Power of One Podcast with Tony Medlin - What is a Global Methodist?

This episode takes a look at a brief history of the Global Methodist Church focusing on core beliefs, doctrine and organization. Grace Methodist Church is a Global Methodist Church in Seneca, SC at 155 Thrift Avenue which worships at 10:00 each Sunday Morning. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to this week's edition of the Power of One podcast with Tony Medlin. I am very excited about this week's podcast, we're going to be talking about what is a global Methodist Church. Now, I am very excited and honored to be the pastor of Grace Methodist Church here in Seneca, South Carolina. If you live here and have not been to our church, or if you'd like to know where we are, we are at 155 Thrift Avenue here in Seneca, right beside Tractor Supply. We meet at 10 o'clock every Sunday morning. Now, we have been in existence since December the 1st, 2024, not quite a year and a half. And God has really blessed us. We have close to 70 members now. We average 45 to 50. We're beginning our youth group, and we have Sunday school in progress, and we have many activities for folks that we are looking forward to being a part of discipleship growth for everyone. We just had a huge planning session where we emphasized our mission and vision for not only down the road, but for where God wants us to be right now. One of the questions that we ask ourselves as we came together is that okay, we're going to be a global Methodist Church. What exactly does that mean? And I'm going to use this podcast today to explore that question in sort of a cliff notes version and hopefully provide some answers that are interesting for everyone. The Global Methodist Church basically is a Wesleyan Methodist denomination that officially launched in 2022. Now it emerged, as many people know, largely from a long-standing disagreement within the United Methodist Church over biblical authority, theology, and especially human sexuality and ordination standards. Now, with that said, one of the things that we have proclaimed and been excited about at grace is although we know that was a part of our history and our coming together, we are emphasizing the positive now, and we are focusing on the fact of where God wants us to be going forward. We're going to celebrate making disciples. We're going to celebrate living the word that He has given us through the Holy Bible. Now, many churches and pastors in the Global Methodist Church did believe that the UMC was moving away from historic Wesleyan and Orthodox Christian teaching. So the GMC was formed as a more theologically conservative Methodist body, emphasizing, and this is important, biblical authority, historic Christian doctrine, evangelism, holiness, discipleship, and church multiplication. The denomination draws heavily from John Wesley's theology, from the articles of religion, from Wesley's sermons and notes. I actually have read through a lot of Wesley's sermons recently, and it is exciting and interesting, fascinating, in fact, to go back and listen and well read, I should say, what he had to say about not only his relationship with Christ, but how he began the Methodist movements. The denomination draws heavily also from classic Methodist practices like class meetings, accountability, and personal holiness. Now, one of the things I want to share is that many of you know I am pursuing my doctoral ministry degree in renewal preaching. And I am planning on doing my dissertation, good Lord willing, on John Wesley's small groups. He did a couple of small groups, including the class meeting and the band meeting. And I am going to be instituting a dissertation project at Greg's Methodist, which will attempt to duplicate the small group meetings that John Wesley had. And my goodness, from his small group meetings, the Methodist movement exploded. And so many thousands of people came to Christ. And I want to see what we can do with that 300 years later. Now let's talk about some of the core beliefs of the Global Methodist Church. First of all, there's the authority of Scripture. The GMC strongly emphasizes that the Bible is the inspired word of God. It emphasizes that the Bible is trustworthy. And it emphasizes that the Bible is the primary, primary authority for doctrine and Christian living. You don't know how many visitors lately I have had say to me before leaving the sanctuary, this is what we have been looking for in terms of teaching and preaching, as we want someone to be able to share with us from the Word of God and emphasizing its inspiration, its trustworthiness, and that it is the primary authority for doctrine and Christian living. And quite honestly, it's one of the biggest distinctions from the more progressive expressions of Methodism's Methodism and even other denominations within the Protestant church. Let's talk a little bit about Wesleyan theology, where the GMC is thoroughly Wesleyan, Arminian rather than Calvinist. Now, what does that mean exactly? Arminian means that God gives us grace and that we receive that grace. We make a decision to receive that grace based upon what Jesus did for us on the cross. Calvinism is more based, of course, upon the teachings of John Calvin, which emphasizes uh predestination, if you will, and that God basically chooses those whom he would save. But the key emphasis within the theology of the global Methodist Church, provenient grace, that is that God, through his Holy Spirit, attracts us, he pulls us, he longs for us, he seeks us so that we may make that decision for Jesus Christ. Justification by faith is one of the key emphasis in theology for the Global Methodist Church, justification by faith, which says that we are justified in the receiving of God's grace and the gift that He gave to us through Jesus Christ, that Jesus paid our sin debt on the cross, both for the past, the present, and the future, and that God raised Jesus from the dead. And now, according to Romans 10, 9, and 10, if we believe with our hearts that Jesus is Lord and confess with our mouths that God has raised him from the dead, believe, confess. Jesus is Lord, God has raised him from the dead. We have the assurance of salvation. Now, one of the Wesleyan theology emphasis that is so well known throughout the last several hundred years of Christian history is the doctrine of sanctification. Christian holiness. Wesley recognized that we are still imperfect human beings, but that we are, in his words, going on to perfection. And that means that we commit to living a life of holiness and righteousness. It's one of the things that I'm excited about getting to the small groups because we are going to emphasize that even in our modern editions of the band meeting or the class meeting. Now, like historic Methodism, the Global Methodist Church believes salvation is not merely forgiveness, but it's transformation into Christ-likeness through the work of the Holy Spirit. When we receive Christ, the Spirit resides within us and we are transformed. Folks, that is one of my favorite words. Transformation takes place when we receive Christ. We're not just forgiven. And as someone said, now we have fire insurance and that we are going to heaven as opposed to hell. But we are transformed and our lives right now through the working of the Holy Spirit will reflect what Jesus teaches, will reflect the life that He wants us to live. Now let's look at some more traditional Christian doctrines that the Global Methodist Church affirms, such as the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. God himself presents us to us. And by the doctrine of the Trinity, as three in one, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we believe and affirm the deity of Christ, that Jesus Christ is in fact God. We affirm the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's one of the most prominent principles of Christian apologetics. In defending our faith, we affirm the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, that when the women came to the tomb that first Easter, that that stone was rolled away and Jesus' body was nowhere to be found. And when people are defending the Christian faith in terms of apologetics and talking about the resurrection, they don't just talk about that particular day when the stone was rolled away and the grave was empty. They talk about the days that Jesus spent on earth after that and the opportunities that we have in Scripture and from other writings, like Josephus, for example, that show Jesus' interaction with his disciples. And if you will note, those interactions with his disciples gave them confidence. Peter, for example, and then later Paul, who had an encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus to persecute Christians, but they now had confidence to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ because they believed in his bodily resurrection. We affirm the historic Orthodox Christianity teaching that salvation is through Christ alone. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me. You will also experience when you come to a global Methodist service, particularly at grace, the Apostles' Creed, or sometimes the Nicene Creed, which affirms early church orthodoxy in terms of what we believe. Now, back to the original thing, which most people believe accurately ultimately led to the formation of the Global Methodist Church in 2022, and that's teachings about human sexuality and marriage. The Global Methodist Church holds the traditional Christian teaching that the definition of marriage is between one man and one woman. And equally important within the structure of the Global Methodist Church is that clergy are expected to uphold these standards. And of course, as we mentioned, this issue was one of the primary catalysts for the separation from the United Methodist Church. Evangelism and revival, two words that are incredibly important to me and incredibly important to our church. The GMC places strong emphasis on conversion, transformation that we just discussed, emphasis upon discipleship, emphasis upon church planning. And we are excited at grace that we are one of those church plants. One of the things that we talked about in our planning session is that we want to grow not just for numbers, but we want to grow in transformation to the point that we are instrumental in planting churches in other places. Revival. Thinking back about Wesley and his preaching to the masses, even in the context of his small groups, he was able to experience revival when he was sharing with the masses. And that's what we want to do. We want to experience a new revival as God works in our community. Mission work. We talked about this in our planning session also. How are we supporting missions right here in our local society and also around the world? The Global Methodist Church, in each annual conference, has a missional program and emphasizes those missional works. And then, of course, as we mentioned, we place strong emphasis on personal and social holiness. Many GMC leaders intentionally speak in terms of renewal and awakening, drawing from early Methodist revivalism. Now, what can you expect when you worship in a global Methodist church? Worship styles vary widely, in fact, from traditional liturgical services to modern contemporary worship. At Grace Methodist Church, we do a little bit of both. We have uh praise music to begin the service. We have uh the affirmation of faith, which we mentioned earlier. But most importantly, as the pastoral leader of our church, I want to make sure that we are preaching biblically sound, doctrinally sound theology. So worship will emphasize strong preaching. We will sing hymns, we practice the sacraments, baptism, and the Lord's Supper. Discipleship systems in that we want to talk not just individual, not just individually, but we believe discipleship is systemic. We want to emphasize the importance of the family within the church, and we want to emphasize the system within the conference itself of promoting discipleship. Connectional accountability is part of the Global Methodist Church as well. And as I mentioned, the two sacraments that we recognize baptism and holy communion. Now, in terms of structure and governance, finally, the Global Methodist Church remains connectional, like you will remember in traditional Methodism, but it aims to be, if you will, leaner and less bureaucratic than the typical United Methodist structure, for example. Local churches generally have somewhat greater flexibility, particularly with property protections that were a problem in the past. But you will still find much of the same organization. Within the local church, you have the staff parish relations committee, you have uh trustees, you will have the planning committee and the council on ministries, and you'll have the governing committee at the administrative board at Grace. We actually combine both of those and call it the Administrative Council. And we do have an annual conference, but it's called Behold. It is a time of worship. It is a time of business. This year it's going to be held at Southern Wesleyan University in August. All right, so let's summarize everything that we've talked about today in terms of the Global Methodist Church. The Global Methodist Church, I believe, can be said to be a conservative Wesleyan Orthodox Methodist movement focused on scriptural authority, holiness, evangelism, and revival. We would love for you to be a part of us. If you have any questions, please check us out. You can go to my website, Power of One Spiritual Remal.com. Power of One Spiritual Renewal.com. You can contact me by email at Anthony Medlin26 at Outlook.com, or you can give me a call at Powerof1 at 864-430-4498. Please remember also I would love to set up appointments to work with you on your journey of discipleship and to help you get closer to Christ, and we will journey together. In the meantime, if you would like to visit us at Grace Methodist Church, we would love to have you. We're growing. We would like for you to be a part of that growth. We are looking for young couples and youth as we are beginning our youth program to revitalize the young people of our community to serve and follow our Lord Jesus Christ. So we meet at 10 o'clock on Sunday mornings, once again, 155 Thrift Avenue in Seneca, South Carolina. Thank you for joining me today on the Power of One podcast with Tony Medlin. We hope you'll join us right here each week as we continue to talk about how to grow closer to Jesus Christ in discipleship. God bless everyone. We'll see you next week.