Theological Journal – June 19, 2020 What Makes for a Dead Church: John Wesley

According to Theodore W. Jennings, Good News to the Poor: John Wesley’s Evangelical Economics, John Wesley was led by a passion for liberation and chief among those passions for him was what Jennings calls the “demystification of wealth.” He believed, as did Jesus that money/wealth/Mammon was a spiritual power possessed of a devilish capacity to ensnare and “damn” us as well as godly use to liberate and bless others.

The sin of Ananias and Sapphira he took as an analogue to Adam and Eve’s sin in the garden as a “fall” for the New Testament church. Money, this first test of the early church, exposed its love as a primal foe of the church’s mission. Therefore, for Wesley, the love of money, even possessing excess money, is an ever-present danger to the Christian. Not every alleged financial blessing is a true one. 

His late tract Thoughts Upon Methodism, begins like this: “I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe or America.  But I am afraid, lest they should only exist as a dead sect.”

And we know the prime suspect in such a mortal outcome, don’t we? As someone else frequently said, “Let those with ears hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.”