He appointed itinerant, unordained evangelists-both women and men-to care for these groups of people. Moving across Great Britain and Ireland, he helped form and organise small Christian groups (societies) that developed intensive and personal accountability, discipleship, and religious instruction. In contrast to Whitefield's Calvinism, Wesley embraced Arminian doctrines. He subsequently left the Moravians and began his own ministry.Ī key step in the development of Wesley's ministry was, like Whitefield, to travel and preach outdoors. On, he experienced what has come to be called his evangelical conversion, when he felt his "heart strangely warmed". After an unsuccessful ministry of two years, serving at Christ Church, in the Georgia colony of Savannah, he returned to London and joined a religious society led by Moravian Christians. At Oxford, he led the " Holy Club", a society formed for the purpose of the study and the pursuit of a devout Christian life it had been founded by his brother Charles and counted George Whitefield among its members. The societies he founded became the dominant form of the independent Methodist movement that continues to this day.Įducated at Charterhouse and Christ Church, Oxford, Wesley was elected a fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1726 and ordained as an Anglican priest two years later. John Wesley ( / ˈ w ɛ s l i/ 28 June 1703 – 2 March 1791) was an English cleric, theologian, and evangelist who was a leader of a revival movement within the Church of England known as Methodism.
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