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Methodism spreads to America

© Susan Padezanin

John Wesley's friend, George Whitefield, who had been a member of the Holy Club at Oxford and who was about to leave for America, had been attracting great throngs of spiritually neglected people in England through his field preaching. Wesley himself felt that this kind of preaching would be out of character for him. Yet, when he preached to a crowd of about 3,000 from an open field on April 2, 1739, he knew that a new phase of his life's work had begun. Eventually, he preached in the open air all over England to miners, humble townspeople, barmaids, farmers, industrial workers and to anyone who would listen.

On of the best known episodes of his career occurred in his hometown of Epworth. When he returned there in 1742, seven years after his fathers death, he found that his home church where his father had preached for thirty-nine years and where he, himself, had been baptized and served as a curate, was closed to him. The pastor would not permit this "field preacher" who held church outdoors to preach in his pulpit. One of Wesley's friends told the people leaving the Sunday service that John would be back to preach at 6:00 that night. Wesley noted in his journal that it was likely the largest congregation Epworth had ever seen. He stood atop his father's tombstone and preached about righteousness, and peace and joy from the Holy Ghost. Whether from an open field or from a graveyard, Wesley seized every opportunity to proclaim the gospel of Christ.

The Wesleyan Revival soon extended beyond England into Ireland, Scotland, and Wales and then to America. A number of men and women whose lives had been touched by the Wesleyan Revival came to America and began to bear witness to their faith in Christ. It was a difficult time because the War for American Independence was on the horizon. Almost all British preachers returned to England at the time of the Revolution. But Francis Asbury remained. Asbury, the "Father of American Methodism," was one of the greatest circuit riders and has been called the "Prophet of the Long Road." The earliest black evangelist in the colonies, Harry Hoosier, rode with him. As Asbury preached indoors, "Black Harry," as he was called preached to the overflow crowds outside.

Eventually an American Methodist church, independent from the Church of England, came into being. In 1784, Wesley sent Thomas Coke as a superintendent of Methodists in America with instructions to consecrate Asbury to that same office. By this time there were nearly 15,000 Methodists in America and eighty lay speakers. When Coke arrived in America, Asbury declined to accept the appointment as superintendent without an election by the preachers with whom he worked. This led to the famous Christmas Conference in Baltimore in 1784. It was at the conference that both Asbury and Coke were consecrated as "general superintendents," a title changed to "bishop" four years later.

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