Evangelism Resources

By Donald W. Haynes
UMR Columnist

Conventional evangelism begins with the line, “I am a sinner.” Methodist evangelism begins with the line, “I am a child of God who is corrupted by sin.” 

A critical dimension of Methodism’s grace theology is the prevenience of God’s grace, which precedes human free will. 

One dimension of prevenient grace is God’s gift of conscience. Our moral depravity does not obliterate God’s “still small voice.” God calls God’s own. 

As we used to sing, “Jesus is tenderly calling thee home.” We have a homing pigeon instinct. Augustine spoke of it when he said, “We are restless until we rest in thee.” 

Whenever you get a gospel tract that begins with “I am a sinner,” disregard it! The first point should be that God created me in God’s own image. My sin is the derivative of my nature, not the origin. 

We see God’s vision in Genesis 1:31: “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” Instead of using the word “plan” for God’s grace, Wesley used “way”—via salutis, way of salvation. Ours is a journey, with God’s grace providing the sustenance. 

Human identity is not who we have become but who were created to be. In Disney’s The Lion King, Rafiki holds Simba high above the kingdom once ruled by his father Mufasa and says, “Simba, you are more than you have become.” That is what the Bible tells us in the very first chapter about ourselves. 

Wesley certainly believed in “the Fall” as a universal human situation, but considered us “corrupted” rather than “depraved.” The very word “fall” indicates a previous and higher state—namely, creation in the image of God—“God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” 

Albert Outler notes that Wesley was working from the tradition of “original righteousness,” and saving grace is a “restoration” of our original design. 

We must recover this Wesleyan language and theology of evangelism. This is what we must teach in our churches—not some Calvinist’s version of God’s grace. 

Wesley insisted that of all God’s attributes, the greatest is love. Love limits power. As parents we know that we love our children so much that rather than overpower them, we empower them. This empowerment gives them freedom of will to rebel, to reject, to withdraw and to ruin their lives and the lives of others, but we keep loving. So does God! 

Randy Maddox of Duke Divinity School grounds Wesley’s objection to predestination in his doctrine of God: “For Wesley, Calvinism’s defining model of a sovereign monarch was an omnipresent almighty tyrant. By contrast, Wesley more commonly employed the model of a loving parent.” 

The word “sinner” is deeply ingrained in our theological culture. Many Christians define humankind by our sin. Inherently, though, our sin does not define us. We are God’s children who have sinned, are sinning and will sin, but in essence we are still who we were created by God to be—made in the image of God. 

Paul defines his fallen state as “sold into slavery under sin.” Slaves are God’s born-free children who are victims of sinful systems. Sin is my slave-master, but I can never sin away my identity as a child of God. 

It’s never too late for us to claim our true identity as a son or daughter of the Most High God. That, my friends, is fundamental to Methodism.

Dr. Haynes is a retired clergy member of the Western North Carolina Conference. e-mail: dhaynes11@triad.rr.com.

This column originally appeared in the United Methodist Reporter (www.umportal.org). Reproduced with permission.