than they have interpreted.

Of the many hymnbooks published by John and Charles Wesley, the most important was A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists (1780). Taking this volume as a case study and concentrating on the Charles Wesley hymns included in it, Teresa Berger clarifies the relationship between the language of doxology of worship and praise of God and the substance of theological reflection. She identifies the central theological themes and emphases in this body of hymnody, and raises the question of how theology can be embodied in hymns. Central to her argument is the claim that the theological analysis of doxological material is possible only when it takes care to recognize and safeguard the characteristics, the criteria of authenticity, and the tests of authority and legitimacy peculiar to doxological language. Part One of the book sets the whole discussion within the context of a renewed interest in doxological and liturgical traditions across Christianity by showing how the relationship of doxology and theology is an important topic of theological discussion in Roman Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, and ecumenical circles. Part Two is devoted to a thorough theological analysis of the central themes and images of the 1780 Collection. Part Three attempts to clarify the nature of doxology in its relation to theology.

This is the sixth volume of Wesley's Journal to appear in the critical edition of The Works of John Wesley. Covering the decade from 1776 to the end of 1786, it contains three full "Extracts" of Wesley's Journal (18-20) and the beginning of his last (21). These materials describe--in Wesley's own words--a crucial period that helps define the shape of Methodist theology and organization. The issues surrounding the manner of John Wesley's leadership and the authority of the Conference within Methodism furnish the framework for this period. Wesley begins working with new leaders such as Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury and makes several crucial decisions regarding Methodism in America, including the matter of ordination. He also faces several continuing points of contention in Great Britain that threaten to disrupt the progress of the revival, such as the problems associated with the building of preaching houses and "fixing" them on the Methodist plan. At the same time, he describes examples of strong local revivals that continue to appear throughout the connection and he fulfills his plans for a new chapel on City Road in London. Several crucial events in 1784 define the continuing nature of Methodist organization, especially the legal establishment of the Conference.