Christian Conferencing
At Lakewood UMC, we have been spending these weeks of Lent reflecting on a book called “The Five Means of Grace” written by Dr. Elaine Heath, PhD, which lists Prayer, Searching the Scriptures, The Lord’s Supper, Fasting, and Holy Conferencing as five unique practices we can do as “means of grace.”
What does that mean? I think it means that when we do these things, we can encounter more closeness with God. These five things in this book are not exhaustive. There are countless other means of Grace because God’s grace is prevenient and, like God, constantly available to us.
One thing that sticks out to me about this particular list of five is that all of them are fuller, more spiritual, and more profound experiences when you do them in community. Even fasting! We can learn from the Muslim practice of Ramadan (which is currently happening and will continue until March 29 this year), a practice of fasting that involves the whole community, acts of charity, and times of breaking that fast together in community called “Iftars.”
One of these means of grace we are exploring during Lent this year is referred to as Holy or “Christian Conferencing,” the most communal of them all but also a term that might need some further definition.
Holy conferencing historically might have referred to “class meetings” organized as a part of the unfolding “Methodist” movement where people would gather together to pray, to hold one another accountable (one question expected to be answered was “How is it with your soul?”), and engage in spiritual practices common to that time.
This concept of Christian conferencing specific to Methodism illustrates a core theological value of ours: we believe that holiness is neither solely personal nor social, it is both. John Wesley, in his preface to a 1739 hymnal once wrote, “The gospel of Christ knows of no religion but social; no holiness but social holiness.”
We can’t be Christians by ourselves! Christian conferencing is a means of grace because it brings us together to practice our faith together. This isn’t to say, of course, that solitude isn’t important. But, pardon me for saying it, it does seem like we in the US have fallen, these days, into a social norm of doing almost everything by ourselves. We have over inflated the value of human independence at the cost of any recognition of our interdependence.
Christian conferencing, our coming together to practice our faith—whether that is in church, in small group bible study, in joining together to protest as an act of our faith, in getting together to pray for one another, in choirs and other forms of communal music making—is crucial to the health of our faith, how we live out our faith, discern God’s calling on our lives, and manifest the kind of Love into the world that the world desperately needs right now.
Christian conferencing is a way to bring to life the truth Paul speaks about in Phillippians 4: “The Lord is near!” Some of my most profound experiences of the presence of God was in the company of fellow believers.
The labor for us, then, is to make christian conferencing work. It doesn’t happen by itself. It requires focusing on “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable,” (Phillippians 4:8) it means striving, as much as possible, to be “of the same mind in the Lord.” (Phillippians 4:2)
Luckily for us, when doing that feels impossible, God’s grace intervenes.
