An Essential Office for Wesleyan Revival: The Class Leader (Part 1)
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A common conviction today among Methodist leaders is the necessity to recapture our early heritage of discipleship and theological conviction. I believe the class leader of the early Wesleyan movement is a crucial office that must be retrieved and reframed for today’s church if we hope to inspire holy revival in our churches. The class leader in the early movement was a disciple-making lay person who fostered intentional community focused on holiness and working out one’s salvation. They gave theological language to what God was doing in the life of the believer and provided loving accountability to ensure the community was living out the truth of the Gospel daily.
So much of what fills our churches today is education of the Christian life and very little devotion to living out the Christian life. Furthermore, the pursuit of holiness, which was once penned as the goal of the Christian life by John Wesley, is more an amorphous catchphrase rather than the focus of our church communities. Wesley says this holiness is perfect love: “It is love excluding sin; love filling the heart, taking up the whole capacity of the soul. It is love ‘rejoicing evermore, praying without ceasing, in everything giving thanks’ (The Scripture Way of Salvation, I.9).
The loss of the class leader underlies many of the factors that developed our spiritual inertia. This office was responsible for the systemic focus on holiness, evangelistic fervor, and making disciples who make disciples.
In order to once again establish this important officiant of a vital means of grace, we must study the first class leaders and contextualize their roles for the church in which we find ourselves. This is a two-part essay in which part one will provide a historical background for the class leader that will demonstrate the high calling of the leader and the dependence on this office for discipleship, evangelism, and structure. Part two will present a contextualization of this office for today’s church and suggest ways to implement class-leader training in the local church.
The Class Meeting and Birth of the Class Leader
The class meeting was the central location of discipleship for the early Methodists, though it was created for practical reasons. The meeting was designed to separate societies into groups to better collect members’ financial contributions to the movement and to check on how individuals were attending to the general rules of the Societies: 1) Do no harm; 2) Do good; 3) Attending to the ordinances of God.
The class leader then was the individual charged with going to the houses of the 10-12 men and women to collect their penny-tithe, to interview each as to the state of their soul and walk with God, and then to report back to Wesley or the local minister. Practicality again led to another shift as leaders found that door-to-door visits were not effective or efficient, and so the classes began to meet regularly together to serve the same purpose. It was not long until Wesley saw something significant born from these meetings:
It can scarce be conceived what advantages have been reaped from this little prudential regulation. Many now happily experienced that Christian fellowship of which they had not so much as an idea before. They began to ‘bear one another’s burdens’, and ‘naturally’ to ‘care for each other’. As they had daily a more intimate acquaintance with, so they had a more endeared affection for each other. And ‘speaking the truth in love, they grew up into him in all things which is the head, even Christ; from whom the whole body, fitly joined together, and compacted but that which every joint supplied, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, increased unto the edifying itself in love’ (A Plain Account of the People Called Methodist).
I often hear the class meeting referred to as a place of accountability and support, and it does that, but this community became a means of grace where holiness was the focus and sanctification was experienced. As Andrew Thompson succinctly puts it, the class was “the substance of an interactive communal practice by a people joined together for the mutual benefit of fruits that are both internal to their common activity and impossible to receive outside of that activity” (To Stir Them Up to Believe, Love, Obey). The usage of Ephesians 4 by John Wesley in his description of the collective transformation in the class meeting is telling. Ephesians 4 is about the community living out the truth of faith together and thereby transforming into the body of Christ. This is more than a group of encouragement or support.
As this became evident to Wesley and the early leaders, classes became a requirement for persons to be a part of the people called Methodist. Furthermore, the class leader became one of the most vital pieces to the spread of scriptural holiness in England and later, America. This office of lay leader became an officiant of a means of grace and the primary connecting relationship for every person in the Methodist movement. Later Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury would acknowledge such in the 1798 Doctrines and Disciplines:
The office is of vast consequence. The revival of the work of God does perhaps depend as much upon the whole body of leaders, as it does upon the whole body of preachers. We have almost constantly observed, that when a leader is dull or careless or inactive—when he has not abilities or zeal sufficient to reprove with courage though with gentleness, and to press a present salvation upon the hearts of the sincere, the class is, in general, languid: but, on the contrary, when the leader is much alive to God and faithful in his office, the class is also, in general, lively and spiritual.
The Historical Class Leader
The Class leader was responsible for the oversight and enforcement of the general rules already mentioned and specifically as follows:
To see each person in his class once a week at the least; in order:
To receive what they are willing to give toward the relief of the poor;
To inquire how their souls prosper;
To advise, reprove, comfort, or exhort, as occasion may require.
To meet the Minister and the stewards of the Society once a week, in order:
To pay into the stewards what they received of their several classes in the week preceding;
To show their account of what each person has contributed;
To inform the Minister of any that are sick, or of any that walk disorderly and will not be reproved (General Rules and Rules of the Band Societies).
Then class leaders would meet weekly with the local preacher assigned to them (or more infrequently depending on the itinerancy of the pastors) to ensure accountability and oversight. It is important to note that these leaders had high responsibilities but they also had high expectations of their own pursuit of holiness, something largely missing from our current leadership mechanisms.
The selection of these leaders was critical, given all that was asked of them. Wesley looked for leaders with “disciplinary and spiritual discernment.” As a disciplinary, they were responsible for discerning the best way to lead people towards a shared goal of holiness and had to be incisive on the conditions of sin, human nature, and the ways to influence people. As spiritual leaders, they are not the source of God’s grace, but they are providing leadership in a means of grace. This requires them to be theologically and spiritually mature as they give language to what people are experiencing and also sensitive enough to respond to what God might be doing individually and corporately.
This responsibility is a tall task, but a worthwhile one. The class became a place of conversions as members maintained evangelistic fervor, inviting people to come and see what God was doing. Individuals learned to pray at the meeting, connecting the entire movement with the sinews of intercession. And holiness, the goal of the Christian life, was constantly held in focus for every Methodist. Movements require flexible structures that maintain the integrity of focus and identity—the class meeting provided that through the raising up of these leaders.
Along with this responsibility and the authority given with it, much was required spiritually of the leaders. They were to be working out their own salvation and leading the way in “fleeing the wrath that is to come.” Leaders would meet regularly with Wesley, their society preacher, or other leaders, and in addition to answering questions about their leadership of the class, they would also have to testify to the state of their own soul.
The Downfall of the Class Meeting
For 125 years the class meeting and the class leader were promoted and encouraged as central to the movement. Several factors led to the downfall of the class meeting.
As the circuit riders gave up their horses for appointed pastorates, dependence on local lay leaders for ministry decreased, taking away the authority of the class leader and the dependence on them for discipleship.
In addition, as Methodism moved from bars and coal mines to suburban middle-class America, pressures of individualization and privatization of members increased. Several historians of class meetings have argued that upward mobilization of the people called Methodists contributed to the decline of participation in intimate transformational groups like the class meeting. Similarly, David L. Watson argues “the decline of the class meeting was due to a neglect of the works of obedience in the weekly catechesis and a growing self-preoccupation with religious experience” (The Early Methodist Class Meeting, 145).
These factors may indicate some barriers to overcome for a return to the class meeting. The dependence on clergy and professionalization of ministry today has led to a vacuum of raising up disciple-making lay leaders in our churches. Clergy lament that churches expect them to wear all of the hats of responsibility, but we have also created the very system of dependence without working to empower ministry. To compound these issues, cultural factors and lingering characteristics of the church growth era have created isolated consumers largely attached to the Sunday gathering if anything at all. Classes reintroduce transformational community and begin to catechize a culture of accountability.
The historic class leader was a loving disciplinarian given the space and authority to shepherd people towards the goal of the Christian life. They were expected to model this pursuit of holiness in their own life and were devoutly committed to their flock of 10-12 individuals. The class leader catechized individuals into the Wesleyan faith as they facilitated sanctification for all in their care. The leaders were more than teachers of a curriculum or Sunday School lecturers.
If we wish to retrieve Wesleyan discipleship practices and to see holy revival in our churches, we must reconsider how we are making disciples in the first place. We need to once again empower disciple-making leaders in our church and focus on holiness of heart and life.
John Wayne McMann is an Elder in the Texas Annual Conference and a church planter in Willis, Texas.