Descriere & specificații

nLearn how Methodism became a worldwide mission.n nn nIt is broadly understood that John Wesley was the founder of the Methodist movement that spread around the world in the eighteenth century. He is known for being a missionary in Georgia, his heart-warming experience at Aldersgate, field preaching, and the famous quote the world is my parish. It is also assumed that Wesley was a proponent of world missions and helped spread the Methodist movement around the world. This study examines this assumption and, after a closer look, reveals John Wesley's reluctance to send missionaries overseas. The book uncovers several examples of Wesley's rejection of world missions and occasions when he thwarted plans. Wesley undermined the efforts of Thomas Coke, the Father of Methodist Missions, who wrote an appeal to send missionaries abroad.n nn nJohn Wesley and the Origins of Methodist Missions reveals that it was unheralded lay people, ordinary immigrants, merchants, planters, soldiers, enslaved persons, and former slaves, who carried Methodism with them to such far-off places at Antigua, Maryland, New York, Gibraltar, Nova Scotia, and Sierra Leone. Persons such as Nathaniel Gilbert, Sophia Campbell, Mary Alley, and Bessie started a multiracial Methodist Society in Antigua-the first outside of Europe. These lay people, and several others, were not officially commissioned or authorized by Wesley to plant Methodist societies. Rather they traveled on their own, motivated by the love of God a