John Wesley, the younger brother of Charles the poet and evangelist extraordinaire, preached, wrote, and financed the gospel message of Christ. He also expounded on the spiritual and social ramifications of it for town and country workers, merchants, and soldiers and sailors in eighteenth-century England. Simply assenting that Christ was the divine Savior in a ritual manner was never enough to confirm a convert’s faith to John. He insisted that his followers make a conscious commitment to Christ and then methodically practice what Jesus and his older half-brother James, and later Wesley himself, found important. John did this so successfully that many historians believe England avoided the horrifying bloodbath of the French Revolution because the Wesleyan spiritual revival reshaped island society without resorting to violence. During his ministry, Wesley taught that any religion that does not offer equal love and support to all, regardless of their possessions, prestige, and power, or lack thereof, is not a Christian faith at all. This so offended some narcissistic Lords of Parliament that they expelled John from his Anglican pulpit, forcing him to preach in the streets and fields, which of course, was where all those dirty people were. The lords and bishops couldn’t have planned John’s success better if they had spent six months working out the details, but God often uses the foolishness of humans for great and wonderful purposes. John did not allow his converts to randomly mature into Christians. He developed procedures that he called methods to follow when internalizing the means of grace. (That’s why his followers were sarcastically called Methodists!) He trained pastors, evangelists, exhorters, and Gospel class leaders who met with the people at least once a week between services. They also held revival sessions and camp meetings with rousing preaching, exhortation, and singing such as the church had seldom heard since the early days of Christianity. Roberta remembers when the phrases ‘singing like Methodists’ and ‘shouting Methodists’ were terms of respect. Jard, as a young man, loved camp meetings deep in the great woods, away from the bustle of life and work. It was an honor to be chosen to give my testimony during Methodist class meetings. These activities were so popular that a person could not even get into the evening sessions or attend a camp meeting without an admission ticket. Roberta’s grandfather, Will Howard, was the last leader of the Methodist class in Denver before the denomination became too sophisticated for such evangelical training, having dabbled for too many decades in high German criticism.

John’s reputation (and the political influence of his expanding congregations) spread through England like wildfire until he was able to spend an afternoon in the foggy city of London, soliciting money from wealthy merchants and raising two or three thousand pounds sterling. for charity. He then he would give everything for the care of the orphans before coming home. John certainly cared for the poor and needy, both spiritually and physically, and they worshiped the somewhat austere man. He raised millions upon thousands of dollars in silver during his lifetime, but being mature in mind and spirit, he understood that he could take nothing beyond the grave. He therefore donated it to the poor much to the annoyance of King George III’s tax collectors, who spent a fruitless week looting his wife’s hereditary house and stable for John’s treasury, money long before spent. in those common people whom the aristocracy despised as ignorant and ignorant. But while the British elite misunderstood men like John and Charles, the emerging global middle class embraced them and their message of redemption, love and social service in one of the greatest Christian awakenings of all time.

John lived to a very old age and died with virtually no money. Some said it was too bad: all the weary old man left behind was a pair of patched wool suits, a battered and stained Bible, a skinned old mare, and the worldwide Methodist Church. Methodism eventually numbered some eighteen million members of the middle class from London to Singapore and Sydney, from Cape Town to Chicago, Hong Kong and San Francisco and almost everywhere in between. All because the somewhat ditzy teenager matured spiritually enough to emerge from the shadows of a narcissistic society and a church that had fallen into the clutches of the Empire’s ruthless aristocracy who used and abused the clergy and faithful.

The rush of devout methodical believers who worked systematically to improve their faith, hope, and love soon caused England to free its slaves, opening free classes on Sunday afternoons to teach reading, writing, mathematics, and religion to children of all classes, helping the poor to escape poverty. teaching them trades and creating a constitutional monarchy with a strong House of Commons elected by the people to counter the highly elitist hereditary House of Lords.

The Wesleyan conviction that spiritual worship and social responsibilities go together, like a violinist’s right and left hands, had a great impact in the English-speaking world. For example, throughout our civilization, there was hardly a city without several Methodist churches, a Methodist hospital, free orphanages, a Wesleyan college, and charities of various kinds.

Not too bad a legacy for a poor country preacher who could spare not a shilling, but who saved a nation from a bloody revolution with his Lord’s message of faith and grace, as he traversed cold and misty England, covering more than twenty thousand miles on horseback during his deeply satisfying ministry of sixty years.

And two hundred years later, when Haim Ginott (clinical psychologist and child therapist) named someone he felt had become a self-actualizing leader, he named John Wesley as someone who had given his best to the people he was among. lived, loved and belonged

Unfortunately, the church has not always been as spiritual as it was under devoted leaders like John and Charles Wesley, along with others like Luther, Whitfield, Arminius, Finny, Moody, Graham, King, and more, each with a fire for God and the people in her womb! Of course, it doesn’t take long for narcissistic users and abusers to find opportunities for themselves by moving in and controlling something as loosely organized and generous with their love, time, and money as the church. The probably apocryphal story goes that a Renaissance pope was showing one of Europe’s powerful monarchs through his treasury chambers under the Vatican which were filled with treasures of silver, gold and precious jewels. He smiled proudly and boasted;

We can no longer say with Jesus: silver and gold we do not have. Then, the grumpy old Emperor grunted and retorted bitterly;

Nor can you say to lame men and women: ‘In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, we command you to get up, pick up your stretcher and walk!’