WESLEY AND SMALL GROUP MEETINGS THEIR APPLICATION IN THE METHODIST CHURCH IN BRAZIL – BRIEF OBSER-VATIONS

Abstract

This article analyzes the experience of Wesleyan small groups in the eighteenth-century Methodist revival, their continuity and discontinuity in nineteenth-century American Methodism, and the absence of this practice in Brazilian Methodism. The study shows how John Wesley transformed a financial problem in Bristol (1742) into an ecclesiological solution, creating Methodist classes as a prudential means of grace and a communal practice of holiness of heart and life. While in England the classes functioned as ecclesiola in ecclesia, in the United States Methodism became institutionalized as a free denomination, shifting the focus from communal holiness to individualized spirituality. In Brazil, under the influence of American pietism, small groups never assumed the theological-pastoral character of Wesleyan classes, being limited to prayer meetings, Sunday School, and society groups. The text argues for the urgent rediscovery of communal responsibility in Wesleyan classes as a way to update the Methodist message of holiness in the Brazilian postmodern context.