Wesley, Asbury, and Apostolicity

From Wesley to Asbury: Studies in Early American Methodism
by Frank Baker
Durham, N.C: Duke University Press, 1976
ISBN 0822303590, 978-0822303596

“Asbury’s apologia pro vita sua was contained in ‘A Valedictory Address’ to Bishop William McKendree, dated August 5, 1813.  In this he used two important adjectives to describe Methodism as he envisioned it:  ‘apostolical’ and ‘missionary.’  He claimed that contrary to popular opinion it was still possible for Methodism to retain ’such doctrines, such discipline, such convictions, such conversions, such witnesses of sanctification, and such holy men, ‘ as ‘in former apostolical days.’  But only if they remained a missionary church, if their preachers, bishops and elders alike, itinerated, as did Paul, Timothy, and titus, thus maintaining ‘the traveling apostolic order and ministry that is found in our very constitution.’”  (these later quotes are from Asbury’s Journal, III, 475-92, especially pp. 475-6, 491-2) p. 139

The Radical Wesley: Pattern for Church Renewal
By Howard Snyder
Published by Zondervan, 1987
ISBN 0310444713, 9780310444718

“Wesley, the master organizer, never built a great evangelistic organization.  He simply went everywhere preaching, and he sent out other preachers in similar pattern.  Wesley’s gift for organization was bent toward the one objective of forming a genuine people of God within the institutional church.  He concentrated not on the efforts leading up to decision but on the time after decision.  His system had little to do with publicity or public image but everything to do with building the community of God’s people.  From the beginning of Wesley’s great ministry in 1738, the secret of his radicality lay in his forming little bands of God-seekers who joined together in earnest quest to be Jesus’ disciples.  He ‘organized to beat the devil’ — not to make converts but to turn converts into saints.  Wesley would have nothing of ’solitary religion,’ secret Christians or faith without works.” p. 2

Quotable >> Chirst The Lord: The Road to Cana

Jesus says:

“What is all that?  Egypt, Italy, Greece, Germania, Asia, what is all that?  It’s the world, my lord.  That’s what it is to us, it’s the world to whom we are to be the light, we, our people!”

He was outraged.  “What are you saying?”

“It’s where I live, my lord,” I said.  “Not in the Temple, but in the world.  and in the world, I learn what the world is and what the world will teach, and I am of the world.  The world’s made of wood and stone and iron, and I work in it.  No, not in the Temple.  In the world.  And I study Torah; and I pray with the assembly; and on feasts I go to Jerusalem to stand before the Lord – in the Temple – but this is in the world, all this.  In the world.  And when it is time for me to do what the Lord has sent me to do in this world, this world which belongs to Him, this world of wood and stone and iron and grass and air, He will reveal it to me.  And what this carpenter shall yet build in this world on that day, the Lord knows, and he Lord shall reveal it.”

He was speechless.

I love that exchange between Jesus and Hananel of Cana!