Methodism's founder was plucked from a burning rectory at age five
In February 1709 a five-year-old boy was stranded upstairs as his family's rectory burned, until a parishioner standing on another man's shoulders pulled him through a window. John Wesley grew up to ride across Britain and Ireland preaching in the open air, founding the societies that became Methodism.
Wesley was born in Epworth, north-west of Lincoln, on 28 June 1703, the fifteenth child of the rector Samuel Wesley and his wife Susanna, who bore nineteen children in all, nine of whom survived infancy. Susanna ran the household like a school: every child, girls included, began reading at five, was drilled in Latin and Greek, memorised long stretches of the New Testament and had a private weekly session with her for spiritual instruction. The rescue from the fire of 9 February 1709 later became family legend, read as a sign he was set apart.
After Charterhouse and Christ Church, Oxford, he was ordained deacon in 1725 and elected a fellow of Lincoln College on 17 March 1726. His younger brother Charles had meanwhile started a small circle devoted to study and devout living, and John took the lead on his return. Fellow students mocked them as religious enthusiasts and gave them the nickname the Holy Club.
In October 1735 the brothers sailed for Savannah at the invitation of James Oglethorpe, founder of the Georgia colony. On board, Moravian settlers impressed Wesley with their calm faith during a storm that snapped the mast. The two-year Georgia ministry went badly, and back in London he joined a Moravian-led society. On 24 May 1738 came the experience remembered as his evangelical conversion, after which he struck out on his own.
His method was to travel constantly, preach outdoors and organise converts into small groups built on mutual accountability, looked after by lay preachers who were not ordained, some of them women. He argued against Calvinism, defended Arminian ideas and taught that Christians could reach a perfection in which love of God ruled the heart. Under his leadership Methodists campaigned on the great issues of the day, including the abolition of slavery. He died on 2 March 1791, and his societies became the core of an independent Methodist movement.
Source: John Wesley
