Club 444: Not Just for United Methodists

Bishop Bill Lewis from a week ago —-

Some of my friends (actually, just one who is left) have asked me to share some of my thoughts about recent events involving the departure of a significant segment of United Methodists to start a new denomination of their own.

When I was young, I bought a set of John Wesley’s Journals. I was eccentric in those days, and I used to read them a lot. I am ninety now and I have outgrown most of those youthful eccentricities.

We had some serious water damage in the lower level of our house one summer when we were gone. A broken water pipe just above my stash of old books. Ruined them. Can’t read Wesley’s Journal anymore.

There was one passage I particularly liked. It was about a visit to the Society at Gateshead.

There were a number of angry people in the Society at Gateshead. They were very contentious. Against everything.

Wesley went himself on a mission of reconciliation but in the end there was nothing to do but make them mad enough to leave.

On the way back to London he was assessing the damage. He had a thing about numbers and keeping accurate records.

When he totaled up the numbers left in the Society at Gateshead about half of them were gone. After some serious rumination he concluded that “The half is better than the whole” and rode home singing one of his brother’s hymns.

—- Whaddya say?

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