Methodist and Nazarene Polity, Worship, and Sacraments — Unit 6: Wesleyan Worship: The Lord's Day Service and the Hymns of Charles Wesley

Key Verse

"God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." (John 4:24, NKJV)

Learning Objectives

When you finish this unit, you should be able to:

1. Explain why Wesleyans say that worship must be both "in spirit" and "in truth."

2. Describe the usual parts of a Wesleyan Lord's Day service and the biblical pattern behind them.

3. Explain how Charles Wesley's hymns teach doctrine and how the 1780 hymnbook was arranged.

4. Compare the written liturgy used in many Methodist churches with the freer order used in many Holiness churches.

5. State the main objections to set forms and to hymn singing, and give the Wesleyan answer to each.

The Voice of This Course

This course is written from inside the Wesleyan tradition, for students who belong to it. It is conservative and evangelical. When it says "we," it means the Methodist, Nazarene, Wesleyan, Free Methodist and related churches that hold the Bible to be the inspired Word of God and follow the doctrine of John Wesley. Other Christians worship differently, and some historians question parts of our story. We state their views fairly and then give our answer. Scripture says, "Test all things; hold fast what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21). In earlier courses you studied our history, our doctrine of salvation, and our teaching on holiness. This unit asks how all of that is sung, prayed and preached on the Lord's Day.

Worship Is the Heart of the Church

Polity, the subject of Units 1 to 5, is how a church is organized. Worship is why it exists. A church could have perfect rules and still be dead if its people did not meet God on Sunday. Wesleyans believe that God is not honored only by correct ideas. He is honored by people who love Him with the whole heart.

Jesus told the Samaritan woman that the Father seeks worshipers who worship "in spirit and truth." We read the two words together. "Spirit" means that worship comes from the heart and is made alive by the Holy Spirit. It is not only a form carried out by habit. "Truth" means that worship is shaped by what God has really said and done. It is not only a feeling. A service with warmth but no truth can drift into emotion. A service with truth but no warmth can become cold. Wesley saw both dangers, and the Methodist movement tried to join them: "the religion of the heart" together with sound doctrine.

The New Testament Pattern

The Bible does not give one fixed order of service, but it shows us what the first church did. Luke writes of the believers after Pentecost: "And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers" (Acts 2:42). Four things appear here: teaching, fellowship, the Lord's Supper, and prayer. Paul adds singing: "speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" (Ephesians 5:19), and he also mentions "teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" (Colossians 3:16). The people also gave, as Paul instructs in 1 Corinthians 16:2, and they read the Scriptures aloud (1 Timothy 4:13).

Paul also tells the Corinthians that when they come together each one may have a psalm, a teaching, a revelation or an interpretation, and he gives this rule: "Let all things be done decently and in order" (1 Corinthians 14:40). Two principles follow. First, worship should involve the whole congregation, not only one leader. Second, it should be orderly, so that all are built up.

The Wesleyan Lord's Day service is built on these elements: gathering and praise, Scripture, prayer, preaching, offering, and, in many churches, the Lord's Supper, followed by a blessing and sending out.

A Typical Wesleyan Lord's Day Service

The order differs from church to church and from country to country. In general, the following parts are found.

Call to worship and opening hymn. The service begins with a reminder that God has called us together. The first hymn lifts the eyes of the people from their own troubles to God.

Prayer of confession and assurance. Wesleyans take sin seriously and grace more seriously still. Many churches include a prayer of confession followed by a word of pardon, based on 1 John 1:9.

Scripture reading. The Bible is read aloud. Many Methodist churches follow a lectionary, which is a planned cycle of readings. Many Holiness churches leave the choice to the pastor.

Hymns and songs. Singing is not a break between the "important" parts. It is itself a way of confessing the faith.

Pastoral prayer. The pastor prays for the church, the sick, the nation and the world. In the Wesleyan tradition this prayer often includes intercession for the lost, because we believe Christ died for all.

Offering. Giving is an act of worship. Paul spoke of the offering in 1 Corinthians 16:1-2.

Sermon. Preaching holds a central place. A Wesleyan sermon explains the Scripture, calls for a decision, and invites growth in grace. Wesley's own sermons were plain. He said he wrote for ordinary people.

Response. After the sermon many Holiness churches give an invitation to come forward, to pray at an altar, to seek salvation or a deeper work of the Spirit. The "altar call" belongs especially to our camp meeting and revival heritage (see Unit 9).

Lord's Supper. In many Methodist churches, the Supper is celebrated on the first Sunday of the month or more often. Unit 8 treats it in full.

Benediction. The service ends with a blessing and a sending into the world.

The Written Liturgy and the Freer Order

Wesleyans worship in two main ways, and a student should understand both.

The written liturgy. John Wesley was an Anglican priest, and the Church of England used the Book of Common Prayer. In 1784, when American Methodists needed to organize themselves, Wesley sent them a revised prayer book, The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America, along with a shortened set of the Articles of Religion. Wesley's own words and intentions are found in his letters and in the book itself. The Methodist churches that came from this line, including many United Methodist and Global Methodist congregations, still have a book of worship with set prayers and services for baptism, the Supper, marriage and burial.

The freer order. The Holiness churches that left Methodism in the nineteenth century, such as the Wesleyan Methodists, the Free Methodists and later the Nazarenes, wanted simpler worship, close to the camp meeting and the mission hall. They have a Manual or a Discipline that contains rules and rituals for the sacraments but gives the pastor freedom in the ordinary Sunday order. Many Wesleyan churches in Latin America and Africa follow this pattern and add their own music and customs.

The Wesleyan tradition holds both together. Wesley himself loved the Prayer Book and also preached in the open air, extemporaneously. He urged his people to attend their parish church and to receive the Supper there, while the Methodist societies met for preaching, prayer and testimony. Our tradition has never taught that one form alone pleases God.

Charles Wesley: the Poet of the Revival

John Wesley preached; his brother Charles (1707-1788) wrote. Charles Wesley wrote thousands of hymns, more than almost any other hymn writer in English. He was converted in May 1738, a few days before John's heart was "strangely warmed" at Aldersgate, as you learned in Course 1. His hymns are well known around the world: "O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing," "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today," "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling," "Jesus, Lover of My Soul," and "And Can It Be." Many have been translated into Spanish and other languages.

Why the hymns mattered

Many early Methodists could not read. The hymns were their theology book. A farmer or miner who could not read a sermon could learn the Gospel by singing it. Over a lifetime they would sing the hymns hundreds of times, and the words stayed in the mind. A hymn does what a sermon cannot do: it lets the whole congregation say the doctrine together.

What the hymns taught

Charles Wesley's hymns taught the full Wesleyan message. You will hear in them the doctrines you studied in Courses 2 and 3: God's love for all people, the offer of free grace, justification by faith, the new birth, the witness of the Spirit, and the hope of being made perfect in love. "And Can It Be" wonders at the cross. "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling" prays for a heart made pure. "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" confesses the Incarnation in simple words. A congregation that sings these hymns is learning the doctrine of the church.

The 1780 hymnbook

In 1780 John Wesley published A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists. Most of its hymns were by Charles. The book was arranged by the stages of Christian life: it began with hymns inviting sinners to return to God, moved through repentance, believing and the new birth, and went on to hymns on holiness and on the life of those who are growing in grace. In other words, the hymnbook followed the order of salvation. A person who sang from the first page to the last was walking through the way of salvation. This is a good example of how Wesleyans think: worship and doctrine are not separate.

Wesley also gave directions for singing, in the front of his tune collections. In summary, he asked people to sing all together, to sing with energy and without shouting, to sing in time, and above all to keep the heart on God while singing. We may adapt his advice for our own churches. The purpose is not to display the voice but to praise the Lord.

The Lord's Supper hymns

In 1745 John and Charles Wesley published Hymns on the Lord's Supper, together with a short work by an older Anglican writer, Daniel Brevint. The collection shows how deeply the Wesleys valued the Supper. Unit 8 will use it.

Objections and Our Answers

A pastor should know the objections that other Christians, and sometimes our own members, bring.

Objection 1: Set prayers and liturgy are cold, empty forms.

Many Baptists, Pentecostals and some Holiness believers say that written prayers quench the Spirit and lead to repeating words without thought. They point to Jesus' warning about "vain repetitions" in Matthew 6:7.

Our answer. Jesus warned against empty heaping up of words, not against prepared prayers. He gave His disciples a model prayer (Matthew 6:9-13; Luke 11:2-4), and the Psalms are a book of inspired prayers and songs for the congregation. A written prayer can be prayed from the heart, and an extemporaneous prayer can be a habit without a heart. The danger of formalism is real, and Paul warns of those "having a form of godliness but denying its power" (2 Timothy 3:5). But the cure is the Holy Spirit, not a ban on written words. This is why our tradition allows both ways and judges each service by whether the people truly meet God.

Objection 2: The opposite objection, from more liturgical churches: free worship is disorderly and shapeless.

Anglicans, Lutherans and Catholics say that a service with no common order depends too much on the pastor's mood, and loses the long memory of the church.

Our answer. Free worship can drift, and Paul's rule is "decently and in order." A pastor who is free in form should still have a plan: Scripture, prayer, preaching, response, offering and blessing. We are happy to learn from the older church, for instance by following the Christian year or reading Scripture in a planned sequence. But the New Testament does not require a written order, and it expects the Spirit to give life to the gathering.

Objection 3: Hymns and music move the emotions, and emotion is not worship.

Some Reformed Christians, historically, sang only the Psalms. Others fear that music manipulates feeling.

Our answer. Scripture commands singing and calls it teaching: Colossians 3:16 and Ephesians 5:19 speak of psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. The Psalms themselves repeatedly say "sing." Emotion in itself is not wrong; Scripture speaks of joy, grief and awe. Our tradition has always asked that feeling be governed by truth. This is why Charles Wesley's hymns, full of Scripture and doctrine, are a model: they stir the heart through the mind.

Objection 4: Historians dispute how "Methodist" the Wesleys' worship really was.

Some historians point out that the Wesleys never meant to leave the Church of England, and that early Methodist services were not a new church's worship but additions to parish worship. Others stress the new freedoms of field preaching and lay leadership. They disagree about whether Methodism's worship was mostly Anglican or mostly a new revival style.

Our answer. Both observations are true. The Wesleys cherished the Prayer Book and the Supper, and they also brought the Gospel to people who would never enter a church. We need not choose between them. The Methodist worship tradition is a union of ordered and revival worship, and a healthy Wesleyan church today tries to hold both.

Pastoral Application

A young Nazarene pastor in a village takes over a church where worship has become a string of songs and a long sermon. The older members say, "We have always done it this way." A visiting family from a more liturgical church says, "There is no order, and nothing from the Bible is read aloud."

First, the pastor does not scold either group. Both have real love for the Lord.

Second, he adds simple pieces step by step: a reading from the Old Testament, a Psalm, and a New Testament passage, read slowly by members of the congregation, so that Scripture is heard before the sermon.

Third, he teaches one of Charles Wesley's hymns for a month. Each week he explains one verse. The congregation learns that the hymn is both praise and doctrine.

Fourth, he asks the older members what they treasure most, and keeps it. A change in worship should always be explained, and it should never cost the church its warmth.

Summary

Worship is the heart of the church, and the Lord seeks those who worship in spirit and truth. The New Testament pattern of teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, prayer and singing underlies the Wesleyan Lord's Day service. Methodist churches that follow the 1784 Sunday Service use a written liturgy, while many Holiness churches use a freer order; both are accepted in the tradition. Charles Wesley's hymns taught doctrine to the whole congregation, and the 1780 Collection of Hymns followed the stages of salvation. Objections to set forms, to free worship, to emotional music, and to the Wesleyan blend of liturgy and revival can be answered from Scripture. The aim is a service that is orderly, warm, biblical and centered on Christ.

Further Reading

• John Wesley, A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists (1780).

• Charles Wesley, Hymns and Sacred Poems and other hymn collections; John and Charles Wesley, Hymns on the Lord's Supper (1745).

• John Wesley, The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America (1784).

• John Wesley, Sermons, especially "The Means of Grace" (public domain).

• John Wesley, Journal and Letters (public domain).

• The Book of Common Prayer (Church of England, 1662).

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