Why We Are Piloting Grace Groups This Summer
A small experiment in the oldest Methodist habit.
In 1739, John Wesley gathered a few people in London and asked them one question: how is it with your soul. The groups he started were not classes in the academic sense. They were small circles of accountability where ordinary Methodists watched over one another in love. Wesley believed those weekly conversations, more than the preaching or the theology, were what built the movement.
McPherson First has had small groups in many seasons of its life. We are not inventing something new. What we are trying to recover is the habit of meeting weekly to ask each other a few honest questions, then doing it again the next week, and the next. That was the original Methodist genius. The format was so simple that anyone could lead, and so demanding that almost no one could fake it.
Two recent experiences pulled me toward this summer pilot.
The first was the Grace Group I led at Central Christian College this past spring. Once a week with a handful of college students, three questions, an hour. The thing I noticed was not the brilliance of any particular conversation. It was that the students kept showing up, and that they kept telling me, “this is the most honest part of my week.” None of them used the language of class meetings or means of grace. They used the language of relief.
The second was confirmation last spring. We embedded the same three-question Grace Group format in every confirmation session, with mentors and confirmands in the same groups. When we asked confirmands to rate every component of the year, the Grace Group time scored 4.38 out of 5.0, higher than anything else on the list. The piece that rose to the top was sitting with three or four other people and answering: how is your faith journey going, where do you see God at work, and what challenge are you giving to God.
So we are piloting Grace Groups for adults this summer. Six weeks. One hour a week. Six to eight of us in a room at the church. I am leading the pilot personally because the cleanest way to learn a format is to teach it from the front, and because the people who walk out of this pilot in late July are the most likely candidates to lead Grace Groups of their own this fall.
A few things I am listening for through the summer.
Whether the three questions hold up across a six-week season for adults the way they did for college students and the confirmation groups. Whether one hour at the church on a weekday slot draws people who would not show up for a Sunday-morning class. Whether the conversation deepens in the way it did at Central, with members eventually saying things they did not plan to say when they walked in. Whether the format produces leaders, which is the test of whether this pattern can become a sustained ministry rather than a curiosity.
What I am not testing is whether Grace Groups are theologically right for our congregation. We are United Methodist, and you cannot get much more Methodist than this. It is a pattern worth seeking to re-enliven in this season of the church’s work. The General Rules and the means of grace tradition are not optional accessories to United Methodist faith. They are the spine of how Wesley thought we grow, and they only work in community.
The shape of the pilot is practical. There are two time options on the sign-up form, and whichever draws more interest is the one we run. We are meeting at the church rather than in homes. The building may prove to be a good ongoing home for groups like this, and an open invitation is how we hope to find out. Six weeks rather than a full season, with a planned gap along the way, since real groups have real interruptions. More than anything, I want to put out the invitation and see what we learn.
On Sunday mornings we are walking through Tending the Soul, and the series and this pilot were designed to launch together. Each of the three Sundays takes up one of the three questions a Grace Group asks. The sermons raise them from the front. Grace Groups are where we sit down and answer them, with a few others, through the week.
If you are reading this and you have been wondering whether to sign up, this is the invitation. The Grace Groups sign-up form is open through Monday, June 15. I would love to have you in the room.
Whether you sign up or not, please pray for the pilot. Pray for the people who will say yes. Pray for the conversations they will have. Pray that what Wesley discovered in 1739 still works in McPherson, Kansas, in 2026.
How is it with your soul?