by Joel V Webb | Sep 20, 2026 | History, Orthodoxy Matters, Sacraments, Theology & Practice
I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins…
This phrase of the Nicene Creed is declared in my church, like many around the world every Sunday. Much of the time we might not think about it too often, yet it carries much significance. I’ve written about Baptism at other times, and while there is various disagreement surrounding this Sacrament of entrance into Christ’s Body (the Church) very few orthodox Christians groups ignore its importance.
In this particular case I want to focus on the ONE portion of the Creed’s statement in regards to Baptism.
One means one. Article over I guess…
I wish. While this question does come up, for those churches that confess and take seriously the Nicene Creed there is something in common. They do not rebaptize. Baptism, as a Sacrament is seen as a one time act that happens, through which the person (infant or adult) is joined to Christ’s death and resurrection, being opened to and receiving grace by the Holy Spirit, and, drawing from St. Paul in Colossians 2, is a circumcision not done with human hands (v.11-12). Likewise, St. Peter in the New Testament makes the bold claim that baptism now saves (1 Peter 3:21).
The point here is not to get into the weeds on the question of baptismal regeneration and the working of faith. But suffice it to say, baptism is really important. And it is only ever done once. To continue to echo the words of St. Paul in Ephesians where he writes, “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4:5).
One could then ask, what counts as a valid baptism? How the what we would now call Nicene faith answers is any baptism done in the name of the Father, the Son & the Holy Spirit is a valid Baptism. Why? Primarily because there are non-Trinitarian groups that may baptize only in the name of Jesus. While texts in Acts (2:38; 8:16; 10:48; 19:5) speak of “baptizing in the name of Jesus”, it seems to be referring to the baptism’s identity and authority, not the actual formula.
In regards to Scriptural data, the most evident come from the words of Christ Himself in the famous Great Commission when He commanded the disciples to, “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). Likewise, the earliest church discipleship manual The Didache very clearly states, “Baptize into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” and thus it speaks to the practice of the early church being what Christ commanded in Matthew, not a later development.
But what changed?
Well…as always. Heretics.
The first major debate in regards to Christian baptism came around 255–257 between Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, and Stephen, bishop of Rome. Their point of contention was if people who came into the orthodox faith from a heretical group needed to be baptized. To simplify the debate, Cyprian said they needed to; Stephen said as long as it was in the Trinitarian formula then they were set. The Sacrament was valid, no rebaptism needed. Sadly, both men were martyred before a resolution could be settled.
Next then came the post-Diocletian debate surrounding baptism. A heretical group named the Donatists stated that any clergy who handed over holy books to the Romans during persecution did not have legitimate ministry, and thus, their baptisms were invalid. Likewise, questions arose whether those Christians who recanted the faith to save their lives, and sought to come back into the Church needed to be baptized again.
St. Augustine of Hippo weighs in here and really sets the precedent that Western Christianity follows. Because Christ is the primary operator in Baptism, the “baptizer” (person doing the baptizing) does not impact the validity of the baptism itself as long as it was done in the Trinitarian formula. And, for those coming back into the Church (there was ferocious debate whether or not to let them back in), they did not need to be rebaptized because the work of Christ at their Baptism was still effectual. Even in the Council of Trent in response to the Reformation, the position of the Roman Church to this day is that even a Baptism done by a heretic or pagan; as long as it is done in the Trinitarian formula it is valid.
A brief sidebar before moving on. This point of Christ being the primary actor in Baptism is what by definition makes it a Sacrament. If we are joined in His death & resurrection, and if there is a circumcision that happens, not of human hands to us by God at Baptism…it is not the kind of thing that can be repeated. But, if you just see Baptism as some kind of ordinance, or just a visible sign of an interior faith or decision, then it doesn’t actually mean anything and you can do it as many times as you want.
While there are certainly many other moments in Church history to touch on, the next biggest one comes during the 16th Century and the Protestant Reformation. Despite what many American Evangelicals might believe, Luther, Calvin & the English Reformers, while they certainly had their disagreements with Rome, they didn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater (pun intended). They all still held to some form of Christ truly being present in the Eucharist, they believed in Baptismal regeneration, held to some of the Marian dogmas, and had other views that would shock many today.
But it was the radical reformers who took things to the next level. It wasn’t good enough to separate from the accretions and power structures of Rome, you had to get rid of it all. (I wrote a piece on the radical reformers, and how I DO NOT like them at all. Despite their good intentions). One of the practices that rose among them was the rebaptizing of believers, even those who had already received baptism as infants. This is where the major break takes place in Chrisitan theology and practice in the Church. Now called the Anabaptists (a name given to them by their opponents), the practice is now found among many Chrisitna groups in the West; among groups like actual anabaptist denominations (Mennonites, Missionary Church), Baptists (Reformed and not), and generic American Evangelicalism. I know this part is very brief, and does not cover the full extent of their beliefs and practices, but you get the jist.
So now the big question comes. What stream are you in?
If you are someone who is a Methodist of any stripe, be it Free (like myself), Global, United, Nazarene, Wesleyan etc… your theological roots and inheritance is not found among the radical reformers. It is of the English Reformers like Thomas Cranmer, Lancelot Andrews and Richard Hooker, who like Luther & Calvin did not get rid of the ancient practice of the Chrisitan faith from the Early Church as likewise demonstrated in Scripture. So what does that mean? It means we should not do rebaptisms.
Why? Because Methodists, as our Anglican forebears do, believe the practice of Baptism is a Sacrament. It is an act by which God is the primary actor. Sure, as a parent I bring my child, or a recent convert comes to be baptized; but it is God who is doing a work. Something indelible, that only takes place once.
For those who have been baptized as infants, the continuing of that work happens at Confirmation where that faith entrusted at infancy is carried on by that young person as their own. Or, for someone who maybe has walked away from Christ for a time, and has come back to the faith, there are beautiful services where the vows taken at baptism are reaffirmed and renewed.
But as Methodists we do not rebaptize. Not because we don’t care about people who have come back to the faith or don’t remember their baptism because they were a baby, or didn’t understand the significance of it when it happened. We don’t rebaptize because You can’t repeat circumcision. Whatever the whole work that Christ does in us is marked once, and we then spend the rest of our lives receiving grace from Christ to live into our baptisms.
Whenever we look at the story of Scripture and our own lives it is never God who is faithless and who fails. It is always us. What God did worked. Yes, we need reminders and encouragement, but why do we think we need to repeat something that God only needs to do once?
Baptism matters. God does something in Baptism. Treat it that way.
by Joel V Webb | Sep 16, 2026 | History, Orthodoxy Matters, Review, Theology & Practice
Every once in a while you encounter a book that makes a deep and lasting impact. I remember when I read The Unseen Realm by the late Michael Heiser and my eyes were open to seeing the supernatural thread that was weaved all throughout Scripture. Taking seriously the cultural and historical context of the Old Testament, and its inherent influence on the New Testament provided a massive shift in some of my understanding of Scripture.
In a similar vein that happened once I finished the first chapter of Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth. Published in 2025, I first encountered this book when it was referenced during a plenary session at a conference I was attending. And then, a few months later, one of my Facebook friends posted a picture of the beginnings of one of the chapters, and I knew it needed to be on my reading list.
Kingsnorth opens, naming the reality that we know something is wrong in the West. As he states in his introduction, “I was sure of something else too: that the political and cultural upheavals which continue to roil the West have historical, technological and ultimately spiritual roots.” And it is this theme that he carries through the entire work with a scary amount of accuracy, tracking and tracing why we are where we are today.
As a personal note, this book came at a providential time. A few years ago when I read St. Augustine’s City of God, I felt a huge sense of affinity with what he was writing about. The seemingly timeless Roman Empire in a state of rapid decline and collapse, and having to ask the hard questions about the why. We are living in a similarly transitional time in history. As Kingsnorth points to, “The West” began in earnest around 1000 AD, with it;s apex in the high Medieval period, and then since the 15th and 16th centuries, it has been a slow march into the lightspeed acceleration of our era of advancing technology.
Kingsnorth is honest, there is no perfect society. The West has many skeletons in it;’s closet, and hanging from the battlements. And despite the narrative of critical theorists, every culture and society in the history of humanity does. He is not shy about addressing these issues, and in doing so provides an even playing field to address why we are where we are.
The feeling that is addressed most commonly in the book is the feeling (that I myself feel at times) is of not being rooted. Sure, I have a hometown, place I live, I know a bit about my genealogy and yet it feels like something is missing. This was highlighted even more when I lived in Cameroon for a year. Spending time in various villages, and with people who were connected to their families, and not just to people but to the land. Yet, in the modern west, we are not connected. Land is just where we are, and there is nothing special about it. And that is part of the problem. Not that we worship or idolize the land, but we are not connected to it, And it is this feeling Kingsnorth not just describes, but diagnoses.
Tracing the history of the West through to our day into what can be labelled The Faustian Age, where we are striving for knowledge, power, and self-realization, often associated with the themes of ambition and the pursuit of the infinite. This perfectly describes our time. Totally apprehended by materialism, we seek to not just know, but control, extract and break all limits. And, this is a culture that is dead. While the West began as Christendom, we have taken Christ from His throne, and eventually that vacancy will be filled. But until then, we will continue to experience the death throws of a culture in unrooted freefall.
Everything in our age is about limitless growth, progress, secularism, and ultimately a deep disenchantment that all of us feel when we think about it for more than am inute. It is this way that Kingsnorth thus defines “The Machine”
This, then, is the Machine. It is not simply the sum total of various individual technologies we have cleverly managed to rustle up—cars, laptops, robot mowers and the rest. In fact, such ‘technics’, as Mumford calls them, are the product of the Machine, not its essence. The Machine is, rather, a tendency within us, made concrete by power and circumstance, which coalesces in a huge agglomeration of power, control and ambition.
Kingsnorth then spends most of the book detailing the many different ways that the Machine was developed and grown at a steady and increasing pace for it’s own existence. Culture, the thing that once served people in the role of commonality of those around us has turned into the thing that actually uses humanity as its fuel to keep it going, in it;s own version of The Matrix.
It is this question of culture that becomes the pivotal core of the discussion of not just why we are here, but also what we need to do in seeking to leave or be against he machine. He concisely lays out culture as the summation of the 4 P’s. People, Place, Prayers, and Past:
Past. Where a culture comes from, its history and ancestry.
People. Who a culture is. A sense of being ‘a people’.
Place. Where a culture is. Nature in its local and particular manifestation.
Prayer. Where a culture is going. Its religious tradition, which relates it to God or the gods.
Similarly, Kingsnorth identifies the core realities of the Machine in the four S’ which represent not just “the culture of the Machine” but really the inversion culture where things are not defined by what they are, but rather by what they are not:
Science. Where we come from. Science can offer us a non-mythic version of this story, and assert a claim as to the true (i.e. measurable) nature of reality.
The Self. Who we are. The highest good is to serve the self and ensure its longevity.
Sex. What we do. Both the highest means of sacral pleasure and, through public expressions of ‘sexuality’, an affirmation of individual identity.
The Screen. Where we are going. The screen is both our main source of distraction from reality and the interface by which we are directed into the coming post-human reality of the Machine.
These four notions are the “ideology of the Machine” if one can be defined. As you can likely tell, these aspects are very relevant to what we see going on in the world around us. The insanity and lack of logic in the secular sphere, the inability to articulate even obviously true things, and our inability to know what is even going on.
So what about politics? If you are conservative or liberal/progressive you might be mistaken that Kingsnorth is writing this in support of your ideology. He’s not. He is very clear at numerous points that both sides of the political debates in our day and age are simply different parts representing the machine. Conservatism is simply just looking to change less quickly that the other side is wanting things to.The entire political spectrum as we know it is a product of the machine, and is in the end interested in its survival.
Now what about the Church? Well, if we are honest we see how the Machine has influenced and impacted the Church in the West, especially contemporary evangelicalism. Over the last few years the murmurings of conversions of young men, and those in Gen Z & A have started to grow louder. People I know across the board in traditional expressions of Chrisitanity, especially Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Anglicanism in particular are seeing this growing interest, and real growth. Why? Because outside of the necessity for authenticity in an age of advertising, the modern Protestant Church has wholly given in to the methods of the Machine.
How do we plant churches? We set everything up like the launch of a new IPO, gathering resources to then make the biggest bang possible. How do we prepare the next generations of clergy and layleaders in the Church? Give them fundamentals of leadership and management skills that will also serve them well in the secular business world. What about our “worship” and Sunday gatherings? We might have sound theology and a desire to honor God, but change a few words and you don’t have anything that is distinguishable from a concert with a motivational talk in it about how “God can do something for you”.
Our ways of thinking and doing are almost wholly the ways of the Machine, just dressed up in Church language. Do we need something to change? Launch and initiative to get people excited. Something not working as we think it should, restructure and reformat because doing something might help things change how we want them. This part might just sound like complaining or ranting, but there is a point to it which I will touch on later.
So what are we to do with this? Is everything just a drab and depressing situation that is hopeless? With Kingsnorth’s wide usage of seemingly prophetic philosophers and poets (especially the recently passed Wendell Berry), and especially for us as Christians, what does all of this mean?
First, none of this should be a surprise. Just as I referenced St. Augustine and the fall of Rome earlier, we should not think that all is lost. Cultures have risen and fallen throughout history, and who are we to think that we are any different? Yes, while the West spread the word of the Gospel across the earth, the West has also gotten in the way of the Gospel actually doing what it was supposed to, seating Christ as the true and ultimate King over all things. The West has become obsessed with her own grandeur, economic advancement and comfort, all things that detract from the reality that Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world.
The West is in the process of falling. It may outlast my lifetime, but that would be a miracle. Something over the next 50-100 years will take its place. But just as St. Augustine was sure, the Church will continue and the Gospel will be preached, and Christ’s Kingdom will expand, regardless of where the locus of power and culture is.
Secondly, in our world that is even more interconnected and global, we need to think smaller. This does not mean we stop world missions, but for our individual lives (our circles of relationships), our families and our churches we seem to be obsessed with the biggest reach possible. Rather, we need to ground ourselves closer to home. Be who we are, redeemed by Christ. One of the joking quips often used by other cultures is that “White people don’t really have culture”, and in the contemporary sense that’s not totally wrong. Those who are Caucasian and from Western Europe, especially those in North America have lost our distinctiveness. We need to become more rooted and grounded in that. Not for the purpose of tribalism, but so that we can then relate to others at our common points.
One of the defining characteristics of the Machine as Kingsnorth writes is that it steam rolls other cultures to become homogenized within it. From the Black Ships of Perry opening trade in Japan, to the global internet culture that is consuming our cultures into a single blob of humanity; we lose who we actually are. Again, the purpose of this call is to not become more suspicious of those different than us, but how can we truly appreciate others if we don’t even know who we are?
Third, as the Church we need to wholly reclaim what it means to be in and not of. We are all products of our times, and we can never escape that. But we also can be adapted by our times, which can compromise our witness of being of a different Kingdom. The West as it falls is a challenging time. And we might not even be sure its happening, but it is. What that means is that using the means that have brought us to where we are, is maybe not the way we are to be the Church. This isn’t wholly about aesthetics and worship style…but at the same time it is. The Western Church is dominated by the cult of individualism, and until we repent and cast that idol out, we will be stuck spinning our wheels in the mud of the age going nowhere.
I truly believe the Church is indefectable. While she errs, she will in the end accomplish the goal that Christ established her for. And that means that we at times need to course correct from where we have gone off.
The idea of the Machine has been in recent years somewhat grasped in the language of “Empire”. And while that language can be helpful, the idea of the Machine helps articulate the even deeper issues at play. The gods of old have disguised themselves in our modern era (note back to Heiser), and more often than not we are simply Modernists who go to Church. Our minds are shaped and we operate under the premises set out by the Machine (the 4 S’s). What could be the fruit of that?
A fantastic companion book to this would be The Desecration of Man by Carl Trueman, that David Watson, the President of Asbury Theological Seminary wrote a wonderful review of. Trueman and Kingsnorth touch on many of the same ideas, they give complementary language and verbiage to what we are living in now. And while Kingsnorth is a Christian (he converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in 2020), Trueman’s work is significantly more theologically directed as it is philosophical.
So we then, as Christians are ultimately called to be against the Machine. Just as the powers and principalities, and the “spirit of the air” as spoken of by St. Paul in the Apostolic Era, likewise we have “the Machine” as the all-encompassing spirit of the age that seeks to oppose Christ and His Bride. Seeking to hollow us out, distract us from reality and turn us from the beauty that is the creation He created us to inhabit. Resistance to the Machine looks like truly living out The Sermon on the Mount. It looks like rejecting to different degrees the things the Machine desires to make dogma.
There are so many other threads in this work that I did not even touch that are also vitally important and help flesh out the entire picture. But I focused on what I could and what seemed important as I am writing this. So rather, let this wet your appetite, and go pickup the book and read it for yourself.
Kingsnorth ends his work not by giving a tidy list of actionable items necessarily. His work, being more philosophical, seeks to set the stage for us to seek how Christ is calling us into the world of the Machine to shine His light of new life. I will end this review with the last few paragraphs of his book because I cannot put it any better than he.
I have come to the end now, and here is what I think: that the age of the Machine is not after all a hopeless time. Actually, it is the time we were born for. We can’t leave it, so we have to fully inhabit it. We have to understand it, challenge it, resist it, subvert it, walk through it on towards something better. If we can see what it is, we have a duty to speak the words to those who do not yet see, all the while struggling to remain human.
People, place, prayer, the past. Human community, roots in nature, connection to God, memories passed down and on. These are the eternal things. We could form hedge schools to teach them. We could live them in any way we can. We could build communities. We could write books. We could plant trees. We could do anything, really. None of it will ‘solve’ all of the world’s problems, or all of ours. We are still going to die; and so, one day, is the Machine. But what will we do in the meantime? What will we do amidst the rise of the robots, amidst the ascendancy of all these tiny, laughable, tyrannical dreams?
Raindance on the astroturf.
Raindance to call down the Spirit upon them and us. Raindance to defy the Machine. Raindance to remember your ancestors. Raindance to offer up prayers to your home. Raindance to the forest and the prairie and the meadow. Raindance to reclaim your stories.
Raindance to discover where you are and where you come from. Raindance on top of your smartphone until it is nothing but splinters. Raindance against the myths of the age. Raindance against the false gods. Raindance with a smile on your face.
What have you got to lose?
Enter the Dreamtime. Begin the restoration.
Become human again.
Remain human despite it all.
I think that might be what home looks like, in the end.
Amen.
by Joel V Webb | Aug 31, 2026 | Sacraments, Theology & Practice
Protestant Christians have two Sacraments, ordained by Christ. Holy Baptism where one enters into the people of God. The second is Holy Communion, the Christian Passover, where we come to not just remember His death, but where we receive His grace as we encounter Him in eating and drinking. These two Sacraments have been central to the identity and practice of the Christian Church for its entire history.
It is especially in Holy Communion where as Christians we encounter Christ. As Scripture shows over and over again, worship requires a sacrifice of some kind. And, as those redeemed by the worthy Lamb the sacrifices of old have been replaced by the celebration, remembering and participation in His sacrifice, i.e. Holy Communion.
But something has happened over the last fifty years in Evangelicalism. A new “sacrament” has creeped in and has become the predominant place where we are told encountering Christ really happens. Worship music. The expectation of most modern evangelical worship services is that the primary place where you are meant to “encounter and feel God” is during the time of singing and worship.
When a congregation is trained to expect that God is most immediately present during a musical crescendo, what does that do to the church’s understanding of the Word, the Supper, prayer, and ordinary discipleship?
In a recent article from Christianity Today they addressed the massive amounts of pressure that “worship leaders” face to perform their jobs with excellence.1 And as a part of that are expected to make experiences and times where people feel the presence of God. The point of this article is not to address the “worship leader” label, something I hope to do in a future blog post. But to ask the question, is music in church supposed to do this?
The Christianity Today article on worship-leader burnout illustrates one pastoral consequence of this expectation: musicians can come to feel responsible not only for leading songs well, but for generating the conditions in which a congregation believes it will experience God. The article does not create the problem, but it helps reveal how deeply the expectation has taken hold.
You see, this expectation that we were meant to “encounter God” in a personal way during a time of singing is a very recent innovation in the Church, and does elevate the use of music in a church service to the status of a Sacrament. If a Sacrament is an action or ritual where God’s grace is encountered and received, then it certainly has done so. A sacrament is not simply any moment in which Christians are helped, moved, or strengthened by grace. It is a rite instituted by Christ and joined to a visible sign through which he promises to act for his people.
The problem is not that Christians may encounter God while singing, nor that music can move the affections. The problem arises when emotional intensity becomes the expected proof of God’s nearness, and when the congregation is implicitly taught that the Spirit is most active during the musical set rather than through the whole ordained worship of the church.
This is not to say singing is not a means of grace. It most certainly is. As the gathered Church sings praise to God, it is both a part of us demonstrating our love to Him, and it is edifying to the believer. Another benefit is that songs and hymns teach us the truths about God just as St. Paul encouraged (Ephesians 5:19). Maddox in his work Responsible Grace talks more specifically about hymns in the Methodist context were to both empower and encourage, and should be aligned with the rhythm of the Church calendar to shape and form the believer2.
The understanding of songs for this purpose is dramatically different that was normally understood in our Evangelical culture today. Rather the current expectation is that when we sing songs (usually a block of 3-4 songs in immediate succession in the first half of the service), it is during this time that the “atmosphere” is set and that it is the time the Holy Spirit moves and works and people are to “feel His move”.
Understanding the purpose of worship music, as already stated, is a very recent innovation. The role of music in the history of the Church has almost always been in support of the ministry of the Word and Table for the Sunday gathering. Any hymns, canticles, Psalms or other songs that are sung are done so throughout the Sunday service. An opening song, a song before the Gospel reading, musical settings to the Eucharist liturgy, songs sung or played during the distribution of the Sacrament, and some kind of hymn or song to close the service has been, with many variations, but the general same shape the norm of Christian worship.
The biggest contention I have with how modern worship music is perceived is that it has taken the primary and predominant place of the Blessed Sacrament as C.S. Lewis calls it. Even my own denomination of Free Methodism that speaks highly and centrally of the Lord’s supper as a primary means of grace has functionally replaced its use with the modern conception of worship music as the primary place of encountering God. While it is not stated, it is practiced. Johnathan Aigner offer this as what is offered in a Word & Table conception of worship:
Christ offers us everything in worship, for he offers us himself. There is where we find true meaning. In the gospel. In the Word rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered. In a rich biblical liturgy that preaches truth to our hearts. In the discipline of the church year.3
What are we to do? I would like to offer two potential steps in recovering the both the right understanding of music in the worship service as a whole, and returning to the centrality of the Table as the central focus of the Sunday gathering.
- Don’t look to emotional experience as the primary litmus test of attending Sunday worship. As I have already addressed in a previous post about the topic, our emotions are a terrible standard to derive whether we have encountered God or not. We have been relentlessly catechized in our modern Evangelical culture to look to our emotions (which are so easily swayed) as to whether we have met with God or not. Stop. Yes, emotions play a role, and they were created by God. But what we have functionally done is turn them into the standard we follow.
- Sing to know and declare, not just feel. A further extension of the first point is to reorient why we are singing. The declaration of truths about God and His mighty works are not just for us and those around us, they are a declaration to the spiritual world (1 Peter 1:12). When music becomes about giving us an emotional feel, we distort what we are there to do. Yes, emotion can and should be expressed in singing, but the purpose of that is to bolster the decoration of who God is and what He has done.
Keep singing. Don’t stop. Music has always been an important part of the expression of the Christian faith. But at the same time it is not a Sacrament. God has already given us his instituted means of grace, why would we replace them with something else?
by Joel V Webb | Aug 13, 2026 | Free Methodism, Sacraments, Theology & Practice
In the Free Methodist Book of Discipline (2023), the phrase ‘means of grace’ is used 10 times throughout, as it should be as the guiding constitutional document for a denomination in the Methodist tradition. While an actual definition is not found within the BOD (it is presumed into the book), that the means of grace can be understood as, “ a broader category referring to all the ways God has appointed to convey his grace to men and women.”1 Simply put what this means is that God has established ways for those in the Church to receive His divine enablement for Christian love and service.
There are many actions that are conduits of God’s grace to people. Everything from preaching, prayer, Scripture reading, Christian fellowship, singing and the list goes on. All of these things are good and necessary parts of Christian life and practice both individually and corporately. And, they are yet eclipsed in effectiveness2 as a means of grace by the two Sacraments that Christ Himself instituted and commanded; Baptism and the Eucharist.
Paragraph 123 of the BOD states:
Water baptism and the Lord’s Supper are the sacraments of the church commanded by Christ. They are means of grace through faith, tokens of our profession of Christian faith, and signs of God’s gracious ministry toward us. By them, He works within us to quicken, strengthen, and confirm our faith.3
And, if you go to the two subsequent paragraphs, each detailing the specifics of our Free Methodist understanding of Baptism and the Eucharist, the language about God’s work in and through these Sacraments is even stronger. All of this to say is that according to our Book of Discipline, the Sacraments should have predominant place in our theology and praxis.
From this I urge Free Methodist congregations to move toward weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper as the normative goal, while recognizing that pastoral, logistical, and conference-specific circumstances may require a staged path toward that goal. This is not a call to adopt a particular worship style or to diminish preaching, prayer, Scripture, fellowship, or works of mercy. It is a call for our practice to reflect our confession that the sacraments are Christ-commanded means of grace.
I now ask the challenging question. If we affirm what our BOD states (something ALL clergy must do), as the Apostolic teaching of the Church carried through our Anglican heritage into Methodism and then through to us today, why do we withhold them from our congregations?
This question specifically applies to our practice of the Lord’s Supper, as there is not usually a question about the importance of Holy Baptism (even if many hold a more anabaptist view). John Wesley himself felt very strongly about this matter as well. We might go straight to his sermon The Duty of Constant Communion (which I encourage all to read), but rather point our attention to Sermon 26, on the Sermon on the Mount where he said,
“It was the judgment of many of the ancient Fathers, that we are here to understand the sacramental bread also; daily received in the beginning by the whole Church of Christ, and highly esteemed, till the love of many waxed cold, as the grand channel whereby the grace of his Spirit was conveyed to the souls of all the children of God.”4
The grand channel of his grace. This is important and we should not miss it. Wesley is not saying that there are no other means of grace, there certainly are. But what is being claimed, as affirmed in both Scripture and the early church, is that the Table is the primary place that God gives His grace to the Church. This claim likewise is bolstered by the fact that the early Methodists in England were namecalled as sacramentarians for their insistence on frequent celebration of the Lord’s Supper.
So I pose the question again for effect. If this is our Methodist belief and understanding of the Lord’s Supper, as affirmed in Scripture, through Wesley and in our BOD; why do we so constantly withhold it from our churches?
I do not mean that Free Methodist clergy are indifferent to Christ or careless toward their people. I mean that, as a denomination, we have tolerated a pattern of sacramental neglect that can deprive congregations of regular access to a means of grace Christ has commanded and our Discipline commends it. The FMC pastors I have met and know, faithfully preach the Word to their congregations to the churches every single week. And I praise God for that, and commend them for that. Yet, that is only the job. We are stewards of both Word & Sacrament. And if a job is only half-done, is it truly done?
One contributing factor is the way broad evangelical, anabaptist inclined and excessively revivalist habits have shaped many non-mainline Protestant churches, sometimes more deeply than their own confessional and theological inheritances. Congregations understandably observe practices that appear to produce engagement, growth, or visible response and seek to adopt them. Yet such borrowing can become uncritical when we ask only whether a practice appears effective, rather than also asking what theology of grace, conversion, the church, and worship that practice assumes.
A related concern is a significant shift in the way worship is understood and ordered. In some settings, the regular pattern of Word, prayer, praise, and the Lord’s Table has yielded to a service structured chiefly around musical affect, preaching, and an invitation for an immediate response. Contemporary worship music is not itself the problem, nor is an earnest call to conversion. Both can serve the church well. The danger arises when emotional intensity or a visible response becomes the expected climax of worship, while Christ’s instituted means of grace, particularly the Table, are treated as occasional additions rather than a regular act of the gathered church.
This pattern bears resemblance to the revivalist logic associated with Charles Finney’s “new measures,” including the anxious bench: practices designed to elicit an identifiable, immediate decision. The concern is not that people should not respond to the gospel. They must. The concern is that the church may come to measure worship chiefly by the response it can produce, rather than by whether it faithfully gathers the people of God around Word and Table, through which Christ has promised to minister his grace.
My purpose is not to stir indignation against or to accuse faithful pastors and churches. It is to call my Free Methodist brothers and sisters, from laypeople to bishops, to receive afresh and to faithfully and regularly use the means of grace Christ has entrusted to his church; especially the Lord’s Supper. Those of us ordained for ministry are charged not only to proclaim the Word, but also to administer the sacraments; we should therefore seek to order the church’s worship in a manner consistent with that charge.
The regular participation of the table is not just for liturgical churches. While the church I serve, as well as several others such as those in Rochester, NY and Boise, Idaho are irregular expressions for our denomination; there are a growing number of churches that are both contemporary and everything in between that are becoming more sacramentally minded and celebrating communion weekly. This call is not about a specific style or formula of worship, it is rather a call to pursue the things Christ has given His church, and that we as Methodists have from the beginning said are important.
I am so appreciative of our denomination’s pursuit of seeking Christ as to how the Free Methodist expression of the Church is called to impact the world. Our desire to seek together, become a reignited Spirit-fueled movement, to see the living giving holiness of Christ made in each person, and the justice of the Gospel be wrought by our churches in our communities. I am moved by, and love who we feel God is calling us to be. Now, how do we enact it?
It is at the table, primarily that we encounter Christ. We wish to encounter the life giving power of the Holy Spirit, that makes us holy and into the express image of Christ Himself. What better place than where Jesus has promised to encounter us as we eat and drink in faith! We desire justice to flow like a river, as we love mercy and walk humbly before our God. What a better place than where justice was served. Where God Himself gave Himself freely for others as we are called to do likewise! We seek for holy moments where people meet with and do business with the Lord. What a better place than where, again, we know He is. In the breaking of bread that we know He is there, where there is a participation, a koinonia5, with Jesus Himself!
We are looking for answers and solutions to what we see as the problems facing the Church, especially the Church in the West. Yes, these are very real issues we must grapple with. And what if the answer has been before us all along? What if, as we come, truly in faith to the place where Jesus is, at the altar in the bread and the cup that we receive the grace and power of Christ in the Holy Spirit.
So what are the next steps?
Pray and read.
First, pray. Pray that the Holy Spirit opens your eyes to the work that He desires to do in you and your congregations as you come around the Table. Celebrating the Sacrament does not do anything on its own. His power is there when we come in faith, knowing that He is working as He has promised. If you are laity, pray as well. Pray that your pastor comes to see the immense power that Christ promises to endow to His Church through His instituted means.
Second, read. Do a study first of all in Scripture. Look at the pattern of the Passover feast, and how much worship elsewhere in Scripture meant actual consumption of food. Then in the New Testament look at how central the Table is to the identity to the life and practice of the Early Church. Then from that foundation look at the Church Fathers, Scholastics, Reformers, Wesley and others like Thomas Oden and see how essential and central the Table is to not just out practice as Christian, but our identity6.
As these things come together; prayer, study, renewed teaching, and faithful practice, we will more fully receive the grace Christ has promised to give his church at the Table. The Lord’s Supper is not an empty ritual or a technique for producing spiritual results. It is a Christ-commanded means of grace, the “grand channel” through which the Holy Spirit strengthens his people in faith, holy love, and service.
As we come regularly in faith, we are continually reminded of Christ’s saving work and receive its benefits anew. Our identity is more deeply rooted in him; we are formed as one body, nourished for holiness, and sent to love our neighbors in the power of the Spirit.
by Joel V Webb | Jul 13, 2026 | Orthodoxy Matters, Theology & Practice
“You keep using that word; I do not think it means what you think it means.”
It is one of the most iconic lines in modern cinema. In The Princess Bride, Inigo Montoya delivers this line in response to Vizzini’s constant use of the word “inconceivable,” a word he clearly does not understand, given how frequently he misapplies it. The humor works because the audience recognizes the gap between the word’s meaning and its usage.
That line often comes to mind when I encounter discussions, especially online, about what are commonly called “Second Commandment violations,” or “2CV” for short.
The argument usually runs like this: because Exodus 20:4 says, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above…,” any depiction of Jesus, whether in painting, film, or other media, is a direct violation of God’s command and therefore sinful.
To that, I find myself thinking: you keep using that word; I do not think it means what you think it means.
The biggest pitfall with this interpretation is not sincerity. Those who hold this position are often deeply committed believers who want to avoid idolatry at all costs. That instinct is good and worth honoring. But sincerity alone does not guarantee accuracy.
Where this position begins to break down is in two key areas.
First, it fails to read the commandment in context, and not just immediate context, but canonical context.
Sound biblical interpretation requires us to ask not only, “What does this verse say?” but also, “How does Scripture itself apply and clarify this command?” The Second Commandment does not stand alone as an abstract prohibition. It is embedded within a covenantal framework and immediately explained: “You shall not bow down to them or serve them” (Ex. 20:5). The concern is not merely the existence of images, but how they are used.
But the context deepens even further.
In Exodus 32, Israel violates this very commandment with the golden calf. What is striking is not simply that they made an image, but what they claimed about it: “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” (Ex. 32:4). This is not so much the introduction of a new deity as it is a false representation of the true one, an attempt to render Yahweh visible, controllable, and immediate. That is the heart of the violation.
And then, almost immediately after this, God commands the construction of the tabernacle, which includes images.
In Exodus 25, the Ark of the Covenant is to be fashioned with golden cherubim overshadowing the mercy seat. In Exodus 26, cherubim are woven into the very fabric of the tabernacle curtains. Later, Solomon’s temple is adorned with carved cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers (1 Kings 6:23–29). These are not incidental decorations. They are divinely commanded elements within Israel’s worship.
Even more striking is the bronze serpent in Numbers 21. God commands Moses to make it, and those who look upon it in faith are healed. Yet in 2 Kings 18:4, Hezekiah destroys it because it had become an object of idolatrous devotion.
That example is decisive.
The problem was not that an image existed. The image was commanded by God. The problem was that the image was misused. It shifted from sign to substitute.
So whatever Exodus 20:4 forbids, it cannot be a blanket prohibition on all visual representation. Scripture itself does not allow that conclusion.
The issue is not images. It is idolatry.
Second, it ignores what idol worship actually looked like in the ancient world.
In that world, images were not simply artistic representations. They were understood to participate in the reality they depicted. Through ritual acts, an idol was believed to become a dwelling place of the deity. Offerings were made to it. Prayers were directed toward it. The image functioned not as a reminder, but as a localized presence of the god.
This is the backdrop of the Second Commandment.
God is not prohibiting art. He is prohibiting the construction of rival presences, attempts to represent Him in ways that make Him manageable, containable, or subject to human control. The commandment guards the freedom and transcendence of God.
At this point, an important question arises: what about traditions that use images devotionally, such as icons and statues?
Here we need both clarity and charity.
Before critiquing Catholic or Orthodox practice, we must represent those traditions honestly. It is easy to construct a strawman by assuming that bowing before an image automatically equals worship, or that such practices are simply paganism in Christian dress. But those claims do not reflect how these traditions understand themselves. As Christians, we are called not only to truth, but to truthfulness.
Both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theology carefully distinguish between worship (latria), which is due to God alone, and veneration (dulia), which is honor given to saints, with a unique form (hyperdulia) accorded to Mary. The Second Council of Nicaea (787) articulated that honor given to an image passes to its prototype. The image is not the endpoint, but a means of directing honor toward Christ or His saints.1
In the Eastern Orthodox tradition especially, this is often expressed through the language of the icon as a “window.” An icon is not understood as a container of the divine, but as a witness that opens the viewer toward a greater reality. It is something one looks through, not merely at. The purpose of the icon is not to localize Christ, but to direct the heart and mind toward Him.
This is deeply tied to the theology of the Incarnation. If the Son of God has truly taken on visible, tangible human flesh, then He can be depicted. The icon becomes, in this sense, a visual confession that the invisible God has made Himself known in Christ. As John of Damascus put it, “I do not worship matter; I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake.”
That is a serious and historically grounded position, and it deserves to be engaged on its own terms.
At the same time, from a Protestant perspective, several concerns remain.
The distinction between worship and veneration, while theologically precise, is not always easily maintained in practice. The Reformers were responding to real pastoral conditions in which the line between honoring and functionally relying upon images had become blurred.
This is strongly reflected in the 39 Articles of Religion of the Church of England,
XXII. Of Purgatory. The Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons, Worshipping and Adoration, as well of Images as of Relics, and also Invocation of Saints, is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God.2
Further, even the “window” language, helpful as it is, raises a question of pastoral caution. Windows are meant to be looked through, but human nature has a way of lingering on the glass. What is intended as a means of directing attention to Christ can, over time or in certain contexts, become an object of misplaced focus.
Here again, the bronze serpent provides a helpful biblical parallel. What God once commanded and used for good can, when misdirected, become an occasion for idolatry.
Finally, the New Testament offers no clear mandate or example of the use of images in the worshiping life of the Church. While that silence does not settle the question, it does suggest that such practices are not essential and should therefore be approached with care.
So we should avoid two equal and opposite errors. We must not misrepresent our Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters. At the same time, we must not ignore real pastoral dangers.
The question is not simply whether an image can function as a window.
The question is whether, in practice, it consistently remains one.
The Second Commandment is not violated by the mere existence of an image of Christ.
Scripture itself includes divinely commanded images, even within the holiest spaces of worship. The commandment, therefore, cannot be about representation as such. It is about the misuse of representation, treating something created as if it were the Creator, attempting to bring God under our control, or substituting a manageable image for the living and holy God.
To have a painting of Jesus, to portray Him in film, or to use visual depictions for teaching is not, in itself, a sin. The question is not whether an image exists, but what role it plays.
Does it point beyond itself to the risen Christ revealed in Scripture, or does it subtly replace Him?
The true danger is not that we might depict Christ. It is that we might reduce Him, whether in image or in imagination, to something safer, smaller, and more controllable than He truly is.
And that is precisely what the Second Commandment was given to prevent.
