DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
How would you summarize the information in this chapter in one or more sentences?
What statement by Bishop Carder really spoke to your mind or heart as very important for us to understand and remember?
RESOURCES
This discussion is on a chapter from Living Our Beliefs: The United Methodist Way, by Kenneth Carder (Nashville: Discipleship Resources, 2009). This book is available from Cokesbury.com, Amazon.com and other sources.
Wikipedia provides more information on Richard Allen at the following links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Allen_(bishop) He the founder in 1816 of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), the first independent black denomination in the United States.
Discussion Question:
1. It is important for a person to know who they are and what frames their life. In doing so they find a purpose beyond themselves to serve others as Christians.
2. We are Christians first! The transformation of the world is God’s preoccupation,not the statistical growth of the institutional church.
1.”The church is an instrument of God’s mission and God calls it to be a sign, foretaste, and vehicle of God’s new heaven and new earth. Its identity is in its relatioship with God and its involvement in Christ’s ministry of reconciliation in a broken, suffering, ad sinful world.”
2″plain doctrine and…good discipline.”
1. This chapter discusses the identity and heritage of Methodists, decreasing denominational loyalty, need for spiritual and moral revival and challenges for Methodists in a contemporary world.
2. “The traditional Methodist summons to “experience the justifying and sanctifying grace of God and encourage people to grow in the knowledge and love of God through the personal and corporate disciplines of the Christian life” remains our primary challenge.” (p. 20)
Discussion Questions:
1. Past and present comparison of Denominational Loyalty, reasoning surrounding the decline of our current times and the renewed interest in our heritage and identity. Through the scope of history a look at how the understanding of the Triune God and God’s presence at work in the world has led to reform and mission.
2. John Wesley said that God had raised up the Methodists to “reform the nation, particularly the Church, and to spread scriptural holiness over the land.” (17)