Are Wesleyan class meetings the solution for a lonely and under-formed Church?
Check out this reflection from Greg McElyea about Wesleyan class meetings, the need for better communal discipleship in our churches, and its applications in LGBT+ ministry. Greg is an ordained elder in the MidSouth Annual Conference of the Global Methodist Church. His clergy appointment is at Asbury Theological Seminary where he serves as the Associate Director of Global Student Life Formation as well as the Coordinator of the GMC Student Fellowship.
Discipling the lonely through Wesleyan class meetings
The idea that American Christianity needs to embrace deeper spiritual friendships is nothing new to churches ministering to LGBT+ people with empathy and biblical conviction. The Equip Team has been writing about the radiance of friendship and the possibility of building community through friendship for years, yet my observation is that many churches in the US have become so individualistic that they often mirror the wider culture in their discipleship structures. Despite clearer teaching around the need for spiritual friendship, the garden-variety Evangelical approach to discipleship continues to emphasize head knowledge above all else. The result is that discipleship groups, if they are even encouraged by church leaders at all, are often oriented around study, content, and curriculum. It’s as if the underlying assumption is that better thinking is sufficient for deeper discipleship.
I contend that correct belief is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of biblical discipleship. I believe that discipleship also includes the ways in which brothers and sisters in Christ connect with one another in meaningful Christian fellowship. The general argument of this post is that discipleship in the local church can be structured in such a way that prioritizes both good teaching and deep fellowship.
In his book, The Class Meeting: Reclaiming a Forgotten (and Essential) Small Group Experience, Kevin Watson lists three common types of small groups in churches: affinity groups, informational or instructional groups, and transformational groups.1 Watson defines affinity groups as meetings that are organized around shared interests or hobbies such as bowling leagues or book clubs, and he asserts that they are the least likely to produce deeper discipleship among their members. Watson defines instructional groups as meetings that are organized around disseminating information. Examples often include Sunday School meetings and Wednesday night Bible studies. The best of these include an application component, but many do not. Finally, he defines transformational groups as meetings that are intentionally “organized around a common desire to support one another in efforts to become increasingly faithful Christians who are growing in love of God and neighbor.”2 The rest of his book argues that the historic Wesleyan class meeting is an example of a transformational small group experience. I agree, and I believe that class meetings were transformational precisely because they required deep connection and openness among group members.
Historical backdrop
The first class meeting began in 1742 during what has been called the “third rise of Methodism.”3 By this time, John Wesley had already combined two religious societies in Bristol, the Baldwin Street society and the Nicholas Street society, into one. He began to refer to this new group as the “united societies.”4
In 1739, Wesley instructed these united societies to meet in the New Room, a building project that he was funding for the purpose of advancing their evangelistic mission. In the years that followed, he attempted to enlist financial support for the building project, but most of his efforts had limited success. By 1742, Captain Foy, a lay leader with prior military experience, divided the united societies into classes (from the Latin classis or “division”). Each class consisted of twelve members, both men and women. The class leader was responsible for collecting twelve pence each week to go toward the building fund.5
Recent changes in the discipleship infrastructure of the united societies left some without a small group. Wesley saw Captain Foy’s new class meeting as an opportunity for all members of the united societies to receive weekly encouragement and guidance. The class leaders thus became spiritual overseers, and the class meeting itself became the context for the members to “watch over one another in love.”6 In time, participation in the class meeting became a requirement for Wesleyan Methodists, a practice that continued for over a hundred years. Some believe that this requirement was one of the Holy Spirit’s primary means for discipling the millions who would come to know the Lord through the Methodist renewal movement.7
Contemporary application
So, what was the class meeting? Its format was exceedingly simple. These meetings usually began with singing a hymn or two followed by the class leader asking each member one simple question: “How is it with your soul?”
I fear that sometimes, even in Wesleyan and Methodist circles, we roll our eyes at such a question. Here’s what I hope: I hope we’re not rolling our eyes at the essence of the question. I hope, if anything, we’re just indicating that maybe the question is a bit outdated in its wording. But surely with a little imagination, we can think of other ways of asking it. Or, we can simply try to understand what it means so that when we do ask it, we will grasp the grace behind the question.
So, what does it mean when others ask you, “How is it with your soul?” In your thought life, in your emotions, in your work, in your relationships (perhaps especially with your friends, families, and foes), and in your heart, they’re asking, “How are you doing? Really?” This is about a gospel of belonging, support, and accountability.
We’re facing an epidemic of loneliness in our day. People feel isolated. This is perhaps especially true for sexual and gender minorities who are seeking to live faithfully for Jesus in a church landscape that, as I said above, is often averse to deep discipleship relationships in the first place. But we’re all made to want to be known. So, when the class meeting leader asks you every week, “How is your soul?” it is one chance for you to be known. It is also your opportunity to practice hospitality in allowing others to be known by listening to them and responding with grace and truth.
In closing, as I now turn my attention to church leaders in particular, I invite you to consider your church’s discipleship infrastructure. I invite you to take a posture of prayer and ask the Lord how you might take steps toward implementing class meetings or other deeply relational discipleship structures in your context. How might these be added to an existing discipleship curriculum you might be using? How can creating space for and even expecting deep community facilitate the conditions in which your parishioners can watch over one another in love and ultimately build themselves up in Christ?
It is my hope that we can start a renaissance of Christian friendship. I believe class meetings can be an essential force in that. During the first hundred years or so of the Methodist renewal, it was largely through the requirement to participate in class meetings that the movement grew from a small number of religious societies in England to millions across Britain and America. What would happen if we recovered this practice today? How might this meet the needs of a world starved of connection, support, and accountability?
Learn more about Equip’s other resources for discipling LGBT+ people well, including Equip’s Leader Course!
A post-text from the Equip Team: For those discipling gay and trans Christians who are trying to live faithfully, the hunger Greg names here is not theoretical. Celibate believers often spend years jumping between social hangouts that stay shallow and Bible studies that stay in the head, but they are desperate for something that actually forms them. They want companions who will sit with their grief, call them toward holiness, and help them imagine a future fuller than “just don’t have gay sex.” Before churches invent complicated programs or romanticize intentional communities that feel out of reach, we should remember that Wesley already gave the Church a tool for this: a transformational structure built on honesty, consistency, confession, spiritual friendship, and shared mission. Class meetings offer exactly the kind of steady, heart-level discipleship that makes long-term celibacy livable and joyful, not just technically possible.
It’s also not lost on gay celibate Christians why class meetings feel strangely familiar. They unintentionally parallel what draws people to queer happy hours, LGBT+ socialist book clubs, and ballroom houses: the same faces every week, chosen family energy, accountability with affection, and a sense that “we’re becoming something together.” In many ways, secular queer spaces are offering the depth, vulnerability, and self-actualization that churches should have been cultivating all along. Imagine if our churches reclaimed that kind of community where gay celibate Christians could confess, be real, be loved, be challenged, and be sent out on mission together. Class meetings won’t solve everything, but they could become the very soil where celibate Christians actually thrive and where queer neighbors begin to wonder, with surprise, whether the Church might offer a kind of belonging they’ve been searching for everywhere else.
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- Kevin M. Watson, The Class Meeting: Reclaiming a Forgotten (and Essential) Small Group Experience, 2013, 5–7.
- Kevin M. Watson, The Class Meeting: Reclaiming a Forgotten (and Essential) Small Group Experience, 2013, 6.
- Richard P. Heitzenrater, Wesley and the People Called Methodists, 2nd ed., 2013, 81–103.
- Richard P. Heitzenrater, Wesley and the People Called Methodists, 2nd ed., 2013, 113.
- Richard P. Heitzenrater, Wesley and the People Called Methodists, 2nd ed., 2013, 130.
- John Wesley, A Plain Account of the People Called Methodist, 1749, 6–7, accessed December 9, 2025, Internet Archive.
- Kevin M. Watson, The Class Meeting: Reclaiming a Forgotten (and Essential) Small Group Experience, 2013, 21–22.
