“I could scarcely reconcile myself at first to this strange way of preaching in the fields,” John Wesley wrote in 1739.
Making a public spectacle of himself hardly suited Wesley, who was then so "tenacious of every point relating to decency and order that [he] should have thought the saving of souls almost sin if it had not been done in a church."
But the Spirit stirred Wesley to loosen his grip on respectability. He “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.”[1] Wesley would not have plotted this ministry course, but his call to proclaim the gospel was stronger than propriety.
Preaching revival in fields and factories brought Wesley trouble from clergy who believed their institution defined when, where and by whom the gospel could be proclaimed. Wesley respected the Church of England, but he understood that if the people who needed to hear the message of new birth were not in the church building, then neither could the preacher be.
Because John Wesley and other early Methodists were willing to imagine an unexpected means by which God’s work could spring up, thousands heard the message of rebirth. To what out-of-bounds places and by what unexpected means do Wesleyans need to proclaim the gospel today?
Wesley’s conviction to amplify the gospel opened him up to unlikely ministry partners: women. Having grown up under his mother Susannah’s capable tutelage, Wesley knew that women’s capacity for discipling others could equal men’s. But he was not certain how far that capacity extended into church offices. Thus, in 1769, Wesley advised Sarah Crosby to, “keep as far from what is called preaching as you can.”[2]
Within a few years, though, Wesley’s position had shifted. Mary Bosanquet, who led Methodist prayer meetings with Sarah Crosby, wrote to Wesley in 1771, “some [women] have an extraordinary call to [preach], and woe be to them if they obey it not.”[3] Bosanquet made a biblical case for women preachers. Wesley accepted her argument, although he saw women preachers as an extraordinary accommodation and did not alter the Methodist policy to open ordination to women.
Although he stopped short of full affirmation, Wesley set a new trajectory for women to serve in ways that had previously seemed impossible, thanks to the courage and conviction of women who refused to be silenced. How shall Wesleyans continue along Wesley’s path toward the full affirmation of women as preachers and movement leaders?
Wesley had the humility to reconsider his positions. In addition to his shift on women preachers, Wesley changed his views on slavery and urged other Methodists do the same. For most of his life, Wesley accepted slavery as not only the status quo, but as compatible with Scripture. He exhorted slave-holders to educate and evangelize, and did not suggest that they free enslaved people or challenge the chattel slavery system.[4]
After decades of silence about the evil of slavery, in 1771, Wesley read a book that prompted him to call the slave trade “that execrable sum of all villainies.”[5] His thoughts on slavery evolved, culminating with his “Thoughts upon Slavery” in 1774. In sharp contrast to his previous laxity on the subject, he declared “I absolutely deny all slave-holding to be consistent with any degree of natural justice.” He concluded by insisting, “Liberty is the right of every human creature. … Let none serve you but by his own act and deed, by his own voluntary choice.”[6]
Wesley’s newly abolitionist viewpoint became the official stance of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America. Lamentably, by 1804, the American Methodists yielded to public pressure and reverted to the position that slavery was acceptable as long as the enslaved were educated and evangelized. Do Wesleyans today have Wesley’s courage to change our minds in obedience to the Spirit who calls us to be more like Christ?
John Wesley wasn’t naturally disposed to innovation. He liked tradition and was sometimes slow to adjust. But when the Spirit called Wesley to a new place or a new position, he followed. He blazed a trail of thoughtful innovation that the Wesleyan tradition can continue to follow with courage and faithfulness.
[1] “The Journal of John Wesley” entries dated March 29 and April 2, 1739.
[2] Quoted in Richard P. Heitzenrater, “Wesley and the People Called Methodist,” (Abingdon, 1995), 236.
[3] Heitzenrater, “Wesley and the People,” 248.
[4] Cf. Sean McGever, “Ownership,” (IVP, 2024), 113-117.
[5] McGever, “Ownership,” 134.
[6] McGever, “Ownership,” 140-1.