My Journey To Methodism

I did not grow up in the church.  I can literally count the number of times I attended an actual worship service before I was 19 years old on one hand.  I do remember that my grandmother gave me a Bible Story book for Christmas as a small child that I read from cover to cover over and over again.  I also remember the Good News for Modern Man contemporary version of the New Testament one of my aunts gave me.  I read it many times.  It is one of my most treasured possessions. 

My family did attend a Lutheran church during Easter once or twice and I attended a Roman Catholic worship service with a friend from high school, but other than that I never attended church as a young person.  I do remember times when people would invite me to church or share their faith with me.

Just after high school, I went to work for a lumberyard in Nashville on Lebanon Road across from Mt. Olivet Cemetery.  Several students from the Freewill Baptist Bible College were also employed there part time.  They often shared their faith with me and invited me to worship services and other church events.  I never accepted their invitation, because while they were persuasive in convincing me of my sin and that God is the judge of all human kind, they did not communicate God’s grace and mercy and willingness to forgive me in a way that encouraged me to take steps toward establishing a relationship with God.  However, about this same time, a friend who attended a charismatic church invited me to attend worship with her.  At that service, I became aware of God’s love and longing for me to turn from sin and accept God’s offer of reconciliation.  Within a few days, I sensed God offering me forgiveness and a new start as a redeemed person as I made a commitment to follow Jesus. 

I immediately told my co-workers from the Bible College about my experience.  They were elated.  One of the students even gave me a New Testament.  I did attend church with them and visited other Baptist churches, but somehow never completely felt at home. During this same time, I was selling lumber to a pastor serving in the Church of the Nazarene who was building a home.  We would often talk about faith and I eventually began attending his church.  I also felt a special connection to the students from the Bible College who were so faithful in sharing their faith with me.  I asked a student from the college who was serving as the pastor of a church to baptize me.  My friend from the charismatic church was also present for the baptism.  I was becoming extremely ecumenical before I had ever even heard the word “ecumenical.”

I continued to attend the Nazarene church with the pastor I met at work and eventually became a member of the congregation.  I hadn’t been a member long before the pastor and others at the church encouraged me to attend Trevecca Nazarene College.  Prior to my joining the Nazarene church I had no thought or intention of attending college.  I could never fully express my gratitude for the nurture and encouragement I received from the people of the little Nazarene Church I began to attend.  I started Trevecca as a social work major but quickly began to add more and more religion courses until I had a social work-religion double major.  My academic advisor, Dr. H. Ray Dunning, who was also the head of the theology department at the school, helped me discern my call to the ministry and I began the process toward ordination in the Church of the Nazarene.  I attended Vanderbilt Divinity School and graduated from the Nazarene Theological Seminary with a Master of Divinity degree. 

While I was a student at the seminary I served as a children and youth director at Overland Park Korean Presbyterian Church, continuing my ecumenical journey.  After seminary, I returned to Nashville to serve the college church at Trevecca as an associate pastor  for four years.  After serving at the college church I served as youth and associate pastor at a Nazarene church in Lake Jackson, Texas and then as a senior pastor at Olivet Church of the Nazarene in Wichita, Kansas.  

While I was in Wichita, my father-in-law received a diagnosis of terminal cancer.  My wife and I wanted to return to Nashville to be near him and other family members.  While we were in Nashville visiting, I attended a Bible study with a friend from the Nazarene seminary who had become a United Methodist pastor.  He told me about a church in Mt. Juliet that was searching for an associate to lead their youth ministry and help in other areas of ministry.  I contacted the pastor and my journey to the United Methodist Church began.  I started serving St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Mt. Juliet as an associate pastor and transferred my membership in the Church of the Nazarene to the United Methodist Church.  I would have been ordained an elder in the Church of the Nazarene one month after I started my position at St. Paul’s.  Lucky for me, I got to go through the whole ordination process twice, both in the Church of the Nazarene and in the United Methodist Church!

I am grateful to be in the United Methodist Church and part of the Wesleyan tradition.  Both the Church of the Nazarene and the United Methodist Church trace their origins to John Wesley.  Wesley was a priest in the Church of England and a fellow of Oxford University.  His status as a fellow of Oxford enabled him to preach throughout England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and even as a missionary in America.  Methodism itself really began as John’s brother Charles asked him to meet with him and his friends to study the Bible and encourage one another in the faith.  The group that met at Oxford grew and eventually their sharing the faith spread out across Great Britain and America.  Wesley remained a priest in the Church of England throughout his life and never intended for his movement to be a formal denomination.  He reluctantly agreed to allow the Methodists in America to form as a church in 1784 during a time when there was a shortage of priests to perform weddings and preside over the sacraments.  God works in mysterious ways!

There are many Wesleyan denominations today.  I am grateful for the United Methodist churches’ emphasis on staying true to Wesley’s theology and approach to ministry.  As John Wesley is reported to have said on his death bed, “The best of all, God is with us!”