One Society, Not a Federation of Congregations

Connexionalism began as the practical shape John Wesley gave to the societies he organized within the Church of England during the eighteenth century revival, and it hardened over time into a doctrine about what a church actually is. Wesley never intended to found a separate denomination, and the societies he set up were meant to supplement, not replace, participation in a parish church; but their internal structure already carried the connexional logic that would outlast that original intention. Ministers were itinerant, appointed by conference to a circuit rather than called and settled by a single congregation, and small class meetings bound members together in a structure that answered upward to the whole connexion rather than sideways to a local vestry. When Methodism did become its own church, first in America with the Methodist Episcopal Church founded in 1784 and later in Britain, this structure carried over as doctrine rather than mere habit. A Methodist congregation, on the connexional understanding, is not a self-standing church that happens to cooperate with others; it is a society within one connexion, property is held in trust for the whole body rather than by the local congregation, and the conference, not the congregation, is the seat of authority over doctrine and discipline.