What Makes Us Church
Congregationalism, independence, and disconnection come naturally. Connectionalism, as a way of doing church, is countercultural and difficult to sustain.
Episcopal oversight and clergy appointment by a bishop, though biblical and historic, is tough in North America. Pastors who are willing to be sent, and bishops who make informed, careful assessment of clergy and congregations are a Wesleyan dream that’s hard to realize in an anti-institutional, individualistic, capitalist context.
Wesleyan Christianity, as God’s gift to the world, requires constant refurbishment and indoctrination. It’s easier to divide the world into the saved and the unsaved, elect and damned, truly committed and merely casual believers, progressives and conservatives, than to extrovertedly preach Wesleyan “Salvation for all!”
Sometimes, claims of graciousness and love are the way that we clergy cover our lack of leadership daring.
Some clergy conceal their desire for power over others with claims that what they say is out of love for their people, what the Bible says, or what Jesus told them he wants.
To invoke any other value or noble goal as more important than invitation to commune together at Christ’s table and enjoy the communal benefits of one Lord, one faith, one baptism is to have misunderstood Jesus.
Pastors are community persons whose primary job is to care about and work for what makes for community among the odd cast of characters Jesus Christ has died to save and is determined to assemble, otherwise known as church.
Leadership that’s good at dividing, winning, and seizing power is rarely competent to create, convene, and grow a church.
Preachers submit our lives to priestly listening of Scripture, disciplining ourselves to talk about what Jesus wants to talk about rather than what nine out of ten Americans would like to hear.
Whenever we take up the sword, using worldly political means, slogans, and power plays to defend Jesus, we betray our Lord’s way of having his kingdom come, his will to be done on earth as in heaven.
If your doctrinal commitments make it hard for you to put up with fellow Christians at the Lord’s Table, you may have given too much of yourself to questionable doctrines.
Go ahead and love Jesus, but remember that other Christians will love him differently than you. While we might like to hit people over the head with the Bible and then, when we fail to convert them to our opinions, vote them out of the fellowship, that’s not Jesus’s way of doing things.
Anybody who’s afraid of or doesn’t know how to curate arguments, manage conflict, protect a congregation from bullies, and speak the truth in love shouldn’t be a pastor, much less a bishop or district superintendent.
Leadership that’s good at dividing, winning, and seizing power is rarely competent to create, convene, and grow a church. Those who are good at fomenting a revolution are rarely good at doing the dishes.
Will Willimon is the author of over 70 books. A bishop in the United Methodist Church, Professor Willimon served as the dean of Duke Chapel and professor of Christian ministry at Duke University for 20 years.
An excerpt from Will Willimon’s newest book, The Church We Carry: Loss, Leadership and the Future of our Church (Abingdon Press, 2025), 196-198.