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Ministry Outside the “consecrated walls”
By Kenneth J. Collins

In late fall of 1738, John Wesley hastened to London to greet George Whitefield, who was just returning from Georgia. Though Whitefield was Wesley’s junior by about ten years, Wesley had grown close to this onetime Oxford assistant. Perhaps Wesley enjoyed Whitefield’s ebullient spirit, his engaging style, and his easygoing manner. Like many others, Wesley was undoubtedly impressed with the preaching ability, rhetorical powers and grace of Whitefield, who could sway the coldest congregation and move it to tears. Benjamin Franklin’s advice to those who would hear this gifted preacher was to go with empty pockets lest they give all that they had. And it was reported by some that Whitefield could bring tears to a congregation’s eyes just by pronouncing the word “Mesopotamia.”

Creative and unconventional in many respects, George Whitefield had already undertaken the practice of field preaching in Bristol during March 1739. At first, Wesley was horrified at such a practice—with its grass, mud, and rain—and he noted that he “could scarce reconcile [himself] at first to this strange way of preaching.” “I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin,” Wesley added, “if it had not been done in a church.” Whitefield, however, was persuasive as usual. Though we don’t know the substance of all that he said on this topic, Whitefield probably convinced Wesley that he could save more souls outside a church than within it, especially since Wesley was now being excluded from so many churches. At any rate, whatever Whitefield said worked. At four in the afternoon on April 2, 1739, Wesley, to use his own words, “submitted to ‘be more vile’ and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation speaking from a little eminence in a ground adjoining to the city, to about three thousand people.” Just a few days earlier, Wesley had written to John Clayton and proclaimed that all the world was his parish: “I judge it…my bounden duty to declare unto all that are willing to hear the glad tidings of salvation.” Now with the beginning of field preaching, it truly was.

Some clues to the substance of what Wesley preached can be found in his journal of the period. In it, he writes on April 25 that he preached “to above two thousand at Baptist Mills” on the topic “Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again unto fear, but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father.” Thus, at the very outset of the Evangelical revival in Britain, Wesley preached freedom from the bondage or dominion of sin as part of the good news of the gospel. Whitefield, however, disagreed with Wesley on this issue—he held to more pessimistic notions—but their sharpest disagreement, theologically speaking, was yet to come.

Valuing their friendship, Wesley was undecided whether he should challenge the Calvinistic views of Whitefield so directly as to preach on the subject of free grace. To be sure, Whitefield would find the notion that salvation was available to all sinners very troubling. To break his indecision, Wesley cast lots on April 26, which indicated that he should “preach and print.” Accordingly, a few days later, April 29, Wesley drafted the sermon “Free Grace” in Bristol, which, on the one hand, impugned Calvinist predestination and, on the other hand, affirmed that salvation is free for all, that all who are in need of Christ may come to the Savior. Naturally, George Whitefield was angered by this publication, and it caused a rift, not quickly healed, between the two principal leaders of the revival. Indeed, no sooner had Wesley and Whitefield joined hands than they were already beginning to go their separate ways.

Despite the difficulties between Wesley and Whitefield, by April 1739, with the employment of field preaching, all the main ingredients for a revival in Britain were in place: preachers marked by holiness and love; a message of forgiveness, liberation, and peace; and willing listeners. For Wesley, the first two elements were clearly in place by May 24, 1738; the last one not until April 2, 1739. However, all of these elements were necessary, none to the exclusion of the others, for promoting and sustaining the awakening that was soon to sweep across the land. Field preaching without Aldersgate (where Wesley’s heart was “strangely warmed”), and its larger theological context, would have been empty; Aldersgate without field preaching would have been pointless, even self-indulgent. Reluctantly, Wesley had found his calling, and grace would make his calling sure.

That John Wesley, like George Whitefield, was a field preacher meant that he would not remain in one local church, but that he would itinerate throughout the British Isles. Barred from many Anglican churches, Wesley could nonetheless reach his audience by preaching in some cow pasture or in the local marketplace. But even in such unconventional settings, which allowed a measure of freedom, Wesley often encountered opposition from local leaders. To illustrate, in late spring of 1739, Beau Nash, the dandy of Bath, challenged Wesley’s authority to preach; declared his meetings to be conventicles, that is, illegal and seditious assemblies; and claimed that Wesley’s preaching frightened the people “out of their wits.”

This last charge comes as something of a surprise since Wesley’s preaching style, from all reports, was calm, earnest, and sincere. His manner in the field, as in the pulpit, was hardly characterized by the antics of subsequent imitators who sought popularity far more than the kingdom of God. Nor was Wesley particularly dramatic in his preaching; shouting, stomping, the flailing of arms, and other wild gesticulations were simply not his style. And yet when Wesley preached, when he proclaimed the good news of salvation in a clear and cogent manner, people at times swooned, fell down, or cried out in heartfelt anguish as if the terrors of the Almighty were already upon them.

Just ten days after this encounter in Bath, while Wesley was exhorting a society meeting in Wapping, some of the people collapsed, others trembled and quaked, and still others were “torn with a kind of convulsive motion in every part of their bodies, and that so violently that often four or five persons could not hold one of them.” Of this occurrence, Wesley himself remarked, “I have seen many hysterical and many epileptic fits, but none of them were like these.”

Naturally, reports of these disturbances spread throughout the land such that even Wesley’s elder brother, Samuel Jr., began to ask, “Did these agitations ever begin during the use of any collects of the Church? Or during the preaching of any sermon that had before been preached within consecrated walls?”

In a carefully written letter in October 1739, Wesley addressed his brother’s several criticisms: “How is it that you can’t praise God for saving so many souls from death, and covering such a multitude of sins, unless he will begin this work within ‘consecrated walls?’…But I rejoice to find that God is everywhere. I love the rites and ceremonies of the Church. But I see, well-pleased, that our great Lord can work without them.”

So then, for the sake of giving the gospel as wide a hearing as possible, Wesley not only, at times, put aside the “rites and ceremonies of the church,” not only preached outside consecrated walls, but he also violated the parish boundaries of the Anglican Church to the annoyance and frustration of many of its clergy. Indeed, in June of the same year, Wesley wrote to his brother Charles concerning his itinerancy: “God commands me to do good unto all men, to instruct the ignorant, reform the wicked, confirm the virtuous. Man commands me not to do this in another’s parish; that is, in effect, not to do it at all.”

Wesley had justified his “new measures,” his innovative evangelistic techniques, to Charles and others by making a distinction between an ordinary call and an extraordinary one: “My ordinary call is my ordination by the bishop: ‘Take thou authority to preach the Word of God.’ My extraordinary call is witnessed by the works God doth by my ministry, which prove that he is with me of a truth in the exercise of my office.”

To illustrate, a few years later, when Wesley, ironically, was barred from the pulpit at Epworth by John Romley, who had been the assistant to his father in compiling his commentary on Job, Wesley simply preached atop Samuel’s tomb with wonderful and gracious effect: “I am well assured I did far more good to them by preaching three days on my father’s tomb than I did by preaching three years in his pulpit.”

All during this period, then, Wesley believed he was in harmony with the Church of England. And when he was asked in September 1739 by a serious cleric in what points the Methodists differed from the Anglican Church, Wesley took this question not in terms of his “new measures,” nor with respect to issues of church polity and governance, but simply in terms of doctrine:

“The doctrines we preach are the doctrines of the Church of England,” he replied, “indeed, the fundamental doctrines of the Church, clearly laid down, both in her Prayers, Articles, and Homilies.” And the following month as Wesley preached on Acts 28:22 in Wales at Abergavenny, he related that he simply “described the plain old religion of the Church of England, which is now almost ‘everywhere’ spoken against, under the new name of ‘Methodism.’”

And even Dr. Walker, canon of Exeter College, agreed that “all…you (Wesley) have said is true. And it is the doctrine of the Church of England.” But he quickly added: “It is not guarded. It is dangerous. It may lead people into enthusiasm or despair.”

Nevertheless, it was precisely this “plain old religion,” a clear articulation of the Word enlivened by the Spirit, that was bringing both life and hope where before there was none. Little wonder then that the poor, if not his fellow clergy, often heard John Wesley gladly.

Kenneth J. Collins is Professor of Wesley Studies and Historical Theology at Asbury Theological Seminary and an elder in the Kentucky Conference of The United Methodist Church. This article is excerpted from his new book John Wesley: A Theological Journey (Abingdon 2003). Used by permission. All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited without written permission from the publisher.

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