We are honored to be featured in Christianity Today alongside other Wesleyan groups who are working to recover classical Methodist theology (and, with it, classic Christianity). Christianity Today was founded by Billy Graham in 1956 and is now one of the largest magazines in the world with 4.5 million monthly readers. In an article titled “‘Wesley Is Fire Now’ and Evangelicals Are Being Strangely Warmed,” Clayton Sidenbender argues that “nearly 20 years after the rise of New Calvinism—when ‘Young, Restless, Reformed’ Christians embraced the doctrinal system taught by French theologian John Calvin—there’s a new and renewed interest in another theological tradition, which has a bit of a different flavor.” If you don’t have a subscription to Christianity Today, here’s an excerpt from the article:
Groups of theologians are working to articulate Wesleyan theology in a fresh way. A small Wesleyan seminary has grown 500 percent in just six years. A new Wesleyan denomination, the Global Methodist Church, is sparking revived interest in the history and theology of the tradition and increased attention to spiritual practices, including Bible reading, worship, and prayer. Last year, a revival among the students at Asbury University drew international attention to Wesleyan spirituality.
Andy Miller III, a sixth-generation Salvation Army officer who has joined the Global Methodist Church and is currently a preaching and theology professor and president of Wesley Biblical Seminary (WBS), told CT this is an “amazing moment in Methodism.”
In addition to being president of a historically Wesleyan seminary, Miller leads More to the Story Ministries, which “exists to create content with orthodox Wesleyan convictions to serve the world in the name of Jesus Christ.” His weekly podcast boasts more than 750,000 views and downloads.
There is also a small fleet of Wesleyan institutions, including Seedbed, More to the Story, the Francis Asbury Society, the John Wesley Institute, the Fundamental Wesleyan Society, Firebrand Magazine, and Holy Joys.
Johnathan Arnold, who helped start Holy Joys in 2019, recalls he was steeped in Calvinist theology in high school. He read whatever was on his dad’s bookshelf and really loved a biography of Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards and the Westminster Shorter Catechism. He also started reading contemporary Calvinist preachers and teachers, including John MacArthur, and watching videos of them on YouTube.
One day, however, he found a Q&A with a question that tripped him up on his path toward Calvinism. On the YouTube video, someone in the audience asked a Calvinist pastor how to explain to people who are not Christians that Jesus didn’t die for them.
“I thought, That’s a weird question,” Arnold told CT. “Surely he’s going to say, ‘Of course he died for the world. He’s not only a propitiation for our sins, but for the sins of the whole world’” (1 John 2:2).
Instead, the pastor said this was a complicated issue.
“That just blew me away,” Arnold, now 29, recalled.
It made him question whether Calvinism, which teaches a doctrine called “limited atonement,” was really biblical. He started looking around for other ways to systematize what Scripture said about God’s grace.
That’s when he discovered a book called Wesleyana, a collection of John Wesley’s writings. He liked what he read and found Wesleyanism to be a much more satisfying option. He started to identify as a Methodist.
Today, Arnold is senior pastor of Redeemer Wesleyan Church in Mount Pleasant Mills, Pennsylvania, and is president of Holy Joys. The organization seeks to equip local churches with Wesleyan-informed resources. It spends little time opposing Calvinism but instead tries to recover classical Methodist theology, much of it from the 19th century, developed by people such as Richard Watson, William Burt Pope, and Thomas Ralston.
“Of course, the name Holy Joys comes from John Wesley,” Arnold said. “In that little book, Wesleyana, that I read, one of the very first chapters is on true religion and in that chapter, Wesley says, ‘Christianity is holiness and happiness.’”
The Holy Joys Podcast has over 25,000 downloads. A lot of listeners seem interested in questions about church structure, discipleship, and building a strong church community.
“Ecclesiology has really become the driving doctrine,” said Holy Joys board member David Fry, who is also senior pastor of Frankfort Bible Holiness Church in Frankfort, Indiana. “We want to write theology for the church and developing healthier churches.”
Chris Lohrstorfer, associate professor of Wesleyan theology at WBS, said Wesleyan ecclesiology offers a vision of the church as a community. Many people, in recent years, have craved a community-oriented Christian life, he said, and that has only increased in response to what some experts have called an “epidemic of loneliness.”
“The Wesleyan understanding of church and Christianity is … what our society is looking for,” Lohrstorfer said.
In addition to putting more Wesleyan sermons on its website, Holy Joys also has an event called the Holy Joys Healthy Church Conference. The first year, 50 people came. The second, that number almost doubled. Around 100 pastors and lay leaders came to the conference this year.
The next big project for Holy Joys is a new catechism, helping people teach its historic theological tradition in their local churches. The group has been working on this for several years.
May the Lord raise up more men and women with the good news of holiness and happiness in Christ. And may we never forget the beating heart of true Methodism:
A Methodist is one who has “the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost given unto him;” one who “loves the Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his mind, and with all his strength. God is the joy of his heart, and the desire of his soul; which is constantly crying out, “Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee! My God and my all! Thou art the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever!” He is therefore happy in God, yea, always happy, as having in him “a well of water springing up into everlasting life,” and overflowing his soul with peace and joy.
