John Wesley's Class Meeting


Book Description

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.




The Class Meeting


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Everyday Disciples


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Everyday Disciples: Covenant Discipleship with Youth by Chris Wilterdink resources pastors, youth leaders, and youth groups with information and planning materials related to Covenant Discipleship and accountability practices. Covenant Discipleship encourages youth to connect with Christ and one another through mutual accountability. It also encourages a networked support structure for living in the world as Christ followers.




The Band Meeting


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Pursuing Social Holiness


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Kevin M. Watson offers the first in-depth examination of the early Methodist band meeting: a small group of five to seven people focusing on the confession of sin in order to grow in holiness.







Marks of a Movement


Book Description

Marks of a Movement calls us back to the disciple-making mandate of the church through the timeless wisdom of John Wesley and the Methodist movement. With a love for history and a passion for today’s church, Winfield helps us reimagine church multiplication in a way that focuses on making and multiplying disciples for the twenty-first century. Winfield Bevins reminds us of the vital multiplication lessons from the Wesleyan movement, one of the greatest missional movements the world has ever known. He highlights the necessity of discipleship as the starting point and the abiding strategic practice that is key to all lasting missional impact in and through movements. The Methodist movement is an example of the power of multiplying movements that utilize the strategy of discipleship. Within a generation, one in thirty people who were living in Britain had become Methodists, and the movement soon became a worldwide phenomenon. We in the Western Church need a movement of historic proportions once again. What would such a multiplication movement look like for us today? We must look to the past to gain wisdom for the future. And as we look at the pages of church history, there is no better example of a multiplication movement in the West than the Methodist movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Marks of a Movement highlights the lessons and key insights that enable us to learn from the past and reapply this timeless, biblical wisdom for today.




John Wesley


Book Description

A major figure in eighteenth-century Christianity, John Wesley sought to combine the essential elements of the Catholic and Evangelical traditions and to restore to the laity a vital role in church life. He began one of the most dynamic movements in the history of modern Protestantism, a movement which eventually produced the Methodist churches. This volume offers a representative selection of theological writings by Wesley and includes historically oriented introductions and footnotes which indicate Wesley's Anglican, patristic, and biblical sources.




John Wesley and the Education of Children


Book Description

Scholars have historically associated John Wesley’s educational endeavours with the boarding school he established at Kingswood, near Bristol, in 1746. However, his educational endeavours extended well beyond that single institution, even to non-Methodist educational programmes. This book sets out Wesley’s thinking and practice concerning child-rearing and education, particularly in relation to gender and class, in its broader eighteenth-century social and cultural context. Drawing on writings from Churchmen, Dissenters, economists, philosophers and reformers as well as educationalists, this study demonstrates that the political, religious and ideological backdrop to Wesley’s work was neither static nor consistent. It also highlights Wesley’s eighteenth-century fellow Evangelicals including Lady Huntingdon, John Fletcher, Hannah More and Robert Raikes to demonstrate whether Wesley’s thinking and practice around schooling was in any way unique. This study sheds light on how Wesley’s attitudes to education were influencing and influenced by the society in which he lived and worked. As such, it will be of great interest to academics with an interest in Methodism, education and eighteenth-century attitudes towards gender and class.




A Year with John Wesley and Our Methodist Values


Book Description

Do we act, live, and breathe our faith? What do United Methodists believe? Do people notice a difference between the way United Methodists practice faith in the church and in the world? A Year with John Wesley and Our Methodist Values is an engaging and provocative study of the practices of discipleship that are of "the Methodist way." Brief scholarly reflections on Wesleyan themes are followed by short essays making recurring Wesley tenets timely and relevant to today's world. Covering one aspect of distinctly Wesleyan theology a month, the collection of essays contained in this book provide an in-depth yet easily approachable 12-month survey of the Methodist tradition for clergy and laity alike. "A Year with John Wesley reveals and makes plain the essence of John Wesley's life and witness," writes one reviewer. "A Methodist way of living becomes accessible through these great themes expressed in contemporary language and situations. Those who read and reflect upon these pages will gain understanding of United Methodist theology, polity, and practice, but even more significantly, they will learn what it means to walk with Christ in our contemporary world."