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ordained ministry who are also pursuing academic credentials.- For Barbara and Jim Holsinger and their clan, with specialappreciation to Sarah for her obedience to the Holy Spirit to think to see ifI was willing to sojourn to Hope Valley. I was—and am forever blessed asa result.- For Alice, Alicia, Amie, Angela, Brian, Cindy, Chuck, Gray, Joy, Josh,Lorraine, Susanna, Tom and Tracey who live on the other end of mymobile phone.- For the congregations who have nurtured, encouraged and challenged mealong this discipleship journey; from Dunellen to Oldwick, to FUMCLexington, to St. James, Resurrection and especially to Sergeantsville forpraying me through.- For my colleagues, whether they reside in the church or the academy (orboth!). There are simply too many to name whom I count as friends andhave been conversation partners over the years, but particular gratitudegoes to Ken Brewer and Rev. Mike McKay who hosted my firstexperiences in Wesleyan small groups, and to Bishops Al Gwinn andHope Morgan Ward who saw no inconsistency in a deacon pursuing adoctoral degree. And especially for my residency group (colleagues andleaders—in both North Carolina and New Jersey!) as well as for theordained and lay folk in Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia, New Jerseyand those scattered around the globe.- For the communities I discovered at Cliff College and NazareneTheological College of the University of Manchester who accepted meand made me feel immediately at home in their midst.- For all who encouraged me, who spoke wisdom, offered counsel, andgave solace, whether they provided me a night’s lodging, a meal, sent mea note, text or phone call of encouragement, and most importantly, offeredprayer on my behalf that I might see this project to completion. May we,by your good grace, Lord, and through the power of the Holy Spirit,continue to grow in grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ for the goodnessof your Kingdom in this world.!12

Chapter OneThe Dilemma of Disciple MakingIntroductionThe intent of this thesis is to examine the nature of discipleship in theWesleyan tradition and to understand how transformative learning theory (TLT), afield in contemporary adult education, might be engaged in dialogue to viewdiscipleship as a single, complex practice and all-encompassing endeavour that hasimplications for congregations. The thesis concerns itself with discipleship efforts inthe field of Christian education within The United Methodist Church in NorthAmerica yet has implications for the broader Wesleyan tradition. The thesis beginswith the premise that, despite efforts through numerous strategies and programmes,there is a failure within United Methodism to adequately nurture and encourage adultdisciples in Christian transformation in holistic ways. The thesis arguescontemporary voices within the field of Christian education may advocate for aWesleyan understanding of discipleship and some may even employ transformativelearning theory (TLT) in their efforts, but they ultimately fail to offer a coherentunderstanding of what discipleship entails. The thesis locates discipleship as thecentral practice and comprehensive lifelong endeavour of the Christian life. It arguesChristian discipleship implicitly inspires transformation when understood asconsistent with the process of sanctification in the Wesleyan tradition. Furthermore,the thesis engages a cross-disciplinary dialogue between educational ministriesassociated with discipleship and TLT in order to suggest appropriate learningprinciples in such a manner to address the present situation.The Need for TransformationThe mission of The United Methodist Church, an inheritor of John Wesley’smovement, is ‘to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world,’which is grounded in scriptural authority of the Great Commission in Matthew28:18-20.1 As a denomination, the UMC views the local congregation as the primarylocation through which persons come to saving knowledge of Jesus Christ,1 The United Methodist Church, The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church(Nashville: The United Methodist Publishing House, 2012), 91.!13

committing their lives to follow Jesus’ command to love God and neighbour and beagents of God’s grace, inaugurating social structures consistent with God’s Kingdomin the world. The denomination’s Book of Discipline defines discipleship as ‘faithfulmembership in the local church [which] is essential for personal growth and fordeveloping a deeper commitment to the will and grace of God.’2 However, acomprehensive denominational study commissioned in 2009 and conducted in 2010by global research analysts Towers Watson indicates eighty-five percent of UnitedMethodist congregations in the United States struggle in the mandate to be faithfuldisciples who make more disciples. These congregations are considered of low ormedium vitality. 3 In 2013, according to the UMC’s General Council on Finance andAdministration, more than seventy percent of local congregations did not baptiseanyone age thirteen or older, fifty-five percent did not baptise anyone age twelve orunder and fifty percent of congregations did not experience any profession of faith.4United Methodist Bishop Scott Jones decries the casual attitude that fosters thismalaise within congregations, likening the Christian life to membership in a civicclub or organisation. He charges that new converts to faith ‘either explicitly or by23Book of Discipline, 91.The Towers Watson study and resultant report was sponsored by The Call to Action SteeringTeam commissioned by the Council of Bishops and the denomination’s Connectional Table. Thepurpose was to determine ‘clear, data-supported information about vital congregations’ by datamining and evaluating the ‘millions and millions of data-points generated by the year-end reportssubmitted by U.S. UM congregations each year.’ In order to identify highly vital congregations,Towers Watson developed a ‘vitality index’ that considered three primary factors: attendance, growthand engagement in order to evaluate the vitality of a given congregation. A methodology ofregression-analysis identified one hundred twenty-seven drivers or elements, sixteen of which weredetermined to be significant factors in highly vital congregations as opposed to medium and lowvitality congregations. Of the thirty-two thousand, two hundred and twenty-eight congregationsproviding data, four thousand nine hundred sixty-one congregations or fifteen percent of thecongregations were assessed as highly vital. Of the remaining eighty-five percent of churches, fortynine percent were medium vital and thirty-six percent were low vital. Amy Valdez-Barker, Appendixin Vital: Churches, Changing Communities and the World by Jorge Acevedo (Nashville: AbingdonPress, 2012), 133-137. For more information on the reports and their findings see The Call to n to access the Steering Team Report at http://s3.amazonaws.com/Website tion-steering-teamreport.pdf and the Congregational Vitality Towers Watson Report at http://s3.amazonaws.com/Website ith-appendices.pdf (accessed 25 April 2015).4 In an effort to ‘renew focus on discipleship,’ Discipling Ministries created One MattersDiscipleship Award in April 2015. Sara Thomas, Deputy General Secretary of DiscipleshipMinistries and Chief Strategist for Vital Congregations states, ‘With the One Matters DiscipleshipAward, we want to lift up the importance of discipleship and help interpret across the connectionwhat zeros in professions of faith and baptism mean and what moving away from the zeros means,’in ‘One Matters Award to Encourage Baptisms and Professions of Faith’ entry posted 17 April -of-faith (accessed 25 April 2015).!14

example’ are taught that the Christian life insists on nothing more than passive,optional participation, asking only for occasional attendance, casual giving andallowing persons to behave ‘as they please.’ 5 Additional research conducted by TheBarna Group, an organisation that makes no denominational distinctions as it studiesreligion across the United States, indicated that while forty-four percent of Americanadults self-identify as Christians, only five percent of American Christians reporttheir lives are significantly changed as a result of their Christian faith.6 Anypossibility of United Methodists contributing to the transformation of the worldappears to be stymied despite the importance placed on discipleship and disciplemaking efforts.Compounding the issue facing discipleship is that when discipleship is notequated with faithful membership within a local congregation, it is described as a listof activities consistent with the General Rule of Discipleship, ‘to witness to JesusChrist in the world, and follow his teachings through acts of compassion, justice,worship, and devotion, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.’ 7 A host ofprogrammes, courses and workshops in Christian education and spiritual formationfoster and nurture these acts of compassion, justice, worship and devotion isdeveloped regularly and are offered as discipleship initiatives within many UMcongregations. The denomination has created an agency, Discipleship Ministries,which is devoted to offering ministries in the areas of leadership, new church starts,congregational development, spiritual formation and other niche ministriesspecialised by age, gender and ethnicity. 8 For United Methodists, there areprogrammes within the denomination designed for nearly every demographic toeducate and replicate more disciples.9 Such programmes target a specificdemographic on a given topic, usually meeting in groups for as little as a few hours5 Scott J. Jones, ‘Teaching the United Methodist Way,’ in The Future of the United MethodistChurch: Seven Vision Pathways, ed. Scott J. Jones and Bruce R. Ough (Nashville: Abingdon Press,2010), 40.6 George Barna, Maximum Faith: Live Like Jesus (Ventura, CA: Metaformation, 2011), 25.7 Book of Discipline, 596-7.8 A non-exhaustive list of ministries can be found on the Discipleship Ministries website under‘Worship,’ ‘Leadership Resources,’ ‘New Church Starts’ and ‘International Ministries’ at http://www.umcdiscipleship.org (accessed 20 August 2015).9 Cokesbury, a division of the United Methodist Publishing House, retails curriculum from acrossthe denomination and also includes other Christian resources for the wider Christian tradition.Categories for whom materials are targeted include ‘Adults,’ ‘Youth,’ ‘Tweens,’ ‘Children,’‘Multiage’ and ‘Multicultural’ at https://www.cokesbury.com (accessed 10 February 2016).!15

or as long as several weeks, or in some cases, months. 10 Church programmes anddenominational initiatives are well intentioned and address a wide range of particularaspects of the Christian life, but participation in such does not ensure disciplesexperience the kind of transformation that has an impact in their lives or on the livesof others.When understood as a programme, discipleship becomes a particularisedministry competing alongside the other committees and activities of the church.Often, discipleship is equated with disciple making, and the necessity of being adisciple in all avenues and areas of life is overlooked. United Methodist Bishop AlGwinn laments, ‘the churches of the Western world have not made discipleship acondition of being a Christian.’11 Bishop Hee Soo Jung cautions, ‘No one is able todevelop a disciple without first engaging in the process of becoming a disciplehimself or herself.’ 12 Both are adamant that discipleship involves adopting theposture of being a follower of Jesus and learning what it means to become like Christif there is any hope to fulfil The Great Commission or the denominational mission.Furthermore, regional strategist for the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference10 E.g. Grace Bradford, Guide for Class Leaders: A Model for Christian Formation (Nashville:Discipleship Resources, 1999); Stephen D. Bryant, Janice T. Grana and Margorie J. Thompson,Companions in Christ: A Small-Group Experience in Spiritual Formation (Nashville: Upper RoomBooks, 2001); Teresa Gilbert, Patty Johansen, Ray Regennitter and John P. Gilbert, Charting theCourse: A Workbook on Christian Discipleship (Nashville: Discipleship Resources, 2007); James A.Harnish and Justin Larosa, A Disciple’s Heart:Growing in Love and Grace (Nashville: AbingdonPress, 2015); Rueben P. Job, Three Simple Rules: A Wesleyan Way of Living (Nashville: AbingdonPress, 2007); Scott J. Jones, The Wesleyan Way: A Faith that Matters (Nashville: Abingdon Press,2013); J. Ellsworth Kalas, Christian Believer: Knowing God with Heart and Mind(Nashville:Abingdon Press, 2001); Leander E. Keck, Jesus in the Gospels: DISCIPLE SecondGeneration Studies (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003); Carol F. Krau, Thomas R. Hawkins,MaryJane Pierce Norton, Barbara Bruce, Susan W.N. Ruach and William Pyatt, A Faithful Future:Teaching and Learning for Discipleship Volume 2 (Nashville: Discipleship Resources, 2003); CarolF. Krau, Judith M. Bunyi, N. Lynne Wasted, Joyce Brown, Barbara Bruce and Ben Marshall, AFaithful Future: Teaching and Learning for Discipleship (Nashville: Discipleship Resources, 1999);Jessica LaGrone, Namesake: Where God Rewrites Your Story (Nashville: Abingdon Women, 2013);Kimberly Dunnam Reisman, The Christ Centred Woman: Finding Balance in a World of Extremes(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2013); Mike Slaughter, Change the World: Recovering the Message andMission of Jesus (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2010); Gayle Turner Watson, Guide for CovenantDiscipleship Groups (Nashville: Discipleship Resources, 2000); Kevin M. Watson, The ClassMeeting: Reclaiming a Forgotten (and Essential) Small Group Experience (Nashville: SeedbedPublishing, 2013); Richard Byrd Wilke and Julia Kitchens Wilke, DISCIPLE: Becoming DisciplesThrough Bible Study (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993).11 In his annual State of the Church Address, on 10 June 2010, Bishop Alfred Gwinn addressed theNorth Carolina Annual Conference of the UMC exhorting members of conference to get back to theirprimary call to be disciples in order to fulfil the Great Commission. Video available at https://vimeo.com/12494982 (accessed 18 October 2010). Discussion of the general state of discipleshipoccurs between minutes 9:00 and 14:45.12 Hee-Soo Jung, ‘Strengthening Clergy and Lay Leadership,’ in Jones and Ough, 47.!16

Christie Latona asserts those ‘struggling to make disciples within the UMC lack afoundational discipling culture’ and insists that a structural solution cannot solve a‘spiritual crisis.’13Jones suggests a necessary cohesion between being a Christian and doingChristian things should exist within the varied and expansive numbers ofprogrammes when he states, ‘Christian discipleship is a many-faceted way of life.’14Christian discipleship is to participate in an integrated, holistic way of life thatidentifies participants as disciples of Jesus Christ. However, the wealth ofprogramming designed to reproduce disciples in a variety of shapes, sizes andfeatures, does not necessarily consider discipleship as a condition, or a way of life.Data collected by The Barna Group indicates forty percent of self-describedAmerican Christians participate in a regular Bible study and only eighteen percentsay they are totally committed to their spiritual development as Christians. 15 Theemphasis on programmes often misleads people into believing that discipleship andthe making of disciples is reserved for persons who are trained to do so, or as Jonespoints out, only an option for lay persons who have available time in their alreadycrowded schedules. The best available data supports the widespread notion withinthe denomination that transformation—personal or social—is not a significant factorin contemporary congregations.Classical Christian DiscipleshipSince Jesus proclaimed the Great Commission, a major task of the Church’sministry has been devoted to cultivate Christian living for participants who eitherseek to become Christian or who are already committed to Christianity. In UnitedMethodism, this has been addressed through the field of Christian education. Twopractical theologians in the Wesleyan tradition, Dean Blevins and Mark Maddix,discuss the inherent and longstanding connection between discipleship andeducation:13Christie Latona, ‘Disciple Multiplication is the Main Thing,’ ministrymatters.com entry posted10 February 2014 under Circuit Rider (February/March/April 2014) iple-multiplication-is-the-main-thing (accessed 25April 2015).14 Jones, ‘Teaching the United Methodist Way,’ 36.15 Barna, Maximum Faith, 39-41.!17

Didache, the Greek term for teaching, serves as a conceptual framework fordiscipleship th

Wesleyan Discipleship and Transformative Learning Theory 2016 The subject of this thesis is the nature of Christian transformation as understood through the process of discipleship in the Wesleyan tradition and United Methodism in particular. A basic premise i