Methodist Culture
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the value of Methodist culture. By "culture," I mean something less tangible and more dynamic than what some would might call Methodist "distinctives." By culture, I’m not talking about doctrinal formulas, organizational structure or the formal elements of the Methodist tradition. I'm describing something much fuzzier than that.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. I attended a bi-lingual worship service today with the Evangelisch-methodistische Kirche in Germany. Wesley's name was never mentioned. The small congregation doesn't have class meetings, love feasts or any of the elements of the historical Wesleyan revival. The sermon was in German with a printed English translation. It was an excellent sermon, faithful to the text and informed by biblical scholarship. It didn't, however, use any of the specifically Wesleyan catch-phrases. Still, it was recognizable within the wide stream of Methodist preaching. I wouldn't mistake it style or substance for a Baptist sermon or a Pentecostal sermon or a law-and-gospel Lutheran sermon.
The songs were German hymns, with an English translation printed to the side. I didn't know any of them, but they were highly singable and the text had theological depth. Charles Wesley hadn't written any of them, but again there was a kind of familiarity with the kind of thing I was singing, and how it fit into the worship.
The service had a very simple structure built around prayers, which the pastor had composed beforehand, songs and preaching. The atmosphere was warm but not overbearing. We stood for prayer. We recited the Lord's prayer and sang one response. There was no creed or confession. The pastor did not wear vestments. This pattern does not match precisely anything that I've experienced before; it is literally foreign to me. Yet, this middle-way of not-too-formal and not-too-loosey-goosey is a pretty common component of Methodist culture. I felt more at home today among German Methodists than among English-speaking Episcopalians or Baptists.
Now the culture itself may not appear to have any obvious meaning. It's just the way we are and the way we do things. That's OK with me, because every organization has its own organizational culture. Still, culture is not as value-free as it first appears. Our way, I think, reflects our belief in a God that is both holy and approachable. It speaks to the mind and the heart. It is reverent toward God and warm toward people. These things are all connected in some way to the more formal defining characteristics of Methodism. And, I should say, this is what our culture looks like when I squint and see only the good stuff. Our culture is what it is not because we chose to make it that way; it evolved largely unconsciously from a mixture of helpful, harmful and indifferent influences. It isn't all good.
I think the culture that has evolved from our Wesleyan roots is an important part of our identity, but like all culture it is constantly evolving. That’s OK with me, too. One of the things that I've come to believe about culture, however, is that you can't transform it to match your idealized vision of what it ought to be. The phenomenon of culture is much too complex and dynamic for that. The best you can do is to find the potential present in the current state of affairs, and nudge it in the right direction.
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