The Gap Between Church and State
By 1738, the Church of England had largely abandoned direct ministry to the masses, preferring to concentrate on a rather elite church for a generally privileged clientele. This is one of the reasons Wesley wrote that he "consented to be more vile" when George Whitefield invited him to preach in the open air in Bristol. At that point in his life, he was a product of the ministerial training of his age, viewing the work of the church to be largely within its own walls and expressed in its in-house liturgies. Field preaching and other accompanying expressions changed all that for John Wesley, moving him to see that the gospel was for everyone — and that by the gospel one must mean doing all the good you can, by all the means you can, as long as ever you can. Changing to this mode of ministry, Wesley incurred the immediate resistance of those who preferred to keep the church separate from society. But he and the early Methodists bridged that gap and gave us a heritage for doing the same.

The Gap Between Complexity andSimplicity
The eighteenth century has been called a gilded age, one fraught with verbosity, and ornateness. There was a clear preference for erudite intellectualism (including what was called "speculative latitudinarianism") and disdain for perceived "superficial" beliefs and practices (called "enthusiasm" in Wesley's day). By consciously choosing to ground early Methodism in "practical divinity," John Wesley was creating a blend of substance and spirit — classical and practical — mind and heart. The result was a theology that could hold its own under technical scrutiny, yet one that expressed itself in "plain words for plain people."² And it was Wesley's conviction that this approach to theology was, in fact, the approach taken by the earliest Christians, particularly those represented by Eastern Orthodoxy. It was also an approach that produced life and made a difference.

The Gap Between Clergy and Laity
The Church of England was largely a clergy-led church. Except for some of the Societies existing within it (from which Wesley took a number of clues), laity were virtually invisible in church polity and largely expected to attend (and that not too regularly) and obey. Almost from the beginning, early Methodism was a mixture of clergy and laity, with the majority of class leaders being laypersons. Here again, Wesley took the heat of criticism from those who believed a movement led by other than clergy was at best inferior, and at worst, dangerous. Even Wesley acknowledged the difficulty of managing such a connectional system, but he felt that the attempt was faithful to primitive Christianity and to a theology of the priesthood of all believers.

The Gap Between Contemplation and Compassion
Not long after his Aldersgate experience, Wesley collided with Quietism and the "stillness controversy," in which adherents advocated a passivity apart from the direct movement of God's Spirit. While never losing his own appreciation for and practice of meditation, Wesley felt that extreme stillness was antithetical to the clear revelation of God in Scripture. We have no need to wait to be "moved" to do what God has clearly set out for us to do. Revelation creates its own response. Furthermore, he could not find this gap in the saints of the ages. So, from the outset, Methodism bridged the gap with a dynamic emphasis upon inward and outward holiness — holiness of heart and life.

The Gap Between Traditions
In Wesley's day there was very little true ecumenism. The Church of England dominated the ecclesiastical structure of the nation. Puritans were not yet free from being viewed as little other than dissenters. The Roman Catholic Church was isolated because of its supposed "papacy" and things that went with it. Calvinists were separate from Lutherans, and Presbyterians had little to do with Independents. The religious landscape was dotted with many and various expressions of Christianity, but far fewer signs of union and cooperation. Because early Methodism was a movement and not a church, its makeup and theological content can be seen to draw from all the traditions we have mentioned, and more. People found community and mentoring more from a "Kingdom" perspective than a church-sect one. Gaps among believers were narrowed, if not closed, in this way.

The Gap Between Theological Concepts
Too often (then and now) theology forces decisions between doctrines, rather than trying to discern the power in their union. My friend and colleague, Dr. Paul Chilcote, has rightly described Wesley's solution to this division by referring to John Wesley as a "conjunctive theologian"; that is, one who could hold seemingly opposite doctrines in a dynamic tension that actually made the whole greater than the sum of its parts; for example, grace and law, sanctification as crisis and process, imparted and imputed righteousness, and so on. The word and served in Wesley's theology to be much more than a grammatical connector; it was a theological strengthener, leaving believers with better faith and practice than if they had been forced to choose one item over (or against) another. And I have come to believe that, in some ways, this view of theology as "life-giving" determined John Wesley's choice to view theology more as an order of salvation than as a topically-oriented system.

Unfortunately, standing in the gap left Wesley with comparatively few friends. But I am convinced it enabled him to remain a friend of God. It is one of the reasons early Methodism played such a significant role in the ecclesial and social reform of the eighteenth century. As we celebrate the 300th anniversary of John Wesley's birth, we would do well to ask ourselves if we are still theologians of the gaps. This will not result in the abandonment of orthodoxy for us any more than it did for John Wesley. But it will result in our being placed in a challenging and powerful "crossroad" that some will choose to avoid — preferring the illusory comfort of one side or the other. Yet, to stand in such gaps will, I'm convinced, make the people called Methodist available to be instruments of God in the twenty-first century as we were in Wesley's day.

^1. See David Lyle Jeffrey, A Burning and a Shining Light: English Spirituality in the Age of Wesley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987).

^2. For more on this, see Albert Outler's excellent Introduction in Volume 1 of The Works of John Wesley (Nashville: Abingdon, 1984), pages 1-96.

Dr. Steve Harper, author of The Way to Heaven: The Gospel According to John Wesley, is Vice President of Asbury Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida.