by Joel V Webb | Jan 26, 2026 | Uncategorized
According to the old liturgical calendar, this last Sunday (Jan. 25, 2026) was the last Sunday of Epiphany. That seems strange, because in modern lectionary and liturgical calendars, we still have three more Sundays until Ash Wednesday, and the official start of Lent. But in the old calendar, like the one we use at my church (the 1662 Lectionary with OT additions from the Canadian Prayer Book Society), we are getting ready to enter into what has been known as the pre-Lent season, with three strangely titled Sunday of; Septuagesima, Sexagesima and Quinquagesima Sunday’s. The three names of these Sunday’s come from the Latin origins, stating how many Sunday’s we are away from Easter. Going 70, 60 & 50 days.
These three Sunday’s provide a unique opportunity to ease into the penitential nature of Lent from the joys of Christmas, and the season of Epiphany where the power and nature of Christ are revealed.
Known collectively as Gesimatide (from the old German for these Sundays), this violet-clad interlude, roughly three weeks long, shifts the church’s tone without the full rigor of Lenten fasting. Gloria and Alleluia vanish from the Mass or Mattins, Tract replaces the Alleluia, and a somber expectancy builds, much like church bells tolling faintly before the Lenten knell. Retaining these in traditional Anglican, continuing Anglican, and some Lutheran rites honors a practice traceable to St. Gregory the Great around 600 AD, bridging Epiphany’s manifestation to Quadragesima’s (Lent’s) forty days.
Opening this trio about 63 days before Easter (not precisely 70, but evocatively so, recalling Israel’s 70-year exile), Septuagesima calls us to spiritual toil. The Gospel’s parable of the vineyard laborers (Matt 20:1-16) shatters merit-based thinking: latecomers receive the same denarius as early risers, revealing God’s prodigal grace. Paired with St. Paul’s runner straining for an incorruptible crown (1 Cor 9:24-27), it urges disciplined training, temperance in all things, for the heavenly prize. Adam’s curse of sweatful labor echoes here, yet Christ’s generosity redeems it.
Roughly 56 days out, Sexagesima turns to providence amid trial. Noah’s ark (Gen 1-8 in some uses) and the sower’s parable (Luke 8:4-15) dominate: seeds fall on varied soils, but God’s Word endures floods and thorns. Paul recounts his thorn in the flesh (2 Cor 11-12), modeling perseverance. It’s a Sunday for battered faith, joy in weakness, trusting the Seed that multiplies despite rocky paths.
At ~49 days (echoing Jubilee’s 50), Quinquagesima crowns the season with love’s supremacy (1 Cor 13). The blind man’s sight restored (Luke 18:31-43) mirrors our Lenten unveiling, as Christ foretells His Passion. Abraham’s faith may appear in OT lessons, but charity binds all: without it, even prophetic gifts clang empty. Shrove Tuesday confessions often follow, purging the soul for Ash Wednesday.
This pre-Lent rhythm, far from archaic, offers graduated resolve, like an athlete’s warm-up or a laborer’s dawn hiring. In our rushed age, it invites deliberate turning toward Easter’s victory, one numbered Sunday at a time. But its deeper importance lies in reclaiming a lost art of spiritual preparation, countering the modern temptation to plunge headlong into disciplines without reflection.
Consider our fractured world: instant gratification erodes patience, self-promotion mocks humility, and superficial faith withers under trial. Gesimatide counters this with measured mercy. Septuagesima dismantles pride in our “early arrival,” teaching that God’s kingdom values grace over merit, vital for a culture obsessed with achievement. Sexagesima steels us against despair, reminding Noah-like believers that God’s ark preserves through storms, and His Word, sown generously, yields harvest in unlikely soil. Quinquagesima then clothes these truths in charity, the “greatest” virtue that outlasts all, preparing hearts not just to endure Lent but to love through it.
Historically, this season echoed Eastern asceticism, where Lent’s intensity demanded forewarning, and Western monks buried the Alleluia at Septuagesima’s close in symbolic funerals. Today, amid secular calendars that rush from holiday to holiday, it restores sacred time’s cadence. For pastors and parishioners alike, it fosters communal momentum.
In Free Methodist or Anglican contexts like ours, embracing Gesimatide bridges confessional depth with evangelical zeal. It humanizes Lent, making repentance feel like a gracious invitation rather than a grim duty. These Sundays whisper: Run well, endure faithfully, love supremely—not for corruptible crowns, but for the imperishable joy of Resurrection. Let us, then, heed their numbered call, stepping from Epiphany’s light into Lent’s refining shadow, hearts attuned to Easter’s dawn.
by Joel V Webb | Jan 17, 2026 | Uncategorized
If it hasn’t become clear, one of my favorite topics in theology and Christian practice are the Sacraments, particularly communion (Lord’s Supper, Eucharist etc…). The enduring and central nature of it’s celebration has been the core of Christian worship since the time of Acts, as we know the early church “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Acts 2:42 NIV).
In past posts and articles I have spoken of some of the reasons why coming around the table has become infrequent in some parts of the modern Church. Part of the disconnect that I think there is centers around a question that many of us take for granted. What is worship? For many, the word worship evokes the idea of music and singing, and I think that’s what most of us think. When we speak of a worship service, we also include prayer and hearing/sharing from the Word. But we have to ask, is that the extent of worship?
Before we came come to a contemporary assertion or application we have to ask the question, what did worship look like in the Old Testament? We certainly see Psalms and songs, and other things that we often associate as worship. Yet, the summit and pinnacle of what we see as worship of God’s chosen people is sacrifice. There is never worship to the one and true God that does not include the offering and giving of something.
Now as a note, the sacrifices in and of themselves were not what ultimately pleased God. The prophets are filled with chapters speaking about how the sacrifices and religious practices of Israel are detestable to God because of their disobedience to His law, and so all worship, whether sacrifice, song or anything else must always be paired with a broken and contrite heart as the psalmist writes in Psalm 51.
Now as a note, the sacrifices in and of themselves were not what ultimately pleased God. The prophets are filled with chapters speaking about how the sacrifices and religious practices of Israel are detestable to God because of their disobedience to His law, and so all worship, whether sacrifice, song or anything else must always be paired with a broken and contrite heart as the psalmist writes in Psalm 51.
If worship in the old covenant reached its height in the offering of sacrifice, then the coming of Christ brings this reality to its perfect completion. In Jesus, we see both priest and victim, the one who offers and the one who is offered. The cross becomes the once-for-all act of worship, the great oblation in which sin is finally dealt with and humanity is brought into reconciliation with God. The letter to the Hebrews proclaims this with clarity: where the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sin, Christ’s self-offering has done so forever.
And yet, that singular sacrifice did not end worship, it transformed it. The Church, in every generation, participates in that one sacrifice through what Jesus commanded us to do: “Do this in remembrance of me.” When we gather at the Table, we do not offer a new sacrifice, but rather enter into the one eternal sacrifice of Christ made present by the Spirit. This is why the Eucharist is not just a symbol or a memorial meal; it is participation. It is communion, not only with one another, but with the very life of God through the risen Christ.
This is what makes the Table the beating heart of Christian worship. Every prayer, every reading of Scripture, every hymn, and every act of fellowship ultimately orients us here, to the place where heaven and earth meet, where Christ is both host and feast. Without the Table, our worship easily drifts into abstraction or emotional expression alone. But at the Table, we are grounded again in God’s concrete grace, in bread broken and wine poured out.
If worship is the offering of ourselves to God, then here is where that offering finds its true pattern. We come forward not merely to receive, but to be made into an offering, “living sacrifices,” as Paul says in Romans 12. The Table is where we learn what it means to worship in spirit and in truth: not only with our lips, but with our lives.
If we recover this understanding of worship, that it centers not on what we bring, but on what Christ has already brought before the Father, then the call to return to the Table takes on fresh urgency. Regular communion is not just about returning to a historic pattern; it’s about rediscovering who we are as the Church, the Body of Christ made one in Him.
The Table is not the privilege of one denomination or cultural expression, but the inheritance of all who are joined to Christ through faith and baptism. In a world fractured by ideology, nationalism, and individualism, the Eucharist becomes a counter-sign, a visible witness to the unity that already exists in the risen Lord. Around this Table, there is no hierarchy of worth, no division of class or nation. There is simply grace received together.
When we kneel or stand side by side to receive from the one loaf and one cup, we are participating in something that heals the fractures of both Church and society. The early Christians knew this: the meal that bound them to Christ also bound them to one another. It was their act of resistance against the world’s ways of dividing and excluding. Perhaps that is why, in our fragmented and polarized age, the Spirit is stirring the Church across traditions to return again to frequent communion, not as ritual nostalgia, but as a prophetic act of unity and hope.
For those of us in the Free Methodist and broader Wesleyan traditions, this means seeing the Table not as an optional add-on, but as central to our life together. Each time we share in the bread and cup, we are declaring that Christ’s sacrifice is enough, that His kingdom is breaking in, and that we belong not only to Him, but to one another. If we could begin to live as people shaped by this Table, forgiving as we have been forgiven, giving as we have received, then the unity we proclaim would become visible in a world desperate for reconciliation.
In the end, “Why the Table?” Because this is where the Church becomes truly herself. This is where the world catches a glimpse of what it longs for: a community reconciled by grace, gathered not by preference or power, but by the love that was broken and poured out for us all.
by Joel V Webb | Jan 15, 2026 | Uncategorized
Walking into the middle of the woods can be kind of a disorienting thing. Going off the path, if you are not careful, you can very quickly realize that you do not know where you are, and when you try to get your bearings, you quickly start to realize that the things you thought were guiding your path were not actually, and now…you are lost. But this type of situation is not just limited to first excursions. This can happen in our lives individually, and it can also happen on a bigger scale with whole groups of people.
The same quiet disorientation can happen to churches and whole denominations. At first, the path seems obvious: preach Christ, make disciples, and bear witness to the kingdom in word and deed. Over time, however, other concerns begin to press in, urgent causes, institutional anxieties, financial pressures, and the constant hum of cultural expectation and without anyone announcing a change of direction, the community finds itself walking by different markers than the Gospel itself.
One of the earliest signs of this drift is not open denial of core doctrines, but a subtle neglect and reshaping of them. The church still uses words like grace, salvation, and kingdom, yet their content slowly shifts away from the historic, creedal vision of a holy God, a real fall, a truly incarnate Christ, and the hope of resurrection and judgment. The vocabulary remains familiar, but the underlying story and the claims it makes on our lives become thinner, more therapeutic, and more imprecise.
Another marker appears when activism begins to function as a replacement horizon for the church’s imagination. There is a rightful and necessary place for works of mercy, justice, and cultural engagement within the great tradition of the faith. Yet when external causes become the primary measure of seriousness, and the thick, doctrinal shape of Christianity is treated as flexible packaging for whatever issue currently feels most pressing, the church has begun to trade the old paths for whatever looks most urgent in the moment. Faithfulness is then gauged less by conformity to the catholic and apostolic deposit, and more by alignment with contemporary movements and moods.
At the same time, business mentalities seep into the bones of the institution. Strategic plans, branding exercises, leadership pipelines, and key performance indicators begin to dominate the conversation, not simply as tools in service of a received faith, but as the primary way the church now understands itself. The community starts to think of itself less as a people gathered around creed, Word, and sacrament, and more as a religious enterprise tasked with managing growth, reputation, and market niche. What cannot be easily graphed, marketed, or leveraged, mystery, holiness, adoration quietly recedes.
In such a climate, confessional and doctrinal commitments often remain formally intact but become functionally optional. Official statements continue to affirm Nicene and apostolic truths, yet they no longer strongly govern what is taught, celebrated, or funded. The boundaries they once provided are treated as starting points for “reinterpretation,” as if the accumulated wisdom of centuries were merely a set of suggestions to be updated whenever cultural winds shift. Bit by bit, the tether to the broad, historic Christian consensus frays, and the church finds itself improvising a faith that is recognizable in language but noticeably different in substance.
This kind of wandering is especially dangerous because it does not feel like rebellion while it is happening. No one wakes up and decides, “Today we will move beyond the faith of the creeds.” Instead, leaders respond to crises, opportunities, and cultural pressures with a hundred small, reasonable-seeming adjustments: emphasize what feels more accessible, downplay what seems strange, reframe ancient doctrines in ways that no longer bind but merely inspire. Only after many such steps does the community look up and realize that the landmarks of classical Christianity are behind it, faint on the horizon.
For denominations, the way back is not mere nostalgia but a sober recovering of the true path. That recovery begins with candid self-examination: Are we still consciously standing within the great stream of Christian belief, rooted in Scripture, informed by the creeds, attentive to the wisdom of the saints—or have we gradually come to treat the tradition as raw material for our own experiments? Do our teaching, worship, and institutional decisions show that we are being shaped by the church’s long memory, or by the short attention span of the present moment?
From there, repentance must take corporate form. Churches and denominations need to name, in specific ways, where cultural agendas have eclipsed catholic conviction, where managerial habits have supplanted dependence on the Spirit, and where the desire to seem enlightened, sophisticated, or successful has led them to loosen their grip on the shared faith of the church across time and space. Such confession is not a backward-looking reaction, but an act of humility that reaffirms: the church does not own its message; it receives and hands it on.
Finally, the path forward requires a deliberate re-centering of everything—teaching, catechesis, mission, mercy, institutional planning, around the rich, thick, and time-tested core of the Christian faith. Programs and causes that clearly arise from and lead back to this center can be pursued with freedom; those that require us to muffle or revise the heart of the apostolic and creedal witness must be questioned, pruned, or relinquished. The church does many things, but it is not about many things; it is about the worship of the Triune God, the lordship of Christ, and the life of the world to come. To remember that, and to live as if it is true, is to step back onto solid ground after many disorienting steps in the woods.
by Joel V Webb | Jan 9, 2026 | Uncategorized
One of the most fascinating sociological phenomenons is the food offerings at Chinese-American restaurants. While there may be some local variations, these usually independently owned establishments share so much commonality in their menus that I can expect to get just about the same order of sesame chicken just about anywhere. There’s been no grand conspiracy of these restaurants coming together and pick their menus. But organically, over the last several generations, American Chinese food has found some sort of equilibrium where the menus are all about the same.
In American church culture there is something very similar going on here. Despite denomination or theological differences, many of the worship services across the West look the same: an energetic welcome, opening song, announcements, more worship songs, prayer, sermon, and then a closing song, sometimes paired with an altar call. I have seen online and have been in these services. Sometimes the church is Baptist, Methodist, Reformed, or non-denominational, yet they share a common “house style” that has quietly become the default American evangelical liturgy, no matter what the denomination’s actual theology or history might say.
There wasn’t a giant gathering of pastors who all agreed, “This is now how church must look.” Just like the takeout menu, this pattern emerged over time. Revivalism taught churches to center everything on visible “decisions” and emotional urgency. Modern sound systems and lighting made it easy to turn the front of the sanctuary into a small concert stage. Church growth experts told leaders to strip out anything that might feel unfamiliar or “churchy” to seekers. And so, slowly, a template took shape: a block of music, a block of speaking, maybe a response song at the end, and very little else.
In the Free Methodist heritage, one of our original distinctives is, “free to worship in the Holy Spirit.” This distinctive comes from our origin story in the mid-1800s, when B. T. Roberts and others broke from the Methodist Episcopal Church over things like slavery, pew rentals, and a kind of buttoned-up formalism that seemed more interested in pleasing wealthy pew-holders than in pleasing God. “Free” meant, among other things, that the poor didn’t have to rent a pew to have a place in the sanctuary, that laypeople and especially women could use their gifts in the assembly, and that worship wouldn’t be suffocated by cold performance or social respectability.
What “free to worship in the Holy Spirit” did not originally mean was “free from the church’s historic practices of Word and sacrament.” The early Free Methodists saw themselves as continuing “original Methodism,” not inventing an entirely new kind of Christianity. And original Methodism, in John Wesley’s own practice, was both revivalist and sacramental. Wesley preached in fields and on street corners, organized small groups, and also remained an Anglican priest who used set forms of prayer and insisted on regular Communion as one of the chief “means of grace.”
Wesley even wrote a famous sermon called “The Duty of Constant Communion,” where he argues that Christians ought to receive the Lord’s Supper as often as they possibly can. He doesn’t treat Communion as a rare symbol but as a regular, God-given channel of grace—a habit that actually shapes the Christian life. For him, to neglect the Table when it is offered is either to ignore Christ’s command or to ignore one of the main ways Christ cares for his people. That is the sacramental DNA that sits underneath our broader Wesleyan tradition.
Fast-forward to the present, and a lot of our Free Methodist services look far more like the generic American evangelical template than like anything recognizably Wesleyan. Instead of a gathered people formed week by week through Scripture, confession, creed, intercession, and frequent Communion, we often have a band set, a sermon, and an altar moment, with Communion tacked on occasionally when the calendar or local habit demands it. The shape of the service quietly catechizes us. It answers the question, “What is church for?” long before the preacher says a word.
If the whole service is built around the sermon and a decision moment, then church starts to feel like an event where individuals come to receive a religious talk and then make a personal choice. If the biggest energy is in the music set, church starts to feel like a spiritual concert with a TED Talk in the middle. But in a Wesleyan and wider historic Christian frame, the church is not just a weekly event. It is the baptized people who are gathered, forgiven, instructed, and fed with Christ’s own life in Word and sacrament, and then sent into the world.
That is where the “Chinese menu” analogy bites a little. No one confuses General Tso’s chicken with the full depth and variety of regional Chinese cooking. It’s a simplified, American-shaped version that settled into place because it works in a particular context. In the same way, the default evangelical order of service “works” in a narrow sense: it is reproducible, marketable, easy to explain, and familiar. But it is not the fullness of the Free Methodist or Wesleyan inheritance, and it may not be the best pattern for forming people in deep holiness over a lifetime.
The tragedy is that our own founding distinctives actually call us to more, not less. Freeing worship from the control of the wealthy and from stiff, performative formalism was meant to open the doors wide—to the poor, to lay gifts, to the Spirit’s prompting—not to cut us off from the very practices that rooted Wesley and the early Methodists in the wider Church. Free seats and full participation make the most sense when you remember that baptism and Communion are the great “levelers”: moments when every person, regardless of status, stands on the same ground of grace.
So the question becomes: do we want our services to be shaped mainly by what “works” in the American religious marketplace, or by what actually tells the truth about what the church is? A Free Methodist congregation that takes its heritage seriously does not have to become a museum of antique Anglicanism. But it does have to wrestle with the fact that Wesley’s own vision was one where the Spirit moves powerfully through very ordinary, very repeatable means—Scripture, prayer, baptism, and the Supper—woven into a recognizable pattern week after week.
If American Chinese food found its equilibrium menu by accident, perhaps we have done something similar in our worship. The good news is that menus can change. No one restaurant has to fix the whole system. A local church can begin, quietly and patiently, to recover a different center: to bring the Table back to the heart of Sunday, to pray not only in our own words but with the words of the wider Church, to order the service so that people are drawn into God’s story rather than just into a string of religious moments.
Over time, that kind of “menu” will form a different kind of people. Not consumers chasing the next moving worship set, but men and women, teenagers and children, learning to live out of their baptism, to expect Christ to meet them at his Table, and to see their whole lives as an extension of what happens when the church gathers. That, it seems, is much closer to what our own distinctive tries to say: not just free to do whatever we want on a Sunday morning, but truly free to worship in the Holy Spirit.
by Joel V Webb | Jan 2, 2026 | Uncategorized
This article was writte nfor, and originally posted on HolyJoys.org
Names are important because they carry meaning and history with them. When the name for something changes, more than just the name can be lost. Part of its identity can be lost, even if the thing remains. I grew up talking about “the cigarette lighter” in cars (something that I burned my fingers on a number of times as an overly curious child). Today, it’s now just called a “12 volt power outlet” or “charger port.” As a non-smoker, I welcome the development. But the point is this: With the change of name, its original purpose is no longer evident.
When it comes to the church, changes in names are more serious and worthy of reflection. For hundreds of years, there were established terms for the parts of the church’s architecture. In recent years, many of these terms have fallen out of use in some contexts. Other terms have been brought in to replace them. This article explores a few of these largely forgotten terms and considers what might have been lost along with the change in name.
From “Chancel” to “Stage”
One of the most striking examples of this is the name for the place in the church where the primary activity of the service takes place. Today, it is most commonly called “the stage” or “the platform.” Traditionally, this area of the church has been called the chancel. The chancel is the area where the pulpit, lectern, and altar or communion table are placed, and where the choir, musicians, and clergy conduct most of the service. The term chancel originates from French usage of late Latin meaning lattice, since in many medieval and traditional churches, the chancel area is sectioned off by a lattice-type wall that you can see through, but that defines a distinction of space. Whether or not a church has a lattice-type wall, the point is that for much of history, churches had a special name for this sacred part of the church.
When we abandon traditional language and begin to refer to the front part of the church as a “stage,” something subtle shifts in our imagination. A stage is for performers. A stage is where you watch people do something for you. A stage implies an audience, spotlights, and a certain transactional relationship: you come, they do, you leave. And while no one means any harm by the language, the word itself quietly undercuts the very thing worship is meant to express.
The word “stage” quietly undercuts the very thing worship is meant to express.
The chancel, on the other hand, does not carry the implication of a performance. It carries the weight of a story. The word reminds us that this space is not just where things happen but where holy things happen. It is the place where prayers are offered, Scripture is proclaimed, the sacraments are administered, and the people of God gather near the mysteries that sustain them. A chancel is not a platform; it is a place set apart.
Reintroducing a word such as “chancel”—even softly, and at first within our own imaginations—can deepen our conviction that the church is not a theater. It is a sanctuary—another word that has suffered its own slow fade into generic meaning. A sanctuary is a place of safety, a place marked for the presence of God, a place where heaven and earth meet. When we reduce the sanctuary to an “auditorium,” we risk losing that sense of sacred encounter. An auditorium is where you attend. A sanctuary is where you are received.
From “Nave” to “Seating Area”
Another example is the nave—the central seating area where the congregation gathers. The word comes from the Latin navis, meaning “ship.” Many have never heard the term, but for centuries Christians understood the nave to symbolize the “ship” or “ark” of the Church, carrying the faithful through the storms of the world, as the ark was used by God to save Noah and his family. Some traditional churches are even designed as a long rectangle or as a half-circle to reinforce this theology.
While it may seem like a small thing to say “nave” instead of “seating area,” the older term reminds us that the church is for our salvation (see David Fry’s article “What is the Church’s Role in Our Salvation?”). In the church, we encounter the Savior who can keep us from drowning (queue walking on the water!). The word “nave” also reminds us that our Christian life is not static. We are going somewhere. Together. We are being carried by a grace not our own through the storms of life by the grace and mercy of God that is given to His people.
From “Narthex” to “Lobby”
Finally, consider the narthex, which is now commonly called the “entryway, “vestibule, “or “lobby” of the church. The narthex once symbolized the place of preparation, the threshold between the ordinary world and the holy drama of worship. It was the space where catechumens waited, where penitents stood, where newcomers took their first breath of the church’s life. When we call it the lobby, we lose the sense that worship begins before we ever sit down. We forget that crossing that threshold is itself an act of intention.
More Than Just Tradition
None of this is about being archaic for the sake of being archaic. It’s about remembering that the church is not just a building with functional parts but a space sanctified to God for sacred purposes with meaning-laden sections. The old words don’t just describe; they invite. They teach. They remind us that our faith has depth, that our worship has a lineage, and that we stand in a long procession of believers who use these spaces not simply as rooms but as signs.
The church is not just a building with functional parts but a space sanctified to God for sacred purposes with meaning-laden sections.
When language changes, the identity of a thing sometimes changes with it. And so part of our task in a distracted, rootless age is to recover not only the practices of the church but the vocabulary that helps shape our imagination of what the church is. Of course, we can just use vocabulary without intention and knowledge of the depths that it represents, and that certainly is a danger. But isn’t that true of any word or phrase that we use? That shouldn’t stop us from appreciating the rich meanings that our brothers and sisters in the faith have found through the ordinary means of architecture and construction—things that point us to Christ and the gospel.
Once you see the chancel as the chancel, the nave as the nave, or the narthex as the narthex, it’s hard to ever see them again as just a stage, seating area, or lobby. And even if you don’t use the traditional names, finding other meaningful words can help to sanctify the church’s space and carry meaning forward for a new generation. A small shift could be the beginning of recovering something we didn’t realize we lost.
