The Wesley Prayer Challenge Leader Guide: 21 Days to a Closer Walk with Christ

By Chris Folmsbee

The Wesley Covenant Prayer has been used in Methodist services around the world on the first Sunday of the year since John Wesley introduced it in 1755. Wesley expected that people would pray this prayer as a way of remembering, renewing, and surrendering themselves in complete trust to God. When we pray it, we are to remember what living like Jesus looks like and what loving God with all our heart, soul, and mind and loving our neighbor as ourselves requires of us.


In The Wesley Prayer Challenge, author Chris Folmsbee invites readers to consider words from the Wesley Covenant Prayer each day for three weeks while reflecting on their meaning in the context of the larger piece.


Each day’s reading will include scripture, prayer, and a challenge for daily life.


The Leader Guide contains everything needed to guide a group through the 21-day challenge including session plans and discussion questions, as well as multiple format options.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abingdon Press
• Release date: Oct 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781791007249

Chris Folmsbee

Chris Folmsbee has served as a youth pastor for nearly 15 years, and now serves as a volunteer youth worker in his local church. He currently leads Barefoot Ministries, a youth ministry training and publishing company located in Kansas City, and is on staff with Youthfront. Chris is the author of several books including his most recent, Story, Signs, and Sacred Rhythms: A Narrative Approach to Youth Ministry. He lives in Overland Park, Kansas, with his wife, Gina, and their three children, Megan, Drew, and Luke.

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INTRODUCTION

On Monday, August 11, 1755, English clergyman and theologian John Wesley held his first Covenant Service. The service was inspired by the writings of Puritan pastor Richard Alleine, particularly a section of Alleine’s A Vindication of Godliness, in the Greatest Strictness and Spirituality of It called The Application of the Whole, which deals with making holiness and godliness a way of life.

John Wesley is best known as the founder of Methodism. While Wesley was certainly a reformer, he never intended to start a new Christian denomination. Rather, he wanted people to know that God’s grace was sufficient for their salvation and that they could open themselves to this incredible gift through practices that he called means of grace. These means of grace include (among many other things) prayer and worship with a community of faith. Through Wesley’s Covenant Service, worshippers experience God’s grace while holding themselves accountable to their covenant with God.

Wesley often likened God’s covenant with God’s people to a marriage, and even used husband-and-bride language in his original version of the Covenant Prayer. Much as one would renew one’s vows with a spouse, Christians must revisit and renew our covenant with God. We must examine the commitment we’ve made and the responsibilities we have as a result. John Wesley’s Covenant Services were an opportunity for such renewal and recommitment.

More than 250 years have passed since Wesley’s first Covenant Service. In that time, the service has become a tradition in Wesleyan and Methodist churches, although this tradition is not as widespread as it once was. Though Wesley held his first Covenant Service in the summer, churches that have followed this tradition usually hold services in conjunction with the beginning of a new year. At a time of year when people often set goals and make resolutions, participants in Covenant Services hold themselves accountable to a commitment they’ve already made as followers of Christ.

Wesley’s Covenant Prayer is the centerpiece of the Covenant Service and is the focus of this study. In the Covenant Prayer, the person praying begins by surrendering himself or herself to God’s will. The prayer then moves into a series of seeming contradictions: Let me be employed or be laid aside; exalted for thee or brought low for thee. Let me be full or let me be empty. Let me have all things, but also, let me have nothing. These pairs of statements remind us that God is faithful and generous and that we are honored to be in God’s service, but also that discipleship requires humility and sacrifice. One closes the prayer by yielding himself or herself to doing the work of God’s kingdom and by praying that the covenant which I have made on earth . . . be ratified in heaven.

When we pray this prayer, we are reminded of what it means for us to be in a relationship with God and to be disciples of Christ. We hold ourselves accountable to whom we profess to be and to whom we profess to serve. And we align our priorities with God’s.

Using This Study

This three-session study covers every line and phrase of Wesley’s Covenant Prayer and accompanies the book The Wesley Prayer Challenge, by Chris Folmsbee. The Covenant Prayer’s linage breakdown in this Leader Guide matches the same linage breakdown of the prayer found in the twenty-one daily readings in The Wesley Prayer Challenge. Ask the participants in this study to do the daily readings in The Wesley Prayer Challenge. Each of the three sessions in this study corresponds to one week of readings in The Wesley Prayer Challenge.

This Leader Guide provides detailed