From Sampler to Sower

Dr. Louie Bustle, Director of Nazarene World Missions

After a great lunch with a good friend, Tony Fightmaster, talking about the excellent scholarship opportunities that exist at ONU for Nazarene students, I returned to College Church for session four of the Holiness Summit on Monday afternoon. One of the highlights of the worship service was hearing George Wolfe sing Larnelle Harris’ song “Were it not For Grace.” Especially after my concerns about the implications of the self-help book metaphor for sanctification from the preceding presentation, those words “Forever running but losing the race, were it not for grace” were especially apropos.

The speaker of the hour was Dr. Louie Bustle, the World Mission director for the Church of the Nazarene. Preceding his message, a student read from Luke 24:49, which Bustle cited as Christ’s promise to give his disciples power through the Spirit.

After citing that verse, Bustle acknowledged the common question in the denomination’s theological circles: Are we Wesleyan?  Or are we American Holiness?  Bustle’s answer: “I say yes.  But even more than that, we should be Biblical.”

And then he spent the next 30 minutes completely ignoring Scripture.

The bulk of Bustle’s message was anecdotal, telling his own story from growing up in the hills of Kentucky, to moving to Indiana.  He told the story of his father who, for most of Bustle’s childhood and adolescence, was, to say the least, far less than exemplary.  But late in life he experienced God’s salvation and sanctification.  It was Bustle’s father then, who encouraged Louie to repent and seek entire sanctification.  “Louie, if you’re gonna live for God, go on and let God sanctify you wholly.”

It was at this point that Bustle began telling the gathered ministers how we could more effectively preach and teach the doctrine of entire sanctification.  “One of the great dangers,” he advised, “is that we don’t let people pray.  We counsel them through.  But you can’t counsel someone through.  You’ve got to pray them through.” And that accounts for the reason we don’t see many really experiencing holiness.  We have lots of people praying at the altar, but very little victory because people have never really prayed through and truly died out.

But that’s only part of the problem with us preachers.  The other part is that we’re not preaching the doctrine enough.  The world is hungering for a doctrine of victory, but we’re too busy preaching other things.  God died so that we could be set free, not just from part of our sins, but from all sin.  “We’ve got to preach it so hot and so much,” argued Bustle, “that our people finally get it.”

Of course, most Nazarene preachers claim to be preaching holiness.  But we preach it generally, said Bustle, as one of many themes, when instead it should be as “the living heart of who we are as preachers.”

Finally, in the only part of his message that addressed the doctrine of holiness itself, Bustle added what even he acknowledged did not appear to be the profoundest of insights: “When you’re sanctified you can’t get more sanctified.  When you are sanctified, you are cleansed and you can’t get more cleansed.”

Obviously that, and other of Bustle’s comments left myself and I believe from conversations at the Summit, many others uncomfortable.  Dr. Bowling closed the service by thanking God for the diamond of holiness, which has many facets.  He noted that we had been looking at a few different viewpoints today on Holiness which were not contradictory, but rather different facets of the same gem and which in the end add to the beauty of the gem as a whole.  However, most people I talked to left wondering if Bustle was really looking at the same gem as the rest of us.

One helpful thing that came from Bustle’s sermon was that it served as a foil in many conversations against which we could examine our understanding of the doctrine of sanctification.   Most helpfully, as several with whom I spoke pointed out, it served to illustrate how prone we are to make our own experience of sanctification normative.  Bustle’s message was not a defense of the doctrine based on scripture, but an explanation of how it happens based on his own experience.  And often that is less than helpful.

Particularly troubling to me were his closing statements about the fact that once sanctified you can’t get more sanctified.  I suppose there may be some internal logic to that.  However, the work that God begins in the crisis moment we Nazarenes call entire sanctification is far from complete in the moment of our complete consecration to God.  And the doctrinal statements of our denomination have always stressed the need for a continued growth in the grace of sanctification both before and after the crisis of entire sanctification – a fact that Bustle’s statement seemed to obscure, or even directly deny.  Nor do I know any Nazarene theologian alive today who would argue that God’s work of sanctification in the life of the believer is complete at the moment we call entire sanctification.  It is in glorification that we are fully conformed to the likeness of Christ.

I also had problems with Bustle’s challenge that as preachers ” “We’ve got to preach it so hot and so much, that our people finally get it.”  There is probably some truth to the fact that in some Nazarene churches the radical optimism of our holiness theology is no longer preached.  But at the same time I couldn’t help but contrast Bustle’s instructions on preaching about entire sanctification with Wesley’s.

When asked “In what manner should we preach entire sanctification? Wesley responded:

Scarce at all to those who are not pressing forward.  To those who are, always by way of promise; always drawing never driving. From Minutes of Some Late Conversations by John Wesley: Conversation II, Bristol, Thursday, August 1, 1745,

Now we can debate whether what Dr. Bustle was talking about when he said we need to preach entire sanctification and what Rev. Wesley was speaking about are the same thing or not.  Likewise we can debate how well Rev. Wesley did at keeping his own advice.  And finally, we can argue about whether a mature Wesley would agree with himself.  (This quote did, after all, come from 1745.)  However, the contrast is striking.

However, while I’m not sure what Dr. Bustle means by preaching it “hot” I’m certain Wesley would not have us preach entire sanctification in such a way as to heap condemnation on those who have not yet expressed experiencing it.

That said, I should also acknowledge that Bustle’s remarks were used by God to challenge many preachers gathered that day, as evidenced by the many that came forward during the response time to pray.  Despite the many reservations I (and most of the others with whom I spoke) had about Bustle’s message, I find myself challenged by the same Bible to which Bustle nodded in passing to see and celebrate the bigger picture of what God is doing.

“But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice. (Philippians 1:18, NIV)