1. I had a fascinating conversation with Patrick Eby, Wesley Seminary's church history professor, on the way a lot of AME churches do class meetings and the way they started with John Wesley himself. If I understand correctly, AME churches (African Methodist Episcopal) have classes and class leaders...
[Wesley's classes were small accountability groups that met to help encourage each other to do right and resist temptation.]
... But, interestingly, in some AME churches, the classes don't actually meet in small groups. Rather, the class leader contacts the members of the small group one-to-one.
When I first heard this fact, I thought maybe that was an effective variation on Wesley for our current context. How many people will sign up to be asked about their temptations in a group setting these days? But one-on-one, with a leader they trusted and respected, maybe that would work for accountability better. Then maybe the group could get together regularly for Bible study and more social functions.
2. Upon telling this to Patrick (who I would argue is the number 2 Charles Wesley expert in the world after his doctoral advisor John Tyson), he told me that this is actually how John Wesley's classes worked in the beginning. Interestingly, he said that the classes started when Wesley would send leaders to individuals to collect a penny for, I believe, the New Room chapel in Bristol.
Then, with Wesley's characteristic genius, he saw that this was an opportunity for spiritual formation as well. The leader began to inquire of their spiritual state as well as to collect an offering. Only those with some resources did this so that they might serve as a model.
But eventually, they began to meet in accountability groups. This is often the case. Something develops organically into something special, and we forget how they developed almost coincidentally (or shall we say providentially?).
Fascinating!
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2 comments:
Excellent timing in posting this, as my students are studying Wesleyan Spirituality.
Thank you, Ken, for the post. There was even a smaller "small-group" meeting and it was called the band meeting. The band meeting was a subgroup of the class meeting. The class meetings could be as large as 20 people, however, the band meetings were always limited to five or less. these groups were always segregated by gender.
For more on John Wesley and the early Methodist movement, I would like to invite you to the website for the book series, The Asbury Triptych Series. The trilogy based on the life of Francis Asbury, the young protégé of John Wesley and George Whitefield, opens with the book, Black Country. The opening novel in this three-book series details the amazing movement of Wesley and Whitefield in England and Ireland as well as its life-changing effect on a Great Britain sadly in need of transformation. Black Country also details the Wesleyan movement's effect on the future leader of Christianity in the American colonies, Francis Asbury. The website for the book series is www.francisasburytriptych.com. Please enjoy the numerous articles on the website. Again, thank you, for the post.
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