| (from Covenant Discipleship Quarterly: October 1985)
Covenant Discipleship is a connectional ministry of The United Methodist Church, and this is heartening on two counts.
Methodist Heritage
First, it is a sure sign that the interest in the life and ministry of John and Charles Wesley has led us back to our Methodist heritage, and in particular to the class meeting, that weekly point of accountability that was the bedrock of early Methodist discipleship.
Informed colleagues from other denominations have long been telling us that the class meeting was the genius of early Methodism.
Yet Methodists of today have been strangely reluctant to apply its principles to their own Christian discipleship. Our diffidence might be explained in part by the proliferation of small-group programs in our congregational life, some helpful, some harmless, some irritating, and some downright mischievous. What need have we of yet another small-group movement?
But this does not excuse our neglect of something so fundamental to the originative Methodist movement. It is high time for accountability once again to be the watchword of our Christian discipleship.
Christian Tradition
The second count on which Covenant Discipleship Groups are to be welcomed is that they plumb the depths of the Christian tradition and draw on its living waters. The early Methodist class meeting was above all a means of grace; and grace is at once the occasion and the dynamic of authentic Christian discipleship. Wesley stated this clearly in the General Rules of 1743 (see http://umc.org/interior.asp?mid=1648), and his pastoral insights are as valid today as they were in the eighteenth century. We are not pioneers in the Christian faith; nor were the early Methodists. We follow countless thousands who have preceded us in Christian discipleship, and it is always a salutary exercise to learn from those who have gone before.
Wesley did so, and found that authentic discipleship consists of two broad areas of activity: works of mercy and works of piety. The works of mercy are simple, but demanding: Avoiding those things that offend God and our neighbor and doing all we can to serve God and our neighbor. The works of piety are the means of grace, those time-honored disciplines of the church that open the Christian to the love and the power of God, and without which no Christian discipleship can have integrity.
Accordingly, the early Methodists met together each week to hold themselves accountable for these basics of the faith: the works of mercy and the works of piety. They practiced the method of being a Christian disciple, nothing more, nothing less. But in so doing, they exercised profound Christian wisdom.
In its support of Covenant Discipleship Groups, The United Methodist Church is making an impotant statement about authentic Christian discipleship. The groups will not be easy to implement. The call to commitment will grate on a church that has made self-indulgence a consummate skill. But the call is coming nonetheless. It is loud and clear, and it has the ring of truth. It also demands an answer: Back to Basics.
Covenant Discipleship Groups
Covenant Discipleship Groups are an adaptation of the early Methodist Class Meeting for the church of today.
Each group consists of two to seven people who agree to meet together for one hour each week, to be accountable to God and to one another for their discipleship. They do this by drawing up a written covenant of intent on which they are all agreed and then giving an account of their Christian pilgrimage during the past week in light of their covenant.
The sessions are not legalistic, nor are they judgmental. But they are firm, and above all they are realistic about the task of discipleship. For to be a Christian disciple means sharing in Christ's ongoing work of salvation in the world — a world that is certainly not neutral territory. The task of discipleship, therefore, calls for the binding together of those with like mind and purpose to watch over one another in love.
This is plain Christian common sense. It is also the essence of Methodism.
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