Saints of Georgia

John’s energy and dedication cannot be questioned. During his short ministry at Christ Church, the first Sunday School of any denomination was formed so that children and adults could learn to read and know the stories of the Bible. For the parish of Christ Church, John produced the first hymnal used in the Church of England (in Anglicanism). However, John, at this stage of his life, was not gifted with “people skills” and he made some serious pastoral mistakes. In the Royal Court in Charleston, the vestry brought charges against John for having people sing hymns of man’s composition—in the 18th century, most Anglicans only sang metrical psalms. Rather than face charges in court, John fled back to England.

Charles Wesley followed his brother to Oxford and also read theology. After being ordained, he obtained a position as General Oglethorpe’s clerk (secretary). He thus was a “bi-vocational” or non-stipendiary priest in the 18th century. Accompanying General Oglethorpe to Frederica on St. Simons Island, he served in his free time as chaplain to the military community, and out of his work there, grew Christ Church, Frederica. After he returned to England, his brother John, the only priest in the colony, would come down on horseback to hold services in Frederica, visiting other outlying settlements in the colony on his way.

The next part of the story is much better known. On the return voyage to England, John found support and prayer with a group of Moravian Christians. In London, as a young priest who had messed up his first position, had never had a chance to preach to the Indians, and who was a fugitive from a warrant in the Royal Court, John continued to keep the Prayer Book discipline. However, he was very discouraged. On Wednesdays, he attended a Moravian Bible study and prayer session, and it was in one of these that “his heart was strangely warmed.” At that moment he knew he was forgiven and that God could use him. Through friends, John became interested in an attempt by some church members to reach new dwellers in the rapidly growing towns caused by the Industrial Revolution. A traditionalist and conservative, it was very hard for John to change. His struggle about preaching outside of a church building and outside of the regular schedule and worship of the church is recorded in his diaries. John and Charles Wesley are important to Christian history for a number of different reasons, including being two of the great sources and creators of English hymnody. But twice in the history of the Church, the Church has lost a whole segment of the population because the culture changed. And both times, God raised up people who realized the Gospel — God’s love working for human beings—had not changed but the environment had. In such a way St. Francis and his brothers (friars) reclaimed the new town dwellers uprooted from the rural farms by the growth of crafts and commerce in the 12th century. In the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution meant that towns, which for almost a millennium had contained no more than fifty people, suddenly had a thousand people. Of course, churches were built to hold fifty and had been around for a long time—six or seven hundred years in many places. The service time had been set before anyone could remember, but now the industrialized mills were running at that time, so the new folk in town could not come. This was the world into which John and Charles were called to preach. They gave their lives to preaching the Gospel to the unchurched population produced by the Industrial Revolution. Some secular historians credit the Methodist movement with giving hope to the urban poor, thereby preventing a parallel in England to the bloody French Revolution. John organized his converts into classes (similar to Cursillo Reunion Groups), where people prayed, studied scripture, and took care of one another. He urged and directed them to go to their local (Church of England) parish church to make their communions. But the local Church of England parishes seldom arranged for the services at a time when they could come, and almost never allowed John, Charles, their friends or followers to preach within their walls. Socially, this was the beginning of a new middle class, an opportunity and encouragement for a person to work one’s way out of poverty. The Wesley—members of the Church of England—preached the Gospel outside the church walls, when the church structure could not see the harvest God had provided.

To preach to the tens of thousands of unchurched, John called on his fellow pastors of the Church of England. But few wanted to give up the security and comfort of the gracious religion of the landed gentry. At the same time, John remembered being the only English-speaking pastor in the whole colony of Georgia (there was a German-speaking pastor among the Salzburgers). He knew that the situation was similar in many of the British colonies. Both Oxford and Cambridge were founded to train priests. However, by the 18th century, Oxford and Cambridge graduates did not want to go and camp out in the greenbrier jungles in Georgia when good church jobs could be had. Few volunteered. People converted by the Wesleyan revival volunteered, but they were not “seminary” graduates! John tried all of his life to get the church to ordain people willing to serve, but our church could not hear him. Despite the stodginess of the church, which could not see the harvest God had placed on its doorstep, John remained loyal. On his deathbed, he said, “Do not leave the church. We are here to revive it, not divide it.” However, in desperation, as no bishop would ordain ministers for the colonies, John as a presbyter (following a Roman Catholic doctrine of the time) ordained converts and sent them. These folks were called “circuit riders.” One of the great missionary stories of all time, they converted the American frontier. But don’t be too hard on the Oxford graduates, the average age of death of a circuit rider was 32—it was a “killer job.”

We give thanks to the devotion of the circuit riders in the colonies, and the itinerant preachers of the Gospel throughout the British Isles, who converted through their love of the Gospel a new people for Christ and a new culture that was on the Church’s doorstep. And we give thanks to God for giving us leaders with the vision of John and Charles Wesley, who see what God is doing in his world, and *ray that God will give us the vision to see the mission he has set before us, and the strength to minister in new ways under his direction.