Posted By The Helwys Society on Feb 11, 2020 | 2 comments

This month marks the ten-year anniversary of the founding of the Helwys Society Forum (HSF). If you can believe it, our first article posted in February 2010. As a result, the next three posts will consider the HSF and its members. This article is co-written by its three founders: Matthew Steven Bracey, Jesse F. Owens, and W. Jackson Watts. Each of us will offer our reflections from the past ten years.

Bracey

When I think about the past ten years, several things come to mind. First concerns our founding. I was a student in Birmingham, Alabama, at the time. Several people had mentioned to me the desire they had for an online outlet among Free Will Baptists that engaged serious ideas in a serious manner. As I recall, other websites existed, but their purpose and focus differed from what we had in mind. Meanwhile, my mind was racing with ideas, as was Jackson’s and Jesse’s.

However, an online forum-ministry does not appear out of thin air. It requires prayer, planning, and hard work. I don’t recall who coined the name the Helwys Society Forum. Perhaps it emerged from a joint effort. Regardless, we founded the HSF to engage issues of theology, spirituality, ministry, and culture from a Reformed Arminian, Free Will Baptist perspective. I believe that we have stayed true to that goal and that we will continue to do so.

We began with five regular contributors. With time some would leave, and others would join. Today we have eight regular contributors, in addition to guests. I am personally proud of our contributors (past and present) and the work they’ve accomplished. We’ve posted articles, interviews, book reviews, and more. We’ve published several volumes of Connections, our occasional print journal.

In addition, other outlets have republished our content, including ONE Magazine as well as the Free Will Baptist Theological Commission’s website, or else highlighted our content, including Trevin’s Seven at The Gospel Coalition, the Society of Evangelical Arminians, and others. Many of our contributors have published and presented materials that saw their earliest germs on this site. I mention these things only to point to the way in which a good God has worked in and through this ministry.

A final observation concerns brotherhood and sisterhood. When I look back over the last ten years, I think not only of God’s blessings but also of my fellow contributors, guest authors, and readers of the site, and their friendships. I think of the tireless work of Jackson Watts (and others) in editing our publications and of Jesse Owens in working on the technical side of our site. Amazingly, God uses the willingness of His children to work and think together to strengthen the ties the bind them in Christ. I’m grateful to the community that the Forum as created, and I look forward to many more years of growing and learning and building together the Free Will Baptist denomination in the Kingdom of Christ.

Owens

I was a Senior at Welch College in 2010 when we posted our first essay on the HSF. Earlier in the school year, I’d spoken with several friends about the lack of solid, Reformed Arminian theological perspectives online. I also noted a lack of serious engagement with topics such as culture, ecclesiology, history, and literature in our circles. Everyone seemed to focus solely on “practical” issues. We wanted to fill that void with thoughtful, biblical articles and essays on these subjects.

Early on, I remember being concerned that what we were writing wasn’t practical enough—that we weren’t giving people enough articles with “10 Steps How To . . .” I remember some people criticizing us for that. However, I became convinced over time that what we were doing would make a long-term difference if we could just stick with it, be faithful, and keep writing.

The HSF has helped us to develop our critical thinking and writing skills, which has, in turn, helped our contributors play major roles in writing, contributing to, and editing multiple books in the past few years. I expect that number to continue to grow as we labor together to serve Free Will Baptists and the Reformed Arminian community.

I’ve mentioned “Reformed Arminians” on several occasions up to this point. When we started the HSF, we weren’t quite sure what to call ourselves. Theologians such as Robert E. Picirilli, F. Leroy Forlines, and J. Matthew Pinson had used terms such as “Reformation Arminianism” and “Classical Arminianism,” and we wholeheartedly affirmed their soteriology. But somewhere along the way, due to various conversations with these men and others, folks in our circles began to refer to our theology as “Reformed Arminianism,” which was an attempt to say something about our approach to soteriology but also our admiration for much of Reformed ecclesiology. We wanted to embody much of what we saw in the Reformed tradition in both arenas, which, to make a further connection, we believed that the leading English General Baptists of the seventeenth century did well.

Over the years, we’ve seen many come to identify their theology as Reformed Arminian, and many have reached out to us, thankful to have found what they believed to be a true middle-way between Wesleyan Arminianism and Calvinism. Reformed Arminianism still continues to raise eyebrows when people hear the title for the first time, but I think it represents well our approach to soteriology and ecclesiology. I expect that the number of those who refer to themselves as Reformed Arminians will continue to grow in the years to come.

I want to say a few things about longevity. Many Christian blogs have come and gone during the past ten years. One day this website will cease to exist. But its longevity can be directly attributed to the consistent efforts of Matthew Bracey and Jackson Watts. Matt and Jackson are more organized than I could ever hope to be. In many ways the HSF is just another example of their tenacious planning, scheduling, and editing. They’ve kept the various contributors to the HSF on-track over these ten years, and they are to be greatly commended. 

Early on the three of us dreamed about the hope of handing this site off to other young Free Will Baptists one day who could pick up the mantle and continue the efforts we’d begun. That was just a dream at that time. But when I look around at our younger Free Will Baptist pastors and laypeople, the new contributors we have to this site, and the young Free Will Baptist students I interact with on a regular basis, I have no doubt that Free Will Baptists and Reformed Arminianism have a very bright future.

I pray that the HSF has played a small part in the advancement of biblical theology, biblical spirituality, biblical ministry, and a biblical view of culture. That has always been our goal. I hope that our efforts in this endeavor can continue for another ten years, if the Lord wills. And I pray that the Lord is glorified in all of our efforts, for it is for Christ and His Kingdom that we labor. 

Watts

When I was attending seminary ten years ago, several friends and I found ourselves both encouraged and discouraged. We were encouraged by the life of the mind that Welch College, among other influences, had cultivated in us. We were enjoying good books that helped fuel the practical ministry that some of us had done during college and that some of us had become more deeply immersed into in those days. I know that was especially true for me. I was in my third year as a Christian Education Pastor at a church and could see how sound theology and a biblical worldview could speak to families, churches, and society.

But my friends and I were also discouraged. It seemed that most everything on offer in the way of theological and ministry insight was being circulated by schools, publishing houses, and other para-church organizations that were typically Calvinistic and certainly not anything resembling Free Will Baptist. So, in some way, the HSF was imagined as a corrective to that void. Conversations ensued, and eventually Matthew Bracey, Jesse Owens, Jeremy Craft, Ryan Johnston, and myself launched this venture.

Though we were different ages and from different places, we were all friends or colleagues from college. We shared a deep conviction that making sense of our church experience and culture was best done in community—hence the idea of a “forum.” The HSF has never been a conventional website or blog. Rather, we’ve invited our readers to be a part of a conversation.

It’s certainly true that a main core of contributors, who bring their various scholarly, vocational, and personal interests and experiences to the table, have predominantly done the writing. However, we have regularly given guest authors a platform to write, review books, and tell us about their ministries and pursuits through interviews. While Forum members shared a common, shared vision, we also wanted to invite others to participate in that vision. So whether it’s leaving comments or questions on the site, contacting us directly about material on the site, or sometimes contributing other content, we wanted Free Will Baptists of many backgrounds to see themselves as part of a vibrant online community. For that matter, we wanted anyone sympathetic to a Reformed Arminian perspective to share in this.

We share so much in common, but we are different, too. And where differences exist among contributors or readers, we hope to address those in thoughtful, honest ways. Unlike current societal trends, the last thing we want to foster is more tribalism that leads people to speak and act in counterproductive ways, retreating to their ideological camps. This isn’t just a danger for democratic republics like the United States. It’s also a temptation for the church of Jesus Christ. If Free Will Baptists would be a fruitful movement of churches, we must communicate.

We also cannot whitewash the past. We cannot sweep differences under the rug. We cannot chalk all debates up to matters of mere opinion (though some are just that). The Helwys Society is a group not only of eight people who enjoy writing. In truth, the Helwys Society is a collection of people who gladly own their General/Free Will Baptist heritage and allow it, along with the broader Christian tradition and its spiritual commitments, to teach them how to think and live well personally, in the body of Christ, and in society. To that end, we pray that our readership will continue to grow not only in number but also in breadth and depth.

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