Last week, while studying for an exam, I took a break and spent a few minutes browsing in Cokesbury. The woman working there was very friendly. She noticed that I was perusing the Methodist section and told me that the 2008 Book of Discipline was out, which people were very excited about.

Has anyone ever actually read the Book of Discipline? I will willingly concede that it is a good idea to have a copy of the new Discipline, as it is the formal rule book for how we conduct our lives together as Methodists. But get excited about it? It isn’t exactly the 8th book in the Harry Potter series.

At best, we are a weird people if the Book of Discipline is the kind of thing we get excited about.

The conversation from my brief post about the early Methodist class meeting has caused me to think about resources that deal with the early Methodist practice of watching over one another in love. Here are some of the ones I consider to be the best:

David Lowes Watson The Early Methodist Class Meeting: Its Origins and SignificanceAmong Wesley scholars this is the book that is usually cited related to the history of the early Methodist class meeting. Watson discusses, as the subtitle indicates, the origins and significance of the class meeting. The primary value of this book, in my view, is that it was the first in depth academic exploration of a piece of the Methodist organizational structure. It helped moved scholarship beyond passing references to the importance of the class meeting and began to actually look at it in its own right.

D. Michael Henderson A Model for Making Disciples: John Wesley’s Class MeetingAs I remember it when I read this book a few years ago, this is an easier read than Watson’s book. It also seems that it is currently being read by a wider audience (especially if the current amazon ranks of each book are any indication… though these can fluctuate quite a bit). To be fair, Watson’s Early Methodist Class Meeting is not necessarily intended to appeal to a lay audience.

Steve Manskar Accountable Discipleship: Living in God’s HouseholdManskar takes a bit broader approach, focusing on the importance of accountable discipleship more generally, with roughly one third of the book focusing specifically on the distinctly Methodist approach to discipleship. In part, Accountable Discipleship also seeks to flesh out the rationale for Covenant Discipleship Groups, more on that below. (Manskar is also the director of Accountable Discipleship at the General Board of Discipleship and blogs at Accountable Discipleship.)

Finally, David Lowes Watson’s adaptation of the early Methodist class meeting was Covenant Discipleship. He developed his understanding of Covenant Discipleship in a trilogy. (I am sorry to say that you probably won’t find it to be a page turn in the same way that this trilogywas.) The books in the trilogy are Covenant Discipleship: Christian Formation Through Mutual Accountability; Class Leaders: Recovering a Tradition; and Forming Christian Disciples: The Role of Covenant Discipleship and Class Leaders in the Congregation.

Probably the most accessible book that explains what Covenant Discipleship is and how to do it is Gayle Turner Watson’s Guide for Covenant Discipleship Groups

I will try to add these to the Wesleyan resources page in the next few days.

Meanwhile, are there any resources I neglected to mention related to the Methodist practice of watching over one another in love?

In studying for my upcoming field exam in 17th and 18th century British and American Church History, I came across this quote from Sydney Ahlstrom’s A Religious History of the American People(which is, incidentally, an excellent survey of American Religious History):

“So long as it prospered, the class meeting was the institution which did most to guarantee that church membership was not merely a nominal affiliation.” (373)

I am guessing that Ahlstrom would not be surprised, then, that Methodist membership today is far too often nominal.

Melissa and I worshiped this morning at Cornerstone, the contemporary worship service at Highland Park United Methodist Church. Before the sermon they played this video, which had a powerful impact on the congregation:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

(This video was originally posted at pacehartfield.com. To see the original post, click on this link.)

Yesterday I purchased the domain http://deeplycommitted.com! This means that if you are in the habit of manually typing the url into your browser you no longer have to type “wordpress”. The domain used to be https://deeplycommitted.wordpress.com, but it is now http://deeplycommitted.com. If you forget and type the old address, no big deal, you will simply automatically be redirected to deeplycommitted.com.

According to the folks at wordpress, if you have subscribed to this blog, your subscription should still work (either by email or to a reader account). However, they do suggest updating the subscription to be safe. I have updated the links on the top right of this page that allow you to subscribe in a reader or subscribe by email. So, you should be able to simply click on either of those to subscribe to deeplycommitted.com.

I don’t know about you, but http://deeplycommitted.com just seems so much more hip (and easy to remember) than https://deeplycommitted.wordpress.com! If you are just as excited as I am, consider it my early Christmas present to you. (And don’t expect anything else…)

And if you haven’t already subscribed to deeply committed, why not do it now? By subscribing you don’t have to come directly to the site to check for new content and it will be brought directly to you so you don’t ever miss it. All you have to do is click on the link to subscribe in a reader, or subscribe via email.

Just a quick update to interrupt the consecutive days without posting streak…

I very much enjoyed a respite from the end of semester writing and studying this past week. Tuesday after class Melissa picked me up on campus with dogs and Bethany in tow. We headed straight to Norman to visit Melissa’s family. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving and I got to catch up on some sleep.

Friday morning we headed to Tulsa to see my folks. It was especially nice to get to see my brother, who was still in town. It was also great to get to see my grandmother, who I hadn’t seen since the end of May. Saturday we put up the Christmas tree and watched a very competitive football game between Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. It is always the hardest game for me to watch all year because Melissa went to OSU and I don’t like rooting against her team.

The best part of the whole week, though, was simply getting to share Bethany with both sides of our family. She is really growing and becoming much more interactive. Having Bethany in my life is an incredible blessing, and I am grateful that she has so many relatives who love her so well.

Today I am feeling rested and ready to finish the work that remains for this semester.

I have added a few resources over the past few days to the Wesleyan Resources Page. If you are interested, I have listed a few resources under the headings of “Wesley’s Works,” “Wesley Biographies,” and “Wesleyan Theology.”

I will continue updating this page in the days, weeks, and months to come.

On another note: I would like to be able to have a table of contents at the top of that page so that all of the headings could be listed at the top, and then people could click on, say “Wesley Biographies,” and it would take them to the list of Wesley Biographies. The only problem is – I don’t know how to do that. If you do and are willing to help me, please shoot me an email at deeplycommitted (at) gmail (dot) com, or bless me with your wisdom in the comments.

I have made a few changes to deeply committed. The most obvious change is that I have changed themes. This allowed me to have a header with a bit more interest. (Bonus points to the first person who correctly identifies what the header is a picture of.)

Another significant change is that I have deleted the “Documents” page and I have added a “Wesleyan Resources” page. The purpose of this page is to provide links to some important Wesleyan Resources. I will try to update this page periodically. I started by providing links to the two different versions of Wesley’s works that are currently in print. I will also add works on Wesley biographies, Wesleyan theology, Methodist history, and more. You can go to the Wesleyan Resources pages by clicking here, or click on the Wesleyan Resources tab at the top of this page.

I also have updated a few things here and there throughout the blog. I updated the “About Me” page, and cleaned up a few other things. I hope these updates are helpful improvements.

By the way, if you have any suggestions about how to improve this blog, or comments about what you would like to see in the future, please feel free to give your input in the comments.

Bridwell Library, the library for the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University, is amazing! Every four months or so Bridwell has a different exhibit which highlights some of the great items that are contained in Bridwell’s special collections. The current exhibit is called “Welcome Additions” and it shows some of the wonderful items that Bridwell has acquired in the last year or so.

I needed a study break last week, so I wandered into the exhibit. I was delighted to see an original letter that written by John Wesley on one side, and written by Thomas Coke on the other.

The first picture is the one by Wesley and the second is the one written by Coke.

Bridwell also has a copy of the Minutes that was given to a “fellow laborer” which was, I believe, the practice for itinerant preachers, they were given a copy of the minutes with an inscription like the one pictured, signed by John Wesley. This one is dated 1789, so Wesley would have been about 86. Here is a picture of the Minutes signed by Wesley:

Now isn’t history fun and exciting?!? (Note: You should be able to click on each picture to see a larger version.)

Dr. David Hempton gave two excellent lectures the beginning of this week here at SMU. Both of his lectures offered glimpses into his forthcoming book, Evangelical Disenchantment: Nine Portraits of Faith and Doubt. Intereestingly, his lecture series was titled: Evangelical Enchantment and Disenchantment, so I was somewhat surprised to notice that the title of the book so clearly draws your attention to one side of what he focused on in his lectures.

Dr. Hempton’s first lecture was titled “Culture Wars: George Eliot and Fundamentalism.” In this lecture Hempton look at the author Mary Ann Evans, whose pen name was George Eliot, and her relationship with evangelicalism. Hempton discussed three aspects of evangelical enchantment that initially appealed to Eliot: the offer of a fresh start (the new birth), disciplined spirituality, and mobilization and transformation by lay agency and an emphasis on hymn singing. Hempton’s discussion of Methodist hymnody, in particular, caught my attention. He argued that the 1737 Hymnbook that Wesley published in Georgia was probably the first hymnbook published in America. He also discussed at length the importance of the 1780 edition.

The symbol of Eliot’s disenchantment was Rev. Cumming who Hempton compared to a modern day Hal Lindsey or Tim LaHaye. Eliot despised the lack of love that she saw in Cummings ministry and his rather gleeful proclamation that others were going to hell.

One of the primary themes I gleaned from this lecture was that the closer evangelicalism came to dogmatism and exclusivism, the more disenchanting it was to the folks in Hempton’s study.

Hempton’s Second lecture was titled “Artists in Revolt: Vincent Van Gogh and James Baldwin.” I will try to post a brief summary of that lecture and some further thoughts in the next few days.