History of the Methodist Church
The famous picture of the ordination of Francis Asbury as the first bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. An original copy of this engraving by A. Gilchrist Campbell after painting by Thomas Coke Ruckle and published by T. C. Ruckle in New York, 1882, stands in the narthex of St. Mark Church.
Link to http://www.gcah.org/ General Commission on Archives and History for The United Methodist Church
Who Was Wesley, John?
John Wesley was a British Anglican priest and the founder of Methodism. He was born on June 17, 1703, in the rectory at Epworth, England, the 15th of 19 children born to Samuel and Susannah Wesley. His father was an Anglican priest. His mother was a Puritan, notable for her learning and dedication to the education of her children. Both John and his brother Charles, with whom much of his life would be intertwined, attended Oxford University.
While at Oxford, Wesley took over the leadership of an informal student organization originally called together by his brother and dubbed the "Holy Club" by fellow students. After graduation, both he and Charles went to colonial Georgia as their first assignment in the ministry. On the voyage to America, Wesley had his first encounter with members of the Moravian Church, who pressed him on his personal religious life. That encounter bore fruit upon Wesley's return to England where he encountered other Moravians and attended informal services at several lay-led religious societies in London. At one such society meeting on Aldersgate Street on May 24, 1738, he had what he termed a "heart-warming experience" that is generally seen as the founding event of the Methodist movement. The movement took shape after the break with the Moravians the following year, and the first "Methodist" religious societies began to form. Within each society, members were invited into smaller intimate groups called classes.
Another Oxford classmate, George Whitefield, has had a similar pilgrimage as Wesley and had begun preaching in Bristol. Before leaving for a tour of America, he turned his work over to Wesley. It became the first major expansion of the movement outside of London. Over the next decades as the movement expanded, Wesley traveled around England periodically visiting the many Wesleyan societies. He regularly preached two or three times a day, and kept a daily journal of his activity. He wrote numerous books and edited hundreds of others to educate the lay preachers that had emerged to serve the movement. Most prominent among his writings were a set of sermons that covered the basic teachings of Methodism that became an essential statement of its doctrinal position. In 1744, he began to hold conferences of the preachers at which he would answer their questions, the published minutes of their conferences becoming the major guide for the developing movement. Among the unique themes that Wesley developed was the need for Christians to lead a life of growing in grace and aiming at a separation from sin and toward becoming perfected in love.
Methodism spread throughout the British Isles as a movement within the Church of England, and in the 1760s the first classes and societies were organized in the American colonies. The American Revolution and the subsequent return to England of all but one of the Methodist preachers he had sent to tend the work there, presented Wesley with a decision. Unable to get the cooperation of Anglican authorities, he assumed the office of a bishop and "set aside" two men, Thomas Coke (1747-1814) and Richard Whatcoat as Methodist superintendents, and commissioned them to set up American Methodism as an independent movement. At a conference held at Barrett's chapel in Delaware, they oversaw the consecration of Francis Asbury (1745-1816) as the first American Methodist bishop and the organization of the independent Methodist Episcopal Church (now the United Methodist Church).
In England, Wesley's movement had developed a unique place. Following both his Anglican and Puritan roots, Wesley kept the movement within the established church, emphasized a personal religious faith, and followed the Calvinist theology of Jacob Arminius (1560-1609), which had rejected the predestination so emphasized by John Calvin. Wesley preached a doctrine of the free grace of God immediately available to any who would turn and accept it. Only after his death would the movement organize as a separate church in England. Meanwhile, he and George Whitefield had parted company over the issue of Calvinism, and Whitefield went on to developed a form of Methodism that that would later merge into the Presbyterian Church.
For over forty years he traveled throughout the British Isles, and in the process delivered over 40,000 sermons. He remained active until close to the end of his life on March 2, 1791. Among his last actions was the penning of a letter to William Wilberforce (1759-1833) supportive of his work to end slavery.
Since his death, there have been several attempts to collect and issue Wesley's writings as a set. The most recent began in 1988 by Abingdon Press. To date some 20 volumes have been issued.
For Additional Reading:
Baker, Frank. John Wesley and the Church of England. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1970).
Green, V. H. H. John Wesley (London and New York: University Press of America, 1987).
Heitzenrater, Richard P. Wesley and the People Called Methodists (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995).
Wesley, John. John Wesley's Sermons: An Anthology. Ed by Albert C. Outler
et al. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991).
John Wesley On Line
A variety of Wesley's writings, including his sermon on "Free Grace"; his treatise on sanctification, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection; and a complete text of his Explanatory Notes of the New Testament, go to: http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/wesley/sitemap.stm
To read extracts from Wesley's, A Plain Account of the People Called Methodists go to http://www.godrules.net/library/wesley/274wesley_h6.htm