John Wesley's Dirtbag Manual

In a post two years ago, I introduced my desire to become a dirtbag preacher. Here is a link to a post reflecting on it one year later. I know it’s a lot of reading, but if you are new to my substack, this essay won’t make sense without it. And if you have read it before, if I may be so bold, it bears reading again: link

How do I become a dirtbag? The way there has occupied my thinking on and off. I have thought, "am I supposed to lay off official ministry, and head out to make disciples?" But that does no go very far, recognizing some basic things, that God called me to preach and very specifically has shown me how He wants me to do that, and that takes a bit of time.
So, then, is my position at Trinity Hill what propels me to being a dirtbag?

I was a dirtbag for a season, in helping get the church planting started in the MidSouth Conference. I did not accept pay, nor did I want any BECAUSE: it will be almost impossible to keep a movement if we expect to get paid. [There will be some other posts on changes in my preaching that I see have come to have impact on being a dirtbag, and why I had to let go of the church planting gig. I ran as hard as I could as long as the Lord wanted me to.]

The good people of Trinity Hill pay me to be a dirtbag. Here is what I mean: the church provides for me and my family to do ministry, for me to go out and about in the community, to lead Life Transformation Groups, train leaders to multiply home groups, etc. Pastoring the church is not my job. I am not a hired hand. I am not a professional. I am a shepherd of the sheep. I am Trinity Hill’s servant, but the church is not my master. The best way I can serve my people is to lead them in fidelity to our first love, Jesus. His mission and His method.

Multiplication of disciples, leaders, and churches takes dirtbag thinking. You have to be able to prioritize the work that must get done so you can get to the mission-critical work. I think it’s why the agricultural metaphors are so constant in scripture. Your harvest can’t multiply if you do not plow the ground in the fall and let the winter and spring snows and rains prepare the ground. You have to sow and be patient, waiting for the harvest. A dirtbag does everything he can to get to do what he loves. For some dudes, it will be working all week at whatever job to get to the weekend so they can go camp out on the beach and surf. For the dirtbag preacher, it is plowing, sowing, chopping, watering, getting ready for a harvest of disciples who then get sent out to repeat the process all over again. I guess what I mean is, I can’t believe they pay me to do this!

But man oh man. There is a really practical side that is cutting me right now. Check out this passage from John Wesley’s “Thoughts on Methodism.” He wrote this towards the end of his life, and while I am pretty sure people read this short treatise for some really pithy and blunt things he says in the first part, it is the last little bit that is working me over:

“I fear wherever riches have increased, (exceeding few are the exceptions) the essence of religion, the mind that was in Christ, has decreased in the same proportion. Therefore I do not see how it is possible in the nature of things for any true revival of religion to continue long. For religion must necessarily produce both industry and frugality; and these cannot but produce riches. But as riches increase, so will pride, anger, and love of the world in all its branches… the Methodists in every place grow diligent and frugal; consequently they increase in goods. Hence they proportionally increase in pride, in anger, in the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life. So although the form of religion remains, the spirit is swiftly vanishing away.

Is there no way to prevent this? This continual decline of pure religion? We ought not to forbid people to be diligent and frugal: we must exhort all Christians to gain all they can and save all they can, that is, in effect, to grow rich! What way can we take that our money does not sink us to the nethermost Hell? There is one way, and there is no other way under heaven: if those who make al they can, and save all they can will likewise give all they can, then the more they gain, the more they will grow in grace, and the more treasure they will lay up in heaven.”

Early in his ministry, Wesley realized what amount he needed to live on. He resolved to give everything above that away. What if we did the same? What if we honored God by making all we can? And provided for our families by saving all we can? And as we seek to live more frugally, and more simply, and thus gain in prosperity, we will have more to give. Alas, it seems what I want rises to the amount I make, and while I give more in actual dollar amount, it is not as much more as the growth in my income has been. Apparently, I was doing just fine when I was making less money. I was a dirtbag at my first church—I shudder to think of the little bit that church paid me, giving everything they could. My wife did not work but devoted herself to the children and the women, and I drove those back roads and, according to a word from the Lord, visited every house that end of the county at least once, many twice, roaming the hills, gathering the sheep. When I married Jessie that I had to tell her I was a dirtbag, was going to take a salary cut because otherwise the mission church would fail. She’s a real dirtbag—she married me anyway! The sweet blessing of being a dirtbag preacher is to pour more into the Kingdom—time, effort, and money-- than would have been available otherwise if I were working a secular job and doing ministry “on the side.”
The mark of a dirtbag, finally, is not their economic activity to be able to spend maximum time surfing or rock climbing; no, the mark of a dirtbag is to be fully committed to your passion.

John Wesley's dirtbag manual is this: give all you can. To the church. To missions and evangelism. To the relief of the poor. Or put another way, D.B. Kulothungan, the founder of a church planting ministry working with unreached people groups, says this: Spend and be spent.