A Beginner’s Guide to a Band Meeting

It’s been five years ago this month that my mom was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. She had an inoperable tumor the size of a softball in her chest. Five years of prayer and experimental medication and chemotherapy, and to meet her today, you’d never know she has cancer. But if she hadn’t gone to the doctor about a nagging cough and just wouldn’t go away, she wouldn’t be with us today. One of the very necessary spiritual practices available to us is the band meeting.

There is evil stuff at work in every one of us. It hides in the darkest corners of our hearts. In spiritual formation, we call this the “false self.” In the New Testament, Paul calls it “the sinful nature” (in Greek, sarx). It’s that piece of us that’s gone haywire, the inherent code that’s been corrupted, the infection in our souls.

When it goes unnamed it festers and sabotages our lives. We go through our lives with a nagging cough, all the while, there’s a fatal tumor in our chest. It seems that every day in the news another celebrity is having the ugliness of their private lives exposed as insidious. But it’s not a celebrity problem. It’s a human problem. It happens in church, too. We all know Christian leaders who have fallen from grace.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

The Roman Catholic church has a mechanism for confession. For Protestants, though, the place of confession is less clear. In our protest against clergy authority, we lost our means of confessing sin. The band meeting is a way of recapturing that practice of grace and forgiveness and healing from habits that often sabotage our lives.

What is a “band meeting”?

“Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (James 5:16).

The genius of the Wesley brothers—John and Charles—was not in their theological innovation. Rather, it was in the way they organized the people in their movement, which came to be called Methodism. Research has shown that the rise and fall of the Methodist movement is directly related to role of the band meeting in the movement.

To be part of a Methodist society required membership within something called the “class meeting.” But if one desired to pursue an even deeper experience of God’s holiness, they could join a band meeting. Bands were groups of 3–5 individuals of the same gender and marital status who met weekly to confess their sins to one another so that they might grow deeper with God.

Step 1: Pray

If you don’t have a space to regularly confess your sin, begin by asking God. This is something God wants for you. Prayerfully consider those in your life. Who shares your eagerness to love God and neighbor? Who else is looking to be emotionally and spiritually healthy? Who do you trust and who trusts you?

The journey begins with prayer. Don’t rush into this. It’s not for the faint of heart. Confidentiality must always be maintained. You’re working to cultivate a safe environment of loving trust. Very few of us have ever experienced such a non-judgmental community. It’s a gift we can share with one another. But it only happens as a gift from God.

Step 2: Meet

Once you have 3–5 people and you’re on the same page about your expectations. Some months back I was at a conference where three guys invited me to join their band. We all live in different states but every Tuesday at 2:15 we meet for an hour over Google Hangouts. There are a couple minutes of small talk about the week, and then we dive into the questions.

There’s no limit to the ways you can meet. It can be in a home. It can be in a meeting space at church. It can be a restaurant or a park. It can even be over the phone or by video chat. The point is having a consistent time and place to meet.

In their book The Band Meeting, Scott Kisker and Kevin Watson write:
“To be part of a band meant being willing to shuck pretense before a brother or sister in Christ. It meant acting as a priest one to another, acting in love toward someone whose sin you know. It meant allowing someone, who knows your sin, to act in love toward you. It was training in Christlike compassion and humility, in holiness.”

Step 3: Ask the questions

These are the questions:

1. What known sins have you committed since our last meeting?

2. What temptations have you met with?

3. How were you delivered?

4. What have you thought, said, or done of which you doubt whether it be sin or not?

5. Have you nothing you desire to keep secret?

Step 4: Name your false self

Your false self does not want to be named. It will slide and slither in the shadows as long as it can. Many of us have a low, what I’ll call, “spiritual intelligence.” We just don’t know how to name sin. I’ve been in small accountability groups with guys where the ability to name sin began and ended with lust. All the while, pride and gluttony ran rampant in our lives.

One starting place is with what the medieval church called “the seven deadly sins”—anger, pride, deceit, envy, avarice, lust, and sloth. The Enneagram can be a particularly helpful tool in community to name those things that prey on your weaknesses and insecurities. Your false self wants to be justified and normalized.

What we do in private matters in public. Jesus says, “For all that is secret will eventually be brought into the open, and everything that is concealed will be brought to light and made known to all.” Our false self will get named. We get a choice. Either we get to expose it. Or others will, to our humbling and humiliation.

Step 5: Extend forgiveness

Grace is powerful. “In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven” are some of the most powerful words in the English language. In the group I meet with, we close with words of affirmation, encouragement, and forgiveness to one another. It’s not in the original questions, but we’ve found it to be a beneficial piece. We’d probably do a group hug, but Google Hangouts hasn’t yet made that a feature.

We all need to hear that we are loved. That even with our weaknesses and vulnerabilities, we are not abandoned. It’s risky being known. When someone opens up about their darkest secrets, it’s crucial to acknowledge that risk and respond with care. Resist the urge to fix. No one in the room needs to wear the Superman cape. That’s God’s role. This is what it is to bear one another’s burdens.

You don’t have to be a Methodist to have a band meeting. It’s not some proprietary method. Sin and grace are universal experiences. Shame has a way of corroding our souls. We’re not made to hide things in secret. God did not make us that way. A loving community, if we can receive it, keeps us from justifying our favorite sins, whatever they may be.

We all need to know where to go when we feel sick. If we feel sick to our stomach, and we don’t know where the restroom is, we wind up throwing up in places we really wish we didn’t. The band meeting gives us a healthy place to put the things that make our souls sick.

If you want to know more, you need to pick up The Band Meeting: Rediscovering Relational Discipleship in Transformation Community by Kevin Watson and Scott Kisker.