Originally Published In Touchstone: Theology Shaping Witness June 2025
The Great Methodist Dumpster Salvage
For me, the great dumpster salvage began one afternoon when there was no one around. I surreptitiously entered the abandoned church library in a building that had, until recently, housed a once-strong United Church of Canada congregation. Knox-Wesley United[1] was the last remaining downtown United Church in my mid-sized west coast city and had recently amalgamated with another congregation to become Wide Expanse United. Knox-Wesley was, in face, part of a wider retreat-via-amalgamation with no fewer than 8 nearby congregations who had amalgamated to become Wide Expanse within the previous 25-year period.
As the congregation fled the inner city and headed for better parking in the suburbs, they left behind a good number of old, leather-clad books of some seemingly long-forgotten time and abandoned expressions of piety. Those 19th-century books, themselves taken from the previous Methodist and Presbyterian church libraries, were replete with stories of passionate singing, fiery preaching, circuit riding clergy, inner city revivals, intercultural ministries, camp and tent meetings, and the birth of new communities of faith.
Though these expressions of faith are a central and foundational part of our collective pre-Church Union history and, I would suggest, an essential part of our DNA, their depictions seemed remarkably different in tone from so much of what I had experienced in most United Church of Canada contexts in the late 20th and first part of the 21st century.
Thumbing through these old books was like opening an enchanted window into another storied time. What I read made me begin to wonder if there might be some latent embers of a fire deep in our bones[2]; a fire that we might consider rekindling as we prepare to celebrate our centenary and look toward the next century of The United Church of Canada.
Methodism’s distinctives are noted by United Church liturgical historian William Kervin as “evangelical zeal and human redemption, the testimony of spiritual experience and the ministry of sacred song.”[3] Canadian Methodism, prior to Church Union emphasised all these characteristics. There were frequent camp and revival meetings leading to a conversion of heart, fervent prayer and singing, times of personal testimony of what God had done in the lives of our forebears–all held together in a distinctive way of seeing and organization known as Connexionalism[4].
As a social justice and anti-oppression activist committed to deep inclusion, I’m grateful that we in The United Church have retained some of the social witness of our Methodist roots. However, I also believe that a witness to an embodied social gospel is also best sustained by the foundational ‘evangelical’ piety that Kervin describes. While some characteristics of a social Methodism endure, expressions of Methodist revivalist piety have, at least on the surface, all but disappeared in most regions of the country in the United Church. This is a great loss.
My suggestion, here, is that it is essential to stoke this latent fire in our bones to fully live into our stated 21st century commitments to engage a deep spirituality, daring justice and a bold discipleship.[5]
Reclamation of Revivalism and Sacred Song
For the Rev. John Wesley, one of the founders of Methodism, a pivotal moment in the formation of the Methodist movement happened when he experienced his “heart strangely warmed”[6] at that auspicious moment at Aldersgate Square, during a reading of Luther’s famously dry Preface to the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans.
It is beyond the scope here to go deep into the histories and trajectories of global or even of Canadian Methodism after Wesley’s ‘conversion’. However, I do want to begin this section on revivalism with this reminder of the Aldersgate moment as a marker for what would happen in the movement in its subsequent emphases on personal transformation rooted in a tangible experience of God, even as I set the foundation for what gems we might reclaim in the years to come.
Canadian historian Phyllis Airhart notes:
In Britain, Wesley’s group had been tagged with the name “Methodist” because of the regularity with which it performed religious exercises such as worship, fasting, partaking of Holy Communion, and acts of charity. But it was the “methods” of revivalism which soon identified the movement, particularly in North America… [7]
She continues:
Appeals for conversion were made in Sunday services as well as in “protracted meetings” where revival services were scheduled for a period of days or even weeks. The quarterly and annual business meetings of Methodism were also the scene of revivals. Summer camp meetings provided another setting for revival preaching… The impact of revivalism in shaping Methodism in Canada went far beyond expanding its membership rolls. It indelibly marked the religious identity of its adherents. In particular the conversion experience, associated with revivalism, characterized Methodist piety long after the pioneer days.[8]
While one might suggest that some elements of the 19th century revivalist impulse returned briefly to certain congregations in The United Church thorough the ecumenical charismatic movement of the 1970s and 80s, much of our mainstream expression has eschewed such expression, too often deemed as ‘emotionalist’ or ‘primitive’ for those who have shaped our dominant ethos.
In her writing, Airhart recalls stories of Methodist revivals across the country. Wesley Methodist Church,[9] a precursor congregation to Knox-Wesley United, whose discarded books I had retrieved, experienced such a revival in the 1860s. The Rev. William Pollard, Chairman of the British Columbia District of the Methodist Church, in an 1874 letter noted: “Though all in the congregation cannot always comprehend what is said, the power which attends their prayers and experiences, sufficiently indicates that they come from hearts regenerated by Divine graces.”[10]
The Methodist missionary, the Rev. Thomas Crosby, also described that era of revival in Victoria, BC:
The services at Victoria were …transferred to a building in the city which had been used as a bar-room. In this building, still bearing the sign of its earlier occupancy, a work of saving grace was begun and carried on, the results of which eternity alone will reveal. That meeting proved to be the beginning of a revival which lasted continuously for nine weeks … It was our great privilege to be with the dear friends for some time in that blessed revival, and when the people were starting north we bade them good-bye, urging them to stand up as witnesses for Jesus, and promising them that, if possible, we would visit them some day.[11]
A key element in this spiritual legacy of revival was strong preaching and testimony, to be sure. However, most histories of Methodism are quick to underline that this legacy is also held in approaches to song. Methodist singing has been a key feature of Methodist spirituality since the beginning of the movement; initially inspired by the hymns of Charles Wesley as well as a more ‘folky’ expressions of ‘gospel’ and ‘spiritual’ songs. This legacy was reflected in the life of Methodism in Canada, and expanded to diverse sacred and secular musical cultures globally.
Reflecting on the ‘Blue Book’, the 1930 Hymnary; the first hymnal published by The United Church of Canada, William Kervin notes that it “…appeared “‘too Presbyterian’ to many Methodists. Because it almost completely ignored the gospel song tradition, it seemed to shun the populist spirit of evangelical Congregationalism.”[12]
In that pile of reclaimed books from that library were several ‘supplementary’ songbooks; their pages filled with singable old-timey, camp and revival meeting songs revealing a heart-driven piety. Though these songs continue to make appearances at many a bluegrass festival and in African American church contexts, they have, for the most part, been shunned in our officially sanctioned hymnody.
As I leave us with the question around how we might consider reclaiming some of the legacies of rich revivalism and sacred Methodist song, I share words extracted from John Wesley’s Rules for Singing:
Sing lustily and with a good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep; but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard, than when you sung the songs of Satan… Above all sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing him more than yourself, or any other creature. In order to do this attend strictly to the sense of what you sing, and see that your heart is not carried away with the sound, but offered to God continually; so shall your singing be such as the Lord will approve here, and reward you when he cometh in the clouds of heaven.[13]
How might we in The United Church of Canada be called to sing anew to God with a spiritual passion, with a fire in our bellies, as if we truly believed Jesus to be ‘crucified and risen, our judge and our hope”[14]?
Reclamation of Connexionalism
At a 2025 staff meeting of the staff of The United Church of Canada, Director of Growth and Ministry Development, the Rev. Cameron Fraser, referred to the Methodist concept of Connexionalism—intentionally spelled with an ‘x’, he noted—as one way the United Church might move forward to engage our post-Christendom reality.
Without a strong foundation of right relationships and good governance, all of the revival and passionate song will struggle to be sustained. As such, I’ve decided to include an exploration of Connexionalism as the next jewel to reclaim in our Methodist heritage.
Connexionalism, put simply, is the “term used to describe the way in which Circuits and Districts of the Methodist Church … are linked together.”[15] A 2017 motion brought forward to the Methodist Church in the UK further articulated the nuances of this idea, noting that:
the essence of Connexionalism is identified and defined in terms of belonging, mutuality and interdependence. All Christians are essentially linked to one another; no Local Church is or can be an autonomous unit complete in itself. This understanding of the essence of the Church is grounded in the New Testament. It is vital for effective mission, and it is expressed in apt structures of oversight, balancing authority and subsidiarity. Where these insights have become part of the ethos of the Church, Connexionalism is experienced in a way of life which assumes that all contribute to and receive from the life and mission of the whole Church.[16]
One might wonder whether the concepts inherent in Connexionalism—that is of mutuality and interdependence, and the balance of authority and subsidiarity—could assist The United Church to find a ‘third way’ beyond to the polarities of our sometimes competitive, and all too oft-limping democratic systems or, to avoid the alternative reflex toward an authoritarian episcopal structure.
How might Connexionalism be engaged and re-imagined in our new structures? How might clusters and networks[17] be engaged to hearken us back to the earliest meeting structures of the Methodist movement with its small groups of deep vulnerability and sharing about how God is at work in our lives?
In terms of regional and national polity, how might the emerging kinds of authority available to the Office of Vocation, Executive and Regional Ministers that are part of the recent reorganization of the United Church[18] animate a way we do ministry in a post-Christendom context that is renews our commitment to being part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church and draws on our Methodist roots?
The connexional principle was integral to Methodism from its beginning. Accordingly, Wesley’s preachers were itinerant; that is, they were available to be sent wherever they were most needed. Thinking regionally, how might Connexionalism, with its ‘circuits’ and ‘circuit riding’ ministry be a foundation for The United Church of Canada to reimagine ministries of preaching and sacraments beyond the Christendom model—especially in a time of shifting economic realities in the church and wider society when it is increasingly difficult to call a local minister and the established Christendom models cease to function well?
Perhaps most importantly, how might Connexionalism serve as a spiritual and prophetic counterpoint to the rampant individualism of late capitalism or counter the rising libertarian impulse that is too often reflected in the competitive nature of our congregationalism? How might it draw us away from our tendencies toward competition around perceived scarcity to a reorientation to abundance of the Reign of God among us?
Reclamation of Sacramentalism
Unlike revivalism and Connexionalism, the sacramental impulse isn’t usually noted as a strong point in Canadian Methodist history. Some historians have even posited that sacramental or ritual expression is a counterpoint to the energy of Methodist revivalism. Experientially, the marks of the ‘method’ of the methodist tradition that Airhart notes as the origin of that Methodist moniker, such as regular eucharist or daily liturgical prayer, were not remarkably strong points in the Canadian Methodist Churches nor are they in The United Church. To this day, most United Church congregations engage in the sacrament of holy communion monthly, or even quarterly. Though there have been various structured prayer offices available to United Church members (including at the back of Voices United[19]), their use has not been strong in either our personal piety or in collective practice.
Regarding communion, Wesley said this:
I am to show that it is the duty of every Christian to receive the Lord’s Supper as often as [they] can. Let everyone, therefore, who has either any desire to please God, or any love of [their] own soul, obey God, and consult the good of [their] own soul, by communicating every time [they] can…As our bodies are strengthened by bread and wine, so are our souls by these tokens of the body and blood of Christ. This is the food of our souls: This gives strength to perform our duty, and leads us on to perfection. If, therefore, we have any regard for the plain command of Christ, if we desire the pardon of our sins, if we wish for strength to believe, to love and obey God, then we should neglect no opportunity of receiving the Lord’s Supper; then we must never turn our backs on the feast which our Lord has prepared for us.[20]
This sentiment is perhaps no surprise – given that the mother of Methodism, John’s mother, Susanna Annesley Wesley, a powerful woman whose portrait hangs to this day in foyer of the United Church’s Emmanuel College in Toronto, had her own conversion experience at the altar rail:
While my son [in-law Westley] Hall was pronouncing these words in delivering the cup to me, ‘The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee,’ these words struck through my heart, and I knew that God for Christ’s sake had forgiven me all my sins.[21]
Wesley’s early prayer books, including his rite for communion and daily prayer offices, were slightly adaptated versions of the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer, reflecting the reality that he was, even until his death, an Anglican priest.
Michael J. Townsend notes that the sacramentalist underpinning in the spirituality of the Wesley family extends to song: “In 1745 the Wesley’s published a collection of 166 hymns under the title Hymns on the Lord’s Supper and it went through at least ten editions in John Wesley’s lifetime. That in itself might be judged a testimony to the strength of their sacramentalism.”[22]
The inaugural liturgy of the United Church of Canada in 1925 also exhibits a strong sacramental imagination, perhaps as a hoped-for foreshadowing of union with the Anglicans.[23] The controversy continued into the 1930s and 1940s and is reflected in the liturgies and writings of the time, some of which also argued for communion to be restored as the regular expression of the then still-young United Church[24]
Among the books reclaimed in my dumpster salvage was The Doctrine and Discipline of the Methodist Church Canada 1922. It exhorts those called to ministry to use ‘…all the means of grace… Prayer—private, family, and public; consisting of adoration, thanksgiving, confession, petition and intercession… [and] The Lord’s Supper.’[25]
As I reflect on the current state of the spiritual life leadership in The United Church, I often witness both a hunger for these types of practices, which I would call mystical, sacramental and liturgical. It raises the question: how might daily structured ‘common’ prayer or a regular practice of the eucharist remind us that we are connected to something bigger (that is, congregationally, denominationally, ecumenically and of course, cosmologically)? How might a renewal of these ancient ways, present in the spirituality of the Wesleys and the early Methodists, re-root us and reshape our leadership and our congregational lives for our next century?
Post-Christendom Possibilities: Stoking the Flames and Digging for the Jewels
In case you’re wondering just how this Methodist renewal might happen—I believe that it already is. The witness of Methodism has come to the mainstream of The United Church through the expressions of diasporic, migrant and racialized Christians and from queer evangelicals and sacramentalists whose hearts are on fire for Jesus. Some of these are planting churches in Canada within The United Church of Canada. Others are quietly leading congregations. These are leaders and communities who have too often been shunned by the middle-strata, progressive mainstream of The United Church of Canada. As the liberal, Enlightenment and Christendom experiments reveal their inadequacies, some of these folks are beginning to find acceptance or even a home in a church that has too often been one of compulsory whiteness, anti-evangelical and anti-sacramentalist bias.
Even as I note this, I’m aware that the colonial attitudes and subsequent Eurocentric actions of the Methodist movement are not above reproach. All our traditions born in colonial and Christendom frames have deep shadows that need exorcising. I’m certainly not proposing a bland nostalgia nor going back to 1860, which isn’t any better than going back to the so-called Christendom glory days of the baby boom in 1960, when every Sunday School had at least 500 children (so our mythologies go).
I’m also aware that for many of us, our formation in an Enlightenment, Eurocentric frameworks can make the wildness of revival and mysticism difficult to engage. Even so, I believe that digging for these jewels and rekindling this old fire is essential even as we pray Veni Sancte Spiritus, Come Holy Spirit, longing for revival to come for the good of the aching world.
I conclude with a few anecdotal snapshots:
- As a 2022 consultation of The United Church of Canada’s LeaderShift initiative,[26] a group of diverse leaders concluded that our first priority is to “seek a Holy Spirit revival.”
- On any given Sunday morning, I’ll watch the worship of the Ghana Methodist United Church in Toronto, one of the longer-established African diasporic UCC Congregations. Their worship involves all-night revival meetings, fiery preaching, passionate singing, praise and dancing. Sometimes, in a striking moment of intercultural expression, the women of the congregation wear Ghanaian dresses adorned with The United Church of Canada logo.
- After a vote of exclusion from the United Methodist Church in the USA, queer clergy and allies came into the convention centre “singing hymns, marching and partaking in the eucharist in a spontaneous act of holy resistance where the Spirit was clearly and present and at work. [They] evoked the power of holy love in a way that the church is utterly foolish to dismiss and reject.”[27]
- Groups of younger clergy who I speak with in the United Church are praying the daily offices, exploring monastic practices, re-engaging ancient liturgical forms, chanting psalms and the Eucharist and engaging in both contemplative and Pentecostal expressions of Christian faith. Most of these do so without discarding the jewel of inclusivity around gender and sexual diversity that has been a strong and defining feature of the United Church since the late 20th century.
I would suggest that in these selective snapshots, the revival we seek will not come from the centre, not out of some ‘program’ from our dominant ‘centre’—but from the very edges of the insides of the church.
In his book Living Buddha, Living Christ, the Buddhist writer Thích Nh’ăt Hanh speaks of encouraging Christians who visit him and wish to convert to Buddhism to only consider doing so after they have mined the jewels of their own tradition. He says this:
[Younger generations] no longer believe in the traditions of their parents and grandparents, and they have not found anything else to replace them. … [Spiritual leaders] have not been able to transmit the deepest values of their traditions, perhaps because they themselves have not fully understood or experienced them. When a priest does not embody the living values of a tradition, he or she cannot transmit them to the next generation. [They] can only wear the outer garments and pass along the superficial forms. When the living values are absent, rituals and dogmas are lifeless, rigid, and even oppressive. …. They cannot transmit the jewels they have received from their ancestral teachers to the young… We need roots to be able to stand straight and grow strong. …I always encourage them to practice in a way that will help them [young people] go back to their own tradition and get rerooted. If they succeed at becoming reintegrated, they will be an important instrument in transforming and renewing their tradition.[28]
How much of our decline, our retreat into amalgamations, closures, and declined staffing stems from the ‘lifelessness’ brought about by the neglect of our birthright, our very spiritual inheritance? How might the Methodist expression of the church of Jesus Christ rekindle the flame in The United Church? What could this mean for The United Church of Canada as we celebrate our centenary and look toward the next 100 years in a much-changed world where both Christendom and liberalism are, at best, contested?
As a response this these questions I have attempted, here, a very precursory attempt to engage in a Great Methodist Dumpster Salvage; proposing a rediscovery of a storied (though not unproblematic) and too-often neglected past which might give a cue to how we might engage the future as we seek to reenchant our common life as part of the wider ‘mystic sweet communion’[29] that is Jesus’ church.
I believe that as we enter the second century of the United Church of Canada, we need reminders and remembrances of our rich spiritual roots. In terms of a reclaimed Methodist spiritual life, what I’m speaking of here is a passion, wonder, a fire! I speak of lives and communities transformed by the person and gospel of Jesus Christ; a reclamation or excavation of the deep Holy Ghost power calling us back to holiness and an embodied justice that flows from that. Siblings, even as we feel that fire being stoked in our bones, let us pray not just for renewal, let’s pray for Holy Spirit revival.
[1] A Pseudonym: both Knox-Wesley and Wide Expanse United are made up names based on real events.
[2] A reference to Jeremiah 20:9
[3] William S. Kervin, ed. Ordered Liberty: Readings in the History of United Church Worship. (The United Church of Canada, 2011), 17.
[4] Connexionalism will be defined later.
[5] The Call and Vision of the General Council’s 2023-2025 Strategic Plan see https://united-church.ca/community-and-faith/welcome-united-church-canada/our-call-and-vision, accessed 1 May, 2025.
[6] John Wesley’s Journal, chapter 2 – https://www.ccel.org/ccel/wesley/journal.vi.ii.xvi.html accessed 1 May, 2025.
[7] Phyllis D. Airhart. Serving the Present Age: Revivalism, Progressivism, and the Methodist Tradition in Canada. (McGill-Queens University Press, 1992), 12-13
[8] Ibid, 17,
[9] Again, using the pseudonym here.
[10] Quoted in Susan Neylan (2003). “Encountering Spirits and Holiness Revivals in Victoria, B.C., and the ‘Colonial Project’.” Histoire sociale/Social History 36 (71): 178.
[11] Thomas Crosby. Among the An-ko-me-nums, or Flathead tribes of Indians of the Pacific Coast. (William Briggs, 1907), 233.: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/54958/54958-h/54958-h.htm., accessed 1 May, 2025.
[12] William S. Kervin, ed. Ordered Liberty: Readings in the History of United Church Worship. (The United Church of Canada, 2011), 17.
[13] Quoted in Voices United: The Hymn and Worship Book of the United Church of Canada. (United Church Publishing House: 1996), 720. Originally published in Wesley’s Select Hymns with Tunes Annext, 1791.
[14] As we say in A New Creed. https://united-church.ca/community-and-faith/welcome-united-church-canada/faith-statements/new-creed-1968, accessed 1 May, 2025.
[15] Unmasking Methodist Theology. Marsh, Beck Shier-Jones, Wareing eds (Continuum Press, 2004), 228.
[16] “The Gift of Connexionalism in the 21st Century” (The Methodist Church, 2017). https://media.methodist.org.uk/media/documents/conf-2017-37-The-Gift-of-Connexionalism-in-the-21st-Century_ZclJGAo.pdf, accessed 1 May, 2025.
[17] See https://united-church.ca/community-and-faith/being-community/clusters-and-networks/getting-started-clusters-and-networks, accessed May 1, 2025.
[18] I’m intrigued by this reporting in the Anglican Journal which speaks to this from an Anglican perspective – see https://anglicanjournal.com/changes-united-church-canada-might-ease-cooperation-anglicans-sources-say/, accessed 1 May, 2024.
[19] Voices United, 906-930.
[20] John Wesley, “The Duty of Constant Communion”, https://holyjoys.org/the-duty-of-constant-communion/ accessed May 1, 2025.
[21] Mitchell Lewis. “Susanna Wesley, Sacramental Evangelical” https://milewis.wordpress.com/2016/02/12/susanna-wesley-sacramental-evangelical/. Accessed May 1, 2025.
[22] Michael J. Townsend. A Sacramental Spirituality for Methodism in The Way Journal (British Jesuits) Supplement 94 1999: https://www.theway.org.uk/back/s094Townsend.pdf, Accessed May 1, 2025
[23] The liturgy is available online and also in William Kervin’s Ordered Liberty. 13
[24] see Kervin, ed.; with contributors Thomas and Bruce Harding depicting this as a debate around ritualism (Chapter 22) and a subsequent apologetic for the Eucharist being the normative expression for Sunday worship written in 1940 by Richard Davidson (Chapter 23)
[25] The Doctrine and Discipline of the Methodist Church Canada 1922 (The Methodist Book and Publishing House Toronto, 1922) 31-32
[26] https://leadershiftuccan.org/, accessed , May, 2025.
[27] Keegan Osinski. Queering Wesley, Queering the Church (Cascade Books: 2021) 47.
[28] Thích Nh’ăt Hanh. Living Buddha, Living Christ (Riverside Books, New York 1995 ,2007), 97-98.
[29] From “The Churches One Foundation” the inaugural hymn of the United Church of Canada.