Wesley Fellowship Groups

This is a make-up post. I had done great all through Lent, and then I simply forgot to do a blog post yesterday. Earlier in the day I had decided on a topic, but when the evening rolled around and Kentucky lost and Becca was sick, the blog just slipped my mind. I'm sure God still loves me, though :)

Yesterday morning I attended a training event led by Bishop Wills at Bethlehem UMC down in Franklin about Wesley Fellowship Groups. It was a great event with a packed house - well over 100 clergy and laity in attendance. The topic was small group discipleship in the Methodist tradition. Wesley called his groups "Class Meetings" and "bands." Today, we have several different names for them, but Bishop Wills calls them "Wesley Fellowship Groups."

Before being elected to the episcopacy, Bishop Wills served Christ Church in Ft. Lauderdale Florida and implemented a huge program of Wesley Fellowship Groups, with over a thousand people participating in them by the time he left the local church to serve as a bishop. He got the idea when he travelled to South Africa and saw the Methodists there had continued the practice instituted by John Wesley of meeting together in small groups for covenant discipleship.

After hearing all the stories of lives changed and ministries happening through these groups, I am convinced that this is the best way to do discipleship, especially in our United Methodist tradition. Each group has a leader who invites others to be part of the group. The leader is not expected to teach or preach or be an expert, but simply to facilitate the group as they study together and watch over one another in love. Part of what gets built into the group is a desire to spawn new groups, so the leader often has an apprentice who will one day lead a group. The groups meet together weekly, usually in someone's home and often around a meal (or at least some snacks).

Bishop Wills described five key ingredients in the recipe for these groups: Fellowship, Worship/Prayer, Study, Accountability, and Mission/Outreach. Each ingredient is essential and none should be neglected, although different groups will have various amounts of the ingredients depending on the emphasis they desire.

I truly do believe that these kinds of groups are the key to renewal in our churches. Through them, people form deep relationships and true community happens. People grow in the love, grace, and knowledge of God. And people live out their faith in real, tangible, and challenging ways. If we were to start these groups in all of our churches, what an amazing work God might do through the power of the Holy Spirit. There is no limit to what God can accomplish through small groups of committed disciples of Jesus Christ!