Praise for the fellowship that here we find

In the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, 1897, there is mention at the Leaders Meeting that a certain Miss Hartshorn and a Mr. West had been appointed to the Wesley Guild Committee. This is the first discoverable mention of a Guild at this church and it is believed that its existence at that time was short lived. In 1902 the Leaders Meeting voted the sum of £1 to the 'Young Peoples Association', so enabling them to hire a piano during the winter months. Twelve years later it was reported that efforts were being made to transform the Young Peoples Association into a Wesley Guild. This attempt appeared to be successful as various reports of Guild activities and lectures were reported in the 'Circuit Magazine' which flourished between 1910 and 1915. One of the Guild's earliest debates was entitled: "That it is part of the duty of the church to provide amusements." A visit to the Guild in 1914 by a Madame Jessie Strathearn, A.R.A.M., was enthusiastically commented upon in the magazine:

"It may be as well to say that Madame Strathearn was formerly connected with the stage... Since her conversion she has forsaken the stage and has been all over the country captivating and enriching thousands by her marvellous power of speech and song. On the Sunday afternoon of her visit she delivered her address on 'The Five Steps' and in a concert on the following Monday evening she sang a duet with one of the church members, Mr. Leslie Bailey, "Watchman, what of the Night.""

By 1921 membership of the Guild stood at 80 with average attendances of between forty and forty-five. Subscriptions were 1/6d p.a. for adults and 9d for seventeen years and under. There was a very large committee of over fifty members and there were sizeable sub-committees for each section - Devotional, Literary, Community Service, Musical and Social. There was also a "Look Out" committee with a Miss Clarkson as secretary. Its purpose was two fold - concern for existing members and to act as a spearhead for attracting new members.

The old Guild minute book for the 1920s makes the present day reader thirst for more information. It was reported that the 1923 A.G.M. was followed by a social which closed with the "usual game of 'A hunting we Will Go'." The annual district Guild Eisteddfod was an event of cultural significance with competitions in music, elocution, literature, arts and handicrafts and exhibitions of photography, painting and drawing, handicraft, cookery, sewing, knitting and needlework. For one member at least the Literary evenings of the Guild added a new dimension to his life:

"At such meetings I was introduced to poets like Francis Thompson and John Masefield and on its first publication I heard a reading of Bernard Shaw's 'Saint Joan'. Some of us wrote stories for the district Eisteddfod, stories that were assessed and criticized by professional authors. We had three separate concert parties – very amateurish ones, but we always enjoyed the performances and the audiences sometimes did."

The three concert parties were the 'Follies', the 'Filberts' and the 'Lads of the Green'. Of the latter they are remembered thus:

"Their speciality was topical and irreverent rhymes about their elders. They used to appear in dress trousers and green blouses, which were changed at the interval for dinner jackets. Members were Jeffery Rolfe, Beresford Rolfe, Edgar Cowin, Eric Fox, Algy Hurst, Arthur Taylor and Arthur (Jimmy) George, and accompanist Trixie Cowin."

In the early 1930s the Guild acquired a new secretary and during his time in office the minutes, particularly of A.G.M.'s, became far from impartial records. "The minutes of the previous executive meeting were read, confirmed and signed. The only business resulting therefrom being the difficulty of sundry members not being acquainted with some of the words used in the composition of these minutes. The difficulty was overcome." In 1933 the secretary reported a drastic reduction in numbers from the previous year, 117 to 64. "Membership stated as sixty-four, i.e. the number of people who had paid subscriptions. The average attendance of people present was fifty but average attendance of members was a mere twenty-eight, showing the absurdity of fallacious statistics." The same A.G.M. voted to "introduce a change of office in every department" and the fearless secretary was lost.

The new secretary either did not sustain his predecessor's vigilance or the new treasurer was more zealous in collecting subscriptions because the next year the Guild membership jumped back to 110.

The Guild carried on its evening meetings for the first year of the 2nd World War until the Birmingham blitz in November, 1940. By that time the meetings were held in the basement of the Sunday School building and David Rudge can remember one meeting that he attended when he was home on leave from the Forces. "The basement shook with each burst of ack-ack fire and the piano vibrated spontaneously with each stick of bombs." With membership depleted owing to the young men and women being called up for the armed services and the severity of the bombing the Guild closed its doors for the duration of the war, or more precisely, until 1944.

On August 1st, 1944, during the ministry of the Rev. Russell, a meeting was called for those interested in forming a weekly fellowship meeting on the lines of the pre-war Guild. Much discussion took place as to its name and eventually it was called "The Circle". In the following year, 1945, membership was at its highest with eighty-five subscribers, with average attendance of thirty-six. The subscriptions were 2/6d p.a. for adults and half price for those under eighteen. The sections were devotional, Christian service, literary and social. It was noticeable that the average age of members was older than that of the 1930s Guild as the younger church members were catered for by a class held weekly and run by Alan Fitton. Nevertheless the Circle prospered with a wide and varied programme and with speakers drawn from all walks of life. However, over the next thirteen years the membership fell to twenty-nine. In a bid to attract new and younger members the name was changed back to that of the "Guild", but with the advent of television and wider car ownership, which enabled people to pursue leisure activities further afield, the Guild was facing an uphill task.

During the 1960s and 1970s membership was low but the decline was halted. However, death was removing some of those pre-war members and younger members were not replacing them. The early 1980s brought some increase in membership when former members of Tyseley Methodist church joined Acocks Green when their church closed. Today the Guild has a devoted and faithful following which makes up in enthusiasm what it lacks in numbers.