Dr. Kevin Watson

Last updated: September 20, 2024

As a fairly new Christian in his college years, instead of spending one spring break skiing in the mountains or going to the beach like some of his friends, Kevin Watson went on a short-term mission trip to Mexico. “I had a kind of sense of self-righteousness like I’m the one going on a church mission trip because I’m such a good Christian,” Kevin says. However, it would prove to be a life-changing trip that would confirm his calling to serve God’s people through his life’s work.

As someone who didn’t grow up in a church-going family, he now describes his faith at the time of the Mexico trip as having a two-dimensional understanding of God’s love. Joking that the construction projects on the trip progressed faster when he actually wasn’t helping, Kevin says that he turned his attention to spending time with the local kids playing soccer. From the simple act of playing with these kids, God’s love became three-dimensional to him. “I saw God’s love for the people I was supposed to be serving so clearly. It was the most fulfilling thing I’d ever experienced,” Kevin says. “It was like the Lord was like, ‘I do love those kids that much, and that’s how I feel about you.’”

With the revelation of that love, Kevin also discerned the beginning of a calling to ministry. “It all just became clear; it’s about the church. It’s about serving the church that makes the love of God real for the world. That makes it concrete and incarnate,” Kevin says. He assumed that a calling to the church meant becoming a pastor, so after conversations with his pastor, Kevin applied to Wesley Theological Seminary. 

While his seminary education would indeed lead to pastoring in the local church, his experience at the seminary would also uncover a deeper layer of his calling. However, his initial seminary experience proved personally challenging. Kevin experienced loneliness and difficulty adjusting to an unfamiliar environment at the school. Thankfully, and providentially, it was during that time that he was invited to a band meeting and encountered the distinct Wesleyan discipleship method for the first time. “The band meeting was kind of a life raft for me to have a context to tell the truth about places where I was making mistakes, where I was sinning, and to confess those sins,” Kevin says. 

The band meeting became a vital part of his spiritual formation during a difficult season. Not only so, but in the band meeting, Kevin had stumbled upon a subject that would mark his eventual academic career. He had previously recognized a personal appreciation for academics and studying, and before discerning his call to the church, had aspirations to achieve a Ph.D. in Political Science. “I didn’t even really like political science that much, but I just kind of felt at home on a college campus and enjoyed reading and writing and that kind of thing,” Kevin says.

Recognizing his academic propensity, friends began regularly telling him that he could be a professor. For Kevin, it felt like a dream he was hesitant to entertain. “They’d say it in a way that was kind of obvious to them,” he says. “And to me, it felt like something that was too tender and precious to even examine.” The band meeting became an interest to him not only as a means of grace and formation but also as a subject for academic study. “One of the guys that had invited me into that group, when I decided to apply to Ph.D. programs and asked him what he thought, said no one’s ever written on the band meeting,” Kevin says. “So it basically also became my dissertation project and my Ph.D. program.”

In pursuit of a more general call to the church, Kevin began to discern a more refined call to work for the renewal of the Wesleyan movement. There were aspects of the Wesleyan tradition that excited him and began stirring a passion within him, and he realized that part of answering his calling to serve the church was through theological education.

Before starting his Ph.D. program, Kevin spent time pastoring at a local church in Lamont, Oklahoma. As a pastor, Kevin was able to reap the benefits of being part of a loving and patient community as he practiced leading, preaching, and teaching. Not only so, but his Wesleyan academic interests overlapped with his everyday ministry, such as small groups in the way of band meetings and class meetings, entire sanctification, and even teaching and equipping other pastors. Though he had yet to move further down his desired path to be a seminary professor, he had discovered a synthesis of ministry and academics that would prove integral to his vocation. “I had a really wise mentor who said even if you do end up becoming a seminary professor, your experience in the local church will be indispensable to you, and it will clarify your calling either way,” Kevin says. 

Kevin soon found these words from his mentor to be true. While he was pastoring, he found himself thinking about how his seminary experience could have been much worse if he had not found the mentors who helped him get plugged into a band meeting. Those mentors acted as his pastors while he was in seminary. “And it was like one day it just popped into my head, ‘My calling is to pastor seminary students while they’re preparing to become pastors,’” Kevin says. “As soon as I kind of received that phrase, it felt like I had permission to apply to Ph.D. programs.” 

Kevin started his Ph.D. program at Southern Methodist University and the threads in his life of service to the local church and academic study continued to weave a unique vocation. His dissertation work on the band meeting was inspired by the fact that it sought to address an issue for the local church in contemporary times. He hadn’t heard about band meetings until he was in seminary, and they had seemed to fall out of practice for a long time. However, from his research, he knew that John Wesley consistently encouraged people to remain in bands and believed that they were vital for spiritual life. If the band meeting truly was designed to be a means of grace for God’s people, then its absence in the greater Wesleyan church was a loss. “I’ve always had an instinct that our history and heritage are important for the present,” Kevin says. “Present faithfulness is aided by attentiveness. Having deep roots in our heritage will help us be more faithful in the present.”

Thus, he began to explore the theology of the band meeting and research what the early Methodist practice of the band meetings looked like, especially in comparison to John Wesley’s vision for them. Since the band meetings are confidential by design, there were no minutes or meeting notes to research. However, Kevin did find testimonies from people who would share significant moments in their spiritual lives or moments of breakthrough related to their band meeting. Ultimately, his research led him to believe the band meeting was an important spiritual practice that needed to be rediscovered. “It felt like, from my perspective and my kind of generational moment, that there’s a hunger for authenticity, there’s a hunger for honesty,” Kevin says. “And part of what is needed in the Wesleyan movement is if we reclaim who we are, that this is sort of low-hanging fruit for our current cultural moment.” 

After receiving his Ph.D., Kevin began his teaching career, which included terms at institutions such as Seattle Pacific University, Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, and Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary. During an academic conference that met in Wilmore, Kentucky, Kevin had the opportunity to speak with former Asbury Seminary president Dr. Tim Tennent about the legacy of Asbury Seminary and its prevailing Wesleyan identity. “That conversation to me – I was so fired up about it,” Kevin says. “I remember it was almost painful, like I would love to be a part of this place. And I remember walking around campus weeping just feeling the Spirit’s presence.”

Kevin made some attempts to get to Wilmore and Asbury Seminary, but it did not work out at the time. Working at Asbury Seminary became what he describes as his dream job. At the same time, he and his wife, Melissa, felt a calling to plant themselves in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “Those two things just are at odds with each other. They don’t work,” Kevin says. “But, in the ways that the Lord works as only he can, he opened a door for us to be in Tulsa that was also a door to join the faculty at Asbury Theological Seminary.”

In 2023, Kevin was announced as the Director of Academic Growth and Formation for Asbury Seminary at the Tulsa Extension Site. In this position, he is able to continue to work towards discipleship and spiritual formation both academically and practically, pastoring future pastors and leaders while educating them on Wesleyan theology. Additionally, Kevin is the Scholar in Residence at Asbury Church in Tulsa, which hosts Asbury Seminary’s Tulsa Extension Site. Not only so, but Kevin has authored books on the Wesleyan class meeting and band meeting that have sold tens of thousands of copies and have influenced how churches and institutions practice spiritual formation, including Asbury Seminary itself. 

His most recent book, Doctrine, Spirit, and Discipline: A History of the Wesleyan Tradition in the United States, was released in June 2024 under Zondervan Academic to become a seminary textbook within the realms of Wesleyan and Methodist history and doctrine courses.

Regarding seeing the impact of his writing and teaching, Kevin says, “It’s been extremely humbling. I mean, it’s really more than my work. It’s been something that the Lord has done. I think that the Holy Spirit never was like, ‘Small group formation in this kind of way isn’t important anymore.’ I think it was more that it got overlooked for a season, and if anybody picked it up, it would have the blessing of the Lord upon it.”

Kevin looks forward not only to the continued influence of Wesleyan discipleship but also to the future leaders and pastors who are being trained right now. “I’m still leaning into this calling,” Keving says. “I feel like the Lord is saying I want you to work to raise up the next generation of leaders for the church.”