John Wesley was born on June 17, 1703, while England was still using the Julian calendar. England adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752 and thus Wesley’s birth date became June 28. Here is a story about Wesley’s birthday reflections.
Thomas Jay Oord, Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Northwest Nazarene University, speaks on salvation from a Wesleyan perspective.
Seedbed Blog writer Allison Norman writes about Howard Snyder’s book, The Radical Wesley
With every story and every novel detail about Wesley’s ministry, my mind raced with ideas, thoughts, and dreams of modern-day parallels. Each facet of Wesley’s work unearthed the same repeating questions within me: “What would this look like for our church?” and “What if?”
Also from Seedbed, Paul Lawler writes
The Claremont School of Theology offers two videos about the first Methodist women named bishops: Early Women Bishops of UMC and The Impact of Women Bishops on the Life of the Church.
Amazon had a copy of From Wesley to Asbury by Frank Baker that I just received. Baker starts out talking about John and Charles Wesley serving as missionaries in Georgia. Baker says, “Georgia meant much to the Wesleys and the Wesleys to Georgia.” Baker argues that the ministry they began there expanded on their work in the Holy Club at Oxford and led to their work with small groups in societies, preaching in informal locations, hymn-singing, extempore prayer, use of laymen and women, working for social causes and connections with Moravians that greatly impacted their work in England. He also argues that the seeds planted by the Wesleys in Savannah, nurtured further by Holy Club member George Whitefield laid groundwork for future Methodist successes.
Baker seeks to provide a timeline of early Methodism.
I think that we can claim that Methodism as a movement began with the Wesleys in 1736 and as a church in 1784. Methodist societies of a kind existed from 1736 and remained a feature of the movement.
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It seems to me that although the birth of the Methodism movement in American must be dated in 1736, the conscious formation of groups of converted and converting Christians into Methodist societies looking to John Wesley as their exemplar and leader began in 1766.
Baker notes that:
in 1729, Methodist movement begins with Wesleys and Holy Club at Oxford
in 1736 Wesleys arrived in Georgia
in 1739, Methodist society begins with Wesleys organizing societies in Bristol and London
in 1766 Methodist society meetings were being held by Robert Strawbridge in Maryland and Philip Embury in New York.
in 1784, Methodist Church begins when annual conference of Methodist Church legally incorporated
Future chapters focus on Thomas Webb, Franics Asbury and Thomas Coke.
Pitt Library at the Candler School of Theology has an exhibit on the first Methodist Bishops Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke. John Wesley sent Asbury to America in 1771 and Coke in 1784.The online exhibit includes a number of important documents including a copy of the John Wesley’s Declaration and establishment of the conference of the people called Methodists, the sermon where Asbury was first referred to as bishop and Asbury’s journal.
There are two United Methodist Historic Landmark Sites in North Carolina: Whitaker’s Chapel near Enfield and Green Hill House in Louisburg.
Whitaker’s Chapel is north of Rocky Mount and east of I-95, about 1.5 hours from Raleigh.
Richard Whitaker built the chapel on his property in 1740. Francis Asbury preached at Whitaker’s Chapel at least three times, in 1786, 1789, and 1804.
On December 19, 1828, 14 preachers and 12 laymen met at Whitaker’s Chapel and organized what became the North Carolina Annual Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church.
The original chapel was built of logs; at some point it was torn down and replaced with a frame building. In 1850 that structure was moved 500 yards from the site and a new church was erected in its place. The 1850 building was moved across the road to its current location in 1880.
Green Hill House is in Louisburg, just off U.S. 401 and NC 39, about 45 minutes from Raleigh.
Major Green Hill enlisted in the Continental Army as a chaplain in 1781. Major Hill became a Methodist around the age of thirty. He became a local preacher, probably the first native of North Carolina to serve in that capacity.
The Hill home in Louisburg was familiar to Methodist preachers traveling the circuit, including Francis Asbury. It was a large house, built for a family of eight children. Following the Christmas Conference in December 1784, the Green Hill House was chosen to host the first meeting of an annual conference of the brand-new Methodist Episcopal Church.
From April 20 to 24, 1785, twenty preachers from 31 circuits in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina met in the attic, a large room covering the whole upper floor of the house. Mrs. Hill and her family fed the preachers, who slept on the attic floor and in tents on the lawn.
Bishops Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke guided the proceedings. Asbury recorded in his diary that the conference met “in great peace,” and Coke wrote that “we had a comfortable time together.”
The house is the original structure and is a private home. It was renovated in 1988, and the second floor has deliberately been kept much like it was at the time of the 1785 conference.
The United Methodist Church General Commission on Archives and History provides this United Methodist Church Timeline.
Northwest Nazarene University in Idaho provides the Wesley Center Online web site, a collection of historical and scholarly resources about the Wesleyan Tradition, theology, Christianity, and the Nazarene church. The website provides Wesley biographies, his Christian Library, several of his journals and letters, 50 sermons and more. There are separate sections on Charles Wesley and the Arminian Magazine.
John Wesley at the Wesley Center Online
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