Thursday, October 02, 2008

Life of Wesley

I am going to attempt to teach about John Wesley's life in a 45 minute Sunday School block. I created 23 bullet point which I hope will give me room to cover the key material. Anything vital missing in your opinion?

The Life of John Wesley

  •  Born June 17th, 1703
  •  Number 15 of 19 children (10 survived)
  •  Rescued from house-fire (1709)
  •  School in London (1714), Oxford (1720)
  •  Leader of the ‘Holy Club’ (1729)
  •  Missionary to Georgia (1735-1738)
  •  Charles converts, writes 1st hymn (1738)
  •  John’s heart ‘strangely warmed’ (1738)
  •  England’s pulpits close to Wesley brothers
  •  Begins preaching outdoors (1739)
  •  3 point circuit (London, Bristol, New Castle)
  •  Societies, Classes, and Bands created
  •  Fell on London Bridge, married nurse (1751)
  •  Spouse separated in 1771, died in 1781
  •  Ordained 28 ministers, separating Methodism
  •  Traveled about 250,000 miles for preaching
  •  Preached 40,000 sermons (3,000 unique)
  •  Wrote/Edited b/w 200 and 300 books
  •  Gave away more than 30,000 pounds to needy
  •  Movement reached 50,000 English members
  •  Movement reached 15,000 Americans
  •  Wrote final letter (to William Wilberforce)
  •  Died on March 2nd, 1791

2 comments:

naphtali_deer said...

I think it'd be a pretty tough task to cover anyone's life in 45 minutes!!

Possible additions (don't know if they're "vital" or not) include:

His brother Charles' opposition to John's marriage because Charles thought John should be wholeheartedly dedicated to ministry.

Tension in John's marriage.

I really appreciate Wesley's sense of Christian unity as seen, for example, in The Question of What is an Arminian... (see point # 12) and Catholic Spirit...as I'm coming from more of a Calvinistic perspective myself. But as Spurgeon, a Calvinist himself said, "I wish to be called nothing but a Christian," and think Wesley would be in agreement with that, as am I.

May God richly bless your teaching time. Christian biography is so wonderful!

matthew said...

thanks for the feedback! I do plan on discussing, briefly, wesley's lifetime of struggle with the female gender.

I also appreciate his 'catholic spirit'... Thanks again!