Cultivating Christlikeness

Are you ready to reclaim our inheritance as United Methodist Wesleyans? Our communities and the world are crying out for empathy, authenticity, and integrity. This book helps us choose ways of living that are grace-filled and redeeming. Cultivating Christlikeness is about the bold adventure of United Methodists celebrating and living into a grand vision that includes everyone in God's extravagant embrace. Jesus invites us to partner in the work of transformation, new birth, and resurrection in every aspect of our lives. Together, we can step into a future showered by God's multiplying love. Paul Chilcote mines his decades of study, prayer, and devotion to Christian practices to share his vision for how we partner with God to make the world more loving and just. In Cultivating Christlikeness, he weaves the threads of insight and appreciation with special attention to Wesleyan ways of loving God and neighbor that can change us and change the world. With his gentle direction, we discover with new appreciation how 18th-century John and Charles Wesley illumine our 21st-century quest to befriend Jesus, who frees us to live into and by the grace of God. Chilcote's book is a practical guide, leading us through selected excerpts from the Wesleys, adding fresh insights and probing questions as we explore essential teachings about God and the beloved community. He helps us know how to share these understandings with our families and neighbors, and more importantly, he points us to ways to live out our commitments with purpose, courage, and joy. The framework and flow of Cultivating Christlikeness make it easily adaptable for group discussion and individual use. It includes a plan for a two-day retreat for those eager to join in a more intensive experience of mutual engagement to renew their spirits and discover fresh ways to grow in love and grace. The book is a companion to Chilcote's Multiplying Love (Abingdon Press, 2023) that casts the theological vision that animates this practical spiritual guide. And it is an updated and expanded revision of an earlier work entitled Wesley Speaks on Christian Vocation, originally published by Discipleship Resources then reissued by Wipf & Stock.