Thirteen: A Story of Growth in Grace Through an Experimental Small Group

In 2016, I was desperate for God's perceivable involvement in my life. I was an associate pastor in charge of men and young families in a non-denominational, medium-sized church from a holiness tradition in the heart of the Bible Belt of America. Wednesday night men's meeting consisted of anywhere from ten to twenty men of varying ages, gathered in an older cinder-block room lined with chairs and whiteboards. It was an honest group, defined by a faithful upbringing in biblical understanding. Showing up on Wednesday nights was a rhythm not normally broken and one would easily become like family in this group, enjoying disagreements, heated arguments at times, but always a sense of togetherness, anchored by several seasoned men of the church.

When I became the teacher of the Wednesday night group, I was zealous about teaching the Scriptures and portraying an inspirational account of our theological heritage as Wesleyan Methodists. To this day I think that I was a good teacher, and yet I felt incredibly ineffective both as a person and as a pastor. Personally, however, I longed for discernment about my future, power over enduring struggles in my heart, and effectiveness in my ministry. I had been in many small groups, had even started a few of my own. In all of them there was a noticeable lack of perceivable victory for both me and others. It is not that God's power had never been perceived in my life before. My conversion at a young age and the years that followed were filled with a perception of God's presence, power, guidance, and effectiveness when sharing it with others. But those fires seemed quenched and distant as life went on.

In the spring of that year, I decided to take a solo trip to Haiti to visit my dear friend, Dr. Vilmer Paul, whose ministry was multiplying rather quickly into multiple schools and churches.

Dr. Vilmer Paul and I met in seminary. Dr. Paul is a native Haitian who planted a church, Heavenly Brightness Church, that quickly grew into a large congregation from which was started a school. Eventually, Dr. Paul planted other schools and churches in the area. His ministry is a bright light for the city of Cap Haitien.

Regarding this early Methodist practice, D. Michael Henderson writes that the practice of punching tickets ‘allowed the Methodist leaders to maintain the integrity of the groups while keeping conflict to a minimum’, and that the exclusion of those who refused to cooperate ‘was deemed a necessary safeguard and the tickets a convenient restraint’.

Henderson, John Wesley's Class Meeting, 143–4.

I was also quite surprised to experience a level of gratitude and victory that the congregants testified to continuously during my time there. At every event that I participated in with Dr. Paul, men, women, and young people would regularly stand up and declare all the good things that God was doing in their lives.

Kevin M. Watson recently wrote that ‘When Methodists have lowered their expectations of what God can do in this life, spiritual and numeric decline have followed’ (Perfect Love: Recovering Entire Sanctification—The Lost Power of the Methodist Movement [Seedbed, 2021], 5).

It would be a mistake to make the case that Dr. Paul's methodology was directly connected to the appearance of great spiritual growth, and that is not my point in sharing it. Instead, the perception of that connection deeply influenced how I began to process my own ministry. I don’t claim that it was science, only that it impacted my thinking about my own ministry experiences and motivated me to change.

On the flight back from Haiti, I was trying to process my experience with Dr. Paul while also reading John Wesley's A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, a book gifted to me by my father after I became a believer eighteen years prior. I had read it multiple times in the past, something obvious by its then-current appearance (it is in far worse shape today). While waiting for a layover flight in Miami, I came across a statement in that book that, conjoined with my time in Haiti, caused a shift to settle in me. Wesley claimed that God offers believers the blessings of a pure heart along with God's active leading in our lives.

Of course, holiness as a way of life wasn’t something new to me. I had long since been convinced that we were meant to live in relative victory and under the continued leading of God's presence. In fact, the first time that the concept of holiness became real to me was in my first reading of Wesley's Plain Account in 1999. It was the first theological book I had ever read as a believer, and it influenced me a great deal at that time. But it was this very fact that made the struggles of my personal life and ministry so difficult. ‘If this is God's plan for us, then what am I doing wrong?’ ‘Where,’ I questioned, ‘had that experience of God gone?’ ‘Okay,’ I thought to myself. ‘I get this, want this, and it isn’t something new.’ To be clear, the issue for me personally was not about Christian perfection per se, but simply Christian growth in victory. ‘Just be present, Lord!’

As I continued to read A Plain Account, I came to Wesley's section on the means of grace. He asks, ‘How are we to wait for this change?’ He answers,

Not in careless indifference, or indolent inactivity; but in vigorous, universal obedience, in a zealous keeping of all the commandments, in watchfulness and painfulness, in denying ourselves, and taking up our cross daily; as well as in earnest prayer and fasting, and a close attendance on all the ordinances of God. And if any man dream of attaining it any other way (yea, or of keeping it when it is attained, when he has received it even in the largest measure), he deceiveth his own soul. It is true, we receive it by simple faith; but God does not, will not, give that faith unless we seek it with all diligence, in the way which He hath ordained.

John Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection ([1872] Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill Press, 1966), 62.

Wesley audaciously claimed that we are to seek after God's work in our lives in specific ways, ways that God himself had designed and instituted for this purpose. Most of these God-designed and instituted ways are historically known as the means of grace.

According to Henderson, the means of grace are a foundational theological principle for Wesley's methods. Henderson writes, ‘The idea that human nature could improve with proper care and discipline was an essential plank in the Wesleyan instructional platform.’

Henderson, John Wesley's Class Meeting, 131.

The practice of the means of grace was not really new to me. However, Wesley wrote two sentences following his answer above that immediately sobered me and woke me from a deep spiritual slumber. This was because he related the practice of the means of grace to our complaining about the sparing experiences of said holiness. He writes,

This consideration may satisfy those who inquire, why so few have received the blessing [of a pure heart]. Inquire how many are seeking it in this way; and you have a sufficient answer.

Wesley, Christian Perfection, 62.

Imagine, if you will, a long pause. Upon reading these words, I felt as though God were speaking directly to me. ‘Kenny, you want me to do all these things in your life, about which you complain incessantly, but you do not take the time to seek me in the ways that I’ve specified for you.’ It…was…simple. I wanted to sit and do as little as possible while being inwardly discontent with God's presence in my life and ministry.

As Watson has written, ‘At one level, this is an easy way to distinguish between our intentions and our actions. It is one thing to say that I want to be a mature and faithful Christian. It is another thing to express that commitment through consistent action’, (Perfect Love, 109).

The light bulb had gone off. Things must be different in me. Things must be different in how I do ministry. For years I had depended on my wisdom and insight, my passion and intensity, my inspiration to lead others to the discovery of God's presence and power. Now, however, I felt confident that I had been wholly mistaken. The greatest gift I could give was to show people how to use the means that God had ordained for them to seek God themselves.

Robert Wuthnow has written that there are two axes of debate regarding how small groups are impacting faith in America. ‘One of these has to do with the question of individual responsibility. It focuses on the degree to which an individual should take an active role in the shaping of his or her faith. The other has to do with the question of faith and work.’ ‘The Small-Group Movement in the Context of American Religion’, in ‘I Come Away Stronger’: How Small Groups are Shaping American Religion, edited by Robert Wuthnow (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994), 345.

Over the next few weeks, I felt sure that I needed to start a group that would not be focused on insights, videos, curriculums, or topical studies. There were plenty of those already. As Watson wrote, ‘To put this even more directly, this volume offers no support for the types of small groups that are most common in contemporary Wesleyan/Methodist communities, which are curriculum-driven and focused on a transfer of information from a perceived expert to a largely passive audience. The most obvious example of this approach is Sunday School.’

Watson, Pursuing Social Holiness, 186.

Readers will be able to discern one of my initial working assumptions, which was not a feature of Wesley's groups. The group would need to be exclusive, our version of ‘punching tickets’, but there were several pressure valves blueprinted into the model. Because our practices would be quite vigorous and new for participants, we wanted to include moments in which the pressure was off. To accomplish this, we limited the commitments to six of seven days, one day being used for making up on failed commitments. Second, the group was limited to thirteen weeks, the idea of which was that our efforts would be long enough to be valuable but short enough to be doable.

Though his suggestion is by now outdated, Robert Wuthnow suggested that by the early 1990s, small groups that had limited terms made up the smallest percentage of groups out of eleven markers (14 percent), ahead of groups that have contracts (18 percent). Wuthnow, Sharing the Journey: Support Groups and the Quest for a New Community (New York: The Free Press, 1994), 136. He notes this in ‘The Small-Group Movement’ as well (377). However, there are models more recently that take this approach, such as The Journey Church in New York, which operates on ten-week rotations. See Nelson Searcy and Kerrick Thomas, Activate (Ventura, CA: Regal, 2008).

The following week I announced to our Wednesday night men's group that we would have an interest meeting regarding this experimental group. Surprisingly, we had nine men show up and initially commit. We decided that a text group would be the best method for checking in, despite the concern that it would feel legalistic (‘just get the check mark’). We were not able to use this experiment in place of Wednesday night men's ministry or any other regular service time, so we had the added difficulty of finding time to meet. We decided that the group would not happen if we had to ask people for what worked best for them. Instead, we raised the stakes by having it after Wednesday night men's group. Additionally, we decided to strictly enforce the time to start and finish since most of the men in our group had families at home. Furthermore, everyone could participate during the first week without any commitment afterward, as a sort of trial and ‘count the cost’ week.

Cf. Wuthnow's advice, ‘The Small-Group Movement’, 361.

Our meeting time together was planned to be rather strict and straightforward. We would read a list of core values and commitments, trading off who read what each week. Everyone had to participate without exception in every question and element of our meeting. The idea was that to finish such a strenuous effort, we would have to be reminded regularly why we had started at all. Although we read Scripture, we never discussed it. Instead, we asked three questions: What are you grateful for? How did your commitments go? How can we pray for you? There was always a mystery question as well, such as, ‘What are you desiring to keep secret?’ In answering questions, everyone was asked to keep their responses to the point, no dissertations allowed. We always finished on time. One other thing we did that was unique: after the first week, everyone had to fast for 24 hours prior to the second meeting, without which participants could not continue. Similarly, the final week included a 24-hour exit fast that was resolved with a big feast.

There are several aspects of how we arranged our meetings that need to be discussed. First, we required everyone to participate in reading the values (alternating), in praying and being prayed for, and in answering the questions, no exceptions. This is noted as a peculiarity of early Methodism by Henderson.

It seems incredible, but every Methodist spoke at every meeting every week…. There was no allowance for mere listeners or watchers. The success of the entire system hinged on the assumption that everyone would participate.

Henderson, John Wesley's Class Meeting, 142 (italics in the original).

Henderson notes what happened when this was no longer required:

By the time the requirement of participation had been dropped as a condition for membership, the entire Methodist group system had crumbled and Methodism became just another religious denomination with no particular methodological distinction.

Henderson, John Wesley's Class Meeting, 142–3.

The second aspect worth discussing is that of self-ownership. A. Lamport and Mary Rynsburger reported in a 2008 study that there is an essential difference between child and adult education. Unlike children, adults are ‘driven by self-direction’ and tend to ‘resent imposed learning’.

Mark A. Lamport and Mary Rynsburger, ‘All the Rage: How Small Groups Are Really Educating Christian Adults, Part 2: Augmenting Small Group Ministry Practice—Developing Small Group Leadership Skills Through Insights from Cognate Theoretical Disciplines,’ in Christian Education Journal, Series 3, Vol. 5, no. 2 (2008): 411.

Most of the core values, commitments, and questions that were asked were derived from Wesley directly. For instance, reading our general commitments to the group each week included the following, ‘Toward this end, I will arrive on time and endure for three months; be serious and speak the truth, refrain from speaking ill of anyone, keep all confidence without exception, forward my brothers in all Scriptural Christianity, and be willing to be told my faults plainly and clearly by those who care for me.’ Additionally, we chose one of Wesley's regular band questions each week as our mystery question, such as ‘Have you nothing you desire to keep secret?’

Henderson gives a general overview of some of these in John Wesley's Class Meeting, 116–21. 44

A third aspect lies in the fact that the group was not a Bible study. Every week a passage would be read but not discussed. Passages were chosen that most reminded us that we are called to be holy. However, we wanted to avoid elaborate talks that would not change our practice. We already had plenty of insights in our lives that we were not living out. This idea is captured best by Wesleyan scholar Matt Friedeman, whom I have heard say on numerous occasions, ‘If you make disciples by sitting around and talking, do not be surprised if your disciples sit around and talk.’

Matt Friedeman, The 5Q Method of Discipleship: Five Questions that Will Change Your Life (Jackson, MS: Teleios Press, 2021), 8.

Certainly, there are some dynamic people to whom others will naturally be drawn to listen and learn from, but for many of us pastors, our incredible biblical insights and dynamic personalities will not move others into action. This was certainly the assumption we were working with. I genuinely thought that I was a great teacher, but lives remained as they always had been. I also felt sure that if we began to study the Bible (which is important), then the group would be dominated by particular personalities. So, we removed it. Instead, the understood outcome of the groups was for each participant to take ownership of God's word and presence in their life, something not available in a church service alone.

As Dallas Willard has said, ‘the greatest contemporary barriers to meaningful spiritual formation into Christlikeness is overconfidence in the spiritual efficacy of regular church service. They are vital, they are not enough, it is that simple’ (Renovation of the Heart [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002] 250). Quoted in Yau Man Siew, ‘A Case Study in Adult Discipleship: Stories of Apprenticeship to Jesus at an Urban Anglican (Episcopal) Church’, in Christian Education Journal, vol. 18 (2) 2021: 203.

The final noteworthy aspect of our arrangement lies in the role of the fasting. The first week was treated as a trial week, as noted already. At the end of the first week, participants would have had opportunity to give our group a trial run. On week two, those who chose to stay were only allowed to stay if they completed a 24 hour fast leading into the second meeting. There are several reasons for this. For one, it added a choice. Participants had the opportunity to get out, but once they were in, it was understood that they were verbally agreeing to allow us to speak truthfully and bluntly for the remainder of the thirteen weeks to keep them on track. Another reason that the fast was important was to create expectation. The ability of participants to complete the fast allowed them and the group to believe that they were serious about participating.

Though viewed differently among participants looking back, it was not a glorious start from my own perspective. Two weeks in and there were complaints beginning to rise from within and without. I was engaged in several conversations about the group in which it was expressed that some people felt that wives were being neglected and that these extreme measures of accountability were overkill.

Upon reading my account of this difficult beginning, most of the participants did not recall that things were so bad at first. My own negative outlook on its beginning may be attributed to conversations that took place outside of the group participants.

Another turning point that stands out was when one our men prayed for us to ‘kick the enemy in the grill’. Regardless of how someone might feel about this sort of statement, it awoke a deep-seated sense that we were at war. When one or more of us were not doing well during any specific week, the others would chime in and rhetorically ask, ‘Did you sign up for something easy?’ The text messages became a place for defying the enemy and throwing up our rebellious flags against defeat. We felt like soldiers. Each ring of the text to check in reminded us that someone was fighting at that moment against the devil and his schemes. We brought up stories like when Sampson faced his enemies with nothing more than the jawbone of a donkey. There were no excuses and when we made any, they were quickly smothered by a group of men that simply would not have it.

In the same way that I remember a few outside voices of criticism at the beginning, new voices arose toward the end who expressed how evident it was that what we were doing was effective in those participating. I remember specifically two texts in which wives respectively reached out to encourage me to keep doing whatever we were doing. When the thirteen weeks were ending, we did an exit fast to end the group. We met and had the best steaks that anyone had ever tasted while discussing the lessons learned. Although some wanted to continue the group (something common, I have learned), I insisted that we should not, so as to preserve the integrity of what we began with boundaries. I then gave each participant a gift for having finished the race. As I recall, the gift I gave was Richard S. Taylor's The Disciplined Life (1962).

All in all, we had learned something. God wanted to be sought and we were tasting His power and presence in a way that we had not before; and we were doing this together. Doing in community these hard things in a vigorous way where excuses were not very useful or accepted created an incredible bond alive still today, though many of us are in different parts of the country now. It did not start with an experience but with simply taking God up on his promises. If we would seek him according to the ways he had determined, then he would respond. He did. Our original vision, which we read every week, was ‘to see men experience effective Spiritual change in their lives by entering a serious and accountable atmosphere for three months at a time consisting of high commitment, definable goals, biblical values, and daily accountability’.