Kyle Hetrick
Formed to Discern: Toward a Practical Theology of Communal Discernment for the Church
Congregational discernment is frequently invoked whenever Christians gather to make decisions, yet the term often names practices that are theologically different: strategic planning opened with prayer, majority preference, clerical control, unmanaged intuition, therapeutic harmony, or religious endorsement of decisions already made. This article asks what makes communal discernment recognizably Christian. Drawing on Acts 15, the…
Can Revival Be Declared? Divine Agency, Discernment, and the Authority to Name Spiritual Awakening
When Christians call a gathering or movement a revival, they do more than report heightened religious activity. They attribute unusual agency to God, claim that this agency can be known, participate in shaping the movement through the act of naming it, and distribute institutional authority and historical legitimacy. This essay asks who may responsibly make…
Beyond Abstinence: Recovery as Christian Formation—A Wesleyan-Holiness Account of Grace, Agency, and Ecclesial Responsibility
This article asks how Wesleyan-Holiness theology can account for sustained recovery without spiritualizing substance use disorder or reducing recovery to abstinence and clinical stabilization. Using Richard Osmer’s four practical-theological tasks, it places addiction medicine and recovery research in disciplined dialogue with Scripture and Wesleyan accounts of grace, formation, and holy love. The article’s distinct contribution…