Autonomy and Accountability

One thing I was going to share with you this morning at the intro and I forgot at that point in time, but when I came into the building this morning, just like the last few weeks, it was 50 degrees in the building because the auto on the thermostats aren’t working so they just shut them off and then they have to come on. So at least it’s not as cold as it used to be, but then I started going, I hope it’s warm enough by the time everybody gets here, and then I started thinking about their utility bill and how much the heat is for their utility bill. Treasurer Sue, how much do we spend on our utilities? We didn’t spend anything.

So that was just one more thing I came in this morning and I was thankful for that, you know, the gift that we had been given in the way that we are loved by the Central Korean Church. I mean, that’s just such a blessing that we can’t take this stuff for granted. We can prepare for so much more and we can plan and think about other things when we’re not worried about this.

I just thought that was pretty cool. It has nothing to do with my sermon, but I wanted to share it. Amen.

As we’re going through this series, I learned something over the last year that is the strongest bond of keeping people together in the same house under the same control. Can we see that first slide? Who holds the title? Who holds the deed for a church? Makes a big difference. And it was held to responsibility all over the country and there were fights.

There are some that have still just come out of court battles regarding the deed and who holds that. At Stillwell, as soon as they paid off the debt, it was kind of interesting that it wasn’t in the name of the United Methodist Church, but when the debt was paid off, they had to sign over the deed to the United Methodist Church. And that is a part of accountability, that they can hold you accountable.

Now, the interesting thing, if we go to this next, oh, sorry. If we go to this next slide, the purpose of the trust clause, according to Timothy Tenet, was to protect the church from heterodox teaching. That means anti-orthodox teaching, which was inconsistent with the scriptures and received interpretation of the Wesleyan messages found in the Wesleyan canonical sermons.

And that was used against churches that wanted to have the Bible as a basis and wanted to resist anything that would push against them. So in the 21st century, it’s come full circle on what holds a church together. So when we ask this question, hey, Methodist, hey, somebody remembered from last week.

Hey, Methodist, why go global? We talked about how it’s beyond us, that God is bigger than us, that when we think of a denomination and places, God is working, and the amazing thing God is doing in Asia, in Africa, in South America, in other places all over the world that we normally might not even think of those places, because they might not be the most greatest getaway vacation places, but God is working and God is moving. And then we talked about scriptural holiness, how Wesley said the goal of Methodism is to spread scriptural holiness across the world, and how that is so core to who we should be and who we are. Last week we talked about we have one hope, and some of you recognize that from some other place, that we have one hope, and that one hope is in Jesus Christ.

Today we’re gonna talk about autonomy and accountability. And as I was praying and walking around the sanctuary this morning, I realized, I think I picked the most boring title of any title I’ve ever had in 18 years of ministry. How many of you, when I say autonomy and accountability, go, yes, Jesus, yes! Okay, maybe I could have come up with something a little better.

But one of the things that’s important in a life as a church is to have autonomy. Autonomy says that you are not ruled over. It’s like the difference between being grassroots and coming up with what you do and how you minister and how you work in the world versus it being pushed down on you.

And one of the difficulties with that is, and we see it more as pastors, because you might not see it as much, because some of it we just ignore, that every year they come in and they go, oh, here’s the latest, greatest thing. Now we gotta implement this. Every one of the churches does this.

Everybody’s gotta jump on board and now do this. And then the toughest part is one of the things that’s supposed to be more autonomous in the global Methodist church is who your pastor is, that the church has more of a say in who your pastor is. I mean, it took all the stress off of me when I’d walk into that the DS would always call it an introductory meeting.

It wasn’t an interview, and the DS would say, I just wanna introduce you to your new pastor. Take it or leave, take it. You can leave it, but then you’re gonna be in trouble.

Autonomy and accountability. Now, accountable, the original purpose of the deed being in the name of the denomination, it started with the Methodist houses, the preaching houses. If you know that part about Methodist ministry around London and Bristol, around England, Wesley bought and set up houses that are preaching houses.

They would still go and do communion and worship at the Anglican church, but they would have these preaching houses too where Wesley would have a circuit throughout England and he would come to the church and he wrote up a quick, knowing that the Presbyterians did this, he wrote up something really quick and said, okay, this is the trust clause for the Methodist houses. And George Whitfield, who was a contemporary of his, who was the walking contradiction of a Calvinist Methodist, told him, you do realize that the way you wrote this, they can tell you you can’t come preach in these preaching houses you started. So he wrote him a little more meticulously and then it spread throughout Methodist and Methodism denominations.

And then the trust clause was in there. But to tell you the truth, there’s gotta be more. I mean, right now, we don’t own a building so we don’t have to worry about it either way, but if you own a building, it’s in the name of the church, not the denomination in the Global Methodist Church.

So how is there accountability in the Global Methodist Church? Well, it’s as simple as us saying we agree with what the Global Methodist Church is doing and where they’re headed and them saying, okay, you agree with that, you can be a Global Methodist Church, but if you don’t, you’re welcome to pick up your toys and leave. It’s kind of a different setting of accountability and that type of accountability doesn’t require a trust clause, it just simply requires trust. Do you trust in the leaders to be doing the will of God and the work of God in the world? And the verse that seemed to really help me with this is probably not something you would come up with if you were just saying, okay, what verses do we have on accountability and autonomy and how that all works with the church? And this is Revelation 2. And John has come before in heaven and seen Jesus, he’s seen the angels worshiping the Lord, he’s seen Jesus looking so powerful in all his glory.

The hairs of his head were white, the white wool like snow, his eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze refined in a furnace and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars for his mouth and came a sharp two-edged sword and his face was like the sun shining in full strength. Now once you say that Jesus, you’re gonna wanna be accountable or you understand that Jesus is powerful.

And it’s not just someone we can say, well, that doesn’t fit today, that doesn’t fit our culture. It’s us saying, we don’t care if we don’t fit the culture. It’s a little different way to look at it.

Revelation 2, verse one through seven, will you stand as you are able. This is the first church of the seven churches that Jesus speaks about to John in the book of Revelation. To the angel of the church in Ephesus write, the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands.

I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance and how you cannot bear with those who are evil but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake and you have not grown weary but I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first.

If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. Yet you have this, you hate the works of the Nicoladians, which I also hate. He who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches.

To the one who conquers, I will grant to eat the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. The word of God. For the people of God.

Thanks be to God. Amen. You may be seated.

There’s a lot going on in here. When Jesus starts addressing the churches, there are different factors that he has here. We’re gonna look at another church in a couple of weeks.

But this week, as we look at the book of Ephesus, we look at the town, the community, the city of Ephesus. We see John listening to Jesus, and Jesus is telling him, to the angel of the church of Ephesus write. And then John wrote those words.

Now, some of the things in Revelation are a little tricky to understand what they mean. Would anybody disagree with that? But some of the things in Revelation explain themselves. Jesus tells John this.

As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, this is at the end of chapter one, and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches. Now, when you look at that, it sounds pretty straightforward, but there’s two ways, two major ways. There’s obviously a lot of ways people look at this.

Is the angel of the church of Ephesus like a guardian angel that is over either the church or the city? Or is the angel, as it’s translated, a messenger? Is it the pastors and the leaders of that church that that’s talking about? Now, the interesting thing is when you say Jesus say, write this letter to the angel of the church, it just doesn’t make so much sense for, okay, John, now you talk to the angels. It’s Jesus holding the angels, and John is sending a letter. Now, the letter would go to the church, and the church would be the people.

So there’s two ways to look at this. One is that it’s an angel, or it could also be the leaders of the church. Now, if you think of it in this order, if we go to the slide, when you see the accountability and the autonomy that’s going on here in this picture, we have Jesus, and Jesus in our world today probably represents who? It’s not a trick question.

Jesus, yes, God. Okay, so it’s Jesus, and then you have John. Now, in our scenario, when I’m thinking of John, John was an evangelist.

John was an apostle, one of the original disciples, and he was not a mainstay in the church of Ephesus. He was not an appointed pastor or leader in the church of Ephesus. He was outside the church, but the church listened to him and trusted in him and was accountable to him.

Because the early church, they looked at the apostles and saw, well, these guys walked with God. So, John is representative of what denominational leaders might be today. If you think of our Bishop Jones, if you think of our President Pro Tempore of the Heartland Conference, if you think of our Supervising Elder of the Flint Hills District, John is the leaders.

So, the greatest thing you want from your leaders is to be able to trust that they’re actually getting the words they guide you with from who? Jesus. So, we, in our situation, if we say, why go global? It’s because at least at this point, we trust the leaders. We know they’re seeking God’s guidance.

We know they are trying to lead us with scriptural holiness like we talked about. And that is huge. So, we’re accountable to them, but to the same extent, you see the church in Ephesus doesn’t have to go through John to talk to Jesus all the time.

They have their own relationship with Jesus and they get their own mission and they work on their area and they do everything and Jesus sees the things they are doing and he said, what’s pretty awesome about you guys is that you toil, you’re patient, you endure in a world, in a difficult situation in Ephesus where they had temples, they had other gods, they had places of worship and Christians like Jews, but then Christians like were outcast to Jews and others. So, whether they were Gentile or Jew, they didn’t trust in them. In Ephesus, they mocked them.

They put them down and it was as the first century rolled on like we see in Revelation, assuming that was written towards the end of John’s life, towards the end of the first century. That’s starting to get a little hostile for Christians in these places. So, there has to be some level of trust between the angel or the leaders of Ephesus and John.

And so, when John would write these words, they would know they came from Jesus. I know your works, you have tested and called those who have called themselves apostles and are not and found them to be false. Now, Paul would write about a group of people he mockingly called super apostles.

Where Paul would probably go into a church like in Corinth, start that church and that church would grow and move and have other leaders. Paul would be there for a year or two and move on. And then this other wave of people would come in that he called super apostles.

Where they would come in and say, well, Paul only told you part of it. Here’s where you really get the power of God. And they would have them bring in and take on more of the law.

The Torah saying, it’s not just about Jesus, it’s also you have to do this and this and this and this and this and follow these dietary habits and have these ceremonies and everything else it wasn’t until later that in the book of Acts, they resolve all that on how they interpreted all that from the Old Testament to the New Testament. So the angels or the leaders or both would have to trust. Now, when I look at this, when it says the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches.

I think of seven, it is a biblical word and we see it a lot in Revelation. We also see it a lot in some of the apocryphal books of the Old Testament. Seven means complete or perfect or full.

When he talks about the seven spirits, that is the spirit of God because it’s complete or perfect or full. The seven stars are the saying, the leaders who are connected to God. And the seven lampstands are the seven churches.

Now, it seems kind of odd that if the lampstand is the church and God says, if you don’t find, if you don’t repent, I’m gonna come and take your lampstand. Well, does that mean he’s gonna come and make us turn the sign of trust clause to turn the building over to God? So the seven lampstands are, if you think now this is me throwing a little Calvin out there, which I don’t do that often, but Calvin would talk about the difference between the little C church and the big C church. The big C church is not every place in the world that calls themselves a church.

It’s really those churches that are connected to the Holy Spirit. So the seven lampstands are the connection to the Holy Spirit. So in a way of saying, I’m going to come and take the lampstand, it’s God saying, I’m going to come and remove the Holy Spirit from your church.

We can see a lot of examples in history where this has happened. But the interesting thing is, even though they do all this stuff, they do these great works. They oppose those who are evil.

Paul says this, but I have this against you that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Now, when you talk about the love you had at first and then he tells him what to do and he said, repent and do the works you did at first. Are works and love the same thing? The first love and original works.

What is the connection there? Now, when you think about the connection between the first love and original works, what I think of is when I first started building a relationship with Jesus and I was a sophomore in college and I would get my homework done as early as possible and then spend the rest of the evening reading the Bible and I fell in love with God. By the time I got to Exodus, I was in love with God and saw how God loved the people so much. And I did all that and I was so excited to read the Bible, so excited to grow in my faith, so excited to learn about God and this mystery of who God is and how God interacts in the world.

And then when I got done with the Bible, then my life would go in ebb and flow of how close I felt to God. Sometimes I’d feel really close and sometimes I’d feel really far apart and sometimes when you feel really far apart of God, it seems really, really difficult to get that closeness to God. It also came again when I took the disciple Bible study.

It wasn’t really the teaching that they had in the class, it was just challenging you to read the Bible for a half hour to an hour a night. Helped me to fall in love with God again. The love we have at first, when we first become Christians, there’s statistics that show when somebody first receives Christ as their savior, they tell people about Jesus a lot.

And then after the first year, it drops and after a few years, it drops and eventually they just stop doing it because all their friends are Christians. So they end up isolating themselves from what they were called to do at first. Now, this part at the end where it says this, yet you have this, you hate the works of the Nicoladians and it’s important to note it’s the works, not hating the people.

Some people think because this is tied from the false apostles that the Nicoladians are as well, that they’re corrupting the teaching of the churches. There’s really no history that shows what that is. Some people think it’s Gnosticism being introduced into the church at that point in time.

But it’s saying, when you do this, when you do things for God, when you say, I’m not gonna stand for this because it’s evil, I’m gonna stand up for God, we cannot lose the sense that we’re doing it out of love. We cannot lose the sense that it’s because of the love of God we do it, not just a burning desire to show someone they’re wrong. Does that make sense? That’s not the foundation of what Christianity is.

And I think what’s most important for us is to have someone who gives us autonomy, but also holds us accountable in loving God. The first and most important command is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. And the second is like it to love your neighbor as yourself.

A lot of what the Wesleyan theology is that we want anyone holding us accountable to brings us back to that point of love. Now, 2 Corinthians 5.14 kind of says this in a way that draws us into what Jesus is probably getting at. It says, for the love of Christ controls, some versions have compels us, because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died.

Meaning, when we look at that, we don’t do something because we’re angry with someone else, we don’t do something because somebody else we think is wrong, we do whatever we do because of the love of God inside of us. And that ties into what Wesleyan theology is. It boils down to love and grace, and we talked a couple weeks ago about holy love.

That holiness without love is an all-consuming fire. Love without holiness becomes more self-absorbed, that eventually you love only if it’s about self-absorption. So the holy love and the shape of grace that we talked about, but in the same book that we’ve been bringing up throughout this called The Next Methodism, Theological, Social, and Missional Foundations for Global Methodism, Matt O’Reilly talks about the importance of perfect love from a missional perspective.

Why don’t we read this together since it’s on the board? Without perfect love, our mission to the world cannot faithfully communicate the power of God’s transforming grace. Now, when we were talking about scriptural holiness, or the way of salvation, it is that God moves before us, and that it’s by God’s grace, we can then be drawn to God, we can repent and receive Jesus as our Savior, that’s the justifying grace, and then once we’re there, it’s a continual process of growing closer and closer to God, being set apart for God, the holiness, the sanctification of it all. But in the midst of that, it’s God’s love that drives us into that transformation, that transformation isn’t possible at all without the love of God.

David Watson this week wrote an article, David Watson, he’s one of the great teachers in global Methodism right now, but he’s a Methodist professor, and he wrote an article talking about the mission statement of the Global Methodist Church. The mission statement is, the mission of the Global Methodist Church is to worship passionately, love extravagantly, and witness boldly, which is pretty cool. But he suggested that at a convening conference later on this year, that they adopt a mission statement is, the mission statement of the Global Methodist Church is to spread scriptural holiness across the globe, which is also pretty cool, to think about that scriptural holiness, to think the scripture and the growing closer to God would be in the essence of who we are and what we do.

Ephesians 2.10 also gives us some insight of what it means to have that first love of what God has. I’m gonna read eight through 10. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.

It is not a result of our works, so that no one may boast. Can’t work your way into salvation or eternal life, it’s by the grace of God, the grace.