Methodist Worship Renewal: Lessons from Early Christian Practices

When Christians hear the word liturgy, we sometimes imagine something old, formal, or complicated.

Candles. Robes. Ancient prayers. Maybe a service where everyone else seems to know when to stand, sit, or respond while you are trying to figure out what page everyone is on.

But liturgy means something much simpler. It is the church’s shared pattern of worship.

Every congregation has one.

A church that sings three songs, welcomes visitors, hears a sermon, and closes with prayer has a liturgy just as surely as a congregation using prayers that Christians have prayed for centuries.

The question, then, is not whether Methodists should have liturgy.

The better question is: What kind of worship forms us into the people God calls us to become?

For Methodists seeking renewal today, the worship of the early church offers important wisdom. And recovering ancient Christian practices would not require us to become less Wesleyan.

In many ways, it might help us become more Wesleyan.

Wesley Was Looking Backward to Move Forward

John Wesley was not interested in novelty for novelty’s sake.

Although Methodism became a remarkable movement of renewal, Wesley repeatedly looked to the historic church for guidance. He read the Church Fathers and admired the spirituality of early Christianity. His interest in what he sometimes described as “primitive Christianity” reflected his conviction that the earliest centuries of the church offered important models of disciplined Christian life.

Ted Campbell, in John Wesley and Christian Antiquity, demonstrates how significantly the ancient Christian tradition influenced Wesley’s theology and vision of Christian discipleship.

Wesley did not want to reproduce the early church as though Christians could simply pretend eighteen centuries had not passed.

He wanted to recover its vitality.

That distinction matters for liturgical renewal today.

Renewal is not reenactment.

We do not recover ancient practices because old things are automatically better. We recover them when they help the church worship the Triune God more faithfully and form disciples more deeply.

The Early Church Gathered Around Word and Table

One of the clearest descriptions of early Christian worship comes from Acts:

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Acts 2:42, NIV).

There is beautiful simplicity here.

Teaching.

Fellowship.

Breaking bread.

Prayer.

By the second century, we can see these patterns becoming recognizable structures of Christian worship. Justin Martyr, in his First Apology, describes Christians gathering on Sunday to hear readings from the apostles and prophets, receive instruction, offer prayers, share the Eucharist, and care for those in need.

Word and Table belonged together.

The church listened to the story of God and then gathered around the meal Jesus had given his disciples.

This ancient pattern offers Methodists an important opportunity today.

Recovering the Centrality of Holy Communion

John Wesley would probably find our infrequent celebration of Communion in some Methodist congregations rather puzzling.

He received Communion frequently and strongly encouraged other Christians to do the same. In his sermon “The Duty of Constant Communion,” Wesley argues that Christians should receive the sacrament as often as possible because Christ commanded it and because God gives grace through it.

Communion was not an occasional religious accessory.

It was nourishment.

A Methodist liturgical renewal should therefore include serious consideration of recovering frequent, even weekly, Holy Communion.

At the Table, the gospel becomes tangible.

We remember Christ’s death.

We celebrate his resurrection.

We experience communion with Christ and one another.

We receive sanctifying grace.

We anticipate the coming kingdom.

The sermon tells us the gospel.

The Table gives us the gospel in bread and cup.

We need both.

Recovering the Christian Calendar

The early church also learned to experience time differently.

Rather than allowing civic life or the surrounding culture to tell the whole story of the year, Christians organized their lives around the story of Jesus.

Advent teaches us to wait.

Christmas teaches us to celebrate the Incarnation.

Epiphany reveals Christ to the nations.

Lent calls us to repentance.

Holy Week takes us to the cross.

Easter announces resurrection.

Pentecost celebrates the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Ordinary Time teaches us to live faithfully as disciples.

Following the Christian calendar is more than changing decorations in the sanctuary.

It is spiritual formation through time.

Year after year, the church inhabits the story of Christ until that story begins to inhabit us.

In a culture whose calendar is increasingly organized around consumption, entertainment, elections, sports, and shopping seasons, the Christian year quietly announces that Jesus Christ tells us what time it is.

That is a deeply formative practice worth recovering.

Recovering Congregational Prayer

Another gift from historic Christian worship is common prayer.

There is certainly a place for spontaneous prayer. Wesley himself valued extemporaneous prayer. But there is also wisdom in praying words that Christians have prayed across generations.

The Lord’s Prayer is the most obvious example because Jesus himself gave it to us.

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9, NIV).

When the congregation prays together, prayer stops being something performed by the pastor while everyone else listens.

The church becomes the praying body of Christ.

Historic collects, prayers of confession, creeds, Psalms, and responsive prayers can similarly give the congregation a shared theological vocabulary.

Sometimes we need to pray from our hearts.

Sometimes we need the church to give our hearts words.

Healthy liturgy makes room for both.

Recovering the Public Reading of Scripture

The early church heard Scripture together.

For much of Christian history, most believers did not own personal copies of the Bible. Scripture was encountered primarily through its public proclamation in worship.

Paul instructs Timothy:

“Devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching” (1 Timothy 4:13, NIV).

Modern churches sometimes read only a few verses before a sermon. Recovering multiple readings from Scripture can help congregations encounter the breadth of the biblical story.

An Old Testament reading.

A Psalm.

An Epistle.

A Gospel reading.

The lectionary can be particularly helpful here. It prevents the pastor’s favorite themes from becoming the congregation’s entire biblical diet.

And yes, pastors have favorite passages.

Even Wesleyans.

Recovering the Creeds

Methodists have historically been a creedal people, even when we have not always emphasized the creeds in weekly worship.

The Apostles’ Creed and Nicene Creed connect us with Christians across centuries and around the world.

When we confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, truly God and truly human, crucified, risen, and coming again, we are not inventing Christianity anew every Sunday.

We are receiving the faith handed down to the church.

Thomas Oden’s Classic Christianity emphasizes the importance of this consensual Christian tradition. The creeds help keep our worship centered upon the Triune God rather than upon our preferences or whatever theological idea happens to be fashionable.

Reciting a creed will not automatically make a congregation orthodox.

But regularly confessing the historic faith has a remarkable way of reminding us that Christianity is bigger than us.

Recovering Confession and Assurance

Early Christian worship also understood that approaching the holy God requires honesty.

Methodists should understand this instinct particularly well.

Wesleyan theology takes sin seriously because Wesleyan theology takes grace seriously.

Corporate confession gives us language for acknowledging together that we have failed to love God and neighbor fully.

But confession should never have the final word.

The gospel does.

We confess, and then we hear the announcement of grace.

We are reminded that “if we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9, NRSV).

Confession without assurance can produce despair.

Assurance without confession can produce cheap grace.

Christian worship holds repentance and mercy together.

Recovering the Passing of the Peace

One ancient practice that can easily become routine is the passing of the peace.

“Peace be with you.”

“And also with you.”

Then everyone shakes hands and wonders whether this is basically church halftime.

But historically, the peace carries significant theological meaning.

Before coming to the Lord’s Table, Christians enact the reconciliation Christ has accomplished.

Jesus teaches:

“If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you… first go and be reconciled to them” (Matthew 5:23-24, NIV).

The peace is not merely greeting our friends.

It is a declaration that Christ is creating a reconciled people.

Imagine recovering that meaning in our congregations.

Recovering Silence

Perhaps one of the most countercultural practices the church could recover is silence.

We live surrounded by noise.

Music plays while we shop. Notifications interrupt conversations. Screens fill empty moments. Even worship can become an uninterrupted sequence of words, songs, announcements, videos, and sermons.

The ancient Christian tradition reminds us that worship also requires listening.

Silence before confession.

Silence after Scripture.

Silence following the sermon.

Silence after receiving Communion.

These moments teach us that God does not require us to fill every second.

Sometimes worship means being still enough to receive.

Recovering Worship as Formation

This may be the greatest lesson the early church can teach Methodists.

Worship forms people.

The question is not simply whether people enjoyed Sunday morning.

The question is what kind of people Sunday morning is helping us become.

James K. A. Smith has helped contemporary Christians recover this insight in works such as You Are What You Love. Our repeated practices shape our desires. What we do repeatedly teaches our hearts what to love.

This insight fits naturally within Wesleyan theology.

Wesley believed God uses ordinary practices to form holy people.

Prayer forms us.

Scripture forms us.

Communion forms us.

Confession forms us.

Singing forms us.

The Christian calendar forms us.

Works of mercy form us.

Liturgy, at its best, becomes a communal pattern through which the Holy Spirit directs our loves toward God.

Ancient Worship Must Lead to Present Mission

There is, however, a danger in any conversation about liturgical renewal.

We can become fascinated with ancient practices while forgetting why they existed.

Beautiful vestments cannot substitute for holiness.

Candles cannot substitute for compassion.

Frequent Communion means little if we ignore hungry neighbors outside the sanctuary.

Reciting the Nicene Creed is hollow if our lives deny the Christ we confess.

The early church joined worship with discipleship, generosity, hospitality, and care for the vulnerable.

Methodist liturgical renewal must do the same.

Word should send us into witness.

Table should send us into mercy.

Confession should produce repentance.

Peace should produce reconciliation.

Worship should produce holy love.

Becoming More Deeply Methodist

Recovering ancient Christian worship does not require Methodists to abandon our heritage.

We should keep singing Charles Wesley.

We should keep preaching for conversion and holiness.

We should keep inviting people into class meetings, works of mercy, evangelism, and accountable discipleship.

But perhaps we can also recover some treasures we have neglected.

More Scripture.

More Communion.

More prayer.

More participation.

More attention to the Christian year.

More connection with the historic church.

More silence.

More expectation that the Holy Spirit will meet us through the ordinary practices of Christian worship.

John Wesley looked to the early church because he believed Christianity was supposed to produce holy people.

That remains our calling.

Liturgical renewal is not about making Methodist worship look older.

It is about allowing the ancient rhythms of the church to help us become more deeply rooted in Christ.

The goal is not ancient worship for its own sake.

The goal is holy love.

And if practices that have nourished Christians for centuries can help us love God with our whole hearts and love our neighbors more faithfully, they are treasures worth recovering.

A Closing Prayer

Triune God,

You have gathered your people in worship across generations and nations.

Renew your church today.

Teach us to hear your Word with attention, approach your Table with hunger, confess our sins with honesty, receive your grace with joy, and pray with the whole communion of saints.

Through the Holy Spirit, use the worship of your church to form us into the likeness of Jesus Christ.

Keep us from empty ritual and shallow novelty. Give us wisdom to receive the treasures of the Christian tradition while faithfully proclaiming the gospel in our own time.

And send us from worship into the world as people of holy love.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.