Holy Groups

During his years at Oxford, John Wesley was the leader of a group called the Holy Club.  It was not the name picked by Wesley, but one used to mock the group which met to seek inner holiness.  Not many of us would want to be a member of such a group.  It met daily every  morning from six until nine for prayer, reading the Psalms, and then reading the Greek New Testament.  They were committed to receiving the Sacrament every Sunday and fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays until three o'clock in the afternoon.  It was definitely not a group for dabblers in religion.  Those fainthearted in their spiritual lives need not apply!  

Any group we might join today in our church is more likely to take into consideration the issue of convenience.  It would also have to fit into our "hurry to get somewhere" schedule.  For those early members of the Holy Club cultivating inner holiness was an issue worthy of personal sacrifice.  And while spiritual disciplines have no inherent saving power, they do enable us to put our spirit in an attitude of openness to what God is saying and wanting to do in our lives.   Even as it is true that we are a generation of worshippers who want our preaching sugar coated so that it is painless to swallow, we also want any religious instruction to be like fast food: quick to get and something to be ingested while on the go.  

The Methodist Church of our day, as well as other denominations, needs to be less concerned about being convenient and easy and more concerned about enabling its people to grow in a disciplined spiritual life.  Such an attitude will not attract the masses so important to the church growth people, but it would go a long way toward creating a community where spirituality takes precedence over the trivial things the church declares to be so important in these days.