More than Mimicry: Recapturing the Power of Early Methodism
John Wesley. Stipple engraving after W. Hamilton, 1788. (Source: WikiCommons)
When Methodism began as a renewal movement within the Church of England with the Wesley brothers, George Whitefield, Howell Harris, and others, they never dreamed that what started as a small group for college students would turn into a church. It’s hard to imagine that these figures ever thought that they’d be caught up in an international movement of the Spirit, something that was much larger than anything called Methodism. There’s cause to think that the earliest form of Methodism at Oxford was a gathering for students to support one another in their academic work, in their Christian walk, and eventually to help those in need. From small beginnings, something much larger began to flourish as the early Methodists chased after the “showers of grace” that were falling across the British Isles and beyond.
But the idea of churches stemming from this movement would have been entirely new to this pious band. Even as a portion of Methodism developed under John and Charles Wesley, the stated aim of their work was renewal from within the church. We can see this clearly in the oft-quoted notes of the 1763 Minutes, a mission statement for Methodism: “To reform the nation, particularly the church, and to spread scriptural holiness over the land” (‘Large’ Minutes, 1763). And in order to enable this renewal, the early Methodists developed strategies and practices aimed at renewal, even designed for renewal, both the renewal of the church and the renewal of the person. The story of how some parts of Methodism eventually became churches is not one that will be addressed in this article. The question here is how early Methodism, its vision, its practices, and its strategies, can inform the local churches of Methodism today.
Methodism has always been optimistic, or some would say hopeful, about the transforming power of grace. Grace was defined by Wesley following Anglican precedent as nothing less than the power of the Holy Spirit. This power enabled the sinner to turn to God, thus enabling a cooperative response to God’s offer of pardon and wholeness. At times identified as free grace, this power changed a person from condemned to pardoned, from shackled by sin to free from its grasp.
And yet, while Wesley was distinctly optimistic about the power of God’s grace in our lives, he understood the complexity of the human situation, the corruption of the human heart, and the struggle necessary to find the freedom that God promises. So, he believed firmly in the means of grace, the channels by which God communicates his transforming power to us. He also created structures that encouraged the possibility of that encounter.
Henry Knight addressed the Methodist system in his excellent book, The Presence of God in the Christian Life: John Wesley and the Means of Grace (1992). What’s striking, however, is one of Knight’s claims at the beginning of the book:
We cannot properly evaluate Wesley’s understanding of the Christian life—and his call to Christian perfection—if we examine it outside the liturgical, communal, and devotional contexts within which Wesley himself understood it. The common tendency to describe Wesley’s “order of salvation” for the individual in abstraction from these contexts is fundamentally misleading, for it does not show concretely how Wesley believed growth in the Christian life actually occurred. Wesley was not offering a vision of the Christian life which could be reasonably sought in any church and under any conditions, but one which could be sought within the structures and discipline of the Methodist movement in the Church of England (2).
When I taught Methodist studies courses at Wesley Theological Seminary, I always outlined the basic structures of early Methodism. Oftentimes, this involved drawing on a whiteboard. What emerged was the four “layers” of Wesley’s ecclesiastical vision. The resulting drawing, however, looked much more like a pizza, but that just made it memorable. Inevitably, and to their credit, it made my students ask questions of application. What would this look like if we tried this model today? Is it even possible?
The largest circle, or layer, drawn on the board was the church itself, and in Wesley’s case, the Church of England. Until his dying breath, this was the ecclesiastical world that Wesley inhabited; its vision was his vision. Within the church, the early Methodists gained certain advantages. One of these is the fact that the Church of England retained the historic witness of the undivided church. During Wesley’s life, several movements within the church called for the embrace of “primitive Christianity,” what we would call the early church. And in her structure, her liturgies, her creeds, and her sacraments, the Church of England provided this “primitive” or historic foundation to the early Methodists.
Some have complained that the Wesley brothers never produced a comprehensive or systematic theology, yet this complaint is historically vacuous given the fact that they were Anglicans working within the Anglican heritage; they didn’t need to provide a comprehensive vision when one was already available. In the parish church, the early Methodists were provided direct access to the apostolic witness, a comprehensive liturgical tradition, and admission to the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist. This is one of the reasons why the Wesleys continually encouraged their followers to attend their local parish churches; they wanted them shaped by this historic Christian heritage. They also wanted the church to experience the transformation to which early Methodism pointed.
John Wesley’s famous description of the Book of Common Prayer is useful here:
I believe there is no liturgy in the world, either in ancient or modern language, which breathes more of a solid, scriptural, rational piety, than the Common Prayer of the Church of England. And though the main of it was compiled considerably more than two hundred years ago, yet is the language of it not only pure, but strong and elegant in the highest degree (Sunday Service, 1).
There’s a reason why Frank Baker claimed that Wesley saw the Prayer Book as “only slightly less inspired than the Bible” (John Wesley and the Church of England (1970), 234). The early Methodists had a liturgical and oftentimes sacramental encounter on Sunday mornings. Wesley’s vision was for both a liturgical and sacramental encounter as can be seen clearly in his sermon, “The Duty of Constant Communion.”
The next layer—within the larger layer of the church—was the Methodist society. This is where the early Methodists encountered evangelistic preaching and hymn singing. Many heard the Methodist preachers in town squares, fields, or outside of coal mines, but the consistent location of preaching and singing was in the society. The Methodist societies, such as the New Room in Bristol or the Foundry (and later “New Chapel”) in London, were the local expressions of Methodism. All other Methodist forms were connected to the societies.
Within the society we then find the class, our third layer. The classes were originally formed in the Bristol society. Their initial purpose was to raise money! But as the class developed, and the wealthier members took on the poorer members in their classes, what emerged was a fellowship that overcame economic difference and produced something much more formative. It was within this “layer” that the early Methodists “watched over one another in love,” meaning that they watched over one another’s spiritual development, but also one another’s basic welfare. Transformed lives and entire sanctification were often experienced in the classes, as seen in written testimonies. They walked with one another as together they walked with Christ.
Finally, also within the societies, we find the bands. The bands were never required of everyone, but they offered a more intense form of accountability. Smaller than the classes and divided by sex and marital status, the bands were opportunities to share one another’s deepest struggles and highest moments. Some bands were geared toward specific aims, such as the “penitential band,” designed to help those who were seen to be backsliding.
What emerges within early Methodism is an ecclesial vision that provides the means of grace at numerous levels. Or to put it differently, the early Methodist system within the church created structures that made encounter, and therefore transformation, of primary interest.
We can see from Methodist history how the first “layer” of Wesley’s vision was neglected, or in some instances disappeared, as Methodism became both independent of its Anglican parent and then transitioned into a revivalistic church with little interest in the sacraments. This was a process that took decades to develop, and mainly developed after the death of both John and Charles Wesley. There are many reasons for this evolution, but that is a story for another article. Some elements of the church layer, however, are beginning to emerge once more. In the past fifty years, for example, there has been a push to re-center the Eucharist in the life of Methodist churches. This was due to the influence of Wesley Studies and the impact of the liturgical movements of the twentieth century.
But what would it look like today in our local churches to embrace the full system that Wesley originally envisioned? First, it would mean more commitment from church members and a greater number of offerings in the life of the church. The idea that we can fit everything into Sunday morning would need to be put aside. There’s a reason why early Methodism was criticized for upending village life; they were constantly together!
Inhabiting the first layer, the church layer, would be Sunday morning worship. These services would be liturgical and sacramental, just as Wesley clearly laid out in his Sunday Service. Liturgy transcends worship style, so this is appropriate for all Sunday morning services. Following “Word and Table I” in the United Methodist Hymnal, an edition of the Book of Common Prayer, or using the Eucharistic services found in Our Great Redeemer’s Praise would provide a solid foundation. Sunday morning would be a Eucharistic-centered encounter with the Real Presence of Christ, grounded in the Great Tradition, and allowing for the formative power of the church’s liturgy to establish a foundation for the entire church.
Note that these are liturgies shared by the church at large, not created or designed at the local level. This would be a change for many local churches within contemporary Wesleyanism. The church layer was vital to early Methodism precisely because it provided that solid, unmoving ground upon which the oftentimes ecstatic movement could flourish. The church layer is the anchor for the entire enterprise.
Another service, perhaps on Wednesday or Sunday night, could provide an opportunity for expansive preaching, singing, and extemporaneous prayer, serving as the “society” layer. The focus of these services would be preaching, formation, and evangelism. This is where the liturgically innovative could spread their wings—a favorite pastime of Methodist clergy—with as much or as little structure to the service as they like. This is where non-lectionary focused sermon series would be appropriate.
The third layer would be based on the classes of early Methodism. In this model, there is no need to mimic the past, but to be inspired by it and to understand why it worked. The small group focus of early Methodism was one of its greatest strengths. In the contemporary model, church members would be divided into small groups to “watch over one another in love” with a dual focus patterned on the early Methodist practice: walking with one another in Christ and taking care of one another through the highs and lows of life. These classes could be organized by the local church to fit the needs of their members as long as the dual focus is used as a guide.
Finally, the band layer would provide additional opportunity for accountability. As in early Methodism, band membership would not be compulsory, and each band could be designed for a different purpose. At the core of this layer, however, is honest accountability within a trusted group of mature believers. Meetings could have set questions, such as those developed by early Methodists, or an entirely different organizational pattern.
Throughout the years that I have spent both studying and teaching about the Wesley brothers and the early Methodists, one common question arises: how can we recapture the power and the vibrancy of the early Methodists? We don’t live in the eighteenth century. At present it would be difficult to say that we are experiencing a trans-Atlantic revival. And while mere mimicry is not the answer, we can look at the structures of the revival, the reasons behind these structures, and the results that they made possible.
When Methodism flourished in its original form, it followed this pattern, a pattern designed to encourage encounter with God: in the liturgy, the Eucharist, the Word preached and read, walking with one another, striving together to attain the promises of God, and embodying the holy love that marks the Christ-like life. The point was encounter with God, and Wesley would have been the first to jettison any form that undermined that essential aim. But this is the pattern they followed and the structure they developed to cooperate with God’s work. There could be worse patterns to emulate.
Ryan N. Danker is the founding director of the John Wesley Institute, Washington, DC, and a member of the Firebrand editorial team.