Leaning Both Ways at Once. Jeffrey A. Conklin-Miller
evangelistic mission in and with the world.
While the Church-World relationship and distinction (to which I will refer henceforth in shorthand as simply “Church/World”) is a theological commitment most recognizable within the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition, the concern for the relationship of Church/World (and, at times, a lack of concern for that relationship) is just as crucial to an account of a Wesleyan understanding of holiness, and thus, to an account of Methodist identity in ecclesiology and evangelistic mission. In order then to develop a theology of evangelism that is also truly Methodist, engagement with the distinct identity and agencies associated with the Church and the world is also required. For example, this distinction is crucial if the practice of evangelism participates in the formation of what a Wesleyan would call holiness of heart and life. If holiness at least names the difference Christian identity and practice makes, then concern for this difference should play a constitutive role in an account of how such Christian identity is formed and how Christian practices take their shape.
I will suggest that this focus on holiness contributes to an ecclesiological vision that renders Church in the Methodist tradition in the form of a particular “People” in, but not of, the world. In other words, Methodist evangelistic mission requires a location within an account of ecclesiology that is framed within the Church/World distinction. So framed, the agency of the Church’s witness can be articulated in terms that carve a path between ecclesial accommodation for the sake of cultural relevance in the world (what I will call “understatement”) and ecclesial self-absorption that grounds Christian witness in an aesthetic display to the world (what I will call “overstatement”). Instead, the Church as a visible, practicing, and witnessing People appear as a community constantly engaging both the practices of intra-ecclesial formation and extra-ecclesial engagement with the “other half of the reconciling event” in the world.
This engagement constitutes an expansion of what we mean by the word “evangelism,” as the People called Methodist practice “intercession” in and for the world. Evangelism as intercession suggests practices beyond sole concern for individual spiritual salvation or congregational membership growth. While it certainly includes the proclamation of the gospel, the initiation of people into the Church (or, for some, the reign of God), and the formation of a holy People, evangelism as intercession requires a broader scope. As Stephen Chapman and Laceye Warner have rightly argued, “The concept of evangelism should . . . be expanded to include the entire missio Dei of global reconciliation, particularly through the imitatio Dei of God’s people in their care for creation and all its creatures. Social justice, peace, and ecological concern are not beyond the scope of evangelism.”24 In my terms, this is the work of a People called Methodist, practicing intercession as they stand between formation and mission, between tradition and innovation, between God and the world, always leaning both ways at once.
“Counterweighting” Church and World: Leaning Both Ways at Once
The image of a simultaneous “leaning both ways” is drawn from the concept of a “counterweighting,” revealed in an unlikely set of sources. First, the poet Seamus Heaney in his collection of essays, The Redress of Poetry, suggests that poetry can fulfill what he calls a “counterweighting” function,25 offering a “glimpsed alternative” of life that is often “denied or constantly threatened by circumstances.”26 Poetry, in this light, offers the possibility of forming a “consciousness [that] can be alive to two different and contradictory dimensions of reality and still find a way of negotiating between them.”27 Heaney draws these images from Simone Weil—specifically Gravity and Grace—and argues that Weil’s work is “informed by the idea of counterweighting, of balancing out the forces, of redress—tilting the scales of reality toward some transcendent equilibrium.”28 It is in this counterweighting, this “tilting,” that Weil seeks to inhabit as the tensioned space between gravity and grace, between the “contradictories” of this world.
However, for Weil, life between the “contradictories” does not seek to deflate the tension endemic to that space; as she writes, “The union of contradictories involves a wrenching apart. It is impossible without extreme suffering. The correlation of contradictories is detachment.”29 Instead, Weil poignantly suggests that this tilting requires a “simultaneous existence of incompatible things in the soul’s bearing; [a] balance which leans both ways at once.” That, Weil says, “is saintliness.”30
In other words, what Weil is suggesting is that we do not try to “solve” what we have come to think of as fixed and opposing “contradictories”—relevance and irrelevance, tradition and mission, Church and world. Rather, in Gravity and Grace, she invites us to inhabit the tense space between supposed polarities without giving into the need to eliminate or even alleviate the anxiety and paradox endemic to that location “in between.” Weil invites us to dwell in that intersection, and with that invitation, offers an image to shape ecclesial identity and evangelistic mission; between these polarities, we seek a balance that leans both ways at once, into the Church and into the world.
The Structure of the Argument
We will begin in chapter 1 with consideration of the Church/World distinction, first investigating its necessity in conversations about evangelism and then seeking its influence (or lack thereof) in contemporary Wesleyan theology of evangelism. We will find that the Church/World distinction is often understated or overstated, sometimes collapsing one into the other, or distancing one from the other.
In constructing an account of ecclesial evangelism, we turn to consider the identity and the agency of the world in chapter 2, drawing focus to the formative influence of the principalities and powers. This should come as some surprise, inasmuch as I will also show Wesley’s strong warning to Methodists to navigate their relationship with the world with care. Given the consideration of the identity and the agency of the powers mediated through the example of the modern market-state, I argue for the crucial role of intra-ecclesial formation within contemporary Methodist theology of evangelistic mission.
Pursuing the development of such an account, the final two chapters turn to consider the identity (chapter 3) and the agency (chapter 4) of the Church inside the Church/World framework, oriented toward developing an account of ecclesial evangelism. In the third chapter, I suggest that Methodism is best understood as a “People called Methodist,” a movement for individual and social reform that requires location in a visible, practicing, and witnessing community of discipleship. Such Peoplehood constitutes the basis for a missional ecclesiology that embodies a set of evangelistic practices and structures aimed at shaping transformed lives and a transformed world, leaning into the traditions and practices of the Christian tradition as well as into the needs of the world, both ways at once.
Chapter 4 builds on this account of a Methodist peoplehood to suggest that a Methodist People is not only shaped in the practice of the General Rules, but also, at the same time, in that People’s ongoing evangelistic engagement with the world. Put differently, a Methodist Peoplehood is constantly “appearing” and is “discovered” as it takes shape at the intersection of Church/World. This engagement is best understood as the evangelistic agency of a Methodist People, described and embodied as the practice of “intercession,” the Church standing between God and the world, leaning both ways at once. The implications of such an understanding shapes imagination to envision a People practicing an intercessory evangelism in initiatives and programs, institutions and structures, that are simultaneously larger than and smaller than the contemporary congregation. We will consider some of these embodiments in a brief conclusion.
The Hope for This Work
In his foreword to the re-release of Julian Hartt’s book, Toward a Theology of Evangelism, Stanley Hauerwas suggests that to find a book about evangelism written by a theologian might come as a surprise. This is the case, he says, because
for some time those concerned about evangelism, as well as those writing about it, have not been theologians. They have been sociologists or people that specialize in marketing . . . [and] if the church is to recover a proper sense of evangelism, that is, an understanding of evangelism that is not equated with church growth then a book about evangelism written by a theologian will be a crucial resource.31
This study