Susanna Wesley

When John was starting small groups, the Church of England didn’t allow women to preach or lead. They were not allowed to be pastors, but they had a big part in Methodism from the start. A large part of that is because of John and Charles mom, Susanna. Susanna had a lot of kids, and she taught them all that day to day things made a big difference in their faith. She had her own small group that met at her house.

It is said, that one time John was frustrated because a woman had the nerve to preach at her class meeting. He complained to his mom about it. Susanna told him he better list to the woman preach before he decided she shouldn’t. John did just that, and realized women were as good at preaching as men. God seemed to be calling them to leadership and using them to reach new people with the gospel. Many women would feel God’s call to be leaders and follow those calls, even though it would take until 1956 until women could be fully ordained in Methodist Church.

Other remarkable women in the early Methodist movement (pulled from http://www.umc.org/who-we-are/timeline-of-women-in-methodism ) :

1768 
Barbara Heck, known as the mother of American Methodism, urges Philip Embury to start preaching in New York and designs John Street Chapel in New York City.

c. 1770 
Mary Evans Thorne is appointed class leader by Joseph Pilmore in Philadelphia; she is probably the first woman in America so appointed.

1787 
Despite objections of some male preachers, John Wesley authorizes Sarah Mallet to preach as long as “she proclaimed the doctrines and adhered to the disciplines that all Methodist preachers were expected to accept.”

1827
Isabella Bomefree, a slave who later changes her name to Sojourner Truth, is emancipated when slavery is abolished in New York State. That same year, she co-founds Kingston Methodist Church. In 1843, she feels "called in the spirit" and begins to travel and preach. She becomes involved in the abolitionist movement, and her public speaking combines her religious faith with her experiences as a slave.

1866 
Helenor M. Davisson is ordained deacon by the North Indiana Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church, making her the first ordained woman in the Methodist tradition.

Questions:

1.      Why do you think women were willing to break church rules?

2.      Do you think there are church rules today that need to be broken?

3.      How do you decide if a rule should be broken or kept?

Charles Wesley

Charles Wesley was John Wesley’s little brother. He was a pastor in the Church of England too. While John was really good at organizing people into groups, Charles had a different gift. He was a poet and song writer. He could take the stories from the Bible and theology (beliefs about God) and turn them into beautiful songs.

Charles published 4,500 songs and wrote at least 3,000 more. As Methodism grew, leaders relied heavily on his hymnal and the Bible, because they couldn’t take a lot of books on horseback. Charles wrote songs for lots of people who didn’t know church music…so he would take popular songs and change the words so people didn’t have to worry about knowing the melody.

We still sing a lot of his songs today!

Activities

1.      Look up Charles Wesley’s songs in the hymnal. Do you know any?

2.      Read John Wesley’s Directions for Singing in the hymnal. What would be your 7 rules for singing in church?

3.      Pick a favorite pop song. Using that tune, write words to make it into a church song. You can use Bible stories for inspiration or a theological idea. 

UMC History: John Wesley

John Wesley is considered the founder of the United Methodist Church. John was a pastor in the Church of England.  John, like many other pastors of his time, didn’t have a crowded congregation to preach to on Sundays. So, like other pastors, he decided to go where the people were, and preach to them there. He would go out to the mines in the English countryside and preach about God’s love and how God wanted us to live. He wasn’t known for being an exciting preacher, but lots of people listened to him and decided to turn their life to Jesus. The only problem was that they kept all the same company and habits and by the time John came back the next week to preach, they needed to turn their life around again.

                John was worried about this. He wanted people to grow in their faith. He didn’t want them to feel like failures. So he tried something that had worked to help him grow when he was in college. He started having these people meet together in small groups each week. These groups were called classes and bands. A class would start with everyone answering the question: How is it with your soul? They would share how they saw God working in their lives. They would help each other to grow closer to God, so they wouldn’t need to turn their life around each week.

                The groups worked! People would invite their friends to come with them. They would pool money together to help the poor. People would get used to talking about God in front of people. God would even call some people to become pastors from the groups. Most importantly, people would grow in their faith together.

Questions

1.       How is our Junior Group like those first small groups?

2.       How could we be more like those groups?

3.       Why do you think it was easier for people to join a small group than come to Sunday worship?