that had been received even prior to their belief. With this deeper understanding came accountability. Over a period of, perhaps, several months they were expected to learn the basics of fellowship: practising transparency, confession, forgiveness, mutual support and encouragement to live as disciples in all areas of life. Once they learned this, lay leaders – trained by Wesley to serve as overseers – recommended (to his ministers) that band members progress to the next level in the ‘United Society’ – to larger class structures.
In the ‘classes’, the emphasis was on teaching the basics of the Christian faith – ‘mind work’, as Wesley sometimes called it. The combination of sharing previous life experiences in the trial bands, learning about the faith in the class, and developing stronger relationships day by day with other seekers, prepared the group members for the ‘converting grace’ of the ‘new birth’ in Jesus Christ. Wesley was fully prepared to stretch this journey to two years. It was an intricate process and, as always, deeply relational. The more one felt a sense of belonging to the group, the more one came to know at an experiential level what it meant to belong to God. The culmination of this spiritual awareness was a conscious acceptance of salvation and professed testimony of conversion to Jesus Christ.
Next, individuals were recommended by their mentors and overseers to the ‘bands’. Here they responded to their conversions with a new resolve to grow in grace, train the will towards God and continue in their support to one another in discipleship. The level of confidentiality increased sufficiently that Wesley thought it was sometimes helpful to break out into smaller and more homogeneous sub-groups based on sex and marital status. Accountability was a major factor here. Finally, in the ‘select bands’, individuals pursued ‘sanctifying grace’ – the glow of divine love and a self-denying responsiveness toward others. They practised deep spiritual formation and group fellowship, living out Galatians 3.28 – ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’
These four types of group formed all over England and Wales in the mid eighteenth century, and they involved people from all classes of society. Women participated in their leadership as well as men – with everyone ‘obedient to their heavenly calling’. Ultimately, this activity led to the great ‘revival’ that would spill over from the Methodist Society structures into the life of other dissenting groups and also the Church of England. There was plenty of tension and conflict along the way, but over time it became clear that this ‘experimental religion’ was beneficial not only to the church, but to society as a whole.
Certainly Wesley was a ‘trailblazer’, and he was strategic, with the nation and, indeed, the world as his parish. No one challenged the parochial model more than this ‘methodistic’ Anglican. Though he intended each ‘society’ to link itself to the local Anglican church, the strength and support offered by the emerging Methodist ‘connection’ proved more effective in sustaining the work of forming disciples. Key to its success were the highly motivated lay leaders and stewards who were more excited by a church that engaged everyday life than a church defined exclusively by Sunday worship events. Here, in ‘free conversation’, they addressed the ‘true state of the soul’ as well as concerns regarding ‘temporal things’ at home and in the workplaces and marketplaces of the day. Wesley even insisted that the hymns, exhortations and prayers of the Methodist groups address these wider spheres of life.
John Wesley became the father of modern evangelicalism because, in part, he was a highly successful ‘networker’. He found ‘persons of peace’ in his lay leaders, ministers and stewards who could reach people where they lived, in all situations, classes and stages of life. He devised a system in which teams of two would fan out across a district or neighbourhood, visiting those who were reported to be in some sort of spiritual or physical need. Wesley selected those he judged to be ‘of the most tender, loving spirit’ for this ministry. When visiting the sick, in particular, these ‘visitors’ were, in Wesley’s words, to ‘inquire into the state of other souls’ and to advise them as occasion may require. To inquire into their disorders, and procure advice for them. To relieve them, if they are in want. To do any thing for them, which he (or she) can do’ Wesley, 1831, p. 186.
Ultimately, the success of this missional, contextual and formational ‘network’ would take on ecclesial intensions as well. It was never Wesley’s desire that Methodists separate from the Church of England, but soon after his death in 1791 this is precisely what happened. The energy and enthusiasm of the movement could no longer abide by the founder’s call to remain as ‘living witnesses’ within the established church.13 As leadership passed to a new generation, the elaborate – yet highly elastic – structure of small groups gradually turned into circuits of Methodist chapels.
While the history of this separation was marked by conflict and controversy, it offers many lessons and parallels for today’s mission-shaped church. Most especially, we recognize that when something ‘new or enlivened is happening’, it may exceed the capacities of existing structures. The resulting tensions can be healthy and energizing when all concerned remember that it is the church, as a whole, that is ‘called upon to proclaim [the gospel] afresh in each generation’ (Mission-shaped Church, 2004, p. 34). This implies an abiding connection between the historic church and the ongoing story of God’s mission to the world – a story that will always have its visionary founders and reinvigorated channels of grace.
John Wesley’s class system
Individuals progressed through
trial bands – they learnt the basics of fellowship;
classes – members learnt the basics of the Christian faith;
bands – members grew in the faith, practising mutual accountability;
select bands – individuals pursued ‘sanctifying grace’.
Charles Kingsley’s life in the kingdom
In the century that followed the great English Revival, the Industrial Revolution brought widespread social dislocation and dizzying change to all aspects of life in the British Isles. The population of England expanded from nine million in 1801 to 33 million in 1901. Growth was most dramatic in the larger towns and cities, especially as the agrarian economy of the countryside went into decline. Society was highly segregated, and the working class, in particular, was forced into dense ghetto-like neighbourhoods with overcrowding, poverty, unemployment and inadequate sanitation.
Thanks in part to the Revival, the Church of England had become more aware of these changes. New churches were planted and a wide array of reform societies organized to address the various social, economic and moral ills of the day. A traditional parish might gradually emerge out of rather non-traditional circumstances. Small mission halls or even corrugated-iron structures sometimes served as the first meeting places, often with the assistance of the local people. Sunday schools, day schools, libraries and charities then began their work, and eventually more comprehensive ‘settlement’ houses offered the whole gamut of services required in the most severely impoverished neighbourhoods (Morris and Macleod, 2000).
What was behind all of this rising church concern for the social conditions of the nation? One of the more fascinating windows into this era is the ministry of Charles Kingsley and his parish church in the village of Eversley in north-eastern Hampshire. This country parson, novelist, labour activist and advocate of ‘Christian socialism’ worked tirelessly among both the rural and, later in life, urban poor, because he was convinced that in baptism Christians were initiated into the kingdom of God and set free
