Chapter 4 of The Discipline contains The Constitution of The North American General Conference. Basic Christian doctrines and the basic outline for our governing structure are established here. Appropriately, these things can be changed, but it requires a tremendous amount of work to do so. Allow me to be clear. The general principles established in The Constitution are sound. They establish as thoroughly orthodox and distinguish us as thoroughly entrenched in the holiness movement with a presbyterian form of government. I will not be advocating for any seismic shifts in this area. However, I would offer a few observations.

What are the five foundational values of The Wesleyan Church as evidenced in her history?

In light of the upcoming Fifteenth General Conference of The Wesleyan Church, I have begun a review of The Discipline of The Wesleyan Church 2022, which serves as the seminal definition of Wesleyan belief and polity. My objective in this is to remind myself of the timeless things which have driven our denomination since its inception and to consider how to best pursue them in the next fifty years. Moreover, I intend to document this journey by sharing thoughts, experiences, and dreams along the way, and in so doing, I hope to encourage and even inspire those who will be elected in 2025 to be present at General Conference in 2026 to imagine what could and should be.

First Timothy 2:11-15 is another great elephant in the room whenever we address the matter of women in ministry. Fortunately, despite its popularity as a proof text for the complementarian position, there is a mountain of evidence that it should not be interpreted as a blanket prohibition of women in ministry. Unfortunately, egalitarians often throw the mountain through our complementarian brothers’ and sisters’ windows and then leave this passage behind as irrelevant to our vision for women in ministry. Instead of asking ourselves how this Scripture is inspired and useful to us, we discard it as entirely irrelevant. An analysis of the passage’s historical, cultural, and textual contexts, however, reveals tremendous insight which allows us to discover the passage’s beautiful vision for men and women to share in the leadership of the church.

After working for more than twenty years as a pastor, I can tell you that sermon planning, preparation, and filing is definitely one of those tasks. When I first came to our church, I picked sermon passages on a whim, and when the message was done, I essentially threw it out. However, as I continued to preach week after week, the inadequacies of this system quickly became apparent. As a brand new pastor picking passages on a whim, I quickly reached the end of the texts that were familiar to me. The longer I preached, the more likely it was that I revisited a passage, in which case I would want to return to all of the notes and such that I had taken the last time I was there. And as I continued to minister in the same church for five, ten, and fifteen years, it became important that I develop a system whereby I do not get stuck in a rut, constantly revisiting the same passages or themes. Consequently, I began to develop a system for planning, preparing, and filing sermons.