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What happened then in the class meeting, when one became a member of the society?

Each one of the Wesleys' small groups related to one of their major theological concepts of grace. The trial band explored and experienced prevenient grace, the grace that goes before belief. The class meeting was for convincing grace. Not only are you responding to the wooing of the Spirit, but you also have made a commitment to pursue a personal relationship with Jesus. You're absolutely convinced that you want and need Jesus Christ in your life. Between the time a person joins the United Society (and gets assigned to a class meeting) and when they experience converting grace, justification, or new birth is about two years.

So what's going on during those two years?

Well, every week you're getting together, every week you're talking about how things are going with your soul, and you're hearing other people talk about it. You could call it small-group spiritual direction. You're praying, you're singing, you're getting spiritual advice, and you bring your questions. You're getting a clearer view of who God is and what the life of faith is, and somewhere in the process the Holy Spirit enabled you to give your life to God. When you've experienced justifying grace, then you're ready for a band meeting.

What distinguishes the band meeting?

In the band meeting, all the members are born again. The issue then becomes, how do I grow in grace, how do I live as a disciple, and there's another theme verse: confess your faults to one another and pray for one another, and you will be healed (James 5:16). In the band meeting, the level of confidentiality is much higher.

The band meeting is also separated, men and women, and even by marital status. New Christians could answer the question, How do I live faithfully as a disciple, now that I've been justified by grace through faith? Gender and marital status become significant. Where before I knew as a single man what the culture told me were appropriate relations for men and women, now that I'm a member of the kingdom of God, how do I relate as a single man?

In a class meeting there could be 12 to 36 people; a band meeting was four to eight. Everybody is my same gender and my same marital status, so they are the ones who can best help me figure out how to live a faithful Christian life in this culture. After this comes the final step, the select band.

How did one get there?

You have to desire with all your heart that God give you sanctifying grace, or else to have already experienced the love of God poured out by the Holy Spirit, as in Romans 5:5. Interestingly, the select band is not separated by gender or marital status. It's as though once you have been filled with the love of God you're living Galatians 3:28, so that in Christ there is no male or female, Jew or Greek, slave or free.

The focus of the class meeting is on the mind, the band meeting focuses on the will, but the formational focus of the select society is the heart. The early Methodists would see the select society as spiritual adulthood. You've given all of yourself at a different level.

It seems that all these small groups demanded a high commitment level.

The Methodist movement was all about creating a channel for people who had the desire and commitment to experience God and live the life of a disciple. It presses us to ask ourselves, Where are the sincere seekers finding a welcome? Where are they finding a community? And where do they find someone to guide them in the spiritual life?

You could argue that any given congregation today probably has 10 to 15 percent of the people who are ready for this type of Methodist movement within the congregation. The trouble is, very few congregations have one available. So people have to go elsewhere if they are really keen to learn and grow.

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August 2003, Vol. 47, No. 8