The Methodist Class Meeting

John Wesley was an eighteenth-century Anglican priest and Oxford tutor. He and George Whitefield were the primary leaders of the Evangelical Awakening which had a profound effect on the spiritual, social, and political life of both England and colonial America. Wesley gathered converts into a network of small groups for personal accountability, behavioral change, leadership training, and the transformation of their communities. Central to his system was the "class meeting," which proved to be one of the most effective tools for making disciples ever developed. This study examines the historical development, the theological foundation, and the social outcomes of John Wesley's class meeting.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1873.

Kevin M. Watson offers the first in-depth examination of an essential early Methodist tradition: the band meeting, a small group of five to seven people who focused on the confession of sin in order to grow in holiness. Watson shows how the band meeting, which figured significantly in John Wesley's theology of discipleship, united Wesley's emphasis on the importance of holiness with his conviction that Christians are most likely to make progress in the Christian life together, rather than in isolation. Demonstrating that neither John Wesley's theology nor popular Methodism can be understood independent of each other, Watson explores how Wesley synthesized important aspects of Anglican piety (an emphasis on a disciplined practice of the means of grace) and Moravian piety (an emphasis on an experience of justification by faith and the witness of the Spirit) in his own version of the band meeting. Pursuing Social Holiness is an essential contribution to understanding the critical role of the band meeting in the development of British Methodism and shifting concepts of community in eighteenth-century British society.

In 1988, The General Conference of the United Methodist Church restored class leaders and class meetings to the Book of Discipline after an absence of fifty years. In this volume, David Lowes Watson explains what the recovery of this tradition can mean for congregations, and offers some guidelines for the revitalized office of class leader. Adapting the later Methodist class meeting as a pastoral subdivision of the congregation, Watson shows how class leaders, under the supervision of the pastor, can nurture the discipline of other church members in light of a ÒGeneral Rule of DisciplineÓ derived from the early Methodist societies: ÒTo witness to Jesus Christ in the world, and to follow his teachings through acts of compassion, justice, worship, and devotion, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.Ó This volume is the second in a trilogy : Covenant Discipleship, Class Leaders, and Forming Christian Disciples.