1.A Church Born in Conference

John Wesley first gathered his preachers in London in June 1744 to talk over what to teach, how to teach it, and how to order their work. He called the meeting simply “the Conference,” and it met every year for the rest of his life. After the Revolutionary War most Church of England clergy had left the new United States, and thousands of Methodists had no one to baptize their children or give them the Lord’s Supper. In 1784 Wesley ordained two of his preachers, Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey, and set apart Thomas Coke, already an Anglican priest, as superintendent for America. When Coke arrived, Francis Asbury would not accept the office of superintendent unless his fellow preachers elected him. So a conference was called. It opened in Baltimore on 24 December 1784, and this “Christmas Conference” organized the Methodist Episcopal Church. From its first day, then, American Methodism was a church that decided things in conference. By 1798 its Discipline, the book of doctrine and church order, had reached a tenth edition, and at the desire of the General Conference the two bishops had added explanatory notes. The notes are not laws, as Coke and Asbury themselves say. They are a pastoral defence of the system.

2.What the Discipline Lays Down

The section opens with a spiritual rule before any legal one. All business is to be considered “as in the immediate presence of God,” and every person is to “speak freely whatever is in his heart.” Then come the rules. The General Conference is composed of all the travelling preachers in full connection. The yearly conferences, which we now call annual conferences, are attended by the same preachers and by those about to be received into full connection. The bishops set the times of the yearly conferences. Each yearly conference works through a fixed list of eighteen questions. Who are admitted on trial? Who remain on trial? Who are received into full connection? Who are the deacons and the elders? Who are under a location, that is, have stopped travelling because of weakness of body or family concerns? Who are the supernumeraries, preachers so worn out that they cannot preach constantly but will still do what they can? Who have died this year? Then the key question: “Are all the preachers blameless in life and conversation?” Others ask where the preachers are stationed, how many are in society, and what has been given to the fund for worn-out preachers and their widows and orphans. The conference also elects and ordains elders and deacons. Six yearly conferences are named: New England, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Virginia, South Carolina, and a Western conference for Kentucky and Tennessee. The bishops may add more as new circuits are formed, and they draw the boundaries of the districts.

3.Why “Conference,” and Why Every Four Years?

Coke and Asbury begin their notes with a general principle. Every large body of people, civil or religious, needs a select number with authority to make rules for its government. The name matters little. Wesley chose the word Conference, and they kept it, noting that it is scriptural. When Paul and Barnabas went up to Jerusalem over the question of circumcision (Acts 15), Paul later described the meeting with the apostles and elders as a conference (Galatians 2:6). Why meet only every four years? Because the societies were scattered over a country about fourteen hundred miles long and five to eight hundred miles wide. To call every preacher away more often would be an “irreparable loss” to the congregations. But some business cannot wait four years: admitting preachers, ordaining elders and deacons, examining characters, stationing every preacher, and managing the relief fund. These matters belong to the yearly conferences, made up of a bishop, the presiding elders, and the elders, deacons and preachers in full connection. Only the preachers on trial stay behind, so that the flocks are not left without preaching.

4.Why No Delegates from the Circuits?

The most interesting part of the notes answers a question many Americans were already asking in a republic of elected representatives. Why not send delegates from each circuit to the conferences? Coke and Asbury answer that it would “utterly destroy” the itinerant plan. A delegate would naturally care first for his own circuit. He would try to win the ablest and liveliest preachers for his people, might make a favourite preacher secret offers to settle among them, and if disappointed might return home resentful and lead a separation. The bishops add a gracious footnote: they mean no disrespect to the local brethren, many of whom exceed them in grace and wisdom. It is simply human nature, and perhaps even a man’s duty, to put the people he represents first. “We should probably act in the same manner,” they admit. The travelling preachers, by contrast, do not know when they meet where they will be sent next, and they are willing to go anywhere on their Lord’s errands. The notes then gather texts for a travelling ministry, from Jesus sending out the Twelve and the Seventy to Timothy and Titus, whom the bishops call travelling bishops. While honouring settled ministers, they insist that the travelling plan is “the primitive and apostolic plan,” and they will not risk wounding it by any novelty.

5.Speaking Freely in the Presence of God

The bishops offer a few “hints,” not laws, on what it means for everyone to speak freely, drawn from the minutes of the British Conference. Be tender of the character of every brother, but never excuse sin. Say nothing in the conference but what is necessary and to the point. If you are accused, remember that “recrimination is no acquittance,” that is, accusing your accuser does not prove you innocent. Beware of impatience when contradicted; be open to conviction. The cause is God’s, and He does not need the hands of an Uzzah to hold up His ark (2 Samuel 6:6–7). Holding on to a point because you proposed it may only be feeding self, so “be quite easy” if the majority decides against you. Use no craft or guile to win a point, and never despise an opponent. Avoid all lightness of spirit, remembering the words “Thou, God, seest me.” Finally, the notes take pride in the yearly examination of every preacher’s character. John Fletcher, Wesley’s saintly ally, once watched it at the British Conference and was astonished. The bishops claim that no church watches more strictly over the morals, the doctrine and the usefulness of its ministers. Conference, for them, is first of all a means of grace: preachers holding one another accountable before God.

6.What Came Later

The system did not stand still. The first regular General Conference met in 1792. In 1808 the General Conference became a delegated body, elected by the annual conferences, and it adopted the Restrictive Rules, which protect the Articles of Religion, the General Rules and an itinerant general superintendency from easy change. Reformers who wanted lay representation and an elected presiding eldership left in 1830 to form the Methodist Protestant Church, which had no bishops. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, admitted lay delegates in 1866, and the northern church in 1872. Meanwhile the General Conference of 1844 divided over slavery, so that by the 1850 era there were two large episcopal Methodist churches, North and South. They reunited with the Methodist Protestants in 1939 and joined the Evangelical United Brethren in 1968 to form The United Methodist Church, whose annual conferences now include as many lay members as clergy. Holiness bodies such as the Wesleyan Methodists (1843) and the Free Methodists (1860) gave laity an equal voice from the start. The Church of the Nazarene, united at Pilot Point, Texas, in 1908, kept the conference principle under other names. Its Manual provides for an annual district assembly and a quadrennial General Assembly with equal numbers of ministerial and lay delegates.

7.What a Methodist or Nazarene Pastor Takes from It Today

Much of the 1798 machinery has changed, but its spirit still shapes every Methodist annual conference and every Nazarene district assembly, in Mexico as elsewhere. First, conference is a spiritual exercise before it is a business meeting: we decide “as in the immediate presence of God,” with prayer for one another. Second, the minister belongs to a connection, not only to a congregation. The question is never only what is good for my church, but what serves the whole work. Third, character comes before gifts. The yearly question whether every preacher is blameless still stands behind the review of clergy in both traditions, and it is a gift, not a threat, to be known and examined by brothers and sisters. Fourth, the hints for debate are a school of humility: say what is needed, refuse manipulation, and be at peace when outvoted. Later Methodists themselves decided that lay delegates strengthen the connection, and Presbyterian and congregational Christians have always given the people a voice. Coke and Asbury’s real concern was to keep local interests from breaking a mission that had to move as one body.

8.Taking It to Heart

1.From Superintendent to Bishop

In September 1784 John Wesley, still a priest of the Church of England, took a step he had long weighed. Convinced from his reading of the early church that bishops and presbyters were originally one order, he ordained Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey as elders for America and set apart Thomas Coke as “superintendent.” He sent with them a service book, The Sunday Service of the Methodists, and an abridged set of Articles of Religion. At the Christmas Conference in Baltimore, the preachers elected Coke and Francis Asbury as joint superintendents. Over three days Asbury was ordained deacon, then elder, and then consecrated superintendent, with the German Reformed pastor Philip Otterbein joining in the laying on of hands. Within three years the American Minutes were using the title bishop. Wesley objected sharply; he had wanted superintendents, not bishops. But the Americans kept the name, and the notes we read here are their defence of it. The main reason for the whole arrangement was sacramental. Methodists needed ordained ministers who could baptize and give the Lord’s Supper, and a church with ordained ministers needed someone to ordain them.

2.What the Discipline Lays Down for Bishops

A bishop is constituted by the election of the General Conference and the laying on of hands of three bishops, or at least of one bishop and two elders. If no bishop remained, the General Conference would elect one and appoint elders to ordain him. The bishop’s duties are six: to preside in the conferences; to fix the appointments of the preachers; between conferences to change, receive or suspend preachers as necessity requires; to travel through the connection at large; to oversee the spiritual and temporal business of the societies; and to ordain bishops, elders and deacons. He is answerable to the General Conference, which may expel him. If he is accused of immorality between General Conferences, three travelling elders examine him. If they believe him guilty, they call two presiding elders from neighbouring districts, each bringing two more ministers, and these nine form a small conference. Two-thirds of them may suspend the bishop until the General Conference meets. A bishop who stops travelling without the conference’s consent may never again exercise any ministerial function among them. Finally, a note allows the bishops to ordain local preachers as deacons if their society, the circuit stewards and nine ministers sign a testimonial for them.

3.Not Wesley’s Power: Coke and Asbury’s Defence

The notes first insist that the episcopal form introduced nothing new: Wesley himself had presided, stationed the preachers, travelled at large and ordained. But they then list ways in which the American bishops hold far less power than Wesley did. First, Wesley had the sole right to name the preachers for every Methodist pulpit in Britain. In America the chapels belong to trustees, and the right of appointment rests with the General Conference, which lends it to the bishops only because it trusts them. If they ever showed tyranny or partiality, it would be taken away, and the bishops add, “who would envy any one the power?” Stationing preachers is the most painful part of their work. They know the grace it takes for a man sent to a circuit where the societies are small, the rides long and the food coarse. Second, Wesley answered to no one; the American bishops are “perfectly subject” to the General Conference and can be tried by a court of nine. Third, Wesley controlled all the funds, though he spent them on God’s work and died worth almost nothing. The American bishops control no public money. Their salary is sixty-four dollars a year plus travelling costs, and for that they ride about six thousand miles a year. The notes add two further limits. The bishops cannot ordain anyone the conference has not first elected. And they must keep travelling until the General Conference declares them worn out. Rather than see bishops settled on their plantations, the notes say, it would be better for the episcopacy to be blotted out. Its true dignity lies in labour and hardship, in rivers, swamps and nights on the bare ground. On the question of apostolic succession the notes are blunt. They regard an unbroken chain of bishops as a “fable,” and they cite Jerome: at Alexandria the elders themselves elected and consecrated their bishop for some two hundred years. Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican Christians would answer this very differently, and the debate has continued ever since.

4.Presiding Elders: The Bishops’ Agents

Section V sets out the office of presiding elder. The bishop chooses, stations and changes them, and may leave one in the same district for no more than four years in a row. A presiding elder travels through his district; in the bishop’s absence he takes charge of all the ministers and preachers, changes, receives or suspends preachers, and presides in the conference. He attends the quarterly meetings, hears complaints and appeals, sees that the discipline is enforced, and keeps the bishop informed by letter. The notes find the office in Scripture, in the “overseers” of Ephesus (Acts 20:28) and the elders “that rule well” (1 Timothy 5:17). The office grew step by step: in 1784 twelve elders were set over the work, Asbury and the district conferences enlarged the number and gave the name, and the General Conference of 1792 confirmed it. Its advantages, the bishops argue, are many. An outsider presides impartially at quarterly meetings, where a local man might favour a relative or friend. Young preachers, zealous but with limited gifts, can be moved after six or even three months. Vacancies left by death can be filled quickly. And the bishops can know the state of every district. The presiding elder’s power is checked three ways: the General Conference may expel him, the bishop may suspend him, and his yearly conference may try him. Since 1784, they add, membership had grown from about fourteen thousand to more than fifty-six thousand, four times as large.

5.Elders and Deacons

A travelling elder is constituted by the election of a majority of the yearly conference and the laying on of hands of a bishop and the elders present. His duty is to administer baptism and the Lord’s Supper, perform marriages and lead all parts of divine worship, and to do all the work of a travelling preacher. A travelling deacon is elected the same way but ordained by the bishop alone. He may baptize and marry in the elder’s absence and assists the elder at the Lord’s Supper. He must serve two years as deacon before he can be elected elder, except on mission fields. The notes ground the diaconate in Acts 6. The first purpose of the seven was care for widows and the needy, but Stephen and Philip also preached and worked wonders, so deacons are more than servers of tables. The early fathers, they add, describe deacons helping at the Lord’s Supper and carrying the consecrated bread and wine to the sick. Above all, the diaconate is a probation for eldership. By the time a man is ordained elder he has proved himself as a member, class leader, exhorter, local preacher, preacher on trial for two years and deacon for two more.

6.What Came Later

These offices proved durable, but not without conflict. In the 1820s reformers pressed for presiding elders to be elected rather than appointed; when they failed, many joined the Methodist Protestant Church of 1830, which had no bishops. In 1844 the General Conference asked Bishop James Andrew of Georgia, who had become a slaveholder through marriage, to stop exercising his office until he freed himself of slavery. The southern conferences withdrew and formed the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in 1845. Through the 1850 era the two churches argued over whether a bishop was an officer of the General Conference or a separate branch of government. In 1908 the northern church renamed the presiding elder the district superintendent. In The United Methodist Church bishops are now elected by regional conferences and remain elders consecrated to an office, not members of a third order; since 1996 the deacon has been a permanent order of its own. The Church of the Nazarene chose not to have bishops at all. Its founder, Phineas Bresee, had been a Methodist presiding elder, and the Nazarenes kept superintendency under that name: general superintendents elected by the General Assembly, and district superintendents who oversee each district. The Methodist Church of Mexico, independent since 1930, elects its own bishops.

7.What a Methodist or Nazarene Pastor Takes from It Today

Whatever the title, the Wesleyan idea of oversight has a clear shape. Superintendents exist for the mission, not for honour. Their authority is lent by the church and can be called back. Their dignity is meant to come from labour, not from wealth or ceremony. A pastor today can learn from this whether he serves under a bishop or a district superintendent. Respect those who oversee you, for their work is lonely and their decisions touch other people’s tenderest feelings. Pray for them. And if you are ever given oversight yourself, remember Coke and Asbury’s standard: travel, listen, carry the burden, and expect to give account. The sections also remind us why ordination mattered so much in 1784. Methodists wanted the sacraments, and the whole episcopal structure grew from that pastoral need.

8.Taking It to Heart

1.The Saddlebag Ministry

In 1798 most Americans lived on farms and plantations far from any town. The Methodist answer was the circuit rider: a young, usually single man with a horse, a Bible, a hymnbook and saddlebags of books for sale. A large circuit could take four to six weeks to ride, with preaching nearly every day in cabins, barns, courthouses and the open air. The rider met the classes, visited the sick, baptized when he was ordained, and moved on. Asbury himself rode, by common estimate, some 270,000 miles in his forty-five years in America. Many riders wore out early, and a good number died young. The sections we read here are the rulebook for that life.

2.A Preacher’s Duty and the Twelve Rules

A preacher is received by the yearly conference, or between conferences by the bishop or presiding elder, and if his name is not yet printed in the Minutes he must carry a written licence. His duty is to preach, to meet the societies, classes and bands, to visit the sick, and to preach in the mornings wherever he can find hearers, at five o’clock in summer and six in winter. Then come twelve rules, taken over from Wesley. “Be diligent. Never be unemployed.” Be serious, with the motto “holiness to the Lord.” Converse sparingly with women, and take no step toward marriage without consulting your brethren. Believe evil of no one without good evidence. Speak evil of no one, and tell those under your care plainly and quickly what you think wrong in them. Avoid affectation, for “a preacher of the gospel is the servant of all.” Be ashamed of nothing but sin. Be punctual, and “do not mend our rules, but keep them.” Rule eleven sums it up: “You have nothing to do but to save souls,” so go not only to those who want you, but to those who want you most. Coke and Asbury’s notes support each rule with Scripture. On punctuality they are fierce. The itinerant plan would be the worst in the world without it, because a preacher who disappoints a congregation may drive souls away from the ordinances of God. An appointment, once fixed, is to be kept like an engagement made to God.

3.Questions at Admission

When a preacher is proposed at conference, the conference fasts and prays and then asks him a series of questions before everyone. “Have you faith in Christ? Are you going on to perfection?” Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life, and are you groaning after it? Are you resolved to devote yourself wholly to God and His work? Do you know the rules of the society and of the bands, and do you keep them? “Do you constantly attend the sacrament?” Have you read the form of discipline, and will you conform to it? Will you employ all your time in the work of God, try not to speak too long or too loud, instruct the children in every place, visit from house to house, and recommend fasting by precept and example? And last, “Are you in debt?” If he satisfies them, he is received as a probationer and given a copy of the Discipline, inscribed with the conference’s promise to rejoice to receive him as a fellow-labourer once he has made full proof of his calling. The Discipline insists that “taking on trial is entirely different from admitting a preacher.” A man on trial may be dropped without wrong, or it would be no trial at all. No one is received without a recommendation from his circuit’s quarterly meeting. After two years of probation, approved by the conference and examined by its president, he may be received into full connection.

4.The Ladder of Methodist Ministry

The notes describe the whole path, calling the societies “our grand nurseries or universities” for ministers. First a seeker is recommended to the preacher, or meets in class three or four times, and receives a note of admission. After six months on trial he receives a ticket and becomes a full member. From the members are chosen the class leaders, who should be deeply experienced in divine things and have some gift for feeding the flock. From those who show a gift for prayer and exhortation in prayer meetings come the exhorters. From the exhorters come the local preachers, licensed by the presiding elder and the quarterly meeting, a licence renewed every year. From the local preachers come the travelling preachers, on trial for two years, their morals, grace, gifts and fruit examined at every conference. The bishops stress one point. No bishop, presiding elder or conference chooses a preacher until the people, through their leaders and stewards, first recommend him. They thank God for this demanding process and credit it, under grace, for the purity of their ministry.

5.Sixty-Four Dollars a Year

Section IX sets the salary of bishops, elders, deacons and preachers alike at sixty-four dollars a year plus travelling expenses. A married preacher’s wife has the same claim to sixty-four dollars as a preacher, so that if a circuit cannot pay everyone in full, the money is divided into equal shares and one belongs to the wife. No preacher may draw on any fund without first giving an exact account of all the money, clothes and presents he received in the year. The notes defend support of ministers from 1 Corinthians 9 and Galatians 6, but they rejoice that Methodist preachers cannot become rich “except in grace.” Their gift to the people is not silver and gold but the fruit of the Spirit. “The lovers of this world will not long continue travelling preachers.” Many did not even receive their small allowance, the bishops admit, usually because of the people’s poverty.

6.The Preacher in Charge of a Circuit

Section X lists the duties of the elder, deacon or preacher who has special charge of a circuit. He sees that his colleagues behave well and want nothing. He renews the members’ tickets every quarter, regulates the bands, meets the stewards and leaders, appoints and changes them, and receives, tries and expels members according to the Discipline. He holds watch-nights and love feasts, supplies every society with books, counts the members for the conference and checks the stewards’ accounts. Further directions follow: leave your successor an account of the circuit; put believers into a band as soon as there are four; let no love feast last more than an hour and a half; give every member who moves a certificate; read the rules in every society once a quarter. When members quarrel over debts, he is to recommend arbitration by fellow members, and anyone who refuses it or sues a brother first is expelled. He appoints prayer meetings, sees that a fast is kept on the Friday before each quarterly meeting, and licenses exhorters. The notes add warmth to the list. He is to watch over his colleagues “not with the eye of a severe judge,” but as a tender elder brother. The quarterly ticket, printed with a verse of Scripture, gives him a reason to speak closely with every member about the soul. Why should the preacher, not a lay committee, receive members? The bishops tell of a society in Europe that put admission into the hands of lay elders and deacons. They kept newly awakened sinners at a distance until they proved themselves, and a great revival died. Ministers, they add, already decide who may be baptized, the church’s great initiatory sacrament; surely they may decide whom to take under their care.

7.What Came Later

The circuit system carried Methodism to the frontier and made it the largest Protestant body in the United States by the middle of the nineteenth century. But as towns grew, congregations wanted settled pastors. The limit on appointments to one place rose from two years in 1804 to three in 1864 and five in 1888, and the Methodist Episcopal Church removed it in 1900. From 1816 the church provided a course of study for preachers, and seminaries followed later in the century. In the Church of the Nazarene a local congregation calls its pastor, with the district superintendent’s approval and regular review, a blend of connectional and congregational practice. Yet much of 1798 survives. United Methodist candidates for full connection are still asked whether they are going on to perfection and whether they are in debt so as to embarrass them in their work. Nazarene and Methodist candidates alike pass through local licence, district or conference examination, and years of supervised ministry before ordination.

8.What a Methodist or Nazarene Pastor Takes from It Today

Few pastors in Jalisco ride horseback circuits, but many serve several congregations, travel long distances and live on small support. The 1798 rules still speak to them. Use time well. Keep appointments as promises made to God. Speak to people plainly and quickly rather than nursing grievances. Keep accounts openly. Build up leaders, because the people recommend before the conference chooses. And measure ministry not by how many sermons you preach but by how many souls are brought to God and built up in holiness. The admission questions remain a searching self-examination for any minister, whatever his or her church.

9.Taking It to Heart

1.Testing a Call: Grace, Gifts and Fruit

How shall we test those who say they are moved by the Holy Spirit to preach? Section XI gives three marks. First, grace: do they know God as a pardoning God, have the love of God abiding in them, desire nothing but God, and live holy lives? Second, gifts: do they have a clear, sound understanding, right judgment in the things of God, a just idea of salvation by faith, and some measure of utterance, so that they speak justly, readily and clearly? Third, fruit: are any truly convinced of sin and converted to God by their preaching? Where all three marks meet, the Discipline says, we believe that person is called of God. The notes add that “brilliant parts” and fine address are only tinkling cymbals without the power of the Holy Spirit. Yet the bishops do not despise trained ability, and they praise the itinerant plan for matching each society with a preacher whose gifts suit its needs.

2.Preaching: Convince, Offer Christ, Invite, Build Up

Section XII names the best general method of preaching: “To convince: to offer Christ: to invite: to build up,” and to do something of each in every sermon. The most effective way of preaching Christ is to preach Him in all His offices and to declare His law as well as His gospel, to believers and unbelievers alike, insisting on inward and outward holiness. The notes fill this out vividly. The preacher must first break up the fallow ground, showing the sinner his danger and driving him from every excuse, including trust in outward morality or ceremonies. Then he must become a son of consolation, setting forth the atoning blood and the willingness of Christ to save now. He must not offer the trembling mourner a rich feast “in dishes too hot to be touched.” Then he must feed Christ’s lambs and sheep, warning the newly justified against Satan’s wiles and leading the mature toward perfect love. Christ is to be held out as prophet to teach, priest to atone and king to reign in us. Holiness, inward and outward, must be the preacher’s aim.

3.Smaller Advices and the Christian Year

A list of “smaller advices” follows. Never disappoint a congregation, and begin on time. Let your manner be serious, weighty and solemn. Suit your subject to your audience. Choose the plainest text you can, keep to it, and avoid anything awkward or affected in gesture or speech. Print nothing without the approval of the conference or a bishop. Do not usually pray extempore for more than eight or ten minutes. Often read and explain a portion of Scripture, and let young preachers often exhort without taking a text. Use the great festivals of the Christian year for preaching. The notes warn against allegorizing, which seldom informs the judgment and still more seldom warms the heart. They urge preachers not to rush into print, since a cause is never more disgraced than by a feeble defence, and the church has already been honoured with a Wesley and a Fletcher. And they defend Christmas, Good Friday, Easter and Pentecost: if nations celebrate their liberation every year, shall Christians not keep holy festivals for the birth, death and resurrection of their Lord?

4.The Means of Grace

Section XIII asks how a preacher is fitted for his charge: by walking closely with God, having His work greatly at heart, and understanding and loving discipline. “Do we sufficiently watch over each other?” The answer is honest: “We do not.” Preachers should ask one another: Do you walk closely with God? At what hour do you rise? Do you keep your morning and evening times of retirement? Then the means of grace are divided into two kinds. The instituted means, commanded by Christ, are prayer (private, family and public), searching the Scriptures by reading, meditating and hearing, the Lord’s Supper, fasting, and Christian conference, meaning conversation that ministers grace. Of the Supper the question is simply, “Do you use this at every opportunity?” The prudential means are wise practices the church has found helpful: rules for growing in grace as a Christian, never missing class or band as a Methodist, and meeting every society as a preacher. Some means, it adds, can never be used without fruit: watching, self-denial, taking up the cross, and practising the presence of God. Wesley himself had urged Methodists to receive Communion as often as they could, in his sermon “The Duty of Constant Communion.” In the young American church, however, elders were few, and on many circuits the Lord’s Supper was given only when an elder came round, often at the quarterly meeting.

5.Forming Societies and Visiting from House to House

Section XIV asks whether Methodists should preach in as many places as possible without forming societies. “By no means.” They had tried it, and “all the seed has fallen by the wayside.” Preaching must lead to fellowship and discipline. Preachers should go where there are most willing hearers and most fruit, and send more labourers where God pours out His Spirit. Section XV then calls for instruction in people’s homes. Personal religion is too superficial among us, it confesses, and family religion is wanting. It recommends Richard Baxter’s plan of pastoral visiting in his Gildas Salvianus, better known as The Reformed Pastor, and lists the hindrances he named: dullness, a man-pleasing temper, foolish bashfulness, weakness of faith and lack of skill. To the objection that visiting leaves no time for study, it answers: “Gaining knowledge is a good thing; but saving souls is a better.” The section also tells preachers to preach against sabbath-breaking, evil-speaking, costly dress and careless debt, to expel members who trade in smuggled goods or take bribes for their votes, and to examine the accounts of members who fail in business. The notes add a word for the poor. On the plantations a preacher cannot visit many comfortable families in a day, but he can visit many poor ones, and he must not let their poverty or untidiness keep him away.

6.Children, Study and Union

Section XVI turns to children. Where ten children of members can be gathered, meet them for an hour every week, teach them the church’s instructions, talk with them at home, pray for them, and preach expressly on education. To the excuse “I have no gift for this,” the answer is to pray earnestly for the gift. The notes urge Sunday schools for the children of the poor and recommend the church’s Scripture catechism. Section XVII advises preachers to rise at four if possible, to spend early morning and evening hours in prayer and Scripture, and to read “the most useful books” for several hours a day. Why are our people not better? Chiefly because “we are not more knowing and more holy.” To the man who says he has no taste for reading, the reply is blunt: “Contract a taste for it by use, or return to your former employment.” Section XVIII closes the chapter with seven rules for union among preachers: be convinced of its necessity, pray for and speak freely to each other, never part without prayer, never despise each other’s gifts, never speak lightly of each other, defend each other’s character, and prefer one another in honour.

7.What Came Later

These sections shaped generations of preachers. The Sunday school became one of Methodism’s great works; the Methodist Episcopal Church formed its Sunday School Union in 1827. The call to preach holiness was taken up by the nineteenth-century holiness revival and by the churches it produced, including the Church of the Nazarene, whose preachers still hold entire sanctification at the centre of their message. The sacraments developed too. As elders multiplied, Methodists received the Lord’s Supper more regularly, and from the late nineteenth century most Methodist and Holiness churches used unfermented grape juice; a Methodist dentist, Thomas Welch, first prepared it for Communion in 1869. The Nazarene Manual keeps two sacraments, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, as means of grace. It allows baptism by sprinkling, pouring or immersion, according to the candidate’s choice, and permits the baptism of young children or their dedication, as the parents prefer.

8.What a Methodist or Nazarene Pastor Takes from It Today

A pastor can use these sections as a regular self-examination. Do I still show grace, gifts and fruit? Do my sermons convince, offer Christ, invite and build up, or have I settled for one of the four? Am I using all the means of grace, especially the Lord’s Supper “at every opportunity,” and am I leading my people to them? Do my converts find a class or small group, or does my seed fall by the wayside? Do I visit homes, teach children and read seriously? And do I speak well of my fellow ministers? None of this is old-fashioned. It is simply the shape of faithful pastoral work.

9.Taking It to Heart

1.The Rise of the United Society

The chapter opens with a story. Late in 1739 eight or ten people came to Wesley in London, deeply convinced of sin and longing for redemption, and asked him to pray with them and advise them how to “flee from the wrath to come.” He set a weekly meeting on Thursday evenings, and their number grew daily. This was the beginning of the United Society. Such a society, the Rules say, is a company “having the form and seeking the power of godliness,” united to pray together, to receive the word of exhortation, and to watch over one another in love, so that they may help each other work out their salvation. To see whether each member was really doing so, every society was divided into classes of about twelve, according to where they lived. The class meeting had begun in Bristol in 1742, when members were organized to collect a penny a week toward a chapel debt, and the collectors soon found they were caring for souls as well as money. The class leader is to see each member at least once a week, to ask how their souls prosper, to advise, reprove, comfort or exhort as needed, and to receive what they are willing to give for the preachers, the church and the poor.

2.One Condition and Three Rules

Only one condition is required for admission: “a desire to flee from the wrath to come, and to be saved from their sins.” But where that desire is real, it will show itself in three ways. First, by doing no harm and avoiding evil of every kind: taking God’s name in vain, profaning the Lord’s day, drunkenness, buying or selling human beings to enslave them, fighting and quarrelling, brother going to law with brother, dealing in smuggled goods, unlawful interest, speaking evil of magistrates or ministers, wearing gold and costly apparel, diversions that cannot be used in the name of the Lord Jesus, softness and needless self-indulgence, laying up treasure on earth, and borrowing without a probability of paying. Second, by doing good of every possible sort, as far as possible to all people: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and prisoners, instructing and exhorting others, practising diligence and frugality, and bearing the reproach of Christ. Third, by attending upon all the ordinances of God: public worship, the ministry of the word, the Supper of the Lord, family and private prayer, searching the Scriptures, and fasting or abstinence. Those who habitually break these rules will be admonished and borne with “for a season,” but if they do not repent, they have no more place among us. The notes call the Rules perhaps the most complete system of Christian ethics for its size ever written by an uninspired author. On evil-speaking they quote Bishop Beveridge: speak of people’s vices only to their faces, and of their virtues only behind their backs.

3.The Rule Against Slavery

The rule against buying and selling “men, women, or children, with an intention to enslave them” is an American strengthening of Wesley’s original wording, and the notes are forceful. Slavery is “a complicated crime,” opposed to the whole spirit of the gospel, feeding pride and tyranny and producing lust and cruelty. They cite Acts 17:26, that God has made of one blood all nations, and 1 Timothy 1:10 against “men-stealers.” A footnote rebukes slaveholders who keep the people they enslave from hearing the gospel. Wesley himself had written Thoughts upon Slavery in 1774, and the Christmas Conference had tried to require members to free their slaves. Honesty requires adding what followed. Facing resistance in the South, the church softened its rules again and again, and slavery finally divided the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1844. Many Black Methodists had already formed their own churches, such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Today’s reader should honour the clarity of these notes and grieve that the church did not keep to them.

4.The Class Meeting and Its Leaders

Section II makes the class meeting work. Each leader is to be examined at least once a quarter on how he meets his class. He is to ask not only how each person keeps the outward rules, but how he or she grows in the knowledge and love of God. Improper leaders are to be changed. Tickets are given only to those recommended by a leader after six months on trial, and the rules are read to newcomers at their first meeting. Members who wilfully and repeatedly neglect their class are to be visited, warned and, if they do not amend, excluded, with the explanation that this is “for a breach of our rules of discipline, and not for immoral conduct.” The notes call the leaders “the sinews of our society,” on whom revivals rise or fall. The bishops insist that what matters is “the thing itself,” Christian fellowship, not the name of the meeting, and they gladly allow that God owns other forms of fellowship too.

5.Bands, Select Societies and Love Feasts

The bands were small groups of believers, men and women meeting separately, who wanted deeper honesty. At every meeting four questions were asked: What known sins have you committed since our last meeting? What temptations have you met? How were you delivered? What have you thought, said or done of which you doubt whether it be sin or not? Directions dated 25 December 1744 ask band members to buy and sell nothing on the Lord’s day, to taste no spirituous liquor unless a physician prescribes it, to be “at a word” in buying and selling, to mention no one’s fault behind his back, to wear no needless ornaments, to give alms and reprove sin in love, to attend church and the Lord’s table, and to fast every Friday. The notes describe the whole society as “a spiritual hospital.” The bands were a society of believers within it, “little families of love,” and the notes stress that this is not auricular confession to a priest or priestly absolution. Within the bands a select society gathered those who enjoyed or were seeking perfect love. Strangers were admitted only now and then to society meetings and love feasts, simple meals of bread and water with testimony.

6.Stewards, Marriage and Dress

Stewards, appointed by the preacher in charge after consulting the quarterly meeting or the leaders, managed the temporal affairs of each circuit and society. On marriage, the Discipline grieves that many members had married “unawakened” persons and been hindered for life. Preachers are to enforce Paul’s caution against being “unequally yoked” (2 Corinthians 6:14), and those who marry such persons are to be expelled. The note explains that members may marry outside the society, provided the spouse has the form and is seeking the power of godliness. On dress the rule is firm: no tickets for those wearing superfluous ornaments, and preachers visiting classes are to be “very mild, but very strict.” The aim, the notes say, is to raise a holy people, crucified to the world. These rules reflect their own century, and later Methodist and Holiness churches applied them very differently.

7.Trial, Reproof and Restoration

Section VIII sets out discipline. An accused member is tried before the society, or a select number of it, with a minister present, accuser and accused face to face. If found guilty of a crime the Bible plainly says excludes from the kingdom of God, he is expelled. Lesser faults, such as neglect of duty, imprudence, sinful tempers or disobedience to church order, follow the pattern of Matthew 18: first private reproof by a preacher or leader, then a visit with one or two faithful friends, then the society. Anyone excluded may appeal to the next quarterly meeting. No one expelled may share in the society or the sacraments again without “contrition, confession, and proper trial.” The notes argue at length from Matthew 18, 1 Corinthians 5 and the letters to the churches in Revelation that judgment belongs to the minister, with the appeal as a safeguard against young preachers’ mistakes. Congregational churches read the same passages as giving that judgment to the whole church, and that disagreement remains.

8.What Came Later, and What a Pastor Takes from It

The General Rules remain in The United Methodist Church’s Book of Discipline, protected by a Restrictive Rule. Yet by the late nineteenth century class attendance was no longer enforced as a condition of membership. The Church of the Nazarene printed General Rules closely modelled on Wesley’s in its 1908 Manual, later reshaped as its Covenant of Christian Character. Today many congregations in Mexico and elsewhere are rediscovering small groups that ask Wesley’s question: how does your soul prosper? A pastor can take three lessons from this chapter. Membership should mean something, and its condition is a real desire for salvation shown in life. Every believer needs a small circle of people who watch over him or her in love. And discipline should be patient and restorative, aimed always at winning back the brother or sister.

9.Taking It to Heart