by Joel V Webb | Jan 29, 2026 | Uncategorized
The phrase “life giving church” gets thrown around a lot these days. It’s used in prayers, fills mission statements, church websites, and social media posts that promise energy, joy, and transformation. It sounds good on the surface. Who wouldn’t want to be part of something described as life giving? Yet when I hear it used so casually and so often, I grow skeptical. What exactly do people mean by it? And why does it so frequently carry the whiff of criticism aimed at churches that don’t fit a particular mold?
For many, the phrase describes a certain atmosphere: lively music, passionate preaching, a palpable sense of excitement in the room. It feels alive, modern, relevant. I’ve sat in those spaces and felt the draw. But let’s be honest. The way “life giving church” gets deployed often functions as coded criticism of historic expressions of the faith. Quieter, more liturgical congregations, with their ordered prayers, ancient creeds, and reverence for sacrament, get quietly dismissed as lifeless or outdated. The implication hangs in the air: if your worship doesn’t pulse with contemporary energy, if it doesn’t chase emotional highs, then it must not be giving life. Is that fair? Or is it just a subtle way to elevate one style while sidelining centuries of faithful Christian practice?
That skepticism runs deep for me. Life in the biblical sense cannot be reduced to mood, tempo, or emotional experience. If “life giving church” means anything substantial, it must be rooted in something deeper and more enduring than surface vitality. Otherwise, it risks becoming a slogan that divides rather than builds up the body of Christ.
Over the last few decades, the phrase has morphed into a kind of brand identity. Churches wield it like businesses tout “fresh” or “authentic,” signaling a cultural style over theological depth. The assumption seems to be that the church’s job is to manufacture an atmosphere of aliveness, as if the Holy Spirit’s work depends on our production values. But does it? There is a place for joy and warmth in worship, to be sure. God wired us as emotional creatures, and joy is a fruit of the Spirit. Yet the early church never marketed itself as life giving because of its energy or entertainment. It simply abided in communion with the risen Christ, letting His life flow through ordinary means. When we make liveliness our yardstick, we exchange the living water of the gospel for decorative fountains, pretty but ultimately shallow.
The Book of Acts offers the clearest scriptural portrait of life together in Christ. Luke records, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” There’s the pattern, plain and unadorned. They were alive because they were devoted. Life wasn’t manufactured; it flowed from nearness to the living Christ through four unchanging practices.
They clung to teaching, the apostles’ doctrine handed down from Jesus Himself. That Word was their anchor, not an optional add-on. Wherever Christ’s truth is faithfully proclaimed and received, the breath of life stirs. They practiced fellowship, true koinonia, where believers bore burdens, forgave freely, and shared generously. Life grows when it is poured out for others. They gathered at the breaking of bread, the Eucharistic feast where Christ offers Himself as bread for the world. In that sacred mystery, the church finds its pulse, feeding on the One who conquered death. And they prayed without ceasing, their lives a constant turning toward God’s presence and will.
What strikes me most in this picture? The absence of any mention of style, mood, or method. No guitars or fog machines, no emphasis on feeling “filled.” The church in Acts was life giving precisely because it fixed its gaze on Christ, not because it nailed the perfect vibe. To question that is to question whether we’ve learned anything from the first Christians.
Jesus Himself cuts through the confusion: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Life isn’t a sensation; it’s a Person. Paul unpacks this in Romans: “We have been united with Him in a death like His… united with Him in a resurrection like His.” The church’s vitality is participation in Christ’s risen life, mediated through Word and sacrament. Baptism buries us with Him and raises us anew. The Eucharist feeds us with that same life, week by week. This isn’t fleeting emotion but deepening communion. A life giving church makes Christ present: His Word thundered or whispered, His table spread humbly, His Spirit moving among the gathered faithful.
Such a church might look traditional or contemporary, urban or rural, high church or low. Skepticism of the phrase “life giving” arises precisely because it so often polices those boundaries, casting shade on historic forms as if they can’t possibly pulse with divine life. But they can, and they do, when rooted in the same devotions.
We needn’t scrap the phrase altogether. It holds truth worth reclaiming, but only if measured by Scripture, not trends. A life giving church centers the gospel, forgives sinners, welcomes strangers as family. It feeds the hungry in body and soul, weaves prayer and hospitality into daily rhythm. Its life shows in love’s generosity, not song’s volume. This frees us profoundly. Pastors needn’t stage excitement. Congregations needn’t mimic the popular. Life is gifted in Christ; we simply abide and receive.
Recall Christ’s post-resurrection moment with His disciples: He breathed on them, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” That breath, divine life shared with dust, animates us still. A life giving church carries that breath outward, becoming springs of living water through Word, sacrament, fellowship. It’s presence, not performance, echoing from Jerusalem’s upper room to today’s pews and folding chairs.
The church isn’t called to sell liveliness but to live it faithfully, devoted to Acts’ four pillars until the world glimpses Christ dwelling among us. That’s a truly life giving church: not styled by preference, but saved by a Savior; rooted in Word and Sacrament, sustained by prayer, bound by love. It may not always thrill, but it endures. And in that quiet endurance, it gives life to the world.
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.
