Being Born Again in the UMC

Shane Raynor notes the fall of evangelical thinking in the United Methodist Church:

I told her about the worship and preaching at our camps and about how cool it is to see teenagers accept Jesus into their lives for the first time. That's when she cut me off. "I don't do the born again thing," she said and proceeded to walk away. I was disappointed but not surprised. After all, John Wesley alienated more than a few Anglicans with his talk of conversion. What's really sad is when today's Methodists, the supposed heirs of the Wesleyan legacy, run away from the idea of being born again. [emphasis added]

I've noticed that many of the elderly people in my church often complain about how young Methodists have abandoned strong ties to the denomination, and its history and traditions. Ironically, it is the young evangelicals who are more aligned with Wesley's thinking. On the otherhand, I have heard elderly members explicitly reject evangelicism.

The more that I read by and about Wesley, the more that I see that he resembled a modern evangelical. I make use of this fact in a weekly Bible study that consists entirely of old men. When I am expressing an evangelical point of view, I include quotations from Wesley to quietly support me. For example, I recently presented a Bible study on fasting. This practice initially struck the members as strange, but when they saw that Wesley heartily endorsed this discipline, they changed their minds.

So why are these elderly Methodists sometimes theologically lukewarm? Well, for all of our moaning about the decline in the cultural assumption that everyone would go to church, I think that there was an unintended consequence. When people to to church because society expects them too, it may impair their ability to make an affirmative decision for Christ.