Wesleyan Church
The Wesleyan Church is an evangelical, Protestant denomination. They offer the good news that faith in Jesus Christ makes possible a wonderful personal relationship with God, a holy life empowered by His Holy Spirit for witness and service, and assurance of eternal life in heaven. Our ministries emphasize practical Bible teaching, uplifting worship, and special programs to meet a variety of life needs.
With World Headquarters in Fishers, Indiana, it was formed in 1968 resulting from the mergers of several like-minded groups, dating back as far as 1843, The Wesleyan Church has its roots in John Wesley’s Methodism. The denomination is a member of the National Association of Evangelicals and the World Methodist Council formed in 1881. The Wesleyan Church does not belong to the National or the World Council of Churches. The financial affairs of The Wesleyan Church adhere to the high standards of Christian ethics in financial accounting and reporting.
The Wesleyan Church vision is to transform lives, churches, and communities through the hope and holiness of Jesus Christ. Transforming lives, churches, and communities through the hope and holiness of Jesus Christ. The Wesleyan Church is a Spirit-led, praying movement called to evangelize and make disciples of all people by equipping believers, developing leaders, multiplying churches and transforming communities. The Wesleyan Church is organized at three levels for effective ministry. Laypersons and clergy are involved at each level in leadership.
History:
The name “Wesleyan” is after John Wesley, a priest in the Church of England who became the inspiration behind the Methodist movement. It was their disciplined routine of spiritual devotion and social work that earned Wesley and a few of his friends in ministry the nickname “Methodists” beginning in 1735. Wesley considered himself to be a man of the Bible.
The first Methodists came to America in 1766 and organized the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1784. A group of pastors and local churches left that denomination because of their strong antislavery convictions and their preference for a more democratic form of church government in 1843. They adopted the name of the Wesleyan Methodist Connection, later changed to The Wesleyan Methodist Church in America.
There was a widespread emphasis on the teaching of holiness that spread across America during the late 1800s. This resulted in the formation of holiness unions, rescue missions, camp meeting associations, and new congregations. Mergers among many of these groups from 1882 on eventually resulted in the organization of the Pilgrim Holiness Church in 1922.
The Wesleyan Church was created when The Wesleyan Methodist Church in America and the Pilgrim Holiness Church united in order to serve Christ more effectively together in 1968. The Wesleyan Church celebrates the involvement of its early leaders in the first ordination of women for Christian ministry in 1843. It was also the first denomination ever to adopt a formal statement of faith in “entire sanctification,” God’s work of making believers pure in heart, holy character, and empowered with the Spirit of Jesus witness and service.
There are five colleges and universities are supported by the denomination in the United States and Canada: Houghton College (New York), Indiana Wesleyan University (Indiana), Southern Wesleyan University (South Carolina), Oklahoma Wesleyan University (Oklahoma), and Kingswood University (New Brunswick, Canada).
Belief:
Wesleyan Church believes the Bible is the highest source of written authority for God’s plan for His people; it reveals how to live out that plan, individually and corporately. Beliefs, practices, priorities are to be anchored in clear biblical teachings.
Wesleyan Church believes Jesus Christ is the defining feature of God’s will for all humankind. In Christ is found the highest and most practical meaning and clearest example for holy living or godliness. Christ is both example and strength as Wesleyans pursue integrity, excellence, faith, hope, and love.
Wesleyan Church believes making disciples is a clear mandate from Christ. This requires a strong focus on evangelism and training in spiritual growth and holy living. Done effectively, this will produce and promote growth and health in and among the churches.
Wesleyan Church believes in the one living and true God, both holy and loving, eternal, unlimited in power, wisdom and goodness, the Creator and Preserver of all things. Within this unity there are three persons of one essential nature, power and eternity — the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Wesleyan Church believes the Father is the Source of all that exists, whether of matter or spirit. With the Son and the Holy Spirit, He made man, male and female, in His image. By intention He relates to people as Father, thereby forever declaring His goodwill toward them. In love, He both seeks and receives penitent sinners.
Wesleyan Church believes in Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, truly God and truly man. He died on the cross and was buried, to be a sacrifice both for original sin and for all human transgressions, and to reconcile us to God. Christ rose bodily from the dead, and ascended into heaven, and there intercedes for us at the Father’s right hand until He returns to judge all humanity at the last day.
Wesleyan Church believes in the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son, and is of the same essential nature, majesty, and glory, as the Father and the Son, truly and eternally God. He is the Administrator of grace to all, and is particularly the effective Agent in conviction for sin, in regeneration, in sanctification, and in glorification. He is ever present, assuring, preserving, guiding, and enabling the believer.
Wesleyan Church believes that the books of the Old and New Testaments constitute the Holy Scriptures. They are the inspired and infallibly written Word of God, fully inerrant in their original manuscripts and superior to all human authority, and have been transmitted to the present without corruption of any essential doctrine.
Wesleyan Church believes that the two great commandments which require us to love the Lord our God with all the heart, and our neighbors as ourselves, summarize the divine law as it is revealed in the Scriptures. They are the perfect measure and norm of human duty, both for the ordering and directing of families and nations, and all other social bodies, and for individual acts, by which we are required to acknowledge God as our only Supreme Ruler, and all persons as created by Him, equal in all natural rights.
Wesleyan Church believes all persons should so order all their individual, social and political acts as to give to God entire and absolute obedience, and to assure to all the enjoyment of every natural right, as well as to promote the fulfillment of each in the possession and exercise of such rights.
Wesleyan Church believes believe that every person is created in the image of God, that human sexuality reflects that image in terms of intimate love, communication, fellowship, subordination of the self to the larger whole, and fulfillment.
Wesleyan Church believes that humanity’s creation in the image of God included ability to choose between right and wrong. Thus individuals were made morally responsible for their choices. But since the fall of Adam, people are unable in their own strength to do the right. This is due to original sin, which is not simply the following of Adam’s example, but rather the corruption of the nature of each mortal, and is reproduced naturally in Adam’s descendants.
Wesleyan Church believes that Christ’s offering of himself, once and for all, through His sufferings and meritorious death on the cross, provides the perfect redemption and atonement for the sins of the whole world, both original and actual. There is no other ground of salvation from sin but that alone.
Wesleyan Church believes that for men and women to appropriate what God’s prevenient grace has made possible, they must voluntarily respond in repentance and faith. The ability comes from God, but the act is the individual’s.
Wesleyan Church believes that when one repents of personal sin and believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, that at the same moment that person is justified, regenerated, adopted into the family of God, and assured of personal salvation through the witness of the Holy Spirit.
Wesleyan Church believes that after we have experienced regeneration, it is possible to fall into sin, for in this life there is no such height or strength of holiness from which it is impossible to fall. But by the grace of God one who has fallen into sin may by true repentance and faith find forgiveness and restoration.
Wesleyan Church believes that sanctification is that work of the Holy Spirit by which the child of God is separated from sin unto God and is enabled to love God with all the heart and to walk in all His holy commandments blameless. Sanctification is initiated at the moment of justification and regeneration. From that moment there is a gradual or progressive sanctification as the believer walks with God and daily grows in grace and in a more perfect obedience to God.
Wesleyan Church believes believe that the Gift of the Spirit is the Holy Spirit himself, and He is to be desired more than the gifts of the Spirit which He in His wise counsel bestows upon individual members of the Church to enable them properly to fulfill their function as members of the body of Christ.
Wesleyan Church believes that the Christian Church is the entire body of believers in Jesus Christ, who is the founder and only Head of the Church. The Church includes both those believers who have gone to be with the Lord and those who remain on the earth, having renounced the world, the flesh and the devil, and having dedicated themselves to the work which Christ committed unto His church until He comes.
Wesleyan Church believes that water baptism and the Lord’s Supper are the sacraments of the church commanded by Christ and ordained as a means of grace when received through faith.
Wesleyan Church believes that water baptism is a sacrament of the church, commanded by our Lord and administered to believers. It is a symbol of the new covenant of grace and signifies acceptance of the benefits of the atonement of Jesus Christ. By means of this sacrament, believers declare their faith in Jesus Christ as Savior.
Wesleyan Church believes that the certainty of the personal and imminent return of Christ inspires holy living and zeal for the evangelization of the world. At His return He will fulfill all prophecies made concerning His final and complete triumph over evil.
Wesleyan Church believes that the Scriptures reveal God as the Judge of all and the acts of His judgment are based on His omniscience and eternal justice. His administration of judgment will culminate in the final meeting of all persons before His throne of great majesty and power, where records will be examined and final rewards and punishments will be administered.
Wesleyan Church believes that the Scriptures clearly teach that there is a conscious personal existence after death. The final destiny of each person is determined by God’s grace and that person’s response, evidenced inevitably by a moral character which results from that individual’s personal and volitional choices and not from any arbitrary decree of God.
Reference:
Official website for the Wesleyan Church: http://wesleyan.org/
Cite Article Source
MLA Style Citation:
Holstein, Joanne “Wesleyan Church:.” Becker Bible Studies Library Nov 2013.< https://guidedbiblestudies.com/?p=2500 ,>.
APA Style Citation:
Holstein, Joanne (2013, November) “Wesleyan Church:.” Becker Bible Studies Library. Retrieved from https://guidedbiblestudies.com/?p=2500 ,.
Chicago Style Citation:
Holstein, Joanne (2013) “Wesleyan Church:.” Becker Bible Studies Library (November), https://guidedbiblestudies.com/?p=2500 , (accessed).
