• About Me

Kevin M. Watson

Kevin M. Watson

Tag Archives: Christian living

The General Rules and a Holy Lent

09 Wednesday Mar 2011

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

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Christian living, discipleship, General Rules, Michael Cartwright, Wesley


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.

Is the Class Meeting Judgmental and Exclusive?

11 Wednesday Aug 2010

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

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Accountability, Christian formation, Christian living, class meeting, exclusive, judgmental, Methodism, small groups

This is the fifth post in a series on the contemporary relevance and practical application of the Methodist class meeting. In the first post, I gave a brief history of the origin and development of the class meeting in early Methodism. In the second post I discussed the potential contributions I believe the class meeting can make for 21st century Methodism and compared and contrasted the class meeting to Sunday school classes, small groups and accountability groups. In the third post I discussed the target audience for the 21st century class meeting. In the fourth post I revealed (with tongue somewhat in cheek) ten ways to guarantee that your class meeting will fail. In this post I will discuss one of the main concerns that people have with any form of accountable discipleship – the fear that they will be judged.

One of the main fears or concerns that keeps people from joining a group like a class meeting is that they are afraid they will be judged. Part of the fear is that if I knew who you really were, I would never be able to accept you or continue to love you. And if I don’t meet your expectations, will you exclude me? Will I be told I am not good enough?

Judged. Excluded. Nobody likes to feel either judged or excluded. Most people will actively avoid placing themselves in situations where they know in advance they will feel judged or excluded. And The United Methodist Church has spent millions of dollars on an add campaign that, among other things, tries show that the UMC is neither judgmental nor exclusive.

So, how does this relate to the class meeting?

If we are honest, the class meeting is unavoidably a place where judgments are made. And it is a place of exclusion. But it makes all the difference in the world what judgments are made and what is excluded.

In contemporary Methodism, one of the quickest ways to dismiss something is to label it as judgmental or exclusive. Could it be that there is a place for both in the Church and in the Christian life?

Again, what we are excluding makes all the difference in the world. The first Methodists were obsessed with trying to figure out how best to exclude sin from peoples’ lives. They were clear that there are things that are not of God, that keep us from growing in our relationship with God. If we are to pursue growth in holiness, these things must be excluded. They are not neutral. It is not a matter of indifference if they are allowed to reign over our lives.

I doubt that many people would argue that Christians should not try to remove sin from their lives. The next part may be more contentious. One way of understanding early Methodism is that it excluded people who were not serious about following Christ. The Methodist movement was not designed to make people comfortable in listless apathetic discipleship. Rather, it was designed to help people experience the fullness of the abundant life that God offers every single person in Christ.

Hear me carefully: I believe that contemporary Methodism should welcome every single person, should reach out to every single person with the good news of what God has done for them in Jesus Christ. The gospel is not only for some, it is for everyone. In that sense the message of contemporary Methodism should be radically inclusive. But I do not believe that contemporary Methodism should pass out cheap grace. I do not believe we should tell people that it is ok if they profess faith in Christ, but do not allow it to impact the way that they live their lives.

I don’t have the implications of this fully worked out. I think that Methodism needs to wrestle a bit with whether excluding people who are not interested in following Christ may be necessary in order to help those who are to grow in their faith. Ultimately, the way I would see this working right now, it would not literally involve excluding people from the UMC, but it would involve intentionally not catering to people who are interested in the church only because it makes them feel comfortable, because it is their country club. The efforts and energies of the church should be fully focused on proclaiming the good news and inviting people into the new way of life that is available in the light of this news. This way of life excludes sin in order to more fully love God and serve others. In American culture today, I believe that something like the class meeting has enormous potential to help people live more fully into this new way of living.

What about judgment?

I want to say two things about judgment, as it relates to the class meeting for the 21st century. First, the fear of being judged, seems to me, to be related to a deeper issue – trust. Imagine having lunch with a perfect stranger, someone you have never met. How would you feel if they began to express concerns about the way that you were living your life? Probably not good.

Now imagine having lunch with the person you trust and respect more than anyone else in the world. How would your reaction be different if they expressed similar concerns? I hope your reaction would be very different. There are a handful of people in my life, who, if they sat me down and expressed concerns about the decisions I was making, I would listen very carefully. There are people whom I trust and respect so much that my instinct would be that they could see things about my life more clearly than I can. I would listen and likely take their advice because I know that they love me. I know that they care about me more than about whatever part of my life we are discussing.

My point is this: I am not sure it is healthy to avoid ever being in situations where you are judged. In my own life, I know that it would make me incredibly vulnerable to self-deception or to rationalization. When it comes to being judged, the identity of the person making the judgments makes all the difference in the world.

Having said that, I don’t think the contemporary class meeting is best conceived as a place where other people make judgments about your life. In the classes I have been a member of, it has been rare for someone to judge me or call me to account for something.

This leads to the second point about judgment, the primary person judging you in a class meeting is yourself. The class meeting is a place where you take a weekly inventory of your own life. You make judgments about how things are going in your life with God. Some weeks you will judge that things are going very well, that you have been particularly aware of God’s grace and have cooperated with this grace. Other weeks, for whatever reason, you will judge that things are not going very well. On other occasions, you may be doing everything right, and yet, God seems strangely distant. The point is that in a class meeting, it is not the group’s job to tell you about your relationship with God, or evaluate it. Rather, you are telling the group about your experience from the past week.

Sometimes judgment and exclusion are the bogey men of the Church. Our fear of them can cause us to forget that they are descriptive terms, that can describe harmful events in some contexts and healthy, even necessary, events in other situations. The class meeting has the potential to be a place that is judgmental and exclusive in a negative sense. However, if this happens it is a malfunction of the class meeting, and not its best use. On the other hand, the class meeting has the potential to create a place where we can gather together to make judgments about our own lives with God, with the goal of removing (or excluding) the things that are hindering our growth in grace and nurturing the things that are an asset to our discipleship.

What do you think?

The Methodist Class Meeting for the 21st Century: Who Is This For?

04 Wednesday Aug 2010

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

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Accountability, Christian living, class meeting, Methodism, small groups

This is the third post in a series on the contemporary relevance and practical application of the Methodist class meeting. In the first post, I gave a brief history of the origin and development of the class meeting in early Methodism. In the second post I discussed the potential contributions I believe the class meeting can make for 21st century Methodism and compared and contrasted the class meeting to Sunday school classes, small groups and accountability groups. In this post I will discuss the target audience for the 21st century class meeting.

Simply put, class meetings are designed for anyone who wants to grow closer to God. As I mentioned in the last post, they can help ensure that people do not fall through the cracks in a church. Classes also help people be self-aware of what is happening in their lives as Christians. What difference is their faith making in their life? And they provide a place for people to talk with other people who want to grow closer to God about what is happening in their life with God.

In the last post, John Meunier raised an important issue. John wrote: “Didn’t the class leader have a role that included giving advice and/or reproof as needed? It seems like that would be felt as more intense to most people today. Not as intense as the bands, but more intense than many folks want.”

As far as I can tell, John is right. I think there would be resistance to joining something like a class meeting among many people for two reasons: 1) Generally speaking, Methodists have not been in the habit of talking about their lives with God for a long time. 2) Contemporary Methodism’s desire to avoid being judgmental or condemning has led to an almost total abandonment of any real standards or expectations for its members. This was illustrated recently by, of all people, Jon Stewart who said that Methodism was like the University of Phoenix of religions, you pay $50 check “I agree” and you are saved. Stewart has perhaps given Methodism too much credit for having membership standards – because there is no cost currently associated with being a Methodist.

So, at one level people might be uncomfortable because they are being asked to talk about something they aren’t used to talking about with other people. At another level they might be uncomfortable because they are being asked to make a meaningful commitment to join together with a small group of people with the purpose of growing in their lives with God.

My response is that comfort is not the best indicator of whether or not something is good for you, or whether you need to do something.

For my first two years as a Ph.D. student, I did not take good care of my body. I did not exercise and I ate whatever sounded good. This approach was, generally speaking, very comfortable. Recently, I committed to exercise 20 minutes or more at least 3 times a week. The first time I ran (using that word very loosely!) was not comfortable, in fact it was painful. I thought I might throw up at the end of those first 20 minutes and the next day my legs were sore. I am slowly getting in better shape, but running (using that word just a bit less loosely now) is never comfortable for me.

This may not be the best example, but we could easily come up with many other examples of how comfort is not necessarily a good or accurate indicator of right or wrong, or of what is best for us.

More directly to John’s concern, in my experience people who are gifted at leading groups like class meetings are quick to listen and both cautious and sensitive about offering advice or correction. At this point, I am going to set this aside, because I plan on writing more extensively about the role of the class leader in future posts – which is what I think is primarily at issue here.

So far I have argued that the class meeting is for everyone who wants to grow closer to God, but I have also admitted that it will likely intimidate many people who sincerely desire to grow closer to God. What is the best way to address this tension?

This is a key place where pastors and lay leaders have an opportunity to challenge people to move outside of their comfort zone. An effective way to address this tension would be for the person who has the vision for starting groups like this to acknowledge that the thought of joining something like this might be a little bit scary, but that is actually a very normal reaction. One thing I have done to ease this tension is to make the first meeting more of an information session, where people will have the chance to learn more about the group, what its goals are, and why someone would benefit from being a part of it. I always stress that people who are interested, but not sure if this is for them should come, that coming to the first meeting is part of discerning whether this is for them. It is NOT a commitment to join the group. In other words, you can give people the freedom to come and learn more, without feeling like showing up means they are going to be forced to permanently join.

More importantly, anyone who is trying to start these type of groups needs to be able to make the case for why facing the fears or discomfort that will result from getting involved will more than offset the initial discomfort. If someone has been part of a group like this before, it would be very appropriate for them to share the hesitation they may have initially had to joining and then to share the ways that the group was a blessing and actually did help them grow closer to God.

Ultimately, I believe there are a significant number of Methodists who want to grow closer to God so much so that they are willing to move outside of their comfort zone and take a risk if they are convinced that the risk is likely to help them actually grow in their faith. The key, then, will be to make a persuasive case that this type of group is a key tool to that end. It might not hurt to remind them that for our spiritual ancestors, it was believed to be an indispensable tool.

What do you think? Have you been in a group like this? Did it help you grow closer to God?

If you are just joining this conversation, welcome! Please continue to feel free to ask any questions that this post may have raised for you. You can email me directly at deeplycommitted at gmail dot com or leave a comment on this post.

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Kevin M. Watson
    • Join 356 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Kevin M. Watson
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar