John Wesley’s Class Meeting and Its Educational Implication for Christian Nurture

This article explores Wesley’s class meeting, and what it might teach us today. It is often to debate whether the church is effective in helping and nurturing church members to live a faithful Christian life. Jesus Christ called people to follow Him on a lifelong adventure of discipleship, and the church was called to nurture and to encourage these people as they embark on this journey. Today, churches use various small groups to reach people for Christ and to nurture growing Christians in their faith. Wesley’s class meeting provides some practical and educational insights for the formation of dynamic Christian; learning community in small group setting. Wesley was deeply concerned about the process of shaping persons into Christians, and his class meeting was a powerful and effective educational system that not only enabled a large number of people to become dedicated disciples of Jesus Christ, but also brought a moral reformation to the nation as well. The pressing issue for the church today is not that there are not enough Christians but rather that Christians are not growing to maturity. Perhaps the greatest advantage of the class meeting was that it enabled the Methodists to reproduce much of the practice of the early Christians, and to fulfill biblical admonitions. People in Wesley’s day found friends, received warm emotional support, and grown in their spirituality in the class meeting. In this sense, Wesley’s small-group innovation, the class meeting, reminds us the importance of forming an interactive, caring, and dialogical learning community to reach people for Christ and to nurture growing Christians in their faith. Although the class meeting cannot be a perfect model for Christian nurture, it still challenges and informs today’s churches to practice more of a ‘life’ than an ‘-ism’ in small group setting, and to breakdown the general congregation into more manageable parts and incorporate more persons into the caring ministry of the church, building mutual trust and loving relationships and nurturing each person a positive learner who experiences development for holy living.