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When the Methodist movement began to grow, John Wesley faced the problem of dealing with converts who returned to their old ways. Many Methodists came from the lowest social classes, so nothing in their background or environment helped them live the "sober, quiet, godly lives" Wesley prescribed. Their backsliding discouraged those who were trying to follow Christ and gave Methodism's detractors ammunition.

The solution to this problem came in a way no one expected. The Methodists had contracted a debt to build a preaching house. In an effort to pay off the debt, the leaders volunteered to visit each Methodist each week and collect a penny.

When they found that it was easier if the people came to the leader, the Methodist class-meeting was born. The people still paid the penny, but the meetings quickly became more pastoral than financial. Leaders used the meetings to instruct members and check up on their spiritual progress.

Seeing how effective this practice was convinced Wesley that the work of God could not prosper without church discipline. With church discipline, however, Methodism did prosper, reaching almost a million people before Wesley's death.

Wesley made church discipline work through four main strategies: (1) he preached it, (2) he taught his lay leaders to administer it lovingly, (3) he organized people into small groups where they could look out for each other, and (4) he publicized the benefits of obeying the Lord in this area.

Wesley frequently preached a sermon on Matthew 18, the passage in which Jesus describes the steps to take upon discovering a brother's sin. Wesley said that the admonition to begin the process of church discipline is not just a suggestion, but "a plain command of God." He said, "No alternative is allowed, no choice of anything else: this is the way; walk thou in it."

In teaching 1 Corinthians 5, where Paul tells the congregation to cast out the immoral man, Wesley commented that the congregation has the responsibility to rid itself of the impenitent man because "one sin, or one sinner … diffuses guilt and infection through the whole congregation."

Wesley also reminded his followers that the early church practiced discipline. In another oft-preached sermon he informed his followers: "It was a common saying among the Christians in the primitive Church, 'The soul and the body make a man; the spirit and discipline make a Christian'; implying, that none could be real Christians without the help of Church discipline."

The church as a whole needed discipline, too, for without discipline there could be no true Christianity. "Is it any wonder that we find so few Christians," Wesley asked, "for where is Christian discipline? In what part of England (to go no farther) is Christian discipline added to Christian doctrine? Now, wherever doctrine is preached, where there is no discipline, it cannot have its full effect upon the hearers."

Wesley lived a disciplined life and was not afraid to hold other Methodists to a similar standard. Reading certain sections of his journal gives the impression that he spent as much time throwing people out of Methodist societies as he did persuading them to come in.

During one early visit to Bristol, he purged almost 20 percent of the society for sins including drunkenness, dishonest business practices, gossip, theft, arguing in public, and cheating on taxes.

Later, when he found a whole group of Methodists whose behavior was substandard, he "told them in plain terms that they were the most ignorant, self-conceited, self-willed, fickle, intractable, disorderly, disjointed society that I knew in three kingdoms." Evidently the group listened well, for Wesley reported that "many were profited" and not one was offended.

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