Back to Our Future:
Every United Methodist an Evangelist
by Tom Albin
Although it is appropriate to celebrate this year in which John Wesley would have been 300 years old, it is also important to remember the role played by ordinary men and women in the early Methodist movement. Without the hundreds and thousands of ordinary people who joined the Methodist movement in the eighteenth century, John and Charles Wesley would have never made it into the history books.
For many years I have studied the diaries, letters, and journals of the early Methodist people in England. The evidence, both in print and in manuscript form, is absolutely clear — the real power of the Evangelical Revival in England came from the ordinary people, the working class men and women who opened their hearts and minds to the Methodist message, joined small formational groups, and engaged their hands and feet in the Methodist mission to the poor and the marginalized. These ordinary people were the ones who experienced the inward transformation of grace, then began to share the love of God with their family and friends. In more than seventy percent of the times we can identify the person God used as a catalyst for conversion or the new birth, it was a lay woman or a lay man — not the Rev. John Wesley or the Rev. Charles Wesley or the Rev. George Whitefield or any other clergyperson.
Every Methodist became an evangelist. Once people came to saving faith in Jesus Christ, love of God empowered them to witness to members of their family, their friends, and to those who needed Christ most. Having experienced the love and grace of God for themselves, the early Methodist people were guided by the teaching of John Wesley and empowered by the music of Charles Wesley to become ambassadors for Christ and participants in his ministry of reconciliation.
Glory, glory, and thanksgiving, and praise, be to God forever, for what he has done for my soul!
Now I am happy indeed! One moment of such a love and such happiness as I now feel is worth a hundred worlds!
I now fear neither men nor devils.
Give my kindest and most grateful love to all my dear friends, who offered up their faithful, humble prayers for me, which God has now answered:
and give them my thanks. Well might they say,
'If all the world our Jesus knew,
Then all the world would love him too!'
I am your new-born, happy brother, T.B.
(The Journal of Mrs. H.A. Rogers, p. 315)
Early Methodist evangelism made room for God to work in a variety of ways. James Hall, a layman who would become one of the early Methodist preachers, came to faith in Christ, as did his brother. The difference in their religious experience became a source of spiritual wisdom for James and kept him from thinking that God would work in every life in the same manner. James explained how the experience of his brother:
. . . taught me many useful lessons, particularly that God was not confined to one method of bringing sinners to the knowledge of the truth. For while the Lord brought me down to the ground, under the most powerful convictions, He, at the same time, gently opened my brother's heart, as he did the heart of Lydia, and kindly drew him with the cords of his love, to the same degree of diligence in all the means of grace. This prevented me from fixing a standard to weigh or measure the work of God by, in the future period of time.
(The Arminian Magazine, volume 16, pages 65-66)
The role of women was important in the Methodist mission as well. Let me offer one brief account from the life of the girl who would one day become a significant spiritual leader and evangelist in the Methodist movement. The witness of the unnamed female servant reminds us how important it is to listen to the spiritual concerns of our children and grandchildren so that we, too, might share the good news.
About this time there came a servant-maid to live with my father, who had heard, and felt some little, of the power of inward religion. It was among the people called Methodists she had received her instructions. Seeing the uneasiness my sister was under, she took some opportunities of conversing with her. I was at this season with my grandmother. On my return home, my sister repeated the substance of these conversations to me. I well remember the very spot we stood on, and the words she spake, which, though we were but a few minutes together, sunk so deeply into my heart, that they were never afterward erased. My reflections were suited to a child not seven years old. I thought if I became a Methodist I should be sure of salvation; and determined, if ever I could get to that people, whatever it cost, I would be one of them. But after a few conversations, and hearing my sister read some little books which this servant had given to her, I found out, it was not the being joined to any people that would save me, but I must be converted, and have faith in Christ; that I was to be saved by believing; and that believing would make me holy, and give me a power to love and serve God.
The Life and Faith of Mrs. John Fletcher (1848 ed., p. 15)
In Africa and every country where The United Methodist Church is effective in its mission to make disciples of Jesus Christ, I find principles and practices similar to those introduced above:
- Every Methodist is an evangelist.
- The variety of God's work is celebrated.
- The witness and ministry of ordinary men and women are affirmed.
- Children are given appropriate spiritual guidance.
Perhaps we need to go back to the future. Can we find ways to help people experience for themselves the transforming love and grace of God, then help them share this experience with their family, their friends, and as many of the children of God as possible? I believe we can, and our history gives strong support to that hope.
Dr. Tom Albin is a well-known Wesley scholar who currently serves as the Dean of the Upper Room Chapel in Nashville, Tennessee.
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