Tools with nothing to fix

I still keep a proportion wheel in my desk. It is useless these days. It’s original purpose was to assist in calculating percentages for adjusting the size of photographs for print publications. This is from the days of blue pencils and wax paste up. In these days of Photoshop and digital publication, the proportion wheel is not even useless. It solves a problem that does not even exist any more.

Which has me thinking about the General Rules.

According to the General Rules a Methodist society was “a company of men having the form and seeking the power of godliness, united in order to pray together, to receive the word of exhortation, and to watch over one another in love, that they may help each other to work out their salvation.”

In the contemporary United Methodist Church we debate and wrestle with the proper understanding of the General Rules and the relationship between the early societies and our institutional church structures. This is all good and a sign of a healthy engagement with our Wesleyan roots.

One commonplace in these discussions is the low bar set for admission to a Methodist society and class meeting. As Wesley’s rules stated, the only prerequisite was a desire to “flee from the wrath to come.” This is often translated to mean that there were no standards for admission.

But was that the case?

The society is described as a company of men (and women) who have the form and seek the power of godliness. In other words, to join the society, you must be willing to live in outward ways that conform to Christian standards even if the true power of holy living might be absent. Indeed, part of the very purpose of the society was to build up and support people in living outwardly as Christians as they sought and prayed for the inner power and assurance that was the very heart of Christian faith as Wesley understood and taught it.

“Small groups” were created not as a place to explore faith or gather around non-religious interests in the name of faith, but for the express purpose of more effectively watching over the society members and discerning whether they were working out their salvation.

People joined such groups and submitted to having class leaders check up on them because they earnestly desired redemption and salvation. As Wesley wrote in the rules, they were aware of the “wrath to come” hanging over their heads. That little phrase we often skip over was the powerful motivating force that gave the societies their energy and power. Those who were not “deeply convinced of sin” would not welcome the rules and arrangements of Methodist discipline.

Having more or less abandoned the theology of the “wrath to come” and dropped almost entirely the language of sin, I wonder if we can even understand – much less adapt – the Methodist society, class meeting, and bands to the contemporary context. They are tools to solve a problem we do not even recognize as a problem.

Advertisement