Class Leader Council

The African-American Methodist churches have always counted on and continue to count on the class meeting system as an effective means of ministry in the local church. Some Methodist pastors have large congregations and depend heavily upon the class leaders to share in the work of ministry. Meeting with the pastor, officially or unofficially, to say how a member is fairing or simply to update the pastor as to the condition of his or her class, is natural and expected.
The African Methodist Episcopal Church today sees the role and function of the class leader and the class meeting system as vital to the life of the congregation. Many local churches have class leaders’ councils or class leaders’ boards who meet on a regular basis (usually once a month) for the purpose of:

• Encouraging one another spiritually and emotionally;
• Seeking new ways to minister effectively to the members of their classes;
• Sharing with the pastor their concerns and the concern of the members of their class and;
• Fellowshipping one with another

Class leaders should be of deep personal piety, mature, experienced, ability to give religious counsel and advise wisely and affectionately, and to influence the members, young and old, to the systematic charge of their Christian duties. They should be well versed in the Discipline of the church, daily readers of the Bible, able to read the lives of persons eminent for piety, commit to memory the sayings of holy men of all ages. Class leaders should be good singers, and should commit to memory twenty to forty hymns. Should observe family prayer in their homes, see that their children attend Sabbath School and public preaching and they themselves regularly. Class leaders should be polite, mild in expression, accustomed to speaking to the members, not gossipers, news carriers, haughty, light trifling, and given to too much joking, but on all occasions should be rave and venerable.