Category Archives: Methodist History

On the Class Meeting

27 Tuesday Mar 2012

Posted by in Accountability, Christian Living, links, Methodist History, Ministry

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I recently wrote a post for Seedbed on “How to Reclaim Wesleyan Class Meetings.” Check it out if you are interested.

For those of you who are finding your way to my blog for the first time because of the Seedbed article – Welcome!

A year and a half ago I wrote a series of posts on the Wesleyan Class Meeting for the 21st century that may be of interest to Seedbed readers who want to learn more. For convenience, here are the titles of the posts in that series:

1. The Origin and Development of the Class Meeting.
2. The Potential Contribution of the Class Meeting for 21st c. Wesleyans/Methodists.
3. The Target Audience of Class Meetings.
4. Top Ten Ways to Guarantee Your Class Meeting Will Fail (Intended to be humorous).
5. Is the Class Meeting too Judgmental and Exclusive?
6. The Role of the Class Leader.

A good friend of mine from Munger Place, a church plant from Highland Park UMC in east Dallas, described his experience being a contemporary class leader in an excellent and insightful series of posts that gives a valuable perspective into the lay experience of the class meeting. His posts can be found here:

1. My experience with classes and the role being in a small group has played in my faith journey.
2. The impact leading a class meeting has had on my Christian faith.
3. The impact of classes on my church.
4. The potential impact of class meetings on The UMC.

Finally, I have received questions in various online forums about the difference between the early Methodist class meeting and contemporary Covenant Discipleship groups. I am working on a post to describe the similarities and differences of these two groups as I see them.

As always, if you would like to subscribe to this blog and automatically receive future posts, you can subscribe by email by clicking here or in a reader by clicking here.

Love Feast

16 Friday Mar 2012

Posted by in Christian Living, Life, Methodist History, Wesley

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On February 18, 1750 John Wesley wrote in his Journal:

“Today, likewise, wherever we assembled together, God caused his power to be known, but particularly at the love-feast. The honest simplicity with which several spoke, in declaring the manner of God’s dealings with them, set the hearts of others on fire, and the flame spread more and more, till, having stayed near an hour longer than usual, we were constrained to part.” (Works 20:321)

Recently, I have been experiencing the way that God does seem to cause his power to be known when people speak with “honest simplicity” about the ways they have experienced God’s work in their lives. Yesterday, I was able to be a part of a love feast with Seattle Pacific Seminary students. We took an hour and a half in the middle of finals to share some light food and talk about how we have experienced God over the past few months.

The best part was that Wesley’s testimony to the power of the love feast in the above account came to life for me in a new way. As we shared with each other, I gained an experiential understanding of what the early Methodists experienced at this love feast when the Holy Spirit “set the hearts of others on fire, and the flame spread more and more.” And I think all of us left feeling like we had been renewed by our encounter with the living God.

In fact, I have been experiencing God’s presence in my life in new ways over the last month or so. I have been blessed several times in the last month with a tangible experience of God’s presence as I have been a part of conversations where people spoke with honesty and simplicity about “the manner of God’s dealings with them.” I have left each of these conversations with a deeper awareness of God’s goodness and his steadfast love for me.

Through these conversations I have experienced my own brokenness more deeply than ever and my deep need for the healing that only God can bring. In one conversation, a dear friend reminded me of two qualities of God: gentle and jealous. I was reminded that God is gentle, that he is so tender and careful with us. God loves us deeply and perfectly at every single moment of our lives. He has never been disappointed in us.

And yet he is jealous. God wants all of us. He wants us to be wholly given to him and the purposes that he has for our lives.

This is why, as I tweeted a few days ago, I still believe entire sanctification is the grand depositum that God has given to the people called Methodist. The gospel is the good news of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ through the crucifixion and the resurrection. Christianity is the promise of salvation, of healing, of rescue to the broken, the hurting, the perishing. But just like the church cannot get to Easter Sunday without Good Friday, we cannot get to the hope for new life in Jesus Christ without recognizing our own brokenness. We cannot save ourselves, we need a savior. And thanks be to God, we are offered salvation through the person and work of Jesus.

I am convinced that the fullness of the gospel is not only hope for life after death. The fullness of the gospel is not a few strategies for improving your life at work or at home. And though I love The United Methodist Church and desperately want it to have a future that is filled with God’s presence, the fullness of the gospel is not survival.

The fullness of the gospel is that at every point of need in our lives God has already acted to meet the need. The fullness of the gospel is that salvation is freely offered to every single person. The fullness of the gospel is that sin is no longer necessary, because the Great Physician is ready to heal us of all that is not in accordance with his purposes. The fullness of the gospel is that we can experience forgiveness for all that we have done that we should not have done and that we can actually live the kind of life that God created us to live.

When I was in high school I read a quote by Henry David Thoreau that has haunted me every since I first read it, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” I think Thoreau is probably right. This would be very bad news, if this were all there news there is. But thanks be to God it isn’t. The good news is that we do not need to live lives of quiet desperation, it is not necessary or inevitable. We can live fully and obediently in God’s presence today!

As Paul says in a moving passage at the end of Romans 8, “I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 8:38)

Anything contrary to God’s purposes in our lives is no longer necessary. Which is not to say that it no longer has a hold on our lives. We cannot release ourselves. But God can and thanks be to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit that he is both able and willing.

These are some of the ways my heart has been set on fire as I have heard others share God’s “manner of dealing with them.” Thanks be to God for love feasts!

John Wesley on the End of the World

19 Thursday May 2011

Posted by in Methodist History, Wesley

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For a period of time George Bell was a preacher in John Wesley’s “connexion.” As Bell was accused of “enthusiasm”, Wesley was initially hesitant to disassociate himself from Bell. The breaking point for Wesley came when Bell prophesied the end of the world on February 28, 1763. Here is what Wesley wrote in his published Journal when the day Bell prophesied the world would end arrived:

Preaching in the evening at Spitalfields on ‘Prepare to meet thy God,’ I largely showed the utter absurdity of the supposition that the world was to end that night. But notwithstanding all I could say, many were afraid to go to bed, and some wandered about in the fields, being persuaded that if the world did not end, at least London would be swallowed up by an earthquake. I went to bed at my usual time and was fast asleep about ten o’clock. (John Wesley, Journal, February 28, 1763, Works of John Wesley, Bicentennial Edition, vol. 21: 407.)

A Future with Hope for The United Methodist Church

12 Tuesday Apr 2011

Posted by in Book Review, Christian Living, Methodist History, Ministry

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The recent conversation about the Call to Action report and the Leadership Summit (known in the twittersphere as #umclead) has stirred up quite a bit of conversation amongst United Methodist leaders about the future of the denomination. It has also revealed a significant amount of discontent with the status quo as well as the proposals from the CTA about a way forward. One particular concern I have frequently heard is related to the role of younger people in the church. We hear a lot about the need for younger clergy in particular, but are we ready to entrust the church to them?

From that perspective, the timing of the release of Generation Rising: A Future with Hope for The United Methodist Church could not be better. The book is written by younger leaders in The United Methodist Church about why the church has a hopeful future.

As Andrew C. Thompson notes in the introduction, “There is one thing that is lacking in recent books on Wesleyan renewal in the church, though: the voice of a younger generation” (xii). To put it bluntly: a lot of people are talking about the future of the church. But the people who are consulted about the future, or given a platform to talk about what is needed for a bright future, are usually not people who are the future of the church!

If for no other reason, then, I am excited by this book because it is one of the first attempts to let the folks who are the future speak for themselves. I am pleased that Abingdon has chosen to support this task. I hope the book will be successful because that would be a sign to younger generations that the general church really does care about who we are, what we think, and what we are passionate about. Success for the book would also be great because Abingdon and other publishers are driven by profit and a desire to make money. If this book sells, it will be easier to make the case that there is a market for voices like these in the future. (I am thinking of the numerous books that came out related to emergent that began with Brian McLaren’s success and eventually led to folks being published who would not have been published otherwise. I am particularly reminded of this book, which is like Generation Rising for emergent: An Emergent Manifesto of Hope.)

The book contains multiple excellent chapters addressing the following topics: Discipleship (Andrew C. Thompson), Holy Communion (Timothy Reinhold Eberhart), Preaching (Joy Jittaun Moore), Evangelism (Jeffrey Conklin-Miller), Small Groups (Kevin M. Watson), Missions (Arnold S. Oh), Race (F. Douglas Powe, Jr.), Ecology (Presian Burroughs), Youth Ministry (Sarah Arthur), Young Adults (Julie O’Neal), Ordination (Eric Van Meter), and Internet Ministry (Shane Raynor).

If you were reading carefully, you may have noticed that I wrote the chapter on small groups. My chapter provides an introduction to the historical background of small group accountability in early Methodism. I then argue that involvement in a small group (class meetings) was basic to what it meant to be a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church for the first several decades of Methodism’s existence as a church in its own right in the United States. Ultimately, I suggest that reclaiming something like the class meeting for the contemporary United Methodist Church is key to a hopeful future for Methodism. In many ways, writing this chapter was the stimulus for much of the writing I have done here over the past few months about the relevance of the class meeting for 21st century Methodism. If you have enjoyed the posts here, you may want to read my more formal discussion of similar issues in this book.

The book is edited by Andrew C. Thompson, blogger and sometime columnist for the United Methodist Reporter. Andrew is also finishing his ThD at Duke Divinity School and will begin teaching Wesleyan Studies at Memphis Theological Seminary this fall. One of the real joys of working on this project with Andrew and the other authors is that in reading their work and interacting with them, I have found even more hope for the future. I am grateful to have been included in this project and hope you will check it out.

New Volume of Wesley’s Works Forthcoming

07 Thursday Apr 2011

Posted by in Book Review, Methodist History, Wesley

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I am anxiously awaiting the release of vol. 10 of the Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley. The title of vol 10 is The Methodist Societies: The Minutes of Conference and will contain, as the title helpfully implies, the minutes from the various conferences in early Methodism. I am particularly interested in getting a copy of this book in my hands because there are several passages from various minutes I would like to cite from the critical edition in my dissertation. This volume is edited by Henry D. Rack, who is best known for his biography of John Wesley, which is seen by many as the standard biography of John Wesley.

The Bicentennial Edition is the scholarly edition of John Wesley’s works, as distinguished from the Jackson edition, which is much cheaper, but is not comprehensive and contains no footnotes or annotations. The Bicentennial Edition is fairly expensive (although about a year ago, Cokesbury was selling the previously published volumes for $15 each) but it is, in my view, a worth while expense for the library of any pastor in the Wesleyan family. The Bicentennial Edition has published all of the volumes of Wesley’s sermons and all of the volumes of Wesley’s Journals and diaries.

Are you as excited as I am?

The General Rules and a Holy Lent

09 Wednesday Mar 2011

Posted by in Accountability, Christian Living, links, Methodist History, Ministry, Wesley

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One of many highlights of last week’s annual meeting of the Wesleyan Theological Society was a conversation I had with Michael G. Cartwright about a new resource on the “General Rules.” Cartwright and Andrew D. Kinsey have developed “Watching Over One Another in Love: Reclaiming the Wesleyan Rule of Life for the Church’s Mission” which is a 28 day day study of the “General Rules.” I have not had the chance to read through this resource, but it looks excellent and I am looking forward to getting into it. (My first impression, when I was given a copy was that the design and layout is beautiful!)

And the price of this resource is right. You can download it here for free! For more, you can also go to The Indiana Annual Conference’s Wesleyan ConneXion page to download another free resource that contains articles by Richard P. Heitzenrater and William J. Abraham on the relevance of the Wesleyan tradition for contemporary United Methodism.

As I write this on Ash Wednesday, I can’t help but think that using “Watching Over Another in Love ” could be a great way to help you have a holy Lent in preparation for the good news that we will hear again on Easter Sunday. In fact, it would be a great way to take on John Meunier’s recent challenge to focus on what it would look like to “be Methodist” during the forty days of Lent.

Published in Methodist Review

06 Thursday Jan 2011

Posted by in Article Review, Life, Methodist History, Wesley

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For those of you who may be interested in my research on the early Methodist band meeting, I have recently had an article published in Methodist Review an online, peer-reviewed academic journal. The title of my article is “Forerunners of the Early Methodist Band Meeting” and (as the title suggests) it explores the key antecedents that influenced the development of the Wesleyan Methodist bands.

If you want to read the article, you simply have to register with Methodist Review (which is free) and then download the PDF file. Once you register you have access to both vols. 1 and 2 of the journal and can download any or all of the articles that have been published.

The Methodist Class Meeting for the 21st Century: Where Are They Now?

18 Thursday Nov 2010

Posted by in Accountability, Christian Living, Methodist History, Ministry, Wesley

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It has been awhile since I have added to my series on the class meeting for the 21st century. (If you have missed this series and want to learn more about the relevance of Wesleyan class meetings for the 21st century, click here for the last post and an outline of the entire series.) I recently received a great question from a reader about my post on the class meeting for the 21st century. The basic question was, Are there Methodist churches that have class meetings? The question is so good, I am going to dedicate a post to it.

The short answer is Yes!

In the Dallas-Fort Worth area I have worked with several ministries about starting something like a contemporary version of the class meeting. Here are three different ministries and the way that they have implemented a 21st century version of the class meeting in their unique contexts:

1. Munger Place Church

Munger Place Church is a congregation that was relaunched by Highland Park United Methodist Church. Public worship began at Munger Place just over a month ago. Munger Place has adopted the class meeting as their basic approach to small groups, which they call “Kitchen Groups.” In the first month as a worshiping congregation, Munger has already had a small group launch that resulted in starting five Kitchen Groups. The leaders for these five groups came from a previous small group that began meeting last spring. My family has been part of the leadership team that helped “relaunch” Munger Place and we have been blessed to be involved with Kitchen Groups as well. I am excited by the way that Andrew Forrest, the campus pastor, has embraced the class meeting model and renamed it. When Andrew talks about membership at Munger Place, he always mentions that part of the expectations of membership include involvement in a Kitchen Group. (One caveat: The link to the Kitchen Group page on the Munger website contains a video that is not specifically about Kitchen Groups. The video was actually made by Cornerstone for their small group ministry, which has a bit different emphasis.)

2. S.M.U. Wesley Foundation

This is an example of a way that a United Methodist campus ministry is implementing a Wesleyan approach to small groups. This year, the Wesley Foundation at Southern Methodist University has started both class meetings and band meetings. Every time I meet with the director, Andy Roberts, and intern from Perkins School of Theology, Robert Perales, I leave energized and excited by the ways that both Andy and Robert are pouring themselves into the students at S.M.U. From the conversations with them, I am coming to see campus ministry as a context that is particularly ripe for Wesleyan forms of communal Christian formation. Andy has recently invited me to speak with the students leaders at the Wesley Foundation over a few weeks in the Spring – I can’t wait!

3. Nexus Community, A Church of the Nazarene

Finally, I was invited by Nexus Community, which at the time was part of Richardson Church of the Nazarene and has since become a new church plant, to share with them about the history of Wesleyan small groups and their contemporary relevance. The last time I spoke with them, I broke the congregation up into small groups and we did a “speed class meeting.” This gave everyone a chance to experience a very abbreviated form of the class meeting and dip their toes in the water of talking about their lives with God. Nexus has since started three class meetings, one meets at the church and two meet in the leaders’ homes.

These are just three examples, and I only know about them because of the ways I have been invited to walk beside them as they begin to reclaim the Wesleyan practice of “watching over one another in love.” Do you know of churches that have 21st century class meetings? Have you been in one? Please leave a comment and share your experience!

Campbell on the Wesleyan Belief in Entire Sanctification

15 Monday Nov 2010

Posted by in Book Review, Christian Living, Methodist History, Wesley

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In a previous post, I recommended Ted A. Campbell’s Wesleyan Beliefs: Formal and Popular Expressions of the Core Beliefs of Wesleyan Communities. One of the highlights of the book is Campbell’s discussion of the continuing relevance of the Wesleyan doctrine of entire sanctification or Christian perfection. Campbell makes the most persuasive and helpful case for the ongoing value and relevance of the Wesleyan doctrine of entire sanctification that I have read in some time. Here is the key passage:

The doctrine of entire sanctification is a great gift at the heart of historic Wesleyan communities, a gift that, I am inclined to say, Wesleyan Christians could neglect only at the peril of losing what has been the heart of their distinctive beliefs. It is grounded in the consistent biblical mandate that the end (telos) or goal of human existence is complete love for God, and love for our neighbors as the natural concomitant and sign of love for God… I find John Wesley’s twofold rationale for the doctrine of entire sanctification unassailable:
1. God intends that we should love God completely.
2. God can accomplish what God intends.
Once these two points are understood, the doctrine of entire sanctification can be understood as the heart of biblical religion… It creates a space where ancient saintliness can meet modern life and thus it is a gift of grace for the contemporary world. (233)

Amen!

Generation Rising: A Future with Hope for The UMC

08 Monday Nov 2010

Posted by in Accountability, Book Review, Christian Living, Methodist History, Ministry, Wesley

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Andrew Thompson has written a post about a book that Abingdon will be publishing in the Spring, Generation Rising: A Future with Hope for the United Methodist Church. Thompson is the editor of the book, which features chapters from twelve different younger leaders in the UMC about the future of the denomination. (Click on the link to Andrew’s post to see a list of the authors of the various chapters, the titles of each chapter, and the cover of the book.)

I was thrilled to be asked by Andrew to write a chapter on the role of small groups for the future of the UMC. My chapter gives a brief history of the role of “watching over one another in love” through a form of small group accountability in early Methodism. I then explore the relevance of the past for the present by addressing some of the challenges to embracing this Wesleyan communal practice in the 21st century. Ultimately, I argue that a return to such a practice will be essential for the renewal of United Methodism. I see the chapter I wrote for Generation Rising as a key part of what I have been doing here in my series on the relevance of the class meeting for the 21st century. If you have found that conversation to be beneficial, I hope you will read my chapter.

I am excited to be a part of this project, because I am thrilled to be part of a collaborative effort to give voice to what younger leaders in the UMC think is needed in order for United Methodism to have a future with hope. One of my frustrations about efforts to restore vitality to our denomination is that they typically fail to represent the vision or insights of the people who are the future of the church. This project is one attempt by younger folks in United Methodism to share what our sense is of where we are and what the most promising and hopeful way forward is. It is written by people who love the church and are committed to it.

I appreciate Andrew’s vision, initiative and leadership in conceiving this project, and his work to bring it to fruition. I also appreciate Abingdon Press’s recognition of the importance of giving voice to the experience and insights of younger generations within the church. Ultimately, I hope Generation Rising is only the beginning of a broader conversation about the way forward for the church.