"The Saints Are Those Who Know Their Sins"

For a conference, I recently found myself in a Pentecostal Church of God congregation for perhaps— I think— the first time. There, a number of congregants approached me to talk to me about Shirley Pitts. She apparently had found an audience well beyond what I might’ve imagined. After fighting back tears, I remarked that Shirley is most definitely in the Kingdom gossiping about how she’s more popular than other saints.

Since I gave this Mockingbird talk about Shirley well before I started this Substack (and since we’re approaching All Saints) I thought I’d post it here. People often accuse me of not being a Wesleyan. I’d prefer to characterize myself as an inconvenient Wesleyan. What keeps me in the fold? While I’ve yet to bury, after 25 years, a Christian who was “perfect in love,” I have known Christians who died different from how they’d lived.

Shirley is Exhibit A for what keeps me in the sanctificationist fold. It’s perhaps the most un-Methodist thing that I stuck in one place long enough to see God change her. I’m still recovering from the fact of having seen God work.