My second (2 of 3) recent serendipitous discovery was a reference to the training of deaconesses for Black Canadian Methodists (British Methodist Episcopal).
 
In my Women in Christian History course I spend time dealing with the functions of the Order of Deaconesses in the early church, noting how it slowly disappeared in the early medieval period due in large measure to the surging monastic movement (a movement quickly embraced by women).
 
In my current research project, I was looking for information on Methodist attitudes to the Great War. As I did so I stumbled across a reference to the training of deaconesses (see above image). I was surprised to see the position of deaconesses here in the Black Methodist movement in Canada, and I now have a number of questions:

1. How far back in Methodist history does the office of deaconesses go? All the way back to John Wesley?
2. Are deaconesses something unique to Canadian Black Methodism? Or were there deaconesses in other branches of Methodism?
3. How many women served as deaconesses?
4. Does this mean Canadian Black Methodist women could not preach or pastor?
5. Who taught the deaconesses? Were they trained in the same way and place as the men training for ministry? 
6. Were the women separated from the men into separate schools? 

Fortunately, the manual for doctrine and discipline provided a detailed order of service for the dedication of deaconesses (Methodists were methodical, after all). Here it is! (click on image to enlarge)

Images from Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/doctrineanddisci00brituoft/page/n3/mode/2up

A quick bit of research provides an example of one woman who was a deaconess, one who eventually became an ordained minister in the British Methodist Episcopal Church (BME). In 1951, the deaconesses Addie Aylestock became “the first ordained women minister of the BME and the first Black Canadian women minister in Canada.”[1]
 
That, by the way, is an example of the joy of serendipity. I had never before heard of Rev. Addie Aylestock, but a chance glance at a Methodist document led to a wonderful new discovery.


[1] https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/addie-aylestock

The great sixteenth-century German reformer Martin Luther should have been the one to quip “never let a good crisis go to waste.”[1]
 
In 1521, Luther was whisked away by his supporters to hide him from the prying eyes of the emperor’s secret police or any other opportunistic bounty hunter. Luther had just become an outlaw for refusing to recant at the Diet of Worms, and as a result he had a price on his head payable to anyone who turned him into the state.
 
His supporters took him to the Wartburg Castle, and there Luther stayed in hiding for just under a year. He did not choose to go. He did not want to go. He did not enjoy being there. But he adapted and made the best of it.
 
In fact, that year in lockdown played a critical and formative role in his ministry.
 
The parallels with today’s pandemic lockdown are similar in a number of ways:

• Luther grew a beard.
• Luther struggled with depression.
• Luther was lonely.
• Luther was frustrated.
• Luther was worried about his flock and how it was faring without his leadership.
• Luther even fought with the devil (or so the story goes – he allegedly threw his ink well at the devil).

 
Yet at the same time he set his mind to accomplish things he could not have accomplished had he stayed in the public eye and faced the constant pressures of parish life. The solitude – as much as he did not want it – was exactly what he needed to prepare foundational texts and theological convictions for what was to come. His translation of the New Testament into the German language was one of the greatest accomplishments of his life - and it began at the castle.
 
The obvious application is for us to ask ourselves what we can do in our own “Wartburg Castle.”[2]
 
We have not asked to be locked down, but perhaps we can use the time to accomplish something(s) that we could not have done otherwise. Solitude is hard – as Luther could attest – but perhaps there is something we can do, or learn, or create, or write, or play, or research, or even become, in our solitude that would not have been possible if the hustle and bustle of life did not stop. And lockdown happen.
 
Luther eventually was able to leave Wartburg Castle, and then spent the next two and half decades in never-ending struggles in life and ministry.
 
Lockdown will eventually end for us too, and we will walk out of our own “Wartburg Castle” to face what awaits. In the meantime, let us, like Luther, use our lockdown for great things.


[1] It was Winston Churchill.
[2] The idea of our lockdown being similar to Luther’s at Wartburg came about through a conversation this week with my friend Dr. James Robertson, a professor at Tyndale University.

It is hard not to be afraid in the midst of a pandemic. And as we (here in Ontario) face yet again a furthering of lockdown restrictions, it is easy to fear going shopping for essentials in the presence of those who may carry the dreaded Covid 19 virus.
 
When fear lurks in my heart, I often think of John Wesley’s[1] iconic encounter with German Moravians on a ship in the midst of a cold Atlantic winter storm in January 1736. And I am reminded that my way forward in the pandemic is to “shop like a Moravian.”
 
Sailing across the Atlantic in a relatively small wooden ship in the eighteenth century was, as one author notes, “not for the weak at heart.”[2] What made it worse for Wesley was that he had never before been on a ship and had a fear of the ocean from youth.[3] Yet there he was, tossed about it the dark with no means of rescue. 
 
And then he saw the Moravians, fearlessly singing and praying in the midst of a storm while he and others wailed in fear. Wesley described the event this way: “In the midst of the psalm wherewith their service began, the sea broke over, split the mainsail in pieces, covered the ship, and poured in between the decks, as if the great deep had already swallowed us up. A terrible screaming began among the English. The Germans calmly sang on. I asked one of them afterward, ‘Were you not afraid?’ He answered, ‘I thank God, no.’ I asked, ‘But were not your women and children afraid?’ He replied, mildly, ‘No; our women and children are not afraid to die.’” (January 1736)
 
The Moravians had a vivid sense of the presence and protection of God, and that led to their being able to deal with their fear. As others cried and cowered, they were courageous. 
 
Wesley was profoundly impressed with their faith – something that he as a priest of the church lacked. However, in subsequent encounters with the Moravians he too grew to become like them. And as result, he too could face the dangers of ministry with a fearless courage that impressed even his opponents.
 
The current pandemic can be a fearful time. And there are many ways to survive and even thrive in the midst of it. What we can learn from Wesley is that one way to be courageous is for us to imitate the Moravians. Or, stated differently, “shop like a Moravian.”


[1] An Anglican priest and key founder of Methodism.
[2] Richard P. Heitzenrater, Wesley and the People Called Methodists (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995), 58.
[3] Richard P. Heitzenrater, Wesley and the People Called Methodists (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995), 58.