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Kevin M. Watson

Kevin M. Watson

Category Archives: Class Meetings

Now Available: The Class Meeting

17 Tuesday Dec 2013

Posted by Kevin M. Watson in Accountability, Christian Living, Class Meetings, Methodist History, Ministry, Wesley

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

21st Century Class Meeting, books, class meeting, Methodism, small groups, Wesley

Life has been hectic the last month and a half! My thoughts recently turned to this blog and I realized that I had not announced here that The Class Meeting: Reclaiming a Forgotten (and Essential) Small Group Experience is now available. The book can be purchased in print directly from Seedbed at the previous link. (It is only available in print directly from Seedbed.) It can also be purchased electronically through a variety of e-formats, including Amazon Kindle. This link will take you directly to Amazon’s Kindle listing for the book.

Seedbed has created a page for the book that has much more information: http://classmeeting.seedbed.com/

Seedbed has also included a page that contains links to reviews written online: http://classmeeting.seedbed.com/reviews/

My previous post included several of the advanced reviews that the book received.

Finally, I wrote a post for Seedbed.com that was published on the day the book was released. I also did a video interview that they published. You can view the post here and the interview here.

I am encouraged and grateful for the enthusiasm I am seeing for reclaiming the Wesleyan class meeting. Thank you for your support!

Almost Here: New Book on the Methodist Class Meeting

30 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by Kevin M. Watson in Accountability, Christian Living, Class Meetings, Life, Methodist History, Wesley

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

The Class Meeting

Over the last few months, many of you have asked for updates on the progress of my book, The Class Meeting: Reclaiming a Forgotten (and Essential) Small Group Experience. The book is an introduction to the central role that the Wesleyan class meeting played in early Methodism, as well as a guide to reclaiming this kind of small group today.

I wrote this book because I have personally experienced the blessing of being in a class meeting and I believe that the Holy Spirit will continue to use this small group practice to help women and men grow in faith in Christ if we would only return to it. I believe the Wesleyan approach to small groups is one of great gifts that God has given to the “people called Methodists.” In many ways, writing this book is an attempt to test whether I am correct in my discernment that God wants to bring renewal to the Methodist/Wesleyan family through a return to this practice.

Here are a few practical details about the release of the book: The Class Meeting has gone to the printer and will be released on November 15 of this year. The list price for the book is $16.95. There is a 20% discount for all preorders of the book before November 15.

Seedbed has created a page that has quite a bit more information about the book, classmeeting.seedbed.com. If you want to read the first chapter of the book now, they will send you the first chapter if you enter your email address. If you are considering using the book in a group (which is my hope for the book), you can find out information about discounts on bulk orders here as well.

I am grateful for the support the book has received from people I admire and respect. Here are some of the things people have said about the book:

Kevin Watson has given us a wonderful gift. He has resurrected an historic Wesleyan practice—the class meeting—and given it fresh meaning, showing its relevance for the church today. Kevin shows us how the class meeting may be a perfect means for church renewal, a gift of God, through the Wesleyan movement, for such a time as this.
Will Willimon, Bishop UMC (retired)
Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry
Duke Divinity School

Kevin Watson has written a fresh new guide to the theory and practice of the Wesley Class meeting, an essential element of truly Wesleyan spirituality. As an experienced participant and initiator of class meetings in academic and congregational settings, Watson is a faithful guide. I highly recommend this book to clergy and congregations who are looking for ways to develop deeper discipleship and reconnect with our own, rich Wesleyan heritage.
Elaine A. Heath, Ph.D.
Southern Methodist University
Co-Founder, The Missional Wisdom Foundation
Director, The Academy for Missional Wisdom

Kevin Watson’s new book is a clarion call to recover the Methodist class meeting as a vital means of grace with an eye on the renewal of the church in the twenty-first century. Rightly balancing the
historical and the practical, Watson invites readers to embrace not only the generous value of the class meeting in the past but also to participate in what promise it holds for the present and beyond in raising up disciples of Jesus Christ.

Dr. Kenneth J. Collins
Professor of Historical Theology and Wesley Studies
Asbury Theological Seminary

As the United Methodist Church struggles to redefine itself and its mission for the next generation of disciples, Kevin Watson has managed to reconnect us to a timeless practice that has the potential of “revitalizing” our denomination—the Class Meeting!
With so much emphasis on declining membership and loss of relevancy, we are invited to rediscover what made Methodism and the Wesleyan movement so vibrant for over a century. Could it be that we’ve been looking in all the wrong places for the right answers? Watson reminds us that the class meeting is not an end in itself, but it has the ability to bring together and transform core groups of people who “are willing to invest in each other’s lives and who are desperate to grow in their relationship with Jesus.”
What I treasure most about this book is the way Watson traces the history of the class meeting, shares the basics of what should/should not take place within the group, and defines for us the role and qualities of the class leader. In other words, this is not a history book that simply tells us what happen then. Instead, it is a modern day road map that points us in the direction of what can happen now! If you are one of those Christians seeking to experience the height, depth, length, width and breath of God’s purpose and meaning for your life, you need to know you can discover it in a
place we’ve yet to look—the class meeting!

Robert Hayes, Bishop UMC

Like other key aspects of Christian living, the Wesleyan class meeting is often talked about today but seldom really practiced. For Wesley the class meeting included, but was much more than,
“small-group fellowship.”
Kevin Watson understands this, and he writes out of both research and personal experience. The strength of authentic Wesleyanism is that it denies the sharp distinction between head knowledge and heart experience. Rather, it unites them. We find that strength here in this practical book.
To be effective today, the class meeting must be re-contextualized (that is, made workable) without losing its essential dynamic as gospel-based accountable community. I commend this book as a useful tool that, if put into practice, can achieve that goal.

Howard A. Snyder, Ph.D.
Author, The Radical Wesley and Patterns for Church Renewal

We want to know and be known. We need to hear each other’s stories. Watson’s compelling case for reinventing the Methodist class meeting recognizes that holy living must be rooted in confession, accountable community, testimony, and gentle shepherding.
Stan Ingersol
Denominational Archivist, Church of the Nazarene

Dr Kevin Watson has given every church and pastor a gift! The gift is the reclaiming of the Wesley Class Meeting as the primary disciple growing tool. Any church willing to use this book as a guide will experience what I experienced at Christ Church United Methodist in Ft Lauderdale, Fl. I was there when
Wesley Fellowship Groups began and I had the honor to watch an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. If this is a hunger in your heart, then this book by Dr. Watson will be a “must read” for you.

Richard J. Wills, Jr., Bishop UMC (retired)

Dr. Kevin Watson’s emphasis upon renewing the Methodist movement takes a pragmatic approach. The intent of this book is to be practiced, not merely read.
Tom Harrison, Senior Pastor
Asbury United Methodist Church
Tulsa, Oklahoma

This powerful practice must be reclaimed, but not just for adults, for all ages. Do your youth pastor a favor and give him/her a copy of this deeply-rooted and thoroughly-practical book!
Jeremy W. Steele, Next Generation Minister
Christ United Methodist Church
Mobile, Alabama

Holy Conferencing: What Did Wesley Mean? (Part 2)

18 Thursday Jul 2013

Posted by Kevin M. Watson in Christian Living, Class Meetings, Methodist History, Ministry, Wesley

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

Christian Conference, Christian Fellowship, Class Meetings, Holy Conferencing, Methodism, Wesley

“Holy conferencing” seems to be one of the buzz words for contemporary United Methodism. This post is the second post on this topic. (It could be seen as the second of three posts, as an earlier post pointed out that Wesley himself did not use the phrase “holy conferencing.”) The first post discussed the contemporary use of “holy conferencing.” This post discusses what Wesley meant by the phrase “Christian Conference,” which is the phrase from Wesley that is usually connected to contemporary uses of holy conferencing.

What did Wesley mean by the phrase “holy conferencing”?

Well, he did not actually use the phrase. Nevertheless, most contemporary appeals to “holy conferencing” ground the phrase in the authority of John Wesley by suggesting that the phrase is synonymous with Wesley’s use of the phrase “Christian Conference.” So, this post is actually a discussion of Wesley’s use of the phrase “Christian Conference.”

In order to understand Wesley’s use of Christian Conference, it is helpful to think about how he uses the phrase as a general concept and how it functions as a practice. When Wesley talks about Christian Conference as a concept, he is generally talking about how Christians ought to converse with one another. However, when he talks about Christian Conference as a practice, it is located within his understanding of “social holiness” or communal formation. My argument here, then, is that Christian Conference should be understood to be a concept that is located within a particular understanding of communal formation. If you divorce the concept from the way it is located in a particular set of practices, you no longer have the full Wesleyan understanding of Christian Conference.

In order to understand Wesley’s use of Christian Conference, then, we will need to discuss the way he used the phrase as a general concept and the way he located it within a particular set of practices.

How did Wesley understand Christian Conference as a general concept? To start, I only found one use of the phrase in Wesley’s corpus. The passage where Wesley discusses Christian Conference is the “Large Minutes,” where it is listed as one of five instituted means of grace (meaning that it has a privileged position because it was instituted by Christ in scripture). The first four instituted means of grace are: Prayer, Searching the Scriptures, the Lord’s Supper, and Fasting. Here is what Wesley says about Christian Conference:

5. Christian Conference.
Are we convinced how important and how difficult it is to order our conversation right? Is it always in grace? Seasoned with salt? Meet to minister grace to the hearers?
Do we not converse too long at a time? Is not an hour at a time commonly enough?
Would it not be well to plan our conversation beforehand? To pray before and after it? (Wesley, Works, 10: 856-857)

This passage is interesting because it consists entirely of questions. It does not clearly define what Christian Conference is. We can only discern what it is by inferring what the questions imply. For the most part, this is relatively easily done with these particular questions. For example, Wesley believes that Christian Conferencing should usually be limited to an hour and it should be started and concluded with prayer. And yet, Wesley also seems to assume that there is clarity about the meaning of this phrase, so he doesn’t define it. Instead of talking about what Christian Conference is, he focuses on a few ways the practice could be improved.

The best passage that I am aware of where Wesley expands on this concept is in his sermon “The First-fruits of the Spirit.” (Thanks to Dr. Andrew C. Thompson for pointing me to this.)

5. They who ‘walk after the Spirit’ are also led by him into all holiness of conversation. Their speech is ‘always in grace, seasoned with salt’, with the love and fear of God. ‘No corrupt communication comes out of their mouth, but (only) that which is good; that which is ‘to the use of edifying’, which is ‘meet to minister grace to the hearers’. And herein likewise do they exercise themselves day and night to do only the things which please God; in all their outward behaviour to follow him who ‘left us an example that we might tread in his steps’; in all their intercourse with their neighbor to walk in justice, mercy, and truth; and ‘whatsoever they do’, in every circumstance of life, to ‘do all to the glory of God.’

6. These are they who indeed ‘walk after the Spirit’. Being filled with faith and with the Holy Ghost, they possess in their hearts, and show forth in their lives, in the whole course of their words and actions, the genuine fruits of the Spirit of God, namely, ‘love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, fidelity, meekness, temperance’, and whatsoever else is lovely or praiseworthy. They ‘adorn in all things the gospel of God our Saviour’; and give full proof to all mankind that they are indeed actuated by the same Spirit ‘which raised up Jesus from the dead’. (Wesley, Works, 1:236-237)

Note that Wesley uses many of the same phrases here that he uses in the questions in the “Large Minutes.” It is also significant that Wesley ties “holiness of conversation” so closely to the rest of a holy life. He wrote, “herein likewise do they exercise themselves day and night to do only the things which please God; in all their outward behaviour to follow him [Jesus].”

It is also significant that the discussion of holy conversation occurs within a sermon about “walking after the Spirit.” Holy conversation, then, is a part of a greater whole, where people are “filled with faith and with the Holy Ghost” and “possess… the genuine fruits of the Spirit of God.” Moreover, “holy conversation” is the result of being led by the Holy Spirit. It isn’t something that we bring with us to difficult conversations, it is something God does for us and in us.

So, how was this concept situated within the particular practices of early Methodism?

This is where, in my view, there is a clear divergence from the way that “holy conferencing” is most often used or understood in contemporary United Methodism, where it largely remains an abstract concept that generally applies to talking to other people, particularly about difficult topics.

For Wesley, Christian Conference was grounded in his emphasis on the importance of Christian communal formation, or social holiness. Several of the questions where Wesley discusses Christian Conference as an instituted means of grace suggest that Wesley was thinking of something like the class and band meetings. Wesley believed that the class meeting served to “minister grace to the hearers” through talking about the state of each person’s soul. He also pointed to the need to limit the duration of the meetings. And the “Rules of the Band Societies” include instructions to begin and end the meetings with prayer.

Consider, for example, the following passage where Wesley discussed the benefits of the class meeting:

It can scarce be conceived what advantages have been reaped from this little prudential regulation. Many now happily experienced that Christian fellowship of which they had not so much as an idea before. They began to “bear one another’s burdens,” and “naturally” to “care for each other.” As they had daily a more intimate acquaintance with, so they had a more endeared affection for each other. And “speaking the truth in love, they grew up into him in all things which is the head, even Christ; from whom the whole body, fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint supplied, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, increased unto the edifying itself in love.” (Wesley, “A Plain Account of the People Called Methodists” Works 9: 262)

Scholars have argued that for Wesley Christian Conference and Christian fellowship are nearly synonymous. (Thanks, again, to Andrew Thompson for pointing me to this.) So, when Wesley talked about Christian Conference as an instituted means of grace, he most likely had in mind a way of conversing that occurred within a particular context, where something like “bearing one another’s burdens” or “speaking the truth in love” was happening for the sake of growing in holiness. The place where this kind of conversation was expected to happen in early Methodism would have been obvious: the class meeting and the band meeting.

My sense, then, is that the early Methodist classes and bands would have been in the back of Wesley’s mind when he talked about Christian Conference, and not merely generic polite conversation. This becomes even more plausible when it is noted that immediately following Wesley’s list of the instituted means of grace, Wesley lists the “prudential” means of grace (because they are prudent, even though not explicitly instituted by Christ). Under the prudential means of grace “As Methodists” Wesley asks: Do you never miss any meeting of the society? Neither your class or band?” (Wesley, Works 10: 857)

As I began working on this, I emailed Dr. Randy L. Maddox and asked him for his thoughts on Christian Conference. In his response he said, “When Wesley refers to Christian Conference as an instituted means of grace, I think the class meeting is the best example of what he has in mind. This is particularly the case if we assume his primary focus in ‘means of grace’ is sanctification” (quoted with permission).

But why is the class meeting listed explicitly as a prudential means of grace for Methodists, and not also as an instituted means of grace for all Christians?

Wesley clearly acknowledged that the class meeting was not prescribed by Jesus. However, he did believe that something like the class meeting was. So, Wesley did believe that the general idea of small groups focused on our lives as followers of Christ was a general principle for all Christians. The class meeting was simply the particular way that Methodists were living out this principle.

So, what did Wesley mean by Christian Conference?

Christian Conference was honest, direct, piercing conversation with other Christians that was intended to help the participants grow in holiness. These conversations were most obviously situated within the weekly class meetings and band meetings. This relates to the first post on the contemporary use of holy conferencing, then, because Christian Conferencing was not generally understood to be having a one-time polite conversation about a controversial subject. Rather, it was focused on the details of individual people’s lives, where they were experiencing God and growing in faith and holiness, and where they were not experiencing God or failing to grow in faith and holiness.

The goal of Christian Conference, then, is to “walk after the Spirit,” and to be “filled with faith and with the Holy Ghost.” The means to this end, then, was through weekly meetings for prayer and “watching over one another in love.”

Now that is a practice worth reclaiming!

Kevin M. Watson is Assistant Professor of Historical Theology & Wesleyan Studies at Seattle Pacific University. You can keep up with this blog on twitter @kevinwatson or on facebook at Vital Piety.

The Class Meeting: Reclaiming a Forgotten (and Essential) Small Group Experience (Coming Soon)

24 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by Kevin M. Watson in Accountability, Class Meetings, Wesley

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Class Meetings, Seedbed, small groups

Seedbed has just posted a press release to their website about the book I will be publishing with them on the class meeting. You can read the entire release here. The working title of the book is: The Class Meeting: Reclaiming a Forgotten (and Essential) Small Group Experience. The purpose of the book is to help people form class meetings. In order to accomplish this purpose, the book provides an introduction to the class meeting and its central role for the early Methodist movement, as well as a practical guide to reclaiming this distinct kind of small group. The book is designed to be an eight week small group resource that helps a group to actually become a class meeting. The hope is that after the book is over, the group will continue meeting as a class meeting. To further facilitate this, the book includes questions for discussion and a transformation question that progressively guides the group to the heart of the class meeting: Discussing the state of each person’s relationship with God.

In the speaking I have done on the class meeting in various contexts, people have consistently asked me to recommend a resource that would help them guide a group toward becoming a class meeting. These requests, and the lack of a resource that is focused on a return to the class meeting, led me to write this book. My hope is that The Class Meeting will help people to actually start life-changing class meetings, not just learn about the small groups that were at the heart of early Methodism.

I am very excited about this book! I believe the class meeting continues to have enormous potential for Christian discipleship in this time and place. And from many of the conversations that have occurred here, I know that many of you do too. I am praying for the Holy Spirit to raise up a network of class meetings.

I will provide further updates on the release of the book here. As the press release states, Seedbed anticipates that the book will be in print this fall.

Kevin M. Watson is Assistant Professor of Historical Theology & Wesleyan Studies at Seattle Pacific University. You can keep up with this blog on twitter @kevinwatson or on facebook at Vital Piety.

Coming Soon: Reclaiming the Class Meeting

18 Thursday Apr 2013

Posted by Kevin M. Watson in Accountability, Christian Living, Class Meetings, Methodist History, Ministry, Wesley

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

catechesis, Christian formation, Class Meetings, life in god, methodist class, relationship with god

photo (8)If I had to pick one thing that I believe would be most likely to be used by the Holy Spirit to bring renewal to the church, it would be a return to the early Methodist class meeting.

And that is why I have finally gotten around to writing a book that is designed to introduce people to what a class meeting is and to help create and sustain these groups. I have just submitted my manuscript and am excited to see this book in print.

Class meetings were groups of seven to twelve people who gathered together to discuss the state of their relationship with God. The question used in the eighteenth-century was, “How does your soul prosper?” Today it might be translated, “How is your life in God?” Regardless of how the question is phrased, the most important thing is that the group is focused on each person’s relationship with God.

In my experience, when people want to grow in their faith, they typically assume that they need to know more. The problem of a lack of formation is often perceived to be a lack of information. I agree that all of us could stand to learn more about our faith and there is a key role for catechesis.

However, following Jesus is ultimately a way of life, not a body of knowledge about him. Too often, Christians do not practice what they do know.

The key contribution that the early Methodist class meeting would make for contemporary Christianity is that it would help people learn to look for encounters with God in every part of their life. They have the potential to help Christians learn to interpret every part of their lives through the lens of the gospel.

Above all else, contemporary Christianity needs Christians who are Christian not in name only, but women and men who are passionate and confident in their faith in Christ and who can speak to the ways that they have seen and experienced God’s work in their lives and in the lives of others.

I believe that the Holy Spirit wants to use this form of communal Christian formation once again to help people have an active faith in Christ, not merely a passive intellectual faith. And I believe that if this practice were to be reclaimed, it would be used by the Spirit to bring renewal.

If you are interested in reclaiming the class meeting in your faith community, stay tuned! I will update the progress and availability of the book here and on twitter (@kevinwatson).

If you’d like to read more about the class meeting, check out the series of posts I wrote here.

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