At the Celebration of Ministry Service at Annual Conference in Indianapolis in June I was struck again by how we in the Methodist tradition continually strive to invoke the Holy Spirit upon the life of the church and upon those who are to order and lead it: in the midst of conference and bishop, in the call to itinerant forms of ministry and accountability, we confess how dependent we are upon the Spirit to share in the mission of the whole church. I was struck by the way we are to order our lives not simply toward God but toward one another, and by the way our guiding vision always takes a particular shape during a particular time regardless of the challenges. It was a grace-filled moment, to be sure, but also a reminder of the true end to which Christ calls each of us.
In a letter to John Smith on June 25, 1746, John Wesley, in reflecting on the Methodist movement, wrote, “What is the end of all ecclesiastical order? Is it not to bring souls from the power of Satan to God? And to build them in his fear and love? Order, then, is so far valuable as it answers these ends; and if it answers them not it is worth nothing.”
Wesley’s quote captures the deeply missional thrust of the
people called Methodists: a church’s
pattern of organization and authority – or polity – must be oriented toward the
church’s mission of saving souls or making disciples. How we order
our lives must somehow support that basic mission. As Wesley would say elsewhere: if we can’t find ways to organize the church
toward these ends, then we might as
well let the devil win!
As United Methodists we have spent a great deal of energy
over the years trying to align our organization more purposefully with our
mission. As historian Russell Richey of Emory
University has stated, Methodists have always tried to develop appropriate
structures that would sustain and nourish their mission depending on the era. What have remained constant over time are
those elements that have been distinctive to Methodists from early on: conference, episcopacy, itinerant ministry,
and forms of accountability. While these
aspects do not provide a full account of Methodist polity, the loss of any of
them would diminish something unique to the Methodist way of sharing in God’s mission.
To be sure, it’s a tall order to keep these four elements
together, especially during a time of historic transition. It would be easy, for example, to fall into
the trap of wanting to do away with one of these principles at the expense of
another. It would also be tempting to
see the role of the Holy Spirit as only working in our individual lives or
congregations as against the structures of the wider church as an
institution. And yet, as our history
indicates, our polity has persisted through time not just because we have the
right structures but because we are actively seeking to respond to what the
Spirit is doing.
Such characteristics, of course, are not unique to United
Methodists. Other Pan-Methodists and
Wesleyan Holiness churches have also struggled with matters of discipline and
order – African Methodist Episcopal and Free Methodists come to mind. They are reminders that questions of mission and
polity go hand-in-hand in the Wesleyan tradition.
Celebrating in worship at Annual Conference, and praying for
those who were being commissioned and ordained, I was moved at how Methodism
seeks to order its life as a mission-driven community of faith. Again and again, we invoked God’s Spirit as
we sent out those who will serve among us, sharing in ministries of mutual
accountability, and renewing our covenant to be faithful to the example of
Christ. It was a hope-filled moment, to
say the least.
However, as we think about the future of the United
Methodist Church, we may also want to ask ourselves why these four elements in
our polity have persisted throughout our history and what they may mean in
light of our present challenges. As
General Conference in Tampa revealed we have much work to do. 
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