He's here to remind us of some important things about the Christian life and the Christian Church. But first, we should remind ourselves about the life of John Wesley. He was born in the English village of Epworth in Lincolnshire in 1703. His father was the vicar of the local parish church. In 1725, John became a fellow at Oxford University. Two years later, he was ordained to the Anglican priesthood. In 1729 he took the lead, along with his younger brother, Charles, in founding the Holy Club at Oxford. Unsympathetic Oxonians dubbed its members Methodists because of their methodical devotion to study and religious duties.

In the mid-1730s, while on a missionary tour in the new British colony of Georgia, Wesley came under the influence of Moravian missionaries from Germany. Conversations with them caused Wesley to question if he had a saving faith in Jesus Christ. In Georgia and then back in England, Wesley continued to preach and perform other ministerial duties, but he became increasingly concerned about whether he was a Christian or not.

One evening in 1738, Wesley attended a meeting of a small religious society in Aldersgate Street in London. There he heard a layperson read Martin Luther's Preface to the Epistle to the Romans . After hearing the great Reformation leader's reminder of St. Paul's declaration that salvation is by God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ, Wesley suddenly felt his heart "strangely warmed." At last, he had the assurance that God had forgiven his sins. By Wesley's own testimony, this experience marked his conversion to Christ.

Wesley spent much of the remainder of his life as a Christian evangelist, sharing the good news of God's salvation. He did most of his preaching in open fields to huge throngs of people, many of whom responded positively to his message. Yet, his ministry was not without controversy. He antagonized many Anglican clergymen and laypersons because of his call for Christians to live holy lives. His beliefs that Christ died for all persons (not just for the elect), that a believer could fall from grace, and that followers of Jesus should strive for and achieve Christian perfection set him at odds with many of the Non-Conformist religious leaders of his day, most especially with those who were Calvinists.

In 1739 Wesley began a society of like-minded Christians in London which eventually developed into the Methodist Church, although he and his brother, Charles, remained Anglican priests until their deaths. John Wesley's remarkable life came to an end in 1791, when he was eighty-seven years old.

What do the life and ideas of John Wesley have to say to us in this Baptist Sunday school department this morning? There are probably many things. Here are just a few. First, we should respect the concept of the conversion experience, without insisting that everyone's conversion to Christ be as dramatic and sudden as that of Wesley. When Wesley began to tell others what had happened to him in Aldersgate Street, many colleagues and even family members were horrified. How could he say that he had just become a Christian? Why, he was a priest of the Church of England! Today, there is a tendency in some Christian circles to react scornfully--or at least, skeptically--to people who say that they have had a life-changing conversion experience, especially if it was apparently sudden and accompanied by some degree of emotion. Educated, sophisticated folk just do not do that sort of thing. Wesley's experience reminds us that some, indeed, do.

Also, we should take seriously Wesley's emphasis that Christians should live holy lives, however much efforts to do so may result in hypocrisy and encourage pride. While we may disagree with Wesley's teaching that a state of Christian perfection is possible in this life, we should give him credit for dealing seriously with important scriptural precepts. The most obvious is Jesus' plain command in the Sermon on the Mount, "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48 NRSV). Of course, scholars and others continue to ponder and argue just what Jesus' admonition means. A look back at the words that precede it (verses 38-47) give us a helpful clue. Jesus told his listeners that God's people should turn the cheek to evildoers, should do more than duty requires, should give to those in need, and most important, should love the unlovely. The Bible has several other hard sayings about perfection, including Hebrews 6:1a, "Therefore, let us go on toward perfection" (NRSV). Instead of looking the other way with embarrassment when we encounter such passages of scripture, we should take them very seriously, as did Wesley.

A last lesson that Wesley, in his methodical way, might press upon us today is the continuing need for missions and evangelism, especially in our own nation. Wesley was perhaps the greatest home missionary in the history of Christianity. It is said that he preached 40,000 sermons and traveled 250,000 miles, almost all of it on horseback, during the course of his ministry. (Think about that statistic. The distance is almost ten times the circumference of the earth!) Wesley was preaching to people in a society that was, much more than our own, supposedly Christian. Most, although not all, of those who responded to his evangelizing efforts were from the lower classes. Many had suffered as a result of the dramatic changes wrought by the early stages of the Industrial Revolution. Wesley told such people that God loved them and cared about their problems. We, too, live in a society of many hurting people who need the same message. Wesley knew, as we do, that missions and evangelism means more than preaching and teaching. He established schools, hospitals, and other charitable institutions for needy people of his society because he loved them. We, of course, have many opportunities to share God's love with the marginalized persons in our own society.

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