I recently wrote about the relatively unremarked issue of gender dysphoria and believers opting for gender reassignment. I wrote that I had communicated with Assemblies of God leadership about this issue some years ago, and that I believed a position paper is in order — now, not at some later date when it becomes a "real" issue.

And it has begun. I'd say the issue is now real.

While it hasn't surfaced within the Assemblies of God yet, I suspect it will within the next few years. Meanwhile, The Church Report Online released a special report in its May 2007 issue, titled: "Identity Crisis: A Transgender Minister Reappointed to Lead

One of the first "superintendents" of the newly formed Methodist Church in America. Appointed Superintendent with Dr. Thomas Coke at the Christmas Conference meeting at Baltimore in 1784.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, Francis-Asbury, history, Methodist, Thomas[/tags]

(1829-1912)

The most outstanding example of ministry to the dispossessed was the work of a pietistic evangelical William Booth. He started his ministry with the Methodist New Connection but soon withdrew to work with London's poor. His street preaching in London's East End in 1864 met with phenomenal success. Within eleven years he had thirty-two stations promoting evangelism and social service among London's destitute. His workers, organized like a military unit, were soon called the Salvation Army. Evangelist Booth became General Booth.

By 1888 the General had established 1,000 British corps and had dispatched patrols to many other nations. His book In Darkest England and the Way Out appeared in 1890 graphically comparing the social darkness in England to Africa's darkness pictured by David Livingstone. In London, in one year, he reported 2,157 people had been found dead, 2,297 had committed suicide, 30,000 were living in prostitution, 160,000 had been

During the late 1800s other evangelicals turned to holiness conferences. Concern for a "second blessing", "entire sanctification", or "Christian perfection" had always been a main tenet of Methodist revivalism. In the late nineteenth century, members of other religious communions came to share this concern. Holiness groups, such as the Church of the Nazarene, as well as "deeper life" conferences, urged believers to yield themselves to reliance on the Holy Spirit as a way to find "the victorious Christian life."

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, Holiness-Movement, Methodist[/tags]

It all began with John and Charles Wesley at Oxford sometime around 1728, when the two brothers, alarmed at the spread of deism on campus, organized meetings with students who were serious about their religion. In scorn the label "Methodists" stuck.

Wherever Wesley went, as he preached revival, little "societies" appeared all over England, Ireland, and Wales in his wake. These were not really congregations, most of them were members of the Anglican Church, and Wesley urged them to attend their parish churches for worship and Communion, but his converts found the center of their Christian experience in the Methodist societies where they confessed their sins to one another, submitted to the discipline of their leader, and joined in prayer and song.

John eventually began to divide his societies into smaller groups of twelve or so members called "classes" to encourage financial support, a penny a week for

(1865-1955)

A Methodist layman, he combined a deep religious faith; evangelistic zeal; power over public assemblies; and compelling, convincing speech. At twenty-three he became student secretary of the International Committee of the YMCA. Sensing the need for greater coordination of student work, he founded in Sweden the World's Student Christian Federation. After the epoch-making Edinburgh Conference Mott served as chairman of the Continuation Committee. When the International Missionary Council was created in 1921, he served for twenty years as its first chairman. No man led more to the spread of the Christian unity that led to the World Council of Churches.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, John-R.-Mott, Methodist, World-Council-of-Churches[/tags]

The most outstanding example of ministry to the dispossessed was the work of a pietistic evangelical William Booth (1829-1912). He started his ministry with the Methodist New Connection but soon withdrew to work with London's poor. His street preaching in London's East End in 1864 met with phenomenal success. Within eleven years he had thirty-two stations promoting evangelism and social service among London's destitute. His workers, organized like a military unit, were soon called the Salvation Army. Evangelist Booth became General Booth.

By 1888 the General had established 1,000 British corps and had dispatched patrols to many other nations. His book In Darkest England and the Way Out appeared in 1890 graphically comparing the social darkness in England to Africa's darkness pictured by David Livingstone. In London, in one year, he reported 2,157 people had been found dead, 2,297 had committed suicide, 30,000 were living in prostitution, 160,000 had