Discipleship as Wesley Intended: How Wesley’s Class Meetings can Transform United Methodist Membership Today Aaron Tiger Oklahoma City University November 30, 2005 Introduction “Methodism will either retain her peculiarities (especially the class meetings)… or, ceasing to have a character of her own, she will range herself with the colorless churches that are Christian institutions.”1 Instead of honoring its peculiarities, the United Methodist denomination has blended into one of the Protestant mainline denominations, instead of the discipline character it had. John Wesley, the leader of the Methodist movement might not recognize the United Methodist Church as the heritage of Methodism. A society that was once disciplined about membership has now become a church that is lackadaisical about membership. Early Methodist societies were serious about discipleship and had a plan through class meetings to make sure that discipleship occurred. Now, United Methodists do not focus enough on serious daily discipleship. The United Methodist Church needs to go back to its origins if it attempts to be serious about discipleship. John Wesley’s class meetings system is the most effective method for discipleship in United Methodist churches today because of its high expectation for membership and its accountability in discipleship. This work will first examine the current state of the United Methodist Church as it relates to discipleship and membership, and then include Wesley’s interpretation of discipleship, and a modern United Methodist understanding of discipleship. Next, different church methods of discipleship will be discussed. Subsequently, Wesley’s class meetings will be investigated both as they were then, and as they are now in the form of 1 Waddy Moss, “Wesleyan Methodism in the Last Fifty Years” in A New History of Methodsim, ed. W.J. Townsend, H.B. Workman, and G. Eayrs (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1909), 480, quoted in Charles Edward White, “The Decline of the Class Meeting,” Methodist History 40, (July 2002): 207. 2 Accountable Discipleship. Finally, high expectation membership for churches will be seen as fulfilling part of Wesley’s purpose of class meetings. Our Current Situation In 1965, there were 10,331,574 United Methodists2 in the United States accounting for 1 in every 15 Americans being United Methodists.3 In 2001, only 8,242,597 Americans were United Methodist dropping the numbers to 1 in 29 people.4 In addition, financial support of the church has decreased relative to the cost of living, as well as professions of faith, baptisms, and Sunday-school attendance decreased by half from 1960 to 1990.5 These numbers, while staggering, do not even begin to tell the whole story. While there are many churches that are strong, vibrant congregations, others are in desperate need of revitalization. Our culture is a largely secular society. Many claim to be spiritual but not religious. Our society is full of “self-help” books and other “New Age” ways of thought that “emphasizes individuals’ responsibility for their thoughts and actions and their resultant outcomes.”6 We, as a society, are becoming more and more individualistic and self-centered in our society. We are losing a community religion for a private religion. In the attempt to find oneself personally, one is lost communally. Even within Christianity, there is a shift from “us” to “me” from “we” to “I.” The contemporary worship of this generation often uses phrases that include, “I will give you all my 2 In 1965 there were still two denominations: Methodists and the Evangelical United Brethren. These two groups merged in 1968 to form the United Methodist Church. 3 Lyle E. Schaller, The Ice Cube is Melting: What is Really at Risk in United Methodism, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2004), 27. 4 Schaller, 27,28. 5 Robert Sledge, “The Effects of Mergers on American Wesleyan Denominations,” in Connectionalism, ed. Russell E. Richey, Dennis M. Campbell, and William B. Lawerence (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997), 216. 6 Alyce McKenzie, Preaching Biblical Wisdom in a Self-Help Society, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002), 81. 3 worship,” and “I’m turning back to the heart of worship.” In addition, it is not uncommon for someone to talk about how one’s faith is “mine,” and there is no perceived need or desire to share it with others because it is between them and God. While it is true that we each can and should have our own personal relationship with the Lord, it is not reasonably, traditionally, scripturally, or experientially true that we are meant to be a community of I’s. The problem then is two-fold as it relates to discipleship. We are self- reliant, thinking that each individual can do discipleship on his or her own, but we are not effective in our individualistic discipleship. While our culture tends to act individualistically, the United Methodist church understands that “faithful discipleship includes the obligation to participate in the corporate life of the congregation with fellow members of the body of Christ.”7 Discipleship is not an individual experience, but a communal experience! When persons join a United Methodist church, they covenant “to faithfully participate in its ministries by their prayers, their presence, their gifts, and their service.”8 While these membership expectations are great and call people to participate in the church, there is little accountability within most congregations to make sure that these acts occur. It is not uncommon to find in a United Methodist congregation where the attendance on Sunday morning worship is only ¼ to 1/3 of its membership. Obviously, members are not faithfully participating in their churches’ ministry by their presence. This lack of faithfulness to uphold their covenant has multiple possible reasons, but two of the main ones are a lack of understanding of discipleship, and the lack of accountability by churches to its members to uphold that accountability. The first task is to adequately 7 The Book of Discipline, (Nashville: The United Methodist Publishing House, 2004), 137. 8 The Book of Discipline, 137. 4 define discipleship. Two modes of discipleship will be analyzed, first Wesley’s “General Rules of Discipleship,” and then modern United Methodist’s “General Rule of Discipleship.” General Rules of Discipleship John Wesley had his own understanding of discipleship and its role in the church and people’s lives.9 To Wesley, discipleship was participation in the grace of God and became an essential core in his understanding of discipleship. Wesley perceived grace in three parts. First, prevenient grace is God’s divine love that precedes all of our conscious impulses. This grace goes before us and precedes our understanding of God. It is also the grace that moves us to repentance and faith. Next, justifying grace is God’s reaching out to one who professes his or her sins and accepts God’s pardoning love. It is a new beginning grace often understood as the conversion that transforms us. Finally, sanctifying grace is what draws us to Christian perfection; God’s continual work in our lives making us more like Jesus.10 “The critical question for Christian discipleship, therefore, was how to permit God’s grace to foster a maturity of constant obedience, so that sanctifying grace might work with an unimpeded love.”11 Wesley in his “Nature, Design, General Rules of our United Societies,” defined those people in a society as "a company of men having the form and seeking the power of godliness, united in order to pray together, to receive the word of exhortation, and to watch over one another in love, that they may help each other to work out their 9 Wesley used the term “godliness” instead of “discipleship” often in his writings. For the purpose of continuity, we will use “discipleship” throughout this paper. 10 The Book of Discipline, 46-47. 11 David Lowes Watson, The Early Methodist Class Meeting, (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1985), 64. 5 salvation."12 The people in those societies wanted to know how to be a disciple, the form, and wanted God’s grace, the power, to become one. This was the need that Wesley’s class meetings met. For those in his society, Wesley had three “General Rules of Discipleship,” where people “should continue to evidence their desire of salvation.”13 The first “General Rule” is to do no harm and avoid evil of every kind, which included taking the name of God in vain, drunkenness, fighting, doing to others as we would not want them to do unto us, laying up treasures on earth, and singing songs and reading books which do not tend to the knowledge of God. His second “General Rule” was to do good in every possible way to all. This included giving food to the hungry, visiting the imprisoned or sick, instructing, reproving, or exhorting all we interact with,14 helping one another and business, and by taking up the cross daily. His third “General Rule” was to attend upon all the ordinances of God including public worship, ministry of the Word, Lord’s Supper, family and private prayer, searching the scriptures, and fasting or abstinence.15 These “General Rules” made a complete disciple for Wesley. There was a balance for Wesley between faith and works. Wesley truly agreed with James that “faith without deeds is dead.”16 This third “General Rule” was part of Wesley’s understanding of the “means of grace,” in which “any attempt to pursue a 12 John Wesley, “Nature, Design, General Rules of our United Societies,” in The Works of John Wesley: The Bicentennial Edition, On CD-ROM, ed. Richard P. Heitzenrater, (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2005). 13 Wesley. 14 Wesley concludes that statement with “trampling under foot that enthusiastic doctrine of devils, that "we are not to do good unless our heart be free to it.” So that we do not just do actions when we feel good about doing them.