Wesleyan Churches

Worship in the Wesleyan Church typifies that of the American holiness movement-relatively informal, centered on the sermon, and concerned with the holiness of the believer. One current renewal movement seeks to make worship a more praise-filled celebration, while another concentrates on recovering reverence through historic Christian liturgy. True religion does not consist in any ritual observances, such as forms or ceremonies, even of the most excellent kind, be they ever so decent and significant, ever so expressive of inward things. The religion of Christ rises infinitely higher and lies infinitely deeper than all these. Let no man conceive that rites and ceremonies have an intrinsic worth, or that true worship cannot subsist without them. (Discipline of the Wesleyan Church [Marion, Indiana: The Wesleyan Publishing House, 1968], 52) This statement in the first Discipline of the Wesleyan Church, adopted at its initial general conference in 1968, remains both a "special direction" …