Denise Stringer - How Is It With Your Soul Class Leader: Class Leaders Manual for Use With This Day

"Looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith."

Hebrews 12:2a

F rom the beginning, the Methodist movement has sought to lead people beyond nominal Christianity into a vital relationship with God (Romans 3:22). The practice of faithfulness in the Wesleyan tradition focuses on the knowledge of God in Christ Jesus, seeking the mind of Christ, or "the renewal of the soul after the image of God, in righteousness and true holiness" ("Thoughts Upon Methodism," John Wesley, Arminian Magazine, 1787, found in Selections from the Writings of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., p. 205). John and Charles Wesley, the founders of Methodism, believed that personal conversion, when properly nurtured within the Class Meeting, would lead to lifelong Christian discipleship and the spread of scriptural holiness across the land. How Is It With Your Soul? has been designed to equip clergy and laity to renew the original vision and methodology of the Wesleyan movement for the twenty-first century.

This manual for Class Leaders is intended for use in conjunction with This Day: A Wesleyan Way of Prayer, primarily within the adult education program of the local church. These resources, when employed as foundational components of the local church's discipleship system, will support spiritual formation over the life span of the class. A revival of the Class Meeting system, accompanied by daily prayer and reading of Scripture, will help to fill the gap that has been created by the historic division between the Church of England and American Methodism, as well as address the widespread decline in spiritual vitality within the Methodist movement. The material has been developed with a clear focus on the contemporary ministry setting, as well as with a strong desire to base current practice on the original Wesleyan methodology. The best of the many sciences that can inform and strengthen the mission of the Church in the postmodern world have been accessed in this effort to support twentyfirst century Class Leaders in providing lay pastoral oversight for the people called Methodists.

The way of life to which the followers of Jesus believe themselves called may best be described by using Jesus' own words: the losing of one's life to find it (Mark 8:35) or taking up the cross daily (Luke 14:27). This way is neither the ascetic's practice of self-denial nor a heavy burden of rules or religious practices (Matthew 11:30; Galatians 5:1). It is nothing more and nothing less than a love for God that engages the whole person and every aspect of one's relationships with others.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, described the way of life he sought for his fellow Methodists when he wrote:

A Methodist is one who has "the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost given unto him;" one who "loves the Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his mind, and with all his strength." God is the joy of his heart, and the desire of his soul; which is constantly crying out, "Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee! My God and my all! Thou art the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever!" (John Wesley, "The Character of a Methodist," in