Paul is Chaplain General of ‘Jesus Generation’ and a lecturer in Hermeneutics and Church History at Unity College, A.C.T.
The Disgraced Anglican Who Dared to Gather Christians in private!
For seventeen years the whole goal of my ministry was to get as many strangers as possible into a weekly public service. Now I am in a church that doesn’t even put on services. Our outreach and gregarious friendship is practised through home life and social interaction. This realignment of what we do publicly and what we do privately is one of the hardest paradigm shifts I have had to get my head around in my journey from the mega-church model to a pattern of household-based church. The whole idea of putting on services and then trying to get the world into them has been flipped on its head. Though all this seems at first quite new and radical, it really isn’t.
My first hint that other public/private paradigms were possible in church life came in the 1980s when I first went to university and found myself exposed to a different pattern of church. I had begun my Christian life in an anglican church where everything – except for meetings of the clergy and church council - was done publicly. At my new Baptist church I was surprised to see that certain things - “Church-business” decisions and Holy Communion, for instance - were undertaken only within private meetings of the pledged membership. These customs were strange and new to me but were deeply rooted in the history of the Baptist churches’ heritage as “covenanted fellowships” – a phrase which means groups open only to pledged brothers and sisters. Though new to me, outside of the National and State churches, this approach of “pledged membership” had been the mainstream expression of Reformed Church Life for three and a half centuries. These notions of membership and privacy in church-life were just new to me.
In the 1500s the archetypal reformer Martin Luther had been an advocate of the State Church – where every resident in the town was regarded as part of the Pastor’s flock. Yet even Luther had a place for the private or “recluded fellowship”, and a very important place. In his preface to the German Missal, Martin Luther argued strongly that true “evangelical life” would be practised in homes, gathering together Christians who regarded themselves as Christian workers in a private family-like setting where they could equip each other through fellowship, the Apostles teaching, prayer and the breaking of bread.
Even in the 1500s this idea was not new. This form of discipleship is hinted at in the Scriptures which speak about controlling entrance to the church-group, excluding certain people from it, and defining many churches on the basis of who was “with” brother N or who was part of Brother and Sister X’s “household”.
Relevant also are the words of Mark’s Gospel which assert that Jesus would often withdraw to private places with his disciples and that at times “Jesus did not want anyone to know where he was because he was teaching his disciples.” (Mark 9.31)
With my Anglican public/private paradigm still in my head none of this New Testament content made any sense to me. As long as I read in my own experience of church-life conducted as a sequence of public meetings, it made no sense at all. How, I wondered, can you exclude a person from a public meeting? It’s a contradiction in terms isn’t it?
Having struggled with this issue myself I was therefore very interested to “discover” a man who successfully made this paradigm shift in his discipling efforts in eighteenth century Britain - a shift which resulted in immense fruit and fierce opposition from the mainstream church. The paradigm-shifter was one Reverend John Wesley.
John Wesley began his clergy career with the State Church model firmly programmed in his mind – attempting to amend the lives of people who, though they were residents in his parish, truly had no motivation to grow in holiness or the knowledge of God. After a few unhappy years of rejection and frustration, Wesley returned home disgraced and bewildered.
It was only when Wesley experienced the New Birth for himself that he came to understand that discipling converts and discipling the world are actually two quite different things. A year after his experience of being Born Again, Wesley had a second powerful experience in which he sensed himself to have been “endued with power from on high”. It was from that point onwards that Wesley’s ministry began to find its shape: Evangelising in public, and Discipling in Private. The result as you probably know was a revival of international and unprecedented proportions.
Two things lay at the heart of Wesley’s understanding of the need for intimacy and privacy in the discipling settings. The first was his contact with a very disciplined sect of Anabaptist Believers originally from Eastern Europe – the Moravians. It was through their preaching that Wesley himself had come into the New Birth and first witnessed large numbers of Christians practising the “one another” aspects of New Testament Christianity in the context of close community. Wesley knew that he wanted his converts to experience both those realities.
Wesley’s vision of close community was also rooted in his own experience as a student at Oxford University. Wesley had been one of three young Christian students made a pledge of accountability together with the aim of growing in holiness. This group became known pejoratively as the “Holy Club” – a name invented by students from another college. The members of the Holy Club committed to confessing their sins to one another and to spur one another on to love and good deeds. Gradually, they began to emulate the kind of ministry typified by Francis, Clare and Dominic, five centuries before. They did this by taking the apostolic ministry out of church buildings and to the 80% who had no interest in church services, programs or events – notably the poor. The Holy Clubbers began by visiting the jails, hospitals, workhouses and poorhouses distributing alms, preaching the Gospel and the need for new birth.
Unfortunately their gregarious ministry was just too public for some. Complaints were soon made to the University that these three students were making a nuisance of themselves and giving a bad name to the university. In his maturity Wesley continued to evangelise very publicly - preaching in the open air, in prisons and poor houses as well as in the parlours of the landed gentry. The fruit of his relationship with God, and his fearless preaching, was thousands of converts.
Wesley and his colleagues were also strongly criticised for preaching and visiting in “other men’s parishes”, and poaching other men’s parishioners. Wesley however was now firm in his rejection of the State-church idea that every man, woman and child “belonged” to an Anglican clergyman, and that no-one else had a right to preach the gospel to them. Wesley famously replied “I regard the world as my parish.”
Wesley and his colleagues soon found themselves excluded from the pulpits of former friends in parish ministry. Booklets were published warning against the Methodists and all kinds of lies were told about them by their Christian brothers and sisters. Bishops and Archdeacons circulated letters advising clergy not to give Mr. Wesley or any member of his network permission to preach. Wesley found his former Anglican friends very compliant to their ecclesiastical masters.
As the mainstream church became progressively more antagonistic to Methodist believers and ministers, Wesley evolved his own discipleship structures. His goal was that every Methodist believer should experience the kind of accountability, devoted brotherhood, and close community he and his fellow students had provided for one another in the Holy Club at Oxford. That was why the structures he developed - the Society, the Class Meeting and the Bands were all recluded fellowships (ie they were private gatherings of members). Admission to the Society was by ticket only. Admission to the Class was by invitation only. And the bands were small self-selected, single-gender groups of friends. People were asked very directly if they were ready for the “closeness” of conversation to be practised in these private gatherings. One standard question was “Do you wish to be told all your faults [plainly] and [directly]?” Another was “Do you wish us to disclose to you from time to time, everything that is in our hearts concerning you?”
It is easy therefore to see why these gatherings were private. Anyone interested in joining a band would have its disciplines explained, after which two visits only would be permitted before the person had to decide if they were ready for it. The intimacy was fiercely guarded because with progressive openness, these groups aimed at ever deeper confession and self-disclosure – impossible other than in recluded fellowship. As well as being attacked for their public ministry, Methodist preachers in England and Wales soon came under attack for gathering people privately in homes for purposes of discipleship and accountability. Their most venomous attack came from those committed to the “come one, come all,” approach of the parish churches. Indeed Wesley was frequently accused of “attempting to revive the spirit of monasticism”, and of secretly re-instituting the confessional! And in a way he was! His stated aim was to create the conditions for New Testament church-life. He regarded that as the standard.
Methodist life could also be seen as a realisation of Martin Luther’s vision for household-based church. They were practising what Luther had termed in the German Missal “The true nature of evangelical order.” However, the reality of it in the 1700s scandalised Christians who found comfort in the status quo.
These intimate gatherings of brothers and sisters were slandered by outsiders as being breaches of the “conventicle act”. This was an act of parliament newly passed to enhance “homeland security” (ie to sure up the new monarchy), and which potentially made any private gathering of more than five people illegal. As a consequence Methodist pastors were, in theory, at risk of imprisonment for gathering Christians to disciple them in private. Wesley was brought up before magistrates more than once. That’s how important the use of such privacy was to those Methodist pioneers.
It was from the Anabaptist Moravians that the Methodists had learned their commitment to brotherhood and sisterhood and to social equity. Consequently Methodist groups took no account of social class. Furthermore Methodist Society accounts were used to re-distribute wealth among the local community of Methodist believers – a practice which drew charges from non-Methodist Christians of sedition, communism and revolution – the kind of buzzwords designed to provoke a panic-response from the authorities in the way the word “terrorist” does in certain countries today!
Wesley’s public/private paradigm scandalised his Anglican colleagues who noted him only as a failed parish priest who, after his ungainly departure from the American Colonies, was unlikely ever to be offered another parish. Wesley’s post-New Birth ministry didn’t look like anything his Anglican friends had seen before. Virtually everything he did was considered by the mainstream Anglican Church to be unacceptable breaches of “church order” and “catholic (ie universal church) principles”. Wesley, a consummate theologian, satisfied himself by replying: “If by ‘Catholic principles’ you mean other than in the Bible, they weigh nothing with me…Church order is useful insofar as it brings men to Christ and builds them up in the love and fear of God. Insofar as it fails to do this, it is worth nothing.”
The Methodists’ great success was with society’s outsiders – those untouched by services and congregational life. God was with the Methodists powerfully, bringing to the world a revival that spanned the Atlantic. The revival helped define the religious heritage of the USA, and palpably altered the whole moral climate of Britain. Many historians credit the Methodist revival with preventing a national slide into anarchy and revolution. The Trades Union movement, the Labour movement, and the social reforms of the 1800s all found their roots and their leadership in the Methodist movement. Western Pentecostalism – the greatest harvest force of the 20th century - and the Salvation Army of the 19th century, both find their historical roots in the church-life of Wesleyan Methodism.
Many Christians today often seem puzzled at the idea of a church like Wesley’s with controlled entrance. I have certainly faced the disapproval of fellow Christians for practising it. But the truth of it is that a great many large churches practice controlled entrance at the level of their small groups, or cell groups. These will often be run in homes, and the membership closely defined. As Wesley understood, such control is important if trust and intimacy are to build in the small group. Whereas a mega church has controlled small groups and public Sunday meetings, many household-based or friendship-network churches exercise that privacy, intimacy and controlled entrance without the addition of creating a program of public meetings. Instead they practise that openness and inclusion through hospitable home life and gregarious and inclusive social lives - both scattered and as a group. I have found that this second pattern makes much better sense if your goal is to reach, include and draw to Jesus those kinds of people who have no interest in attending programs, services or Christian events – ie the 95%. It doesn’t work well if your goal is to be immediately understood by Christian friends whose lives are oriented all around getting non-believers into church services.
If you want to bear fruit publicly, why not take a leaf out of Wesley’s book and develop that level of “one another” life, discipleship and accountability that can only be achieved in the secure privacy of the gathered fellowship. It would be folly to disregard the fact that the persecuted church finds itself forced into this pattern - and grows exponentially as a consequence! The persecuted Wesley proved it in the West in his day. Now it’s the turn of a new generation to learn to flip their private/public paradigm inside out!