Much-needed advice from John Wesley

By Donald G. Bastian

John Wesley, like all thinkers during the Enlightenment (primarily the eighteenth century), wrote long, carefully argued essays and books, in his case on theological, ecclesiastical, and moral topics. Wesley was a Church of England priest who was instrumental in starting the Methodist movement.

But in the midst of these writings are aphoristic jewels on a large range of topics. I am struck by how appropriate many of them are to the crisis today in political discourse (if it can even be called that). Here are some jewels from John Wesley.

Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt, we may. Herein all the children of God may unite, notwithstanding these smaller differences.

We should be rigorous in judging ourselves and gracious in judging others.

What one generation tolerates, the next generation will embrace.

I want the whole Christ for my Savior, the whole Bible for my book, the whole Church for my fellowship, and the whole world for my mission field.

In all cases, the Church is to be judged by the Scripture, not the Scripture by the Church.

Lord, I am no longer my own, but Yours. Put me to what You will, rank me with whom You will. Let me be employed by You or laid aside for You, exalted for You or brought low by You. Let me have all things, let me have nothing, I freely and heartily yield all things to Your pleasure and disposal. And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, You are mine and I am Yours. So be it. Amen.

Not, how much of my money will I give to God, but, how much of God’s money will I keep for myself?

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.

My new memoir, FROM KITCHEN CHAIR TO PULPIT: A Memoir of Family, Faith, and Ministry, has just been published. I hope you will click on one of the links that follow to be taken to the page on these sites that enable you to view and potentially purchase the paperback or ebook. My book shows just how extraordinary the pastoral life can be, describing how I prepared for ministry and ministered to three congregations and then, as a bishop, to pastors as a bishop, with the help of my wife, Kathleen, and the support of our children as they grew up from children to adults.

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Another Conversion Story of a Heart Strangely Warmed

Do ministers of the Gospel need a new (spiritual) birth? Isn’t their knowledge of theology and service to God’s people enough? Last week we learned the answer through the story of Charles Wesley’s conversion. Here is the similar story of his elder brother, John Wesley, the founder of Methodism.

Recall that both brothers were ministers, thoroughly trained in church history and Christian doctrine. They were deeply schooled in their profession as Anglican clergymen. They understood preaching well. How, then, did these men miss the need for conversion?  

It appears that the central element of Christianity had been missed during their training — that is, that Jesus paid the price for our sin, shielding us from judgment and beginning our repair, and that to be saved we must believe in him as Savior and follow him as our Living Lord. And this with good works as the fruit, not the source, of our salvation.

How Charles and John Wesley missed this core of the Gospel early in their lives intrigues me. We know that, during their childhood in the Epworth parsonage, piety touched every aspect of family life. Their devout parents taught their children faithfully, 

In his journal, John said, “[I had] been strictly educated and carefully taught that I could only be saved by universal obedience, by keeping all the commandments of God; in the meaning of which I was diligently instructed …. But all that was said to me of inward obedience, or holiness, I neither understood nor remembered.”

In the midst of the great piety of his childhood he had been taught that his salvation would be achieved by good works. Once that incorrect notion is planted in any human mind, it is hard to dislodge. 

Wasn’t his exemplary life after childhood enough? After all, he had gone to seminary. After seminary, he was ordained a deacon and after two years, a priest. In his zeal for the faith, he had led regular meetings of a small group of devout young men on the campus of Oxford University, to pray and to carry out good works in the area. 

He had even served as his father’s curate at Wroot and had come across the ocean to spend nearly two years as a missionary in Georgia. Why would a man of this training, piety, and zeal need to experience a new birth?

Here is how it happened: At age thirty-five, Wesley’s sense that something was missing led him finally to a Society on Aldersgate Street in London. That evening, someone read from the preface to Martin Luther’s commentary on the book of Romans. As Wesley listened, he described receiving the assurance of salvation through faith in Christ alone.

In his own words: “About a quarter before nine, while [the reader] 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.”

Note that the great moment of saving faith did not diminish Wesley’s (or his associates’) energy for good works. It only placed this energy on a new foundation. From that time onward, Wesley did works of mercy and kindness and justice not to achieve salvation but as a saved person to express the mercy of God to as many as possible. All good works were in the name of Christ who alone saves those who believe.

While meditating on these pages of John Wesley’s journal and thinking of the tireless health-care, educational, and other ministries that grew out of this holy moment, I find myself wondering if spiritual rebirth/renewal is not the very thing needed in today’s church — by both laity and clergy. Christ-renewal in every heart. Otherwise, our labors for the Lord become slack, misdirected, overly-striving, and unctuous. Vitality of ministry comes from Christ living in us and nurtured daily!

First published: August 1, 2011; revised March 6, 2023.

Photo credit: Daniel Mouton (via flickr.com)

My new memoir, FROM KITCHEN CHAIR TO PULPIT: A Memoir of Family, Faith, and Ministry, has just been published. I hope you will click on one of the links that follow to be taken to the page on these sites that enable you to view and potentially purchase the paperback or ebook. My book shows just how extraordinary the pastoral life can be, describing how I prepared for ministry and ministered to three congregations and then, as a bishop, to pastors as a bishop, with the help of my wife, Kathleen, and the support of our children as they grew up from children to adults.

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Strong Families Don’t Necessarily Produce Strong Marriages

Samuel and Susanna Wesley, of eighteenth-century England, shaped their children with Christian learning and wisdom. You would think that all of their children would grow up to marry well and establish their own devout Christian families. That isn’t what happened. 

The couple had nineteen children in twenty-one years. Ten lived to adulthood: three boys and seven girls. Samuel, the first-born, had a warm, nurturing marriage, as did his brother Charles. 

John didn’t. For many years he did not think marriage was advisable for him, given the evangelistic work he was called to do and the constant travel it required. Later in life, however, he married a widow named Mary Vazeille. He was forty-eight, and she was forty-one.  

John’s early notes to Mary are warm and tender. Later, they reveal trouble. Historian Henry Rack reports that his letters to her indicate her pathological jealousy, suspicion, uncontrollable rage, and even physical abuse. I haven’t verified it, but I remember reading years ago that neighbors saw him escape her by climbing over the back fence of their home.

Wesley’s letters also give a sense of his response: patient reasoning, answers to slanders, and even ultimatums as conditions for reconciliation.  

Purely speculatively, I wonder if today she might be diagnosed with something like borderline personality disorder.  

Samuel (senior) and Susanna tried to protect their seven spirited and brilliant daughters from unwise alliances. Five had marriages that were unsatisfactory, with at least two of the five being disastrous.  

History reports that Hetty, in a rash moment, ran off with an unscrupulous man, and, after being away for a few brief days, returned home pregnant. Half contrite and half desperate, she volunteered to marry any man her father chose. This was to redeem her indiscretion.

Her father was enraged and unwisely approved her union with a drunken and illiterate plumber, a Mr. Wright, though he refused to perform the wedding. Four months later the child was born but did not survive. Hetty’s other children also did not live. Her life became an ever-deepening tragedy.

Returning to the Wesley children’s formation, Susanna was famously effective in homeschooling her children into deep learning. She also inculcated deep Christian piety in them. And in Epworth rectory, Samuel’s parish, the children carried on a lively correspondence and shared strong emotional bonds. 

The community outside the rectory, however, was not a model of rectitude and cohesion. 

There was grinding poverty for the family as well as the general population, a deprived social environment, and a scarcity of eligible mates for refined young women.

It didn’t help that Samuel, who was rated a serious and competent rector of the church, seemed to lack judgment in the regulation of home and family.

In spite of all of this, back then taking refuge in victimhood was not a viable option. Adult children were – as they should be today – responsible for their decisions.

From this home came John Wesley, in essence the founder of Methodism, and Charles Wesley, whose hymns still brighten congregational singing around the world more than two centuries after his death.

In today’s broken culture, Christians also suffer the blight of the Fall. The late Bishop Paul N. Ellis said to me once, “I know families of very high Christian quality whose children disappointed profoundly by marrying with poor judgment.”  

In the face of this, we must believe that God can redeem our circumstances, and pray urgently that he will do so.   

Photo credit: Ted Rabbitts (via flickr.com)

My new memoir, FROM KITCHEN CHAIR TO PULPIT: A Memoir of Family, Faith, and Ministry, has just been published. I hope you will click on one of the links that follow to be taken to the page on these sites that enable you to view and potentially purchase the paperback or ebook. My book shows just how extraordinary the pastoral life can be, describing how I prepared for ministry and ministered to three congregations and then, as a bishop, to pastors as a bishop, with the help of my wife, Kathleen, and the support of our children as they grew up from children to adults.

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Thoughts about Revival In a Morally Desperate Age

Gin Lane, a print issued in 1751 by English artist William Hogarth — depicting the misery caused by widespread consumption of gin among England’s poor.

In January of 1958 a little book by Doctor Mary Alice Tenney, appeared on the scene. At the time,  she was head of the English Department of Greenville College (now University). The book was called Living in Two Worlds: How a Christian Does It.

It was written for a lay audience, even though it derived from her doctoral work. Its subject: ”john Wesley and the Methodist Revival in Eighteenth Century England..”  In her introduction she says, “This book is written first of all to people who want to be really Christian.” To set up the reader’s understanding of the profound need for revival in England of Wesley’s time, Tenney explains that life there in the early 1700’s was almost unimaginably coarse and dehumanized. 

She writes, ”As for family life in England, divorce of course, could not be obtained”. But a double standard of morality wrecked as many homes as divorce would have in any age. Prostitution was an accepted, and even protected, institution among all classes, a subject of humor in the literature and art of the intellectuals and the aristocratic, and a heavy contributor to the beastliness of the lower classes.”

“Hanging was the punishment for 160 different sorts of offenses. Many a day saw ten or fifteen hangings – spectacles attended by mobs of sensation–mad men and women. Grandstand seats were provided; hawkers peddled broadsheets recording Dying Speeches. Gin was sold at stands; pickpockets and prostitutes circulated freely.”

Into this time of drunkenness and debauchery Wesley preached the Christian Gospel:  Justification with God by Faith alone in Jesus Christ; the witness of the Spirit; good works as evidence of that faith; salvation by Grace through Faith. All of these are consistent with other Reformation thinkers.

Wesley also taught converts that, in the words of Dr. Tenney:  

“The surest evidence that God is what the Bible claims him to be, the One and only God, the All-Wise, the All-Powerful and the All-Loving, is the moral transformation which he works in a sinner. The revolution that occurs in a human being who believes God so fully as to give Him complete control over his life constitutes a supernatural event. Christianity is the only religion which carries with it any such moral empowerment. It performs the miracles promised by the Bible.”

Dr. Tenney also pinpoints the a major aspects of Wesley’s life and teaching that we would be wise to adopt in this present materialistic world of ours, saying:

“Four attainments clearly distinguish the early Methodists from the modern professing Christian. First he seems to have found the secret of soul serenity. Second, he gave convincing witness to his business and social world. Thirdly, he contributed amazing amounts to the work of his church. Fourthly, he lived a life of such appealing simplicity that the concept of ‘plain living and high thinking’ finally penetrated the thought of the whole nation.”

The Methodist Revival was God’s doing. John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield and others were God’s instruments, as they made themselves available to him. 

Would anyone question that it is time for another such spiritual awakening on this continent to bring both moral clarity and joy back to many lives?

Revival could start among those who are already Christ followers: with more discipline for daily Bible reading and prayer; rebuilt family devotions for children; increased attention to the ministries of the church; humility and reconciliation between family or fellow believers; partnership with other believers concerned for renewal. These things might make each of us ready to be his instruments today.

Just as in the 1700’s, renewal always begins with a stirring of God’s Spirit. And there is a challenge in the Scriptures which is repeated often and speaks to us of our part: “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13)

My new memoir, FROM KITCHEN CHAIR TO PULPIT: A Memoir of Family, Faith, and Ministry, has just been published. I hope you will click on one of the links that follow to be taken to the page on these sites that enable you to view and potentially purchase the paperback or ebook. My book shows just how extraordinary the pastoral life can be, describing how I prepared for ministry and ministered to three congregations and then, as a bishop, to pastors as a bishop, with the help of my wife, Kathleen, and the support of our children as they grew up from children to adults.

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Repost: How Susanna Wesley Home-schooled Ten Children

For parents worried about their children’s education in the era of Covid-19, here is an encouraging story from more than 200 years ago.

Susanna Wesley home-schooled the surviving ten of her nineteen children, teaching them to read. The famed John and Charles Wesley, leaders of the Methodist movement of the eighteenth century, were among them. How did she go about this daunting task?

She had the background to be their teacher. She was the youngest of the learned Puritan minister Samuel Annesley’s twenty-five children. Before she was out of her teens she knew Greek, Latin, and French and was proficient in theology and philosophy.

She married Anglican clergyman Samuel Wesley when she was twenty and he twenty-seven. As children began to come along, she designated one room of the parsonage as the school room. In that room there was to be no loud talking, and no coming and going except for good cause. For Susanna and her brood, formal learning was scheduled to last six hours a day during weekdays and it was serious business.

The day before a child’s education was to begin, as Susanna described it to her son John years later, the house was set in order, his or her work appointed to them, and a charge given that none except the child involved should come into the room from nine till twelve and from two till five. These were the inviolate school hours.

Formal learning began the day after each child’s fifth birthday. Each was then given one day to learn the alphabet. Susanna reported that two children, Molly and Nancy, took a day and a half before they knew the letters perfectly. In this she implied that they were slow, but she later revised this view when she saw how slowly children outside her family accomplished the same task.

She would have followed her start-at-age-five rule with Kezzy also, but she complained in her letter to John that her husband overruled her and insisted she be started earlier. She reported that Kezzy was more years learning than any of the rest had been months.

As soon as the children had learned the alphabet, they began in the first chapter of Genesis by spelling and reading a line, then a verse, then two verses, and so on.

They never left a lesson until they could do it perfectly. As Susanna wrote: “It is almost incredible, what a child may be taught in a quarter of a year, by a vigorous application, if [the child has] but a tolerable capacity, and good health.”

This kind of regimentation might make a modern educator groan in protest. And Susanna Wesley’s pedagogy might not work equally well with a random sample of twenty children today. After all, the Wesley children were extraordinarily bright. As well, it is worth noting that she was teaching them to read one at a time, not in a group as we tend to do in today’s classrooms.

In any event, at that time illiteracy was high among men and even higher among women — and close to universal in their village of Epworth. Susanna’s method is validated by the fact that her little flock all learned to read well and this gift was given them for a lifetime of usefulness and pleasure.

If this slice-of-life makes Susanna Wesley seem like a severe parent, consider one other aspect of her pedagogy. In a letter to her husband, Samuel, during one of his long absences in London, she gave this glimpse into her mentoring practices.

I take such a proportion of time as I can best spare every night to discuss with each child, by itself, on something that relates to its principal concerns. On Monday I talk with Molly; on Tuesday with Hetty; Wednesday with Nancy; Thursday with Jackie (John); Friday with Patty; Saturday with Charles; and with Emily and Sukey on Sunday.

Think of the emotional or intellectual enrichment that could be added to many an emotionally impoverished or neglected child today by a one-hour face-to-face with a parent genuinely interested in sharing the child’s agenda for that hour. It would be far more enriching than the time so commonly devoted by children and parents these days to the Internet and television.

Who can deny the wisdom of a Christian mother who insisted that her children master the objective tools of learning like words and numbers and facts and who also encouraged them to explore personal experiences of their choice during a dedicated time for each child?

Photo credit: Shawn Campbell (via flickr.com)

A Fire in an Old Parsonage: Who Saved John’s Life?

In 1709, at age six, John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, came precariously close to losing his life in a raging parsonage fire.

That parsonage, Epworth rectory, was an old house. It appears that it was at least 200 years old when the Wesley family first occupied it near the beginning of the 1700s.

It was a three-story house constructed of ancient timbers, lath, and plaster, with a thatched roof. It was dusty and dry and in 1702 (the year before John Wesley’s birth) that same parsonage had been damaged by a mysterious fire, but had been saved and repaired.

Then came the raging fire of August 24, 1709. It could well have wiped out the whole family. It began near midnight. Susanna was ill and she and Samuel were sleeping in separate rooms. She had two boys with her. Samuel, hearing the cry of “fire” in the streets, ran to Susanna’s room but the door was locked and he could not break in.

Fortunately all the commotion awakened her and she and the two boys hurriedly walked through the flames on the front stairs. Only her hands and face were scorched. Samuel then raced to the nursery where the younger children were in the care of a maid and hurried all of them out through the back part of the house. But once he was outside he realized that Jackie (son John) was missing.

Just then John’s face appeared at the upstairs window of the room where he had been sleeping. He had been awakened by the fire that was already playing along the ceiling of his room. There was no time for the crowd to get a ladder. Samuel, sure his son would die, knelt and commended him to God.

But a strong man in the crowd stood against the wall beneath the window and another man was hoisted onto his shoulders, bringing him close enough to the height of the upstairs window to reach John.

The appearance of the man frightened John and he disappeared from the window to try the door of his room. It was already in flames. He returned to the window and fell into the arms of the man. At that very moment, the roof collapsed and the burning thatch dropped into his room. John was saved — but just in time.

The cause of the fire was never established. Someone blamed it on Samuel’s carelessness. There were also hints of arson. Ruffians in the town of Epworth had often threatened the rector and his family. Samuel’s cows had been stabbed, his dog lost a leg, and the children, while at play in the yard, had been menaced by men who came by.

John’s amazing rescue registered deeply with the parents. All the children had been saved, but Susanna was particularly grateful for the mercy shown to John.      Two years later, May 17, 1711, she wrote a prayer, saying she intended “to be more particularly careful of the soul of this child that thou hast so mercifully provided for, than ever I have been, that I may do my endeavours to instill into his mind the disciplines of thy true religion and virtue.”

In his adulthood, John Wesley himself saw his great deliverance as an expression of God’s providence — his governance of the affairs of all mankind — and was convinced that he had been spared for a special reason. This event had a profound effect on his ministry.

In 1737, at age 34, he began to ascribe to the event the biblical expression “a brand plucked from the burning” (Zechariah 3:2). A modern version (NIV) says: “Is not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire?” Wesley came to believe he was saved from a fiery death by the Divine Hand so he could carry out a special ministry at God’s behest.

We all have had such providences. For some, they are obvious — a reprieve from cancer or financial ruin — for others, they are not as dramatic but equally real.  After all, our very lives and the breath we breathe day after day are the result of God’s provide-ence. And therefore should we not, as did John Wesley, reflect on them as evidence of God’s immeasurable mercies toward us to serve His purpose?

In the light of God’s daily mercies, dare we take lightly His call to salvation in Christ Jesus, and then to lives of committed service?

Photo credit: Ada Be (via flickr.com)

John Wesley’s Adversity Training

Some years ago I was thinking about how adversity can produce character, and particularly “grit.” One example, though couched in a larger passage about judgment, comes from Isaiah 30:20: Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. 

My mind jumps here to John Wesley, 1703-1791, a man of extraordinary strength and persistence I had been reading and writing about at that time.

I began to review what prepared him to lead with such perseverance and conscientiousness in the widespread ministry he was thrust into later in his life.

Consider first his education. There were the five years of excellent home schooling under the watchful eye of his mother, Susannah. Then there were six years at Charterhouse school. Finally there were about five years at Oxford University.

The grim experiences he had at Charterhouse may be one key to Wesley’s future competence and capability. Charterhouse was a well-regarded school for boys in London. One hundred years earlier a man of great wealth had established the school so that select boys could get the best possible education there in preparation for university.

There was no money in the Wesley household to pay the tuition for such instruction, but Samuel Wesley, John’s father, managed to persuade the Duke of Buckingham to nominate John. So, before he was eleven, Wesley left the well-regulated and prayerful environment of the Epworth rectory (parsonage) to enter the tumult of a public boarding school. W. H. Fitchett writes that “the Charterhouse of that day was a school with great traditions and a decent standard of scholarship.”

However, there was one feature of this institution that leaves modern students of its history perplexed: the practice of high-handed student-on-student food theft. When the rations were given out at the cook house, the older and stronger boys took the meaty portions from the smaller boys. It was a daily experience. During those years Wesley practically lived on bread.

Fitchett writes: “A boy trained in the severities of Epworth parsonage, however, could easily survive even the raided meals of the Charterhouse School.” But what were the officials of this great school thinking in not stopping the thefts? It is hinted that such treatment developed humility or self-restraint. More likely, if one responded to it nobly, and without descending into thievery oneself, it developed a toughness of character, the ability to make do with what was available and to fend for oneself without the benefit of warm and nurturing guardians.

Wesley himself mentions another potential benefit of his time at Charterhouse. When his father sent him to the school he gave him instructions to run around the school’s large playing field or garden three times each morning. In other words, to stay strong and active. Wesley obeyed and later wrote that he believed (and we might at least in part disagree) that this exercise and limited diet contributed to his sturdy constitution as an adult.

Many years later, when Wesley was deeply involved as leader of the Methodist movement, he experienced all sorts of adversity. He faced mobs, endured storms, traveled tirelessly mostly by horseback, wrote copiously in defense of the Gospel and for the instruction of new converts, and often preached as many as three times a day.

His own opinion was that the ruggedness and deprivations of his early years — including Charterhouse — had made him equal to such a demanding life.

Is There Hope for Spiritual Renewal in Our Times?

In our era, the news can be dark and shocking. Consider: the intentional shooting of policemen viewed by some as a new means of protest! As recently as two decades ago, who would have thought such lawless conduct would be part of the evening news?

And a recent headline reports that street drugs and prescription opioids used illicitly kill more people than the sum of those killed by auto accidents, gun violence, unexpected falls.  As well, at the interpersonal level, simple differences of opinion appear to easily elicit contempt and even biting hatred.

Lifelong friendships can be dissolved in a moment, and family relationships made to suffer. And then there is our “abortion Holocaust.” Sometimes it seems that our society groans with all of this misery.

The answer to it all? Nothing less than a genuine movement of God’s Holy Spirit to trigger spiritual renewal. Without question, in other times of similar great need, such moral renewals have been sent by God.

And it is our privilege and task as Christians to hope and pray that God will work today as he has in the past. I’m thinking of the Methodist Revival in England led by John and Charles Wesley in the Eighteenth Century.

Some historians say that at that time, England was near the point of moral collapse. There was widespread drunkenness, and depravity of every sort.  Conditions were ripe for massive social upheaval.

English society had fallen so deeply that it needed more than a bit of tidying up.  Politics was corrupt, the drunkenness just mentioned was hugely destructive, and public behavior had sunk into vulgarity and depravity.

Back then, response of the law was both harsh and futile: Children of both sexes could be hanged for 160 different violations of the law. Pick a pocket, snare a rabbit on a gentleman’s estate, shoplift, or steal a sheep – and even a child could go to the gallows.

Charles Wesley, brother to John, records that in one jail he preached to 52 felons waiting to be hanged — among them a ten year-old child. Public hangings were attended much like carnivals. And in cities and on highways corpses were often left rotting in chains from the gallows where they had been hanged.

Instead of societal collapse and even revolution, a divinely-appointed revival of the Christian faith swept the British Isles. God’s chosen leader for that unexpected movement was an English clergyman named John Wesley. A slight man who stood only 5 feet 3 inches tall, he ministered as a clergyman and had also taught logic at Oxford University.

From his initial ministry, nobody would have seen this coming: After more than a decade of earnest but ineffective ministry as a clergyman Wesley was ushered into an experience of God that energized and commissioned him and a corps of associates to guide this powerful revival. England came back from the precipice!

Where, in our disturbed times, is the reservoir of talent and spiritual will to first experience the cleansing and renewal of God’s Holy Spirit and then say “Here am I, send me”?

I think of the human resources for revival gathered in a great spread of Christian colleges, universities and seminaries across this continent in both Canada and the United States.

If a significant number of people in training were to equip themselves with serious intent and were moved by God’s sovereign Spirit to be anointed with power and righteousness, who can guess how God might use them as he did the Wesley brothers and their associates?

In one of Zechariah’s, divine revelations the angel said to him: “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord Almighty” (Zechariah 4:6). It’s not  just a cliché. It’s a key to spiritual renewal in any age and it is the word God would speak to us today.

Photo credit: Phil Smith (via flickr.com)

Re-post: On Wesley’s Journey to True faith

I’ve been reading again about John Wesley – 5 feet 3 inches tall, 126 pounds, Oxford University Greek instructor, failed missionary to the New World, and father of Methodism. I’ve decided he deserves more attention than his spiritual children sometimes give him.

From his early 20s onward he was a man of what appeared to be great piety. This stood out in contrast to the widespread godlessness of his generation. He organized his days around times of prayer; along with companions he served the sick and the poor; he attempted to manage his time as a spiritual trust; and he even made the perilous journey to America, as he reports in his journal, to work out his own salvation. However, on the latter point, even the piety did not conceal his lack of evangelical faith.

His passage from England to Georgia aboard the Simmonds revealed inner uncertainties about his salvation. Even though he and three traveling companions carried out with great diligence religious duties daily aboard ship — conducting worship, teaching the children, giving Christian counsel — his journal shows that several times during a series of bad storms he felt afraid to die.

He became aware of this by the example of 26 Moravians also on board. These were devout Christians from a community called Hernhuth in Germany. On one occasion they had just begun a service of worship aboard ship when a storm broke over the vessel. The 26 German Moravians continued singing while many of the 80 or so English passengers screamed in terror.

This fortitude in the presence of mortal danger did not escape John Wesley’s attention and he inquired of their leader: Were his people not afraid to die? He was assured they were not. Were the women and children not afraid, he asked further? Again, he was told they were not.

When the ship arrived at Savannah, Georgia, Wesley approached the Moravian pastor, a Mr. Spangenberg, and engaged him in conversation. He asked him if he would tell him what he found wrong in him — like an accountability partner. Here was a further hint not so much of deep humility as of self-preoccupation.

The pastor responded, “I must first ask you one or two questions. Have you the witness within yourself? Does the Spirit of God bear witness with your spirit, that you are a child of God?

Spangenberg noticed that Wesley, this Oxford-trained clergyman, seemed perplexed. So he asked further, “Do you know Jesus Christ?”

Wesley paused and then answered, “I know he is the Saviour of the world.” To which Spangenberg replied, “True. But do you know he has saved you?” Wesley responded, “I hope he has died to save me.” Moments later Wesley tried to make his answer more convincing but of that effort he writes in his journal, “I fear they were vain words.”

In spite of his great learning, his apparent piety, and his willingness to go abroad on Christian mission, something was missing. He lacked that assurance of salvation which the Moravians had and which Spangenberg knew was a key witness to a genuine faith.

Assurance was something Wesley could not talk himself into. Nor could his closest associates have convinced him. This inner assurance could not be reasoned or argued into existence. It was a certainty to be given by the Spirit of God to his own inner being – his own spirit — in response to sincere repentance plus the full trust of himself to the saving mercies of Jesus Christ (Romans 8:14).

That conversation with Pastor Spangenberg took place on February 7, 1736. Not until May 24, 1738 did John Wesley fully understand and completely surrender to the truth that salvation is by faith alone – the renunciation of one’s sins and the full transfer of one’s trust from oneself to Jesus Christ. And when he exercised that faith the Spirit gave him the inner witness of his salvation and his ministry took on a new spiritual quality, sanctioned by God’s power in unusual ways.

Image info: Stormy Sea at Night, 1849, Ivan Aivazovsky

What Serious Ministers of the Gospel Do: They Preach and Teach (Part Two)

William Hatherell; John Wesley Preaching from the Steps of a Market Cross, 1909

During 19 years as bishop in my denomination I listened at times to lay committees ponder the qualifications of a pastor being considered for appointment. One question was sure to surface from the laity with urgency: “Can this person preach?”

This question is particularly urgent now that a pastor’s neglect of this task can be concealed by the availability of “quickie” sermons from the internet. Real preaching takes more than that.

Preaching is rooted in the history of Christendom. It reflects, for one thing, the widespread influence of the Reformation – that mighty movement of the Spirit to renew Christendom in 16^th century Europe.

Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, John Knox and many others came alive to the deeper truths of the Bible. As a result, biblical preaching was revived as God’s primary way of shining the light of the Gospel on his fallen creation and particularly on our human depravity. We can be saved! And begin to be ‘repaired!’

Later, the Methodist movement of the eighteenth century engendered the same high regard for preaching. John Wesley, a Spirit-appointed leader of that renewal, had much to say to his growing ranks of preachers.

For example, he gave them 12 rules to follow as Methodist preachers. The twelfth included this instruction: “It is your part to employ your time as our rules direct: partly in preaching and visiting from house to house, partly in reading, meditation, and prayer.”

They were to take the task of preaching seriously and also allow adequate time for reading, meditation, and prayer to inform and energize their efforts.

However, the often-asked question, “Can this person preach?” has deeper roots than either the Reformation or the Methodist revival. Long before and standing above these movements, the New Testament is rich in language that reflects the centrality of proclamation and teaching in the life of the church everywhere.

The most common word in the New Testament for preaching — used more than sixty times as a verb — means “to herald.” A herald is a servant to whom a ruler entrusts his message, expecting it to be delivered clearly and with authority, regardless of the cost.

A second New Testament word applied to preaching is translated as “to evangelize.” We know well that the word means “to broadcast good news.” Sermons, whatever the issue, should have some element of this in them.

These two words do not exhaust the vocabulary for preaching in the New Testament. The idea of teaching occurs, too, and these three elements — preaching, proclaiming, teaching — require that careful thought, serious preparation, and spiritual energy be invested into each effort.

In order to bring the three elements forward faithfully and with effect two pastoral habits are necessary. The first is good Bible study habits — the techniques and resources for exploring deeply what is in the passage upon which the sermon is based. The second discipline is to set aside and actually use significant time in study, prayer, and preparation at least five mornings a week.

And of course the congregation also has a role: to be committed to support the serious minister’s efforts with prayer, deep listening, and occasional encouragement for the pastor’s commitment to faithfulness in preaching.

To be a servant of the Word of God in the pulpit is a demanding assignment in these times of many distractions. But fulfilling the task enabled by the Holy Spirit and His work in the minds and hearts of hearers brings its rewards for the souls of both pastor and people — now and in eternity.

Photo credit: John Wesley’s House & The Museum of Methodism