17
June 1703 A.D. Pietist
and Sectarian John Wesley Born.
John Wesley
"About a quarter before nine, while he was
describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I
felt my heart strangely warmed."
In late 1735, a ship made its way to the New
World from England. On board was a young Anglican minister, John Wesley, who
had been invited to serve as a pastor to British colonists in Savannah,
Georgia. When the weather went sour, the ship found itself in serious trouble.
Wesley, also chaplain of the vessel, feared for his life.
But he noticed that the group of German
Moravians, who were on their way to preach to American Indians, were not afraid
at all. In fact, throughout the storm, they sang calmly. When the trip ended,
he asked the Moravian leader about his serenity, and the Moravian responded
with a question: Did he, Wesley, have faith in Christ? Wesley said he did, but
later reflected, "I fear they were vain words."
In fact, Wesley was confused by the experience,
but his perplexity was to lead to a period of soul searching and finally to one
of the most famous and consequential conversions in church history.
Timeline
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1678
|
John Bunyan writes The
Pilgrim's Progress
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1687
|
Newton publishes Principia
Mathematica
|
1689
|
Toleration Act in England
|
1703
|
John Wesley born
|
1791
|
John Wesley dies
|
1793
|
William Carey sails for India
|
Religious upbringing
Wesley was born into a strong Anglican home:
his father, Samuel, was priest, and his mother, Susanna, taught religion and
morals faithfully to her 19 children.
Wesley attended Oxford, proved to be a fine
scholar, and was soon ordained into the Anglican ministry. At Oxford, he joined
a society (founded by his brother Charles) whose members took vows to lead holy
lives, take Communion once a week, pray daily, and visit prisons regularly. In
addition, they spent three hours every afternoon studying the Bible and other
devotional material.
From this "holy club" (as fellow
students mockingly called it), Wesley sailed to Georgia to pastor. His
experience proved to be a failure. A woman he courted in Savannah married
another man. When he tried to enforce the disciplines of the "holy
club" on his church, the congregation rebelled. A bitter Wesley returned
to England.
Heart strangely warmed
After speaking with another Moravian, Peter
Boehler, Wesley concluded that he lacked saving faith. Though he continued to
try to be good, he remained frustrated. "I was indeed fighting
continually, but not conquering. … I fell and rose, and fell again."
On May 24, 1738, he had an experience that
changed everything. He described the event in his journal:
"In the evening, I went very unwillingly
to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's preface to
the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing
the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my
heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for
salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even
mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."
Meanwhile, another former member of the
"holy club," George Whitefield, was having remarkable success as a
preacher, especially in the industrial city of Bristol. Hundreds of
working-class poor, oppressed by industrializing England and neglected by the
church, were experiencing emotional conversions under his fiery preaching. So
many were responding that Whitefield desperately needed help.
Wesley accepted Whitefield's plea hesitantly.
He distrusted Whitefield's dramatic style; he questioned the propriety of
Whitefield's outdoor preaching (a radical innovation for the day); he felt
uncomfortable with the emotional reactions even his own preaching elicited. But
the orderly Wesley soon warmed to the new method of ministry. With his
organizational skills, Wesley quickly became the new leader of the movement.
But Whitefield was a firm Calvinist, whereas Wesley couldn't swallow the
doctrine of predestination. Furthermore, Wesley argued (against Reformed
doctrine) that Christians could enjoy entire sanctification in this life:
loving God and their neighbors, meekness and lowliness of heart, abstaining
from all appearance of evil, and doing all for the glory of God. In the end,
the two preachers parted ways.
From "methodists" to Methodism
Wesley did not intend to found a new
denomination, but historical circumstances and his organizational genius
conspired against his desire to remain in the Church of England.
Wesley's followers first met in private home
"societies." When these societies became too large for members to
care for one another, Wesley organized "classes," each with 11
members and a leader. Classes met weekly to pray, read the Bible, discuss their
spiritual lives, and to collect money for charity. Men and women met
separately, but anyone could become a class leader.
The moral and spiritual fervor of the meetings
is expressed in one of Wesley's most famous aphorisms: "Do all the good
you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places
you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever
you can."
The movement grew rapidly, as did its critics,
who called Wesley and his followers "methodists," a label they wore
proudly. It got worse than name calling at times: methodists were frequently
met with violence as paid ruffians broke up meetings and threatened Wesley's
life.
Though Wesley scheduled his itinerant preaching
so it wouldn't disrupt local Anglican services, the bishop of Bristol still
objected. Wesley responded, "The world is my parish"—a phrase that
later became a slogan of Methodist missionaries. Wesley, in fact, never slowed
down, and during his ministry he traveled over 4,000 miles annually, preaching
some 40,000 sermons in his lifetime.
A few Anglican priests, such as his
hymn-writing brother Charles, joined these Methodists, but the bulk of the
preaching burden rested on John. He was eventually forced to employ lay
preachers, who were not allowed to serve Communion but merely served to
complement the ordained ministry of the Church of England.
Wesley then organized his followers into a "connection,"
and a number of societies into a "circuit" under the leadership of a
"superintendent." Periodic meetings of methodist clergy and lay
preachers eventually evolved into the "annual conference," where those
who were to serve each circuit were appointed, usually for three-year terms.
In 1787, Wesley was required to register his
lay preachers as non-Anglicans. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic,
the American Revolution isolated Yankee methodists from their Anglican
connections. To support the American movement, Wesley independently ordained
two lay preachers and appointed Thomas Coke as superintendent. With these and
other actions, Methodism gradually moved out of the Church of England—though
Wesley himself remained an Anglican until his death.
An indication of his organizational genius, we
know exactly how many followers Wesley had when he died: 294 preachers, 71,668
British members, 19 missionaries (5 in mission stations), and 43,265 American
members with 198 preachers. Today Methodists number about 30 million worldwide.
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