John Wesley
- Lived
- 1703–1791
- Era
- Modern
- Where
- England
- Tradition
- Methodist / Wesleyan
Methodism, and 250,000 miles on horseback
An Anglican priest whose Oxford "Holy Club" earned the mocking name Methodist, who failed badly as a missionary in Georgia, and who in 1738 at a meeting in Aldersgate Street felt his heart "strangely warmed" and thereafter preached conversion for fifty years without stopping.
Why it matters
Barred from most pulpits, he preached in fields and at pit heads, and he rode perhaps a quarter of a million miles to do it. His organisational genius is the real legacy: converts placed in small classes that met weekly for mutual account, led by lay people, so the movement did not depend on clergy and did not evaporate when the preacher left. He remained an Anglican to his death, ordained ministers for America against Anglican order, and wrote against the slave trade to the end.
In the record
-
1730–1840 AD Revival
The Great Awakenings
Organised the converts into classes, which is why it outlasted its preachers
All the figures, from the apostolic age to the present, or the timeline they stand in.