James Bryan Smith contends that the early eighteenth-century Methodists were one of the purest examples of the power of accountability in community. Their leader, John Wesley, would preach to countless people, seeing thousands of conversions. Wesley’s outdoor preaching to the masses was encouraged by his longtime friend George Whitefield, himself a preacher to even larger audiences and who saw far greater numbers of conversions.

According to Smith, a theology professor in Wichita, Kansas, the biggest difference between the two historic preachers was in how they instructed people to live after conversion. Whitefield, Smith writes, had no plan and simply assumed that people who gave their life to Christ would naturally find a church and live out the Christian life.

By contrast, it was Wesley who insisted that people join what were then called “societies.” These Methodist societies encouraged people to attend several times a week to hear Wesley’s (or some other minister’s) preaching. Attendees were also asked to join a class, which consisted of twelve students and one leader. The purpose of the weekly class was for the attendees to come and share candidly about the state of their souls. In fact, Smith writes, Wesley was so serious about faithful, regular attendance that anyone who failed to attend a meeting would be banned from future meetings unless they approached Wesley himself with the reasons for their absence.

“Though Wesley’s practice might not work in today’s world, it certainly did in his time,” Smith declares in his book The Good and Beautiful Community (2010 InterVarsity Press). “He offered people a method (hence the name Methodists) to grow in Christlikeness in the context of communities. The movement spread rapidly and continued to grow in astounding numbers. He asked a lot of his people, but he saw a lot of transformation.”

The work and the legacy of Wesley lives on. George Whitefield, however—the book points out—left no such legacy. Despite his giftedness as an orator and evangelist, Whitefield never started an actual movement. It was a fact of which he was painfully aware.

Smith writes that Wesley believed that preaching like an apostle “without joining together those that are awakened and training them in the ways of God is only begetting children for the murderer.”

James Bryan Smith shares that he spent two weeks one summer working with Dallas Willard, assisting him in a class he was teaching on spirituality and ministries. The lessons learned about spiritual formation, especially in the context of community, were abundant. “Dallas Willard believes that in any given church approximately 10 percent of the people are ready to grown and willing to make an effort to make it happen.” Smith says that Willard thinks that the church puts too much emphasis on trying to light a fire under the 90 percent and neglects to challenge the 10 percent who are sitting idle but wanting to help.

James Bryan Smith is the director of the Christian Spiritual Formation Institute in Wichita and an ordained United Methodist Church minister. In addition to The Good and Beautiful Community, his other Apprentice Series books include The Good and Beautiful Life and The Good and Beautiful God.

In this book, Smith shows his readers how to bring spiritual formation and community engagement together. “Apprentices of Jesus are not part-time do-gooders,” he writes. “They live in continuous contact with the kingdom of God and are constantly men and women in whom Christ dwells.” His books seeks to offer spiritual practices that root new, true narratives about God and the world in our souls.