United Methodist Church talks with author Geordan Hammond on his new book “John Wesley in America: Restoring Primitive Christianity,” published by Oxford University Press.
John Wesley served as pastor of the Georgia colony in Savannah for 18 months. Rev. Enoch Hendry of Trinity United Methodist Church in Savannah remembers Wesley and the history of his church.
Blogger Scott Parrish shares a photo in his blog Kudzu Life of the Georgia Historic Marker placed at a site on the state’s coast where John and Charles Wesley lived with the Oglethorpe colony at Savannah, Georgia.
Blogger Scott Parrish writes in his blog Kudzu Life of visiting Forest Frederica where John and Charles Wesley lived with the Oglethorpe colony at Savannah, Georgia.
UMNS talks with author Geordan Hammond about his new book, John Wesley in America.
Blogger Rev. Brent L White traveled to the coast of Georgia on vacation and encountered memories of John Wesley‘s missionary work with the Georgia colony at Savannah.
Wesley, as many of you know, briefly ministered in the new British colony of Georgia (from February 6, 1736 to December 2, 1737), an experience that, by Wesley’s own account, was a failure. Like all such “failures” in God’s kingdom, however, God used it as an important formative experience from which Wesley learned and grew.
White has some photos of historical markers and Wesley related sites.
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.
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