 Why would anyone commit to something as serious and time-consuming as a Covenant Discipleship group?
If salvation comes by faith alone -- a teaching that Methodists believe wholeheartedly -- then doesn't small-group accountability seem like an unnecessary work piled on top of faith?
I ask this question seriously, because CD groups are not easy. Joining one requires a deep commitment. You will inevitably be led to examine your life in a new way. Giving an account of your walk with Christ to your CD group means reporting many joyful successes, but it also means confessing humbling failures as well.
If we believed in predestination, we might indeed admit that such a form of discipleship is really an unnecessary intrusion into our busy lives. God's grace is certainly powerful enough to do the work of salvation for us, so why should we bother with our own struggling attempts to respond through accountable relationships?
John Wesley's answer to these questions comes with reference to the way grace works in restoring us to the point where we can actually say Yes to God's calling on our lives. This grace is poured into our souls in a healing way, canceling the power of Original Sin and making faith possible.
The word we use for this type of grace is "prevenient grace." The word "prevenient" simply means, "to come before" or "to arrive first." So prevenient grace goes before us -- or, as Wesley says in his sermon, "On Working Out Our Own Salvation," it is "the grace of God preventing, accompanying, and following you".
His account of prevenient grace highlights the gratuitous character of God's love toward us. Though we otherwise find ourselves mired in the dark pit of sin with no way out, God's prevenient grace heals us enough that we can recognize the light of God's saving action in our lives.
"Everyone has some measure of that light," Wesley writes, "some faint glimmering ray, which sooner or later, more or less, enlightens every [person] that cometh into the world."
Wrapped up in a statement like that are some Wesleyan essentials: namely, that Christ died for all and that God's grace is a truly free gift to us. And because God's grace really does impart righteousness into our lives, it gives us the ability to respond to God in faith.
The beauty of sanctification, as Wesley sees it, is that it is God's hope and desire for all of us. It does not take spiritual heroism, but rather a regular engagement in those means of grace that God has provided for us. This means searching the Scriptures, prayer, the Lord's Supper, and -- of course -- joining in those very relationships of accountability that we find in a Covenant Discipleship group.
In this way, Wesley says, we are "saved from the power and root of sin and restored to the image of God."
Thanks be to God!
••••
Andrew Thompson is a doctoral student at Duke University Divinity School in Durham, NC. He is a member of the Arkansas Conference. You can read his blog at www.genxrising.com.
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