Wesley's Focus on Fruit: Senior Staff Retreat (1 of 4)
The conversation around the Call to Action: Reordering the Life of the UMC and the subsequent UMC Leadership Summit, as well as the conversation in Kansas and Nebraska about Great Plans for the Great Plains: A Vision (PDF Link), I have been reflecting on the time that I spent on the spring senior staff retreat at Resurrection in which we read together, Bearing Fruit: Ministry with Real Results.
John Wesley focused on outcomes and fruitfulness in ministry. He initiated practices in his ministry and among Methodists which he saw bearing fruit in God's kingdom, despite the fact that some of these practices did not make sense to him. Wesley writes in his journal in 1739:
"Saturday, [March] 31. In the evening I reached Bristol, and met Mr. Whitefield there. I could scare reconcile myself at first to this strange way of preaching in the fields, of which he set me an example on Sunday; having been all my life (till very lately) so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought the savings of souls almost a sin, if it had not been done in a church.
Mon [April] 2. - At four in the afternoon, I submitted to be more vile, and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation, speaking from a little eminence in a ground adjoining to the city, to about three thousand people." Will you please share your thoughts, feelings or opinions about practices that bear fruit despite not making sense to you?