John Howard Yoder says that communal practices like baptism, the eucharist, the opening meeting, and binding and loosing are the Gospel, in that the good news “is by definition always public; it is proclaimed in the open…it cannot be esoteric or private and be news.” Yoder warns of the influence of market mentality: The way for these communal practices to be good news is “not to try to please some marketplace or live up to someone else’s prior picture of what is credible.” These practices “do not make the individual the pivot of change. No trust is placed in the individual’s changed ‘insights’ or ‘insides’ to change the world. The fulcrum for change and the forum for discernment is the moral independence of the believing community.”
These practices are not introspective or otherworldly. They are not only for the individual, and in fact, they do not exist merely for the sake of the church. Such practices ultimately exist for the world. They can be “spoken of in social process terms, which can easily be transposed into non-religious equivalent that a sociologist could watch. People who do not share the faith or join the community can learn from them.”
It imperative to collapse the difference between “means” and “ends,” to eliminate the differentiation between the Church and the message it proclaims. The Gospel cannot be communicated on its own apart from the community that is the church.
One aspect of modern United Methodism is to consider the church in functional terms. More specifically, a church is successful when it effectively facilitates the spiritual growth of individuals. Such “success” is noticeable through membership, attendance in worship, small groups and service projects, as well as financial giving. Indications in Wesley that suggest his support for a functional view of the church can be found in contemporary ecclesiological reflection for United Methodists.
For example, George Hunter, a popular author and professor of evangelism suggests that Wesley’s approach to pursuing evangelism was
“…remarkably close to that of today’s Church Growth movement. For instance, [Wesley] was an unapologetic pragmatist in the choice and development of strategies, models, and methods. The supreme standard for evaluating any evangelism approach was its outcomes, that is, whether or not the approach helped to achieve the perennial apostolic objectives of discipling of people and the growth of the true Church." (To Spread the Power)
This comparison is significant, given that the Church Growth movement places great emphasis on numbers and the “homogeneous unit” principle. Both of these bear great similarities to the project of the modern market. In the modern market, one's success is determined by market share. In addition, the “homogeneous unit” principle sounds very much like forms of niche marketing, not to mention that such a principle could lead to supporting racial/ethnic and economic divisions in the society within the church.
My point is not to argue what Wesley did or did not say or do. Rather, I am suggesting that United Methodists, in evaluating Wesleyan thought for the contemporary church, cannot help but be distorted in these efforts when their goal is to secure the legitimacy and the relevance of the church.
A few years ago, I became interested in the Emergent Church movement, which represents (among other things) an ongoing experiment with cross-traditional liturgical and formative Christian practices. The United Methodist Church has also shown interest in this young movement, since it may be instructive for their own efforts to reach out to these missing generations. In other words we United Methodists believe that if it works for the Emergent Church, we should try it too.
There is an ongoing conversation between the UMC and the Emergent Church movement. However, are these conversations subject to distortion by the influence of the consumer market? Read how one leader describes his emergent community: “Individually, each [member] adopts what practices they [sic] want and asks for help. Some do the Book of Common Prayer, some the divine hours, and some the Eastern Orthodox prayer book” (Gibbs/Bolger p.230). Such practices are offered as new programs that will hopefully awaken interest and stimulate growth in a dormant church.
Could this be a subtle form of what Michael Budde describes as the “appropriation of religiosity?” By appropriation of religiosity, Budde means offering religious symbols and practices (extracted from their respective traditions) in order to attract new members (or consumers?). While the search for a greater catholicity in the life and practice of the United Methodist Church is good, United Methodism is by no means insulated from the drive of the market that seeks to appropriate these traditions in the interest of seeing its churches be more successful, relevant and popular.
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