wfn.org | At the Roots of Methodism: Bristol holds many "firsts"

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March 14, 2000 News media contact: Tim Tanton·(615)742-5470·Nashville, Tenn.
10-71B{141}

NOTE: This is a regular feature on Methodist history by John Singleton
prepared especially for distribution by United Methodist News Service.

A UMNS Feature
By John Singleton*
             
The single building that, literally, takes you straight back to the roots of
the Methodist movement is the one known throughout World Methodism as the
New Room in Bristol, England. It's the oldest "purpose-built" Methodist
building in the world and the first Methodist chapel opened by John Wesley. 

It was here also, at Kingswood, that Wesley first let go of his natural
inhibitions and began preaching to masses of ordinary people, mostly tin
miners and their families, in the open air. And it was here that the first
"class meeting" was started in order to give a semblance of order to the
burgeoning Methodist movement. 

A consultation of Bristol Methodist leaders in 1742 agreed that every member
of their society who was able to do so should contribute one penny a week.
The leaders agreed that the society should be divided into small groups, or
classes, with about 12 people in each. One person in each class was
appointed leader, primarily -- at first -- to receive the contributions of
the rest and bring them to the stewards each week. 

It is interesting to note that while many early Methodist members were too
poor to even afford a penny a week, the class leaders who called weekly on
every member of their groups took notice of the conditions in which they
lived, collected the pennies from those who could afford to pay and
invariably made good any deficit themselves. 

So began an interesting aspect of the development of the Methodist
societies. The rapid growth of the movement, with its continual demand for
building new meeting houses and providing help to the poor, required sound
financial planning.

As a result, Bristol was the humble birthplace of what became one of the
world's greatest pioneering systems of voluntary finance. It was significant
that when Lord Shaftsbury and other evangelical social reformers later
fought for humane working conditions in factories, they borrowed the idea of
the Methodist class meeting to help make their campaign successful. 

Wesley's keen, practical intuition soon hit upon a more compelling purpose
for these class units than that of raising funds. In the establishment of
class groups, he found an effective vehicle for the personal supervision of
every member of the societies. "This is the very thing ... the very thing we
have wanted so long!" he declared. 

It was soon arranged that the members of each class should assemble weekly.
In the class meetings, where the sexes convened separately, the members
shared their most pressing problems and encouraged each other to "fight a
good fight." 

Here, it was said, all men were brothers and all women were sisters, and
members were pledged to secrecy regarding personal confidences. Had these
class meetings not been conducted in an atmosphere of honesty and trust,
where meanness, pettiness, vanity, self-aggrandizement, animosity and
revenge were unthinkable and where faith, hope and love were said to reign,
they might have simply degenerated into centers of gossip, petulance and
scandal. 

Confessions of failure, defeat and sin were heard in their respective
classes by men and women who not long before would have gloated over the
opportunities for gossip which these afforded. But now, with changed hearts
and in a spirit of fellowship, cooperation and service, they listened
sympathetically. All now became their brother's and sister's keepers; all
had helped to heal the wounds of sin. However painful were the temporary
defeats, a note of triumph invariably prevailed. That was the spirit of the
class meeting. 
 
The 10,000 or more class leaders whom Wesley probably knew personally must
have included some of the finest early lay pastors in Methodism, marked out
because of the breadth of their Christian sympathy and the depth of their
Christian understanding. It is impossible to calculate the stimulus
generated by these countless class meetings toward the moral uplift,
spiritual growth, educational development, self-expression and organized
social endeavor of the disinherited multitudes of England at that time. 

In the worship services, the new converts to Methodism caught the vision and
turned toward their goal, but it was in the class meetings that they found
their spiritual school. There, under trusted leaders, they grouped together
in mutual aid to work out their salvation and to discuss reverently and
prayerfully their attitude to the social, ethical and religious problems of
their daily lives. The class meeting was something wholly new to English
life and became an important civilizing, as well as spiritualizing, force.

Every modern revolutionary movement has had cell groups at its heart, and
today the idea is far from being redundant. Many Christians and people on
the fringe of the church can still feel empowered by meeting in a small
group to share their faith, often in an informal atmosphere in someone's
home. John Wesley sure knew what he was doing when he developed the early
Methodist class meetings. His example is still relevant today.

# # #

*Singleton is the assistant editor of the weekly Methodist Recorder in
London. He can be contacted by e-mail at editorial@methodistrecorder.co.uk.
The Recorder is at http://www.methodistrecorder.co.uk on the World Wide Web.

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