6| How Lack of Discipline Led to an Ineffective Church

Core disciplines of the early Methodist movement that we’ve neglected.

This is part six of the Boxed Wine & Bad Ideas series on how we killed a church movement and how we can get it back.

Methodical

“I am determined to be a Bible Christian, not almost, but altogether.”

— John Wesley

The Methodists were called the Methodists for a reason. Their faith was rooted in Christ and they reminded themselves of the faith they professed by disciplining themselves in a way that they believed glorified God. Much of which held to the traditions that Jesus practiced with his disciples.

Wesley wasn’t only concerned with the “big spiritual disciplines.” He advised his preachers to “Be punctual. Do everything exactly at the time.” He taught his followers not to eat too much and to go to bed and get up on time. He journaled and sat in the silence and processed and took more time in prayer than we probably have the capacity for with our current attention spans. The most acute details of his life were given attention.

Why?

Fair warning, this is a generalization and may be offensive to some.

When I (Curtis) came into the “church world” my greatest shock and disappointment was the lack of discipline that I saw with Christians I was meeting all across the US.

I had been spending my time with business leaders who disciplined themselves by any means necessary and to whatever extent available to optimize performance. Typically to make money and live well.

Yet when I met many followers of Jesus who were tasked with making disciples of the nations, their discipline was left in the chapels and church offices. Video games all night as adults. Incessant media consumption. Wandering eyes in public. Complete disregard for physical health.

What else can “I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave” mean? The everyday discipline gives us the muscle memory for the great moments of temptation when they arise.

A lack of discipline may not seem it matters much in the moment, but after enough neglect, the weeds take the garden.

“Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial.”

Discipline begets discipline. If one eats a light meal, gets set up for a good morning, and gets to bed on time with no nightly distractions, aren’t they more likely to get up and start the next day with discipline and have that carry into all that they do? Everything we do is an opportunity for the next best step. And it matters because those who don’t know Christ are watching, and our lives shouldn’t give them one possible thing to hang on as to why our faith is hollow.

Satan doesn’t push us off course. He nudges ever so subtly until eventually we realize we can’t find the road we were on. Wesley chose discipline because it allowed for vigilance and it allowed for it to be replicated levels deep into his churches and his churches’ churches.

There’s a Hebrew word called “Nephesh,” that we sometimes translate as “soul.” But that can be problematic in the way we understand the word. Nephesh wasn’t just this abstract part of us floating around somewhere inside. This word means the totality of the person.

Love the Lord with all your heart, soul and strength. Heart (lev) Soul (Nephesh) Strength (Meod).

The Holy Spirit has given us power to be self-controlled. It’s listed in the Fruits of the Spirit. But gifted doesn’t mean utilized. We have the opportunity to line our entire being, our Nephesh, up with God. As Eugene Peterson puts it, “the unforced rhythms of Grace.”

We say we shouldn’t drink and cuss so we just do it secretly while we’ve conveniently forgotten the vigor that comes from fasting and prayer. We’ll make every excuse in the book why we don’t need discipline in our lives, and the rest of the world sees the church as lazy, hypocritical, and negligent.

How can that possibly represent any sort of Messiah worth following?

We all have gaps. The Apostles had gaps. Wesley had gaps. But that’s never an excuse to not repent, dust ourselves off, and give it another go.

“Be sober minded and self-controlled so that you can pray.” — 1 Peter 4:7

Our discipline isn’t wasted. Our discipline allows for space. That space has the capacity to be filled with God’s voice.

Jesus said, “You can do nothing without me.” Well, we seem to defy those odds each day. I can get pretty comfy with brief conversations with Jesus while I grow my church, my business, and a healthy family. But without the rhythms in life to remember, we forget what the goal is. We wind up using the metrics of the Romans, not of the Messiah.

Chess vs Checkers

Nobody makes millions of dollars a year playing checkers. Why? Because it’s dumb. You move linearly, take pieces, get kinged, and ravage the board. Yet in chess there’s seemingly infinite moves that can be played. The possibilities are mind numbing, and when someone is great, they can make you think that you’re winning when really they’re only drawing you into a trap.

In our faith, we’re playing a game of chess, not checkers, and the win isn’t always so obvious.

Exhibit A: Jesus dying on the cross with confused followers.

We need discipline because we need prayer. We need prayer because we are blind on our own. Prayer and the access it grants is what we didn’t have until the death and resurrection.

What has a hold on you? If you sit still long enough to listen, where is your conscience burdened? Does anyone but you know about it?

Every day we have a chance to practice this discipline in the great things and in the small. But if we don’t discipline ourselves, someone else eventually will. Meaning, if we don’t manage finances well, the debtors eventually come. There’s accountability and consequences to the consistent choices that we make.

We ought to live our lives in such a way that nothing will hinder our ability to utilize the access we’ve been given to see, hear, strategize and move. Prayer isn’t just a part of the equation; prayer is the mass to which the rest of our life is to orbit around.

The Practices and The 22 Questions

The men and women of the early Methodist movement had rhythms in their lives that allowed God to interrupt their natural tendencies and break into their everyday lives.

Here were some of the Methodists core practices:

Fasting

The practice for the people of God, pre and post Jesus, had been collective fasting twice a week. Then it suddenly stopped and Wesley said this:

“I fear there are now thousands of Methodists, so called, both in England and Ireland, who, following the same bad example, have entirely left off fasting; who are so far from fasting twice a week… that they do not fast twice in the month!”¹

And he then said:

“The man who never fasts is no more on his way to heaven than the man who never prays.”¹

Go back an article to our discussion on choosing leaders. Wesley prioritized these things because if someone wasn’t willing to do the bare bones of disciplining themselves, how in the world could he trust them to lead?

And he trusted his judgment arguably because his clear conscience coupled with the freedom that came from his discipline unclogged his ears and he had confidence in what he was hearing from the Lord.

Fasting is a discipline that affects every other discipline we want to implement. There’s something about delayed gratification of the stomach that gives intentionality and purpose to the other things that we do. There’s something even more powerful when it’s coupled with prayer and other brothers and sisters fasting right alongside us.

There are plenty of books and arguments for fasting and there’s plenty of Scripture to pull from, but as of right now this one Scripture might be my favorite:

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.

— Ezekiel 16:49

Anyone else find it odd that he didn’t mention the other insane sins woven into the fabric of their culture? He chose “overfed and unconcerned.”

May we be disciplined enough to fast and let God’s concerns become the center of ours.

Communion

Communion wasn’t only done at a large gathering. This was a weekly or even daily occurrence with an intimate group of people around a table.

“Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

— Acts 2:46–47

Breaking bread isn’t just eating food, and communion isn’t only for the large gatherings. Breaking bread was the command Jesus gave in an intimate setting with his closest friends to the rest of the Church to continue. The early Church and early Methodists took this seriously.

Communion is a time for depth and intimacy and confession and joy and life.

Prayer

In a sermon on prayer, Wesley called prayer “the proper test of our desires.” Wesley and his followers would regularly have hours carved out for focused and intentional prayer. Nothing else. Up until recently, prayer gatherings weren’t just for the committed few at the church who were willing to come out on a work night. Prayer was prioritized. Not as a brief place to visit while we talk to God. Rather as a place of margin and intimacy, soaking in the access the Jesus restored that humanity hadn’t experienced since the garden.

In John Wesley’s 22 questions, the ninth is “Am I enjoying prayer?”

Mother Teresa was asked in an interview what she said when she prayed. “I listen,” She responded. “What does God say?” asked the interviewer. “He listens.”

In our flurry of moving constantly from one activity to the next, we rush past our most sacred act as believers. We rush through our most unbelievable privilege. I don’t know whether the world will be turning for a few hundred more years or if it will all come to an end before I die, but in the hindsight of history I think the people of God will be scratching their heads at how prayer seemed to skip a few generations — especially since most people ceased praying because they couldn’t stop building their personal sand castles and watching TikTok.

Maybe that’s a bit harsh. But I don’t think so.

Sabbath

Like fasting, Sabbath was non-negotiable in Wesley’s eyes and a practice that he and his followers followed each week. In our culture, creating space in our lives to center our day around prayer is an act of radical trust. In those moments we are choosing to not “do stuff” and trust God for the essentials.

Sabbath is an even more radical act. This is taking a whole day of not “producing” and trusting God enough to fully enjoy a day that doesn’t involve the checking of multiple boxes.

I’ve found that in these moments of stillness, something incredible happens: we get the chance to hear His voice. We have the opportunity in these days of rest to practice trust in a way that proves that we don’t believe we are the fourth member of the trinity. It takes us to a place where we get to tap into His perspective on our thoughts and actions. In the jungle of ideas and objectives and potentials in our lives, imagine seeing through all of it to only focus on the simple essentials that He’d have you give your attention to.

Service

Serving the poor was at the heart of this movement and became one of the primary avenues to reach people for Jesus. Wesley talked a lot about not “lacking the necessities of life.” He would preach, start hospitals, start schools, visit those in prison, etc. And this served as a “healing balm” for the poor that may have prevented a revolution in England like that of their neighbor, France.

The serving was not expected to be done by the Methodists as a whole. The responsibility was on the individuals and the smaller gatherings to take hold of areas where they could have an impact in someone’s life.

“We shouldn’t underestimate the social impact of turning each individual soul one by one.”

Finding the ones to serve collectively and the one you walk by each day is an act of worship that aligns our heart with the heart of the Father.

Confession

Confession gave leaders strength and longevity. It wasn’t talking to a priest you didn’t know behind a kind of see-through wall. It was the most intimate and trusting relationship one could have that left nothing unsaid.

We try so hard to create structure in our denominations to keep pastors healthy with reviews and cohorts and programs. Yet the act of confession in their classes and bands with those they trusted most seemed to have a greater impact that our current approach. Deep and regular accountability with a few who know us most is the best shot we have at finishing this race well.

Generosity

Just after Wesley’s 86th birthday in 1789 and less than two years from his death, he preached a sermon in Dublin which he titled: “Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity.” He based this message out of Jeremiah 8:22: “Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?”

He followed with the question: “Why has Christianity done so little good in the world?”

So an 85-year-old man who catalyzed and sustained one of the most substantial movements in memory is looking back on his life and ministry and sharing the most important and effective thing he can think of, and this is how he starts his sermon?

He continues and spends quite a bit of time on the lack of generosity that his people are showing.

“Allowing that diligence and frugality must produce riches, is there no means to hinder riches from destroying the religion of those that possess them? I can see only one possible way; find out another who can. Do you gain all you can, and save all you can? Then you must, in the nature of things, grow rich. Then if you have any desire to escape the damnation of hell, give all you can; otherwise I can have no more hope of your salvation, than of that of Judas Iscariot.”

Wesley didn’t hold back. His recognition of lack of discipline with finances, in his mind, was a cancer eating away at the movement from the inside.

Discipline was at the heart of the man and the heart of the movement.

Here are those 22 questions we’ve been referring to throughout these articles that were read for daily self-examination. Take your time reading through them, even if you’ve read them many times before:

1. Am I consciously or unconsciously creating the impression that I am better than I really am? In other words, am I a hypocrite?
2. Am I honest in all my acts and words, or do I exaggerate?
3. Do I confidentially pass on to another what was told to me in confidence?
4. Can I be trusted?
5. Am I a slave to dress, friends, work, or habits?
6. Am I self-conscious, self-pitying, or self-justifying?
7. Did the Bible live in me today?
8. Do I give it time to speak to me everyday?
9. Am I enjoying prayer?
10. When did I last speak to someone else about my faith?
11. Do I pray about the money I spend?
12. Do I get to bed on time and get up on time?
13. Do I disobey God in anything?
14. Do I insist upon doing something about which my conscience is uneasy
15. Am I defeated in any part of my life?
16. Am I jealous, impure, critical, irritable, touchy, or distrustful?
17. How do I spend my spare time?
18. Am I proud?
19. Do I thank God that I am not as other people, especially as the Pharisees who despised the publican?
20. Is there anyone whom I fear, dislike, disown, criticize, hold resentment toward or disregard? If so, what am I doing about it?
21. Do I grumble or complain constantly?
22. Is Christ real to me?

[1] (Sermon: Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity) https://www.resourceumc.org/en/content/sermon-116-causes-of-the-inefficacy-of-christianity