Part Seven: Susanna Wesley, Ecclesial Gangster
Amid an adaptive challenge the mandate is to exceed thou authority.
Often in Fresh Expressions trainings we get to the institutional questions: How do we measure? How do we maintain accountability? What about the restrictions on what laity can and can’t do? What about sacraments? And the list continues. They are good questions and it’s hard to make general prescriptions that apply to various contexts. But many of them are technical questions, not adaptive ones.
I have suggested in this series that mainline denominations in the United States might be experiencing a crisis of organizational wisdom. It is possible that the compassionate dimension of wisdom has been minimized or neglected leading to a failure to cultivate the common good. Thus, there is a misalignment between the stated purpose of religious institutions and their actual contribution to making the world a better place. Thus, the rise of the “nones and the dones” in the chasm of the compassion gap.
We are in a time when the fate of denominations (in their current structure) themselves is in question. When times of shifting paradigms are upon us, like the one we find ourselves in right now, God uses certain people to take risks, bend, blend, and break rules, and to establish new missional norms. You can see this in Jesus’s rule-breaking activities within the inherited religious system of his day (Mark 2:23-28 is a clear example). Also, in the book of Acts, the first disciples reframe “the rules” to further the mission (Acts 15). These scenarios reveal that there are times when rules engender conflict with greater missional need and purpose.
A core principle of adaptive leadership is to anchor radical and incremental change in founding story and deep values.
The Methodist tradition provides, historically speaking, a more recent example of “exceeding authority” in the liminality of an adaptive challenge. What practical insights might we utilize from the adaptive leadership of early Methodists?
People are often surprised to discover the first Methodist Fresh Expression in history was started by Susanna Wesley. Her role and influence as the “Mother of Methodism” has been historically downplayed. Yes, she raised ten children, including John, Charles, and Mehetabel (a notable poet in her own right), but there’s more to the story.
In my travels across seven annual conferences this season, I introduced a new phrase into the Methonerd lexicon. Susanna Wesley, ecclesial gangster.
In 1710 Susanna began conducting irregular worship services in her home. A nine-year-old John Wesley grew up in this environment of ecclesial innovation. Susanna, deeply committed to the inherited church, also saw its ineffectiveness. She broke many social and ecclesiastical conventions of her time.
Her husband, Samuel Wesley, was himself a priest who traveled frequently, spent time in debtors’ prison, and struggled to provide financially for the family. He asked her to stop these irregular gatherings as they were upsetting the local curate Rev Inman (who by all accounts was less than effective).
February 6, 1712, Susanna writes, “I am a woman, so I am also mistress of a large family. And though the superior charge of the souls contained in it lies upon you as head of the family and as their minister, yet in your absence I cannot but look upon every soul you leave under my care as a talent committed to me under a trust by the great Lord of all the families of heaven and earth. And if I am unfaithful to him or to you in neglecting to improve these talents, how shall I answer unto him, when he shall command me to render an account of my stewardship?”[1]
Susanna describes how the gatherings started with a kind of personal family chapel for the kids, then evolved from there… “This was the beginning of my present practice: other people coming in and joining with us was purely accidental. Our lad told his parents—they first desired to be admitted; then others who heard of it begged leave also; so our company increased to about thirty and seldom exceeded forty last winter.”[2]
This is what we describe in Fresh Expressions as the “loving first journey.” She was listening, loving and serving, building relationships, exploring discipleship, and church started to take shape… in her kitchen. The first Methodist “open table.”
Susanna’s house church existed alongside a congregation that worshiped about 20 people. She writes, “With those few neighbours who then came to me I discoursed more freely and affectionately than before. I chose the best and most awakening sermons we had, and I spent more time with them in such exercises. Since this our company has increased every night, for I dare deny none that asks admittance. Last Sunday I believe we had above two hundred, and yet many went away for want of room…”[3]
Yes. Susanna Wesley planted a church in her home in which 200+ people were gathering.
Here are some excerpts from her follow up letter to Samuel, February 25, 1712, “but ‘tis plain in fact that this one thing has brought more people to church than ever anything did in so short a time.”[4] Not only were new people connecting in her house church, but they were beginning to be involved in the life of the inherited church as well.
Susanna writes, “If you do after all think fit to dissolve this assembly, do not tell me any more that you desire me to do it, for that will not satisfy my conscience; but send me your positive command in such full and express terms as may absolve me from all guilt and punishment for neglecting this opportunity of doing good to souls, when you and I shall appear before the great and awful tribunal of our Lord Jesus Christ. I dare not wish this practice of ours had never been begun, but it will be with extreme grief that I shall dismiss them, because I foresee the consequences. I pray God direct and bless you.”[5]
Susanna’s ecclesial innovation is part of the treasured inheritance of the people called Methodists. Methodists are wired for the blended ecology, in which new innovative forms of church spring up alongside existing congregations.
This kind of adaptive leadership would live on in the Wesley brothers. The reality of bishops in Methodism itself was born from a missional adaptation. As Methodism spread over to the United States and began to take on a life of its own, out of sheer missional necessity, Wesley consecrated Thomas Coke as a “General Superintendent,” and then instructed Coke to consecrate Francis Asbury in 1784.
These consecrations occurred outside the realm of appropriate authority in the Anglican Church. John Wesley used the scriptural rationale in cases of necessity to validate his actions, going back to first principles beneath the traditions. The missional need was primarily to do with providing the sacraments in the Americas. Thus, some rule blending was in order between the inherited and emerging modes.
The most explosive power of the early Methodist movement was the releasing of laity to transform the world. Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky suggest that adaptive leadership is the “practice of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges and thrive.”[6] A key to adaptive work is creating environments in which an increasing number of participants are mobilized for shaping new social arrangements.
John Wesley took “ordinary heroes” among the priesthood of all believers and called them “lay preachers.” The different Methodist gatherings were sustained by the laity. At first, these leaders were chosen by Wesley and commissioned to serve in different capacities. This allowed for a recovery of the fivefold gifting from Ephesians 4, as apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers were released to serve as the people of God.
They were unleashed into the fields, prisons, and mining communities, as well as into the societies, classes, bands, and Methodist preaching houses. Wesley was an apostolic leader who advanced the gospel from a heart strangely warmed with compassion for those outside the church. He did this while sustaining the larger institution’s integrity.
Cultivating missional movements among inherited systems often creates a polarity between competing truths. The people called Methodists were born from a missional impulse that ultimately led to the creation of a whole new institution. Adventurers usually feel faced with a choice: either to leave the inherited system and start from scratch, or to work within the inherited system that we know and love to bring revival. If we choose the latter, at some point, we will find ourselves in the position Wesley did. John Wesley chose mission over strict adherence to rules that confined the Gospel’s expansion, and yet he maintained integrity within the institution. He did some rule blending.
This was something he learned in his mother’s kitchen. Perhaps we need to awaken some fresh Susanna Wesley energy in the world today.
In an epidemic of isolation and loneliness, where firearm violence is now a major health crisis and the leading cause of death among children and adolescents. Are we willing to explore new ways of being church that bring healing in the everyday spaces of life?
As L. Gregory Jones reminds us, “For most of American history, faith-based communities led the way in innovative approaches in sectors such as education, health, housing, food, just to name a few.”[7] He calls for a rediscovery of Christian social innovation, in which the church takes an active role in building, renewing, and transforming institutions to cultivate human flourishing. He catalogs some of the various past social innovation projects of the church, which have become the major institutions of today’s society: hospitals, universities, schools, and so on.
This can begin with us. Right now. In our everyday life. With people that we know and love. Great awakenings of compassion can begin in a small kitchen. Jesus is calling forth all ecclesial gangsters.
[1] Wallace, Charles Jr., The Complete Writings of Susanna Wesley (Oxford University Press, 1997), 79.
[2] Wallace, 80.
[3] Wallace, 80.
[4] Wallace, 82.
[5] Wallace, 83.
[6] Heifetz, Ronald A., Alexander Grashow, and Martin Linsky. The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World (Boston, Mass: Harvard Business Press, 2009), 14.
[7] Jones, L G. Christian Social Innovation: Renewing Wesleyan Witness (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2016), 51.