John Wesley Research Paper

John Wesley is one of the most influential men in Christian history, a man known for his rigorous devotion to personal holiness. He not only is the founder of the Methodist Church, but also influenced the Wesleyan Church, the Free Methodist Church and the Nazarene Church, among others. His passion for the nonbelievers led him to travel 250,000 miles, give away over £30,000 and preach over 40,000 times around the globe. Wesley lived his life with vigor, rising each morning at four to prepare for the day. John Wesley pioneered spiritual revitalization in Europe and North America, devoted himself to personal holiness, and redefined experience and the Holy Spirit in his lifetime, changing the course of Christian history.

CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION

John soon became the natural leader of a band of men, dubbed the “Holy Club,” which originally included Charles Wesley, William Morgan and Robert Kirkham. This fraternity spent an hour in private prayer each morning and evening, fasting twice a week and keeping each other accountable. They visited the sick, gave to the poor, and performed pastoral duties to their community. The club eventually grew to over twenty members, with the men living in sharp contrast to many of the frivolous scholars of the time—whose religious laxity permeated the Oxford campus. Onlookers called these fellows everything from “Bible Moths” to “Sacramentarians,” but the title “Methodists” stuck with John and soon became a mantra for

Rudolf Rican, a professor and church historian, characterized the Moravians as a “people who have decided once and for all to be guided only by the gospel and example of our Lord Jesus Christ and his holy apostles in gentleness, humility, patience, and love for our enemies.” The Moravians originally came from a man named Jan Hus who created the Moravian Church sixty years before Martin Luther started the Protestant Reformation, and burned at the stake in 1415 for his beliefs. The Moravians, like many Protestant traditions, differ from the Roman Catholic Church because they offered the cup of Christ to the laity during communion. The Moravian faith survived for two hundred years until Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf led a revival in the 1700s. Moravian families fleeing persecution found refuge in Zinzendorf’s estate, where he sheltered and encouraged them. This allowed the Moravians to bring the gospel to America soon after its discovery, and inspired a one hundred year prayer watch where someone in the church prayed for the globalization of the gospel every minute of every