No doubt Bishop Gibson would also have dearly liked to discuss with John another issue—the matter of lay preachers. The Church of England was held together in part by strict observance of its rules. One of those rules made it clear that no man could preach unless he was ordained, and a man could not be ordained unless he had earned a degree from one of the church-approved colleges and pledged to uphold Anglican doctrine. The thought that anyone, a stonemason, farrier, or farmer, could stand and address a congregation on spiritual and theological matters was a shocking thought to the average Anglican. Yet it was an issue John was forced to grapple with, since in his preaching he encouraged men and women to speak openly with others about their faith.
The matter came to a head for John while he was in Bristol. He received word that a man named Thomas Maxwell had been preaching to the Methodists meeting in the converted foundry back in London. In fact, John was so alarmed by the news that he rushed home to confront Thomas. However, when he finally reached the foundry, his mother met him.
From the look on her son’s face, Susanna could tell that he knew about Thomas’s preaching. She offered him some advice. “John, take heed what you do with reference to that young man, for he is surely called to preach as you are,” she said.
Her words stopped John in his tracks, and John decided to slip into the back of the meeting and listen to Thomas preach before confronting him. What John heard at that meeting astonished him. Although he was not a college graduate, Thomas Maxwell spoke with force and eloquence. For the first time, the idea that God could call any man to the pulpit to preach began to permeate John’s thinking. John left the meeting shaken and told his mother, “It is the Lord’s doing. Let Him do what seems good. What am I that I should withstand God?”
Despite theological differences, the Methodists began their first social program in the year 1740. As more and more landless peasants moved from the countryside into the towns and cities, poverty became more and more of a problem in England. John was troubled that the Methodists were not doing enough to help the poor. He arranged for part of the foundry to be turned into a small workshop, in which twelve poor members of the congregation were taught to card and spin cotton, a skill they could use to earn a living for themselves.
The presence of so many poor, unemployed people in the towns and cities created problems for the Methodists. With nothing else to do, many of these poor people banded together into roving groups, stealing, fighting, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. They particularly liked harassing people on the street, and here the Methodists made an easy target as they gathered in the open air for their meetings. These gangs would cluster around the Methodists to heckle and catcall and generally disrupt. Sometimes they would try to pick fights with people at the gatherings. On one occasion at Hampton in Gloucestershire, for an hour and a half a group of thugs poured hogwash, the scraps and swill fed to pigs, over a group of Methodists who had knelt to pray in the street.
John himself was not immune to such treatment. He was often harassed by unruly mobs when he stood to preach. Fortunately he was a powerful and persuasive public speaker, and on many occasions he was able to diffuse the situation through his preaching. Once, when John was preaching in the open air on a green at Pensford near Bristol, a group of thugs descended on the meeting. They brought with them a bull that they had spent hours baiting to make angry. They released the animal, hoping that it would charge into the crowd, causing mayhem and injuring some of those who had gathered to hear John preach. But the angry bull would not cooperate with its tormentors. Instead of charging into the crowd, the bull kept running around and around the outside of the group until it was so exhausted it could barely stand up. All the while John kept preaching.
Finally, in frustration, the rabble-rousers caught the tired bull and led it into the crowd. They pulled it to the front of the meeting to the table on which John was standing to preach. They then released it and tried to provoke it to attack John. Once again the bull failed to cooperate. It just stood in front of John, snorting loudly. But when John saw that the gang of thugs was now angrier than the bull, he decided it was time to abandon the table. As soon as he did so, the group surged forward, grabbed the table, and took out their frustration on it, smashing it to matchwood.
Sometimes the local authorities tried to control the unruly situations when they developed, but more often than not they did nothing. And sometimes the anti-Methodist riots, as they came to be known, were stirred up by Church of England clergymen frustrated at and concerned by the growth of Methodism within their ranks. The anti-Methodist riots would last for several years.
October 1740 brought with it a shocking death. A prominent Methodist named William Seward, an associate of George Whitefield, had arrived back in England from the American colonies in March. William Seward was traveling around the country, preaching to people wherever a crowd would gather. And like other Methodist preachers, gangs of poor thugs often harassed him as he spoke. On one occasion he was pelted with rotten eggs. Then in the small town of Hay-on-Wye on the border of England and Wales, he was attacked by a mob. In the brawl he was struck over the head and died a short while later from a fractured skull, becoming the first Methodist martyr. His death had a deep impact on John Wesley and the other Methodist preachers.
Despite the persecution the Methodists faced in the streets, by the end of the year, John had organized a group of twenty lay preachers who had fanned out between Bristol and London to preach to the masses. Before these preachers set out, John outlined a set of rules to guide them:
1. Be diligent. Never be unemployed a minute.…
2. Be serious.… Avoid all lightness, jesting.
3. Converse sparingly…with women, particularly with young women.
4. Take no step toward marriage, without first consulting your brethren.
5. Believe evil of no one.…
6. Speak evil of no one.…
7. Tell everyone what you think is wrong with him.…
8. Do not [pretentiously act as] the gentleman.…
9. Be ashamed of nothing but sin: not of fetching wood…or drawing water.…
10. Be punctual. Do everything exactly on time.…
11. It is not your business to preach so many times, and to take care of this or that society, but to save as many souls as you can.…
12. Act in all things, not according to your own will, but as a son in the Gospel.
The lay preachers did their best to follow these rules, but in a number of the places they visited, they were not welcomed, especially when people realized they were not “qualified” to be ministers. One of the lay preachers, John Nelson, who was a stonecutter by trade, was mobbed and nearly beaten to death during an outdoor meeting.
The year 1741 brought little relief from troubles. Kezziah Wesley, John’s youngest sibling, died suddenly. It was a bitter blow, as she was only thirty-two years old. Charles was especially crushed by her death, and Susanna Wesley also found it difficult to accept her daughter’s passing.
Still, the work of sharing the gospel carried on. Then at the beginning of 1742, John discovered the secret to keeping the Methodist societies together. It happened in an unexpected way. In Bristol the Methodists were having difficulty raising the money needed to pay off their meetinghouse. Captain Foy, one of the wealthier members of the society there suggested that all Methodists pay a penny a week, if they were able to, until the meetinghouse debt was cleared. To make this happen, he advocated dividing the members of the society into groups of twelve, with one member taking on the responsibility of collecting the money. To show his support for the new plan, Captain Foy offered to form a group with eleven of the poorest society members and to pay each of their pennies if they were not able to.
The plan was an instant success, and soon the small groups were meeting together each week not only to donate their pennies but also to encourage and admonish one another. Everyone was enthusiastic about the new development, and John soon realized that in these small accountability groups lay the missing piece of Methodism. He immediately began encouraging the establishment of such groups everywhere he spoke. He even went so far as to allow the leaders of the groups to issue tickets of good conduct. These Methodist tickets were good for two months and were given to a member after he or she had paid a shilling entry fee. Any member who was absent from three consecutive meetings without a good excuse was not issued another ticket and was no longer considered a Methodist. The system was simple and easy to administer, freeing John to take on preaching assignments farther afield.
Two months later, Lady Huntingdon, a financial supporter of both John Wesley and George Whitefield, suggested that John take his straightforward gospel message to the colliers in the north of England. Since he now had his Methodist groups in Bristol and London under control, John decided to take her advice to go north. He took with him John Taylor, one of Lady Huntingdon’s servants, who was also a lay preacher. The two men rode their horses north to Newcastle, arriving there on May 30, 1742.
Since they did not know anyone in Newcastle, the two men had to think of a way to draw a crowd. This proved easy for John. He found his way to the hillside slum of Sandgate, where he and John Taylor stood on a busy street corner. Amid the hustle of vendors and shoppers, they began to sing a hymn. A small crowd of curious onlookers gathered to see what they were up to. Soon more people joined the crowd until, in a short time, several hundred people were peering over each other to see what the attraction was. When John judged the moment to be right, he began preaching to the gathered throng, using the text, “He was wounded for our transgressions.”
At the end of the sermon, John Wesley invited the listeners back to hear him preach that evening. This time the crowd was bigger, and John began to hold regular preaching and teaching sessions at Sandgate. Within two weeks he had attracted a core group of men and women who were ready to be organized into small groups. John Wesley and John Taylor worked tirelessly to make sure the Newcastle Methodists were a united group. To ensure this, they broke ground on an orphan house—a project that everyone could contribute something toward and that would help the young and the destitute of the slum. After this, the two preachers headed south again, pleased with the progress of the new Methodists.
It had been seven years since John had visited his childhood home in Epworth, and he decided to make a side trip there on the journey back to London. He stayed at a local inn in Epworth, where he met a woman who had been a Wesley family servant many years before. The woman was overjoyed to see John again and asked him if he would be preaching in his father’s old church the following Sunday. John had to admit that he did not know—he would like to, but his Methodist ideals had slammed many church doors shut to him. However, emboldened by the enthusiastic welcome of the woman, John walked to the rectory, where he talked with the curate, the Reverend Romley. Mr. Romley gave John a frosty welcome and assured him that no help was needed in the church. John shrugged off the insult and determined to at least attend the dinner-hour prayer service that evening.
It felt strange to John to be back at St. Andrews Church. The church held so many memories for him. John could hear his father’s voice booming from the pulpit and imagine his mother and brothers and sisters all sitting side by side in the front row. But now his brother Samuel and his sisters Mary and Kezziah were dead. John thought about the time when his father was away in London and his mother had started holding unofficial meetings in the rectory kitchen, reading aloud the account of the first two European missionaries to India. What an impact those meetings had had not only on the members of St. Andrews but also on the residents of Epworth and the fens. In a sense, his mother’s meetings were the forerunner to the Methodist societies that were springing up around the country. John looked forward to getting back to London to see his mother and tell her all about Epworth.
