‘Transformed by Grace’: Wesleyan wisdom for today’s UMC

In a world that can be challenging and ever-changing, Wesleyan scholar Paul Chilcote shares how his new book, “Transformed by Grace,” and the wisdom of John and Charles Wesley can inspire us to love boldly, serve joyfully and lead courageously in our lives and churches.

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Guest: The Rev. Dr. Paul Chilcote

Learn more about the Rev. Dr. Paul Chilcote, author and Wesleyan scholar.
Order your copy of "Transformed by Grace: More prayers in the Wesleyan tradition," at The Upper Room.
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This episode posted on Sept. 19, 2025.

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Transcript

Make this Advent season a time of peace and reflection. With “Advent: A calendar of devotions 2025,” each day's reading draws you closer to Christ's light, offering hope and joy for your journey. Available now at cokesbury.com. Your source for meaningful advent resources.

Prologue

Crystal Caviness, host: Hi, my name's Crystal Caviness. I'm your host for “Get Your Spirit in Shape.” I'm so excited today to welcome back a friend. He and his wife, Janet, were just here a few episodes ago, the Chilcotes, Paul and Janet Chilcote, and we were talking about their new book that they had written, “On Love: 20 Lessons for the World We Seek.” And today, Paul is back to talk about yet another new book. It’s been a prolific writing year for you, Paul, and I'm so glad that we have the privilege of having you here to talk about that. So before we jump in, if you'll just for anybody that may not have yet listened to the podcast a few weeks ago with you and Janet, if you'll just give us a brief summary about who you are and all the things that you've done for The United Methodist Church and in the work of the Wesleys.

The Rev. Dr. Paul Chilcote, guest: Well, thank you, Crystal. It's always a joy to be on the podcast and welcome to all your listeners out there. I’ve been looking forward to this. It's always fun to promote your own book in both Janet's and mine as you mentioned, and then this new one, “Transformed by Grace.” I don't know where to even start with things I've been doing. Let me give a snapshot of the last few years. It's been a difficult period in The United Methodist Church. There has been a lot of anxiety in the church there, this divisiveness that we've experienced. And I think that's caused us in many ways to look more closely to our identity. Who are we as United Methodists? What is our future as a part of God's larger family, God's community of faith? What is God calling us to be in to do in this next chapter of our life together?

And as I've been reflecting on all of that really with a very strong future orientation, I've just come back over and over again to the basics and the basic, which is love. We need to rediscover what it means to live in a Christ-like love, to live love in the way that we have been loved by God in Christ through the power of the Spirit. So it's an exciting time. I think it's a time that can be filled with joy as we move forward, put that anxiety behind us and move into this next age of the life of our church with love, with deep love of God and others, which creates joy in our lives and a sense of peace as well.

Crystal: And there's a lot of hope in that.

Paul: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I preached this past week and pulled the trilogy of faith, hope and love into it. What a powerful image of life, lived in faith, hope and love, and that is life filled with joy.

Crystal: Today we're going to talk about a book that has just come out this month. We're in August. I think this podcast will be out in September, but the book is from The Upper Room and the title is “Transformed by Grace: 52 More Prayers in the Wesleyan Spirit.” This is part two, if you will, to a book called “Praying in the Wesleyan Spirit,” in which you translated, and that's a word I borrowed from you when we were speaking earlier, you translated the sermons of John Wesley into prayers. You put it into what's essentially can be used as a devotional, paired it with from hymns from Charles Wesley, some bible verses. And I want to talk about this new book, but I feel like we have to back up and talk about part one first. So talk about how this came about. And I know when I was reading it, these sermons as prayers were so much more accessible than the times I've tried to read the sermons on their own. So I'd love to hear about how you took those sermons, which can be really dense, and turn them into these beautiful prayers.

Paul: Yeah, absolutely. It's kind of fun. It's hard for me to imagine that “Praying in the Wesleyan Spirit” this coming year will be 25 years old. So it was partly in relationship to that anniversary on the horizon that I thought a little bit more about a sequel or kind of a companion to that first book. Let me say a few things about “Praying in the Wesleyan Spirit.” Twenty-five years ago, I had been teaching Wesley studies in seminaries for a good little while at that point. And I always found it difficult when I was assigning the sermons of John Wesley to students not quite sure how they would respond to them because as you've alluded to already, they are not easy. I used to say if a student came up to me after class and said Dr. Chill coat, I just love John Wesley's sermons, that was a signal to me that something was not quite right.

They're hard. They're dense. You use that term. And they're written in 18th century English. And maybe even more importantly, Crystal, most of what are called the standard sermons of John Wesley, they're either 44 or 53 depending on how you number them. Most of those sermons were never preached. They're more like sermonic essays. They were meant to be read. They have kind of the style of a sermon. But John Wesley didn't preach them. He published them when just trying to think through how could I make these rich texts because they're just filled with spiritual insight and wisdom. How can I make them more accessible to a contemporary reader? And it just dawned on me one day, if I could distill the essence of the sermon, get the core of the sermon, and then translate that into the form of prayer that would give an accessibility and also modernize the language perhaps, obviously that would make them so much more accessible.

I had a model of doing this actually with a good friend, Tomas Boström, who is a Swedish Methodist singer, hymn songwriter, and he'd established a practice of his own kind of a devotional practice of reading a sermon of John Wesley's for a whole week, just returning to it back and forth and then create a song out of his experience of the sermon. So I thought, well, if I could do that with prayer, what a great gift that might be to folks in the church. And so there are 53 standard sermons. I simply eliminated the 53rd, which was actually a eulogy for George Whitfield and then created this original praying in the Wesleyan spirit. We have 151 of John Wesley's sermons that are still in existence. So that left 99, and I figured, well, I'll take 52 more. And there's an interesting contrast between that first batch of 52 sermons and the 52 sermons translated into prayer in this new volume, ‘Transformed by Grace.”

Whereas those early sermons are standard, the standard sermons, they tend to be kind of heavily doctrinal. They have themes like salvation by faith, it's about grace and faith and the way of salvation, which is a central theme, justification by faith, Christian perfection. So heavily doctrinal pieces, sermons, these later sermons that I've used in the new volume come from the later Wesley, the vast majority of them. So there's a maturity there and there's also a deeper sense of the importance of love and happiness. So there's a shift away from what you might describe as a doctrinal theology to a practical theology. How do you live that life of love in our world? And that world's ever changing, so it needs new applications. So it was fun to work with this different material, to be honest. It was a devotional practice of my own reading those sermons and translating them into prayers and then identifying Charles Wesley hymns that align with the theme of the sermon. It was just fun for me.

Crystal: I was going to say that just had to have been your really happy place, Paul! Well, I want to talk about too the church, The United Methodist Church has recently introduced a new vision statement for the church.

And I'm going to just read it real quickly and then we're going to talk about it piece by piece. But the new vision statement says, “The United Methodist Church forms disciples of Jesus Christ, who empowered by the Holy Spirit, love boldly, serve joyfully and lead courageously in local communities and worldwide connections.” So we have these three verbs, if you will, of loving boldly, serving joyfully and leading courageously. So many of your most recent projects, your most recent books have talked about love and loving boldly. I just took a quick glance at some of the titles. There's “Multiplying Love: A vision of United Methodist Life Together,” “Cultivating Christlikeness: Loving as Jesus loved, “The Fullest Possible Love: Living in Harmony with God and Neighbor.” And then of course, the one I mentioned earlier that you and Janet co-authored, “On Love: 20 Lessons for the World We Seek.” So I think you're a great person to talk about how about the new vision statement and how we as United Methodists can go into the world and love boldly and serve joyfully and Lee courageously, but also how does your new book, what we know about John and Charles Wesley, but also using this new book, how can all of this just kind of come together as a, I don't know, as a guide perhaps for how we live into the vision statement? And boy, that seems like a really big question and a lot in there.

Paul: I love big questions. Yeah. First thing I'd want to say is I love this new vision statement. I really do. If you just take those verbs, love, serve, lead. Boy, if there were ever a time in our world when those three words are important, I think it's our time right now. There's so much that needs to be done in terms of the church's witness to the world in which we live. And I think those are absolutely critical to the life of the church, the life of the world today. I did not write this book with the vision statement in mind or even a lot of knowledge at the time I was working on it of what this new vision statement might be. But this volume does speak into this I think in quite a number of ways. I've got, I can actually put a copy of the book in my hands right now, and if I walk through just some of the titles, and most of them are new titles from John Wesley's title.

So they're revised titles that I've used. So listen for love here, God's Love of All Creation, love is on the move, humble love, the image of God, the love of God, a can of love. I mean, every sermon is not on love in this little book, but a lot of them are a lot. Touch on that. And I've got a couple, just little excerpts from some of them that I might read. So from the sermon on humble love, love incarnate, you reveal that humble love is the essence of all true religion to love as you love entails loving our neighbor. It means assuming the posture of humility, guard me against becoming all puffed up. It means enduring injuries with patience and kindness. Guard me against becoming harsh and vindictive. My book really reflects on love as a practical discipline. How do you live at a time such as this in a way that is loving as Christ loved us?

That's a real challenge. How do we love boldly at a time like this? So there are quite a number of these sermons translated into prayers that touch directly on those themes. The love is on the move. We pray that your rule will silently flow through us and among us spreading from heart to heart, from home to home, from town to town, from nation to nation. We pray that you'll use us in renewing the face of the earth, that we might bear witness to the eternal reign of mercy, and that you will establish universal happiness causing all to sing praise be to God, father, son, and holy spirit. This is really central. What an important message for our time.

Crystal: Paul, you mentioned that the first book that you wrote, “Praying in the Wesleyan Spirit”, that those prayers were much more about the doctrine and about theology, but these are more about love and happiness. Does that reflect something that was going on in John Wesley's life?

Paul: Yeah, this is a really interesting thing, Crystal. I had a PhD student at Cambridge. I'm a fellow at Wesley House Cambridge and had a doctoral student who did his doctoral thesis on the theme of happiness in Wesleyan theology or a Wesleyan Theology of Happiness, I think was the proper title. And it was all based on John Wesley's sermons. And my student identified five sermons in which the theme of happiness is most predominant. So we call these signature sermons, five signature sermons. All of those sermons on happiness come from the latest Wesley. In other words, toward the end of his life, as Wesley was moving closer to the end of his life, he was clearly reflecting more on love and happiness as the absolute core of the religion of Jesus. You see? And I thought that was a profound discovery. So you do see this in these hymns as well, and that turn, as it were, to more practical issues like wealth and riches in a world that is kind of focused on affluence and things and wealth, how do you live the life of Christ in the context of that in a practical way? Yeah, there's so much practical wisdom in these later hymns, and then you can pray that.

Crystal: Yeah, and when I think about leading courageously, I think about both John and Charles. They were so courageous in, and especially John who's outspoken against what was really the normative religion of the day, which took a lot of courage and

Paul: The critical social issues.

Crystal: Absolutely.

Paul: Like slavery, for example.

Crystal: Yeah. So I really see that just their life as an example of how we would lead courageously too and getting insight into their lives through these prayers and through the hymns. I can see how that would really be an inspiration.

Paul: Yeah, I think in our own time, but also I think reflected in these prayers is the idea that you cannot lead courageously through silence. Silence is not a way to lead courageously. And I think the time in which we live calls for voices, for voices of faithful Christian people to speak into the injustice and the intolerance and the evil and the hatred that characterizes so much of life in our nation and in our world today. So it requires a voice. And some of these prayers do speak to that issue of finding your voice, having courage in your voice. And also there's, at least in this collection of prayers, one lament entitled Lament, because I think our connection with justice and compassion in some ways begins with lament. It begins with repentance and the way in which we have colluded with the forces that are antithetical to the way of Jesus. And once we're aware of that, conscious of that, then we have a platform from which we can speak into this with love and peace and joy and mercy and compassion as opposed to exclusion and anger and hatred and bitterness and strife. We have so much to share with a broken world on the basis of the deep well of spirituality in our Methodist tradition.

Let's take a break from our conversation with Paul to talk about church budgets. Let's be honest. When you hear apportionments, you might think, is that just a church budget thing? We get it. It sounds like accounting, but here's the truth. It's actually a story of ministry, mission and multiplication. Apportioned giving is how your small offering becomes part of something much bigger. That means supporting churches in underserved communities. That means funding seminaries, hospitals, and disaster response teams. That means reaching people you may never meet but who know God's love because of you. It's not about how much it's about all of us showing up together. You're part of a church that is united in impact. That's a story worth sharing and a story worth being part of. It starts with you and your faithful generosity. We are the people of the United Methodist Church, and together we are united in impact. Visit resourceumc.org/unitedinimpact to learn more. Now, back to our conversation with Paul.

Crystal: Sometimes I think that we are taught inside the church that being a peacemaker means not causing trouble or not causing waves. I mean, or that's been my experience, and I kind of counter that that's not true either, that we speaking out. I really appreciate what you said about silence. Living courageously is not meant to be done silently, but to speak out against the injustices that we see.

Paul: Let me just pull up real quickly here, just an excerpt from the danger of riches. Save me, oh God, from the pride that comes with riches, make me humble of heart. Save me, oh God, from the haughty spirit that accompanies wealth. Make me meek and low. Leave Spirit, save me, oh God, from the arrogance aligned with affluence. Make me patient and content in all things. Save me, oh God, from a sense of superiority to others. Make me zealous of works of mercy and piety. This is Wesleyan. This is what it means to be a Methodist. That's the ideal toward which we move as Methodists, as people who love boldly serve joyfully and lead courageously.

Crystal: Before we started recording, we talked a little bit about this idea of Christian maturity that we're seeing through these prayers or through these sermons that are now the prayers, which really I think also leads to the serving joyfully. Can you talk about that for just a minute?

Paul: Yeah. There's a really interesting parallelism, I think, between the Franciscan monastic tradition that goes back to Francis of Assisi and our Wesleyan heritage. And one of the things, and I don't want to take time now to kind of line out what all those connections are, but one of the things that was so interesting to me in my early study of the Franciscan tradition was the way in which it was always connected with joy. So wherever a Franciscan monk or nun went, they carried joy with them. So wherever they visited became a more joyful place after they'd been there. What a great idea that would be. So wherever we go in the world, in our communities, it would be more joyful us having been there. And I think the very same thing was true of early Methodism. I think many people have a kind of austere image of John Wesley in their minds, but there was a lot of joy in what Wesley did.

Here's a great, great example, just came to mind when Wesley was much older and could no longer ride his horse and instead rode around in carriages from preaching appointment to preaching appointment whenever he went to Bath, which was the place for the rich and famous in England at that time. He always ordered his carriage a half hour or so early before his appointment and collected street children in that unbelievably wealthy town. There were street children, and he collected those street children and joy rioted with them through the streets of Bath before he preached. Boy, what an image there. I don't think most people have that image of John Wesley in their minds.

And the early Methodist people discovered this joy in a relationship with God in Christ. I don't think a tradition becomes noted perhaps more than anything else for singing unless it's a joyful tradition. And I love to say that Methodism are Wesleyan heritage puts a song in your heart. It's a joyful journey. It's a joyful adventure, and we simply get to be part of it. What a privilege that is. And boy, if these are the kinds of things, crystal, that we're increasingly focused on as we live into our future as the United Methodist Church, what a transforming agent we could be in our world. And that's a part of our vision, transforming the world through our joy, through our love of others that's transparent and concrete. I love it.

Crystal: I love that too. When you were talking, when you starting to share the story, I thought you might share the story that I've heard recently, and I think Dr. Ashley Boggan recounted it on a podcast that Charles Wesley, perhaps maybe they were being thrown out of the town because he was preaching or singing, but he left singing or they came in singing. I don't know if you also know that story, but I just remember thinking the image of that is like they're not really even being welcome, but yet they're coming in with a song and joyfully, which is definitely going to be memorable.

Paul: Well, there are so many accounts of conversion that are related to somebody walking past a Methodist society, building a chapel, a Methodist chapel, hearing them singing, being drawn in by the singing and rediscovering joy. I love. There's an early Methodist woman by the name of Hester, Ann Rogers. Rowe was her maiden name, and her brother was at Oxford preparing for the ministry in the Church of England. And he was a very, I'll just say kind of a haughty, staunch Anglican person and very rational in everything that he did, very characteristic of the age. And she wrote him a letter basically talking about the happiness that she had found in life once she became a Methodist and talks a little bit about the nature of that happiness and joy that she had found. And he writes back to her, and I can't quote it verbatim, but I can get close to it.

He said, if this is true, he kind of doubted it. He said, I doubt it, but if this is true, I'd rather have that than anything else in the world. Well, isn't that where people are everywhere today? I mean, to have a life filled with happiness and joy, this is God's vision. This is what God having designed us and created us. This is God's intention for every human being, every human being and all means all be filled with the fullest possible happiness. And again, I just want to say to those Methodists listening, this is who we are. This is who God is calling us to be anew for a time such as this. Let's just spread our joy, spread our love, our care, our compassion as far and wide as we possibly can. I mean, wouldn't it be amazing if every United Methodist church, anywhere in the world was known as the place you go to find love and joy?

Crystal: Yes.

Paul: Wow. That's my vision. That's my dream.

Crystal: As we finish up today, Paul, I don't want to skip over how someone might use your book because I really appreciate it. In the introduction, you gave a few ways that a person could use it or a group could use it, a Sunday school. And I want you to be sure and share that because like I said, this is so core. Our Wesleyan heritage is just baked into these sermons, but they're not easy to read. But here's a way that we can learn more about that heritage and more about John Wesley. And so I'd love for you to just share just for a minute about how people can use your book.

Paul: Oh, sure. I'd love to. Well, first and foremost, 52 is the perfect number. So kind of standard use. If you want to simply read a reading, which includes the scripture text of John Wesley's sermon, the sermon translated into a prayer and then selections from Charles Wesley's hymns. So read one of those a week or dip back into it over the course of the week and use that as a part of your devotional rhythm over the course of a year. So over the course of a year, you will have immersed yourself in these important spiritual insights of both John and Charles Wesley. I might just add to that I made the decision very early in praying in the Wesleyan spirit to include HIMSS of Charles Wesley because the hymns engage a different part of you than the prayers or the sermons. And so I wanted to offer something to people that would touch in a lot of different directions, kind of thinking of the way different people learn.

So reading through poetry is different from reading through prose. I hope that's helpful. You can also, again, the perfect number, divide this into four sections of 13 each over the course of four weeks. Perhaps use each of the readings in the morning and evening, perhaps, so you can read through 13 of those basically in the course of a week. And small group use for this is really intentional as well. I've always found that processing what I read with a group of people often bring so much more richness out of it. Not out of the text per se, but out of what people share out of their own experience in relationship to it. So I highly encourage this to be used in small groups. You may have a small group that you're part of already, and this would be a great resource to use in that established group. Or maybe it provides an opportunity to start a new group to say, Hey, here's a resource we can use. It's not heavy reading. It's accessible to everyone. Let's read this together and then share our reflections on it. Yeah, I hope that helps the listeners to know what they can do with it.

Crystal: Absolutely. You said something earlier in our conversation that writing this book, putting this book together, really became a spiritual practice for you. When you reflect back on that process, how did it change you?

Paul: Well, several things I said. I think at one point earlier in our conversation that left 99 sermons, so I had to make some decisions, 52 more prayers in the Wesleyan spirit, which do I include? Which do I exclude? So to be blunt about it, I just went for what I like the best. So the selection is out of those remaining sermons where some of the ones that I thought were most important and touch my own heart in life, but it is a spiritual process I think of translating. Any translation involves that kind of spiritual process, discernment, how is it best to communicate what Wesley is talking about here in a way that connects with people today? So just thinking through that, praying through that. I mean, I did a lot of praying about the prayers.

So if to sing is to pray twice, I don't know, maybe translating something into prayer is to pray three times and maybe finally it just reinforced in my own mind and spirit how deeply important love is in our own personal lives and in the life of our world. This is why we exist to love God as fully as we possibly can. And the way I like to put it is to love everything else in God as fully as we possibly can. And obviously that includes those people right around us that we live life with day in and day out, as well as the stranger. How do we love? So really reinforced the centrality of that theme of love. Or as Charles Wesley wrote, love Divine All loves excelling the centrality of that love, not only in the life of a Christian, but perhaps in particular in the life of a Methodist, of a united Methodist. I want our life together to be all about love.

Crystal: As we finish our conversation about the new book, “Transformed by Grace,” is there anything you wanted to mention about it that we haven't yet talked about?

Paul: I think we've covered so much Crystal. There's nothing that comes immediately to mind other than the humble request that people look at it, take a look at it, use it, and I hope that God will work through it to change lives, to enrich lives and to make our world a better place.

Crystal: And we'll definitely put the link on the episode page of how folks can take a look, go through The Upper Room website and get that a copy for themselves. So now I'm going to ask you the question that we ask all of our guests on “Get Your Spirit in Shape,” which I've asked this to you multiple times about how do you keep your own spirit in shape?

Paul: Yeah, that's a simple response today: By reading my own book, “Transformed by Grace.” It’s interesting to me, after so much labor put into a product like this, a book like this, going back and seeing so many new things as I read back through it and use it, devotion for my own life, both those prayers and those hymns of Charles Wesley, they really are powerful.

Crystal: Well, thank you for your dedication and faithfulness in writing this book and translating that for all of us to appreciate and enjoy, and I'm just always so happy to have you as a guest on “Get Your Spirit in Shape.” It's just a real joy.

Paul: Same for me. Crystal. I love talking with you about good things, important things, maybe I should say, good, beautiful, and loving things.

Crystal: Yes, right. Thanks so much, Paul.

Paul: You're most welcome.

Epilogue

That was the Rev. Dr. Paul Chilcote, author of “Transformed by Grace: More Prayers in the Wesleyan Tradition.” To learn more, go to umc.org/podcast and look for this episode where you'll find helpful links and a transcript of our conversation. If you have questions or comments, feel free to email me at a special email address just for Get Your Spirit and shape listeners, gysis@umcom.org. If you enjoyed today's episode, we invite you to leave a review on the platform where you get your podcast. Thank you for being a “Get Your Spirit in Shape” listener. I'm Crystal Caviness and I look forward to the next time that we're together.

Today's “Get Your Spirit in Shape” episode was brought to you by Cokesbury, your partner in ministry. This Advent season make this advent a season of hope and connection with “Advent: A calendar of devotions 2025.” This meaningful and affordable resource offers daily readings from the first Sunday of Advent through Christmas Day, each with scripture, a short devotion and a prayer or practice perfect for your congregation, outreach or as gifts. These booklets come in packs of 10, can be personalized with your church's details and are also available as an ebook or daily email. Order today at cokesbury.com.