In the summer of 2004 the  Methodist Conference (representative governing body of the British Methodist Church)  approved a report reviewing the present situation and spelling out the priorities that the Church would pursue over the next few years, in partnership with others wherever possible. 

The Priorities Report explores and endorses a set of aims which it summarises as follows :

underpinning everything we do with God-centred worship and prayer

supporting community development and action for justice, especially among the most deprived and poor - in Britain and worldwide

developing new confidence in evangelism and in the capacity to speak of God and faith in meaningful ways

encouraging fresh ways of being Church

nurturing a culture in the Church which is people-centred and flexible

In the spring of 2004 I had personally begun to think afresh about British Methodism. A message came unexpectedly in my prayers, simple and perfectly distinct. It was that the Methodist Church still constitutes a people in God’s sight, that he loves and cares for this people and that in the present time he is calling to them afresh.

Over many years the experience of finding God’s presence and activity in many different church settings had made me set very little store by denomination at all. The upshot was that I viewed the local situations where I was stationed as places where I would try to serve the good of Christ’s Church. But even as a born and bred Methodist I was not specially interested in the larger denominational edifice or specially fond of Methodist ways of doing things.

I believe in Christian unity no less than before. I have not begun to suppose that somehow Methodism is God’s favourite denomination. But I have sensed how he addresses this particular people whom he remembers raising up.

Everything which God speaks to Methodism he prefaces with the words ‘I love you’. He does not call to Methodism out of hostility but calls out of pure love towards a people whom he raised up. He calls to us as people whom he lovingly keeps within his purpose. He is intent on claiming those who already belong to him.

He calls us to a high and holy calling to proclaim his name in this generation with all the resources at our disposal - this is like the human capacity of our resource raised to an ‘nth’ degree by the injection of God’s Spirit and being conscious co-workers in his purpose.

He knows the ways that we have dishonoured him and sometimes lost practically all trace of the original marks of Methodist conviction.  He calls to us that we should ourselves keep calling out to him saying, ‘Lord, where is the zeal, purity, vision and purpose in a people raised up to know you and be known by you?’

I have no intention of offering a different orientation from the one which the Priorities Report already gives when it calls for everything to be underpinned with worship and prayer. But I underline how searching are the tones of divine love, remembrance and intention.

Early Methodism was familiar with experiences of ‘wrestling with God’, reminiscent of the mysterious story of Jacob in Genesis 32. There are those in Methodism today who are genuinely under God’s call but still need to wrestle for a renewed view of the one who has called them.

Even after the long depletion of its visible strength, and with difficult readjustments still ahead, God is able to bless this denomination and make it a means of blessing to others. This is not a question of sentimental human attachment to the past. It is an intimation of something God wants to do that has a place within the much larger picture of his purposes. I know there are others in British Methodism whose experience has led them to a similar expectancy. But I am not here speaking on behalf of others, simply sharing what has come to me.

I do not presume to know how this will work out. But I encourage people in Methodism, individually and corporately, to tell God that we want to seek him, above and beyond the insistence of any of our own preferences, prejudices and plans.  Against the background of our own history we must pray, ‘Lord, what you want to find in us, create in us, because you are our God and we are your people’.