Old School Wesleyan Discipleship
The title is kind of tongue-in-cheek, a reference to a new hangout Drewsky Jordan introduced me to: Old School Coffee. They just opened one not far from the church.
Every so often, I have to rebuild my schedule, to get back to protecting the mornings for time with the Lord, and to make sure I keep my nose to the grindstone on discipleship. There are plenty of distractions in ministry that can keep you from The Main Thing.
Today, I got down to the Main Thing… at Old School Coffee. George Mueller’s great book, Answers to Prayer, has renewed my intensity in praying for one of the few things Jesus tells us specifically to pray for: that there would be workers in the harvest field. One guy came with his first draft of a plan for a new church. Another guy came by to tell me he feels like God is calling him to church planting, and what should he do?
For a number of years now, I have been digging into the Puritan pastors of the 1600s. I have become convinced that the core Methodist doctrine of holiness owes much to those Puritans. In another great book, Susanna Wesley and the Puritan Tradition in Methodism, there is a fragment from one of her father’s sermons. He was John Wesley’s grandfather. The basic idea was read Scripture, pray about it, and resolve to do what Scripture tells you to do. Which is exactly our House Group model. We did not explicitly decide to follow a Puritan pastor’s model. Rather, there is nothing new under the Sun. It would appear that John Wesley’s Puritan grandfather spoke to him through his mother, and that no matter the time and place, to be a disciple means to love and obey Jesus.