Zeal and Patience, Part IV

Originally published on Covenant, 19 July, 2017

A similar uncertainty surrounds the affirmations about our essential unity of belief regarding the Holy Eucharist. It is true that This Holy Mystery: A United Methodist Understanding of Holy Communion affirms “the real, personal, and living presence of Jesus” in the sacramental elements (though “in temporal and relational terms”). However, assorted practices surrounding the celebration and administration of Holy Communion in United Methodist Churches stand at some tension with this claim, as they deviate so seriously from historical norms.

Much of the online discussion has centered on whether the Methodist requirement that Holy Communion be celebrated with “the pure, unfermented juice of the grape” can be squared with the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral’s that the Holy Communion be “ministered with unfailing use of Christ’s words of institution and of the elements ordained by Him.” More serious is the nearly universal United Methodist practice of admitting the unbaptized to Communion and the widespread authorization for celebrating Holy Communion by licensed local (unordained) pastors.

Commentary: Beloved Dust by Jamin Goggin and Kyle Strobel (2014)

A friend of mine, a lifelong Episcopalian, told me the other day that he’s never really understood what evangelicals are going on about when they talk about having a personal relationship with Jesus.  I muttered something to him about emotional and intellectual approaches to faith, but we both knew that was skirting the issue.  Having finished Jamin Goggin and Kyle Strobel’s Beloved Dust this week, I think I’ll just send him a copy and let the evangelicals explain it all in their own words—beautifully, simply and compellingly.

Goggin and Strobel are certainly from the evangelical mainstream.  Goggin is a pastor at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, probably America’s healthiest and influential megachurch, and Warren himself writes a ringing endorsement of a foreword.  Strobel teaches spiritual theology at Biola College in Los Angeles, one of evangelicalism’s strongest colleges.  They speak openly about the spiritual challenges they have experienced within the evangelical mainstream: duty-focused legalism, secret hypocrisy and shallow and trite devotionalism (not that evangelicals have any monopoly on these things).