John Wesley: The Organizer
John Wesley: The Organizer » A. Raymond George John Wesley had the gift of being a good organizer. This was no doubt one of the reasons why he, rather than his brother Charles or George Whitefield, became the acknowledged leader of the Methodists and in some.sense the founder of a new branch of the Christian Church. Whitefield was a more popular, though less profound, preacher. Whitefield and Charles Wesley both experienced an assurance of God's forgiveness before John did, but John emerged as the leader.
Yet John Wesley was not attempting to found a fresh branch of the Church, or, as we should now say, a denomination. He was, as we all know, a clergyman of the Church of England who urged attendance at the church service and opposed separation from the Church. What he wrote about the Church was not intended as an ecclesiology for a fresh denomination. Yet bit by bit the Methodist system came into being. First came the Societies. There were
Societies in London, especially the Fetter Lane Society, and one of its sub-divisions, the Society in Aldersgate, but these were not under Wesley's control, even though in December 1738 he drew up rules for the Band-Societies connected with them. Whitefield's appeal to Wesley to come and help him, indeed to take over his work, in Bristol included the quaint expression that the Societies there were 'ripe for hands'. Wesley in response to this invitation to Bristol preached for the first time in the open air in a Brickfield adjoining the city on 2 April 1739; this led to an immediate increase in the Societies in Nicholas Street and Baldwin Street, and in order to expound the Scripture to these Societies Wesley arranged the building of 'our New Room in the Horsefair', the oldest building in the world erected for purely Methodist pur-
John Wesley: The Organizer
poses. When on 11 July Wesley and Whitefield, who had for a while returned to Bristol, 'united the two leading Societies together', as Whitefield put it, in effect they began the first Society fully under Wesley's control, apart from the Holy Club, which, interesting as it is a forerunner of Methodism, and cause of the nickname 'Methodist', preceded the Aldersgate experience. This seems to have led to the first use of the term 'United Society', which was later employed also elsewhere. In December of the same year a Society was established at the Foundery, London, a building which Wesley leased, and this Society eventually came to be regarded as in some sense the parent Society.
Soon Wesley was employing laymen as preachers. John Cennick seems to have been the first, but when in 1740-41 Thomas
Maxfield, one of his first converts in Bristol, began preaching in London at the Foundery, Wesley hastened to forbid him. His mother Susanna, however, said: "Take care what you do with respect to that young man', and by permitting him to continue
Wesley took a decisive step towards the establishment of what would eventually be the Methodist ministry.
In Bristol in 1744 a ship-captain called Foy, in order to pay the debt on the New Room, divided the Society into classes of twelve members, each of whom was to pay, if able to do so, a penny a week to a leader; he thus instituted a system which Wesley perceived to be useful, not merely financially, but also pastorally. The whole membership, and not merely a select few, was thus divided into classes, under the pastoral care ofa class leader. Through the next century conservatives fought a losing battle trying to insist on attendance at class as essential to Methodist membership; but to this day Methodism, at least in Great Britain, has its whole membership divided into classes, under the pastoral care of a leader or, nowadays, if they do not actually meet, of a pastoral visitor. The bands have died out, though some chapels, especially in the North of England, still have a band-room, but the division into classes continues.
But it was not only at Bristol or through the initiative of Bristolians that innovations occurred. The first Conference of preachers was held in London in 1744, at which six Anglican clergymen invited four laymen to join them. There followed later the division of the preachers into travelling preachers and local preachers; the institution of the circuits or rounds, the quarterly
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives meetings.' What emerged was a Connexion, a term probably derived from the phrase 'preachers in connexion with the Rev. Mr
John Wesley', and always spelt with an x.
This was not yet a church, but it was not surprising that some Church of England clergymen saw the intrusion of unordained preachers into their parishes as a breach of church order; and thus the way was prepared for the more decisive breach, namely
Wesley's ordinations in 1784 for America, and later for other places, and finally for England." Well might Joseph Beaumont say at the Wesleyan Conference of 1834: 'Wesley, like a strong and skilful rower, looked one way while every stroke of his oar took him in an opposite direction.'
Such groups are not uncommon in the history of the Church.
They often exist uneasily within the larger church and then either fade away or break away; while such a group still remains within the larger church, it may be called a little church within a church, ecclesiola in ecclesia, but like many other writers I use instead the terms society and church to describe, perhaps in an oversimplified way, the contrasting styles of the two bodies in Wesley's lifetime.
The preachers, however, have been described as resembling a religious order; the fact that, except for a very small number of Church of England clergymen such as Charles Wesley, they were all laymen until finally Wesley ordained a few of them, does not invalidate this comparison, for some of the historic religious orders did and indeed still do include many laypeople.
Entry to the Church was by baptism, which was usually of infants and, at least theoretically, was followed later by confirmation; entrance to a society was of adults or adolescents by the receipt of a class-ticket on the basis of a desire to flee from the wrath to come. Bishops, priests and deacons ministered in the Church; travelling and local preachers in the societies.
The Church had Morning Prayer in the latter part of the morning and Evening Prayer in the afternoon; the societies had simple preaching services at 5 a.m. and 5 p.m. The Church had
Holy Communion; the societies had love-feasts. The Church was established, clearly linked with the state, and largely governed by the bishops; the societies were free from state control and governed by the Conference, which in effect meant by Mr Wesley. The Church had amorphous congregations with virtually no ecclesiastical discipline; the societies were rigorously disciplined bodies
John Wesley: The Organizer
with intimate fellowship in society meeting and class meeting. In the Church one might expect a variety of theological, ethical and political views; in the societies, considerable uniformity. The Church, theoretically at least, was the church of the majority of the population; a society is likely to appeal only to a minority.
In 1784 all that changed for America. After Wesley had ordained preachers for America, giving his reasons in a letter from Bristol dated 10 September 1784, the Christmas Conference at Baltimore decided to constitute an episcopal Church, and the Methodist Episcopal Church sprang fully-armed, as it were, from the head of Zeus. It was this action of ordaining preachers and sending them to America which justifies the statement that Wesley was in a sense the founder of a denomination, and the system devised for a connexion was immediately modified to form the constitution of a denomination.
In Britain no such event as the Baltimore Conference occurred. The statement that the Methodist Church existed in America before it existed in Britain sometimes startles British Methodists, but it is undeniably true. Nor did Wesley's actions after 1784 in ordaining a few preachers for Scotland and later England make much real difference. I leave aside the somewhat different case of Scotland, and ask: when did the establishment of the Methodist Church of Great Britain or the separation of Methodism from the Church of England occur? It is impossible to give a definite answer to these questions, for they occurred by a gradual process. The whole subsequent history of British Methodism may be regarded as an evolution from society to church, which has been completed only in our own day. With hindsight we can see that it was inevitable, but that was not obvious to all Methodists in the turbulent years after Wesley's death in 1791, when there was much confusion, not least in Bristol. It was the adherents of the 'Old Plan' who claimed to be loyal churchmen, showing a proper regard for the sacraments and customs of the Church of England. What John Bowmer calls by contrast the Providential Way was to make the people called Methodists into a Church or a denomination.* The compromise reached in 1795, with the gloomy name of Plan of Pacification, was not explicitly the establishment of a church, but it marked the point of no return. If any definite date can be given for the separation, this must be it.
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives From a technical point of view the next great step was the decision of the Wesleyan Conference of 1836 that the Preachers to be publicly admitted into full connexion should be ordained by (interestingly not 'with') the imposition of hands. But this was only one step in a process which recurred after Wesley's death.
The whole development of Methodist ecclesiology can be seen as development from society to Church, and cannot be traced here.°
The point is that Wesley's organizing ability had produced, whether by accident or design, whether by chance or by providence, a system easily adaptable for the purposes of a Church. Of course the system alone was not enough; much had to be added to it from the traditional institutions of a Church. The travelling preachers. had to be ordained as well as received into full connexion. The reception of people into membership of Society had to be related to baptism and confirmation. The love-feast was no substitute for the Lord's Supper. The Lord's Supper survived, and the love-feast virtually died out. The simple preachingservices had never been meant to supersede the church service," and when Methodism began holding its own services in church hours, as indeed it had done in some places in Wesley's lifetime, a fuller form of worship was needed.
The point is, however, that the connexional structure which Wesley had developed was fairly easily susceptible of such alterations. The Methodist Church today, though clearly recognized as what is called a mainstream denomination, bears clear marks, both in its terminology and in its ethos, of its societary origin. Is it right to do so, or should these marks, perhaps in the interests of ecumenism, be eliminated?
Some further development may indeed be possible. The continual discussion of episcopacy has led to the use of the term episkope, supervision, oversight.
It is now almost universally recognized that episkopoi or bishops and presbyters or elders were not merely, as Wesley said about the early Church, of the same order, but were in New Testament times identical, different terms to describe the same people. Nevertheless episkope is now a useful term to describe an oversight somewhat wider than that of the pastor of a congregation, in other words the pastoral care of a number of pastors and their congregations. It is then customary and proper to say that in British Methodism episkope resides, not in episkopoi, but in the Conference, though also, by derivation from
John Wesley: The Organizer
the Conference, in chairmen of districts and superintendents of circuits. Even in the United Methodist Church of America, the main constituent part of which has had bishops ever since it became a church in 1784, a considerable degree of oversight still resides in the General Conference and in the Annual conferences.
But the British style of episkope is capable of further development.
In accordance with the principle of the Lima document Baptism, Eucharist, Ministry that ordained ministry should be exercised in a personal, collegial and communal way, one can envisage further developments which may themselves be an improvement of our system as well as facilitating relations with churches which have what might be called personal bishops.
After all, the switch from a Conference dominated by a Wesley to a Conference presided over by an annual President was itself a considerable change in the style of episkope, and Methodism is not tied to any particular style of it, though it has certainly come to share the general Free Church conviction that the Church's leaders should be appointed by the Church, and not by the Crown.
Indeed the British Methodist Church has twice in recent years by a substantial majority approved proposals working towards church unity which have involved the acceptance of personal bishops, but these proposals did not carry a sufficient majority with the proposed partner.
Such matters are to some extent controversial and open to discussion, as are other possible developments, which are being discussed by other churches also, such as initiation and the related problem of children at Communion, and non-stipendiary ministry. But such developments should take care to respect the essential ethos of Methodism. Thus, for instance, the disciplined style of our ministry, somewhat reminiscent of a religious order, is one of Methodism's contributions to ecclesiology, and similarly the system of pastoral care and discipline of members, though somewhat weakened in our day, is an equally valuable contribution. Such a development was indeed envisaged by the international bilateral dialogue of Methodists with Roman Catholics, which suggested as an element for a model of organic unity the idea of a religious order. Just as Benedictines or Franciscans have their own traditions but are within the Roman Catholic Church, so might Methodists retain some at least of their traditions within the church of the future.'
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives Churches can be divided into gathered churches and territorial or parochial churches. Each style has something to teach us.
Wesley indeed was far from being a Dissenter, and only with great reluctance secured in 1748 for the New Room at Bristol a Dissenting meeting-house licence, against which his brother protested, but Methodism, having ceased to be part of the Church of England, has inevitably come to resemble more closely the gathered churches, and that is one of the reasons why Methodism has drawn closer-to the rest of what are now called the Free
Churches; yet its ethos has features clearly distinguishable from those of a gathered church, even one with a connexional system such as Presbyterianism. Methodism, like every other church, should seek not only to learn from other churches, but to preserve its distinctive contribution, albeit in creative interplay with them, until it can be brought into what we may still call, in an old ecumenical phrase, the coming great church. When we fully make that contribution, I hope that we shall recognize our debt to John
Wesley, the organizer.