I grew up in the Methodist Church and was a Methodist for the first 50 years of my life. I became an Anglican because I did not want to stray too far from the church that produced Wesley and he remains at the top of my list in terms of favorite theologians. The following about Wesley comes from Richard Schmidt.

Graduating from Oxford in 1724 and ordained the next year, Wesley served briefly as his father’s curate in Epworth, then returned to Oxford, where he lectured in Greek and joined a small club which included his brother Charles, called the “Holy Club” and soon tagged with the derisive nickname “methodists” because of their rigorous discipline of study, devotion, and good works.

In many ways Wesley was a catholic churchman. He received Holy Communion regularly and to the end of his life urged his followers to do the same. He valued order and tradition. But after Aldersgate, Wesley found himself increasingly at odds with the established church. Lacking a parish of his own, he depended on invitations to preach, and these became fewer and fewer. The leaders of the Church of England in the eighteenth century feared religious “enthusiasm.” Enthusiasts were viewed almost as insurrectionists, and John Wesley was, without question, enthusiastic.

Wesley had a passion to preach, so he preached his first outdoor sermon on April 2, 1739  “I submitted to be more vile and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation” he wrote. Thus began a half century of preaching, three and four times a day, never repeating a sermon, in fields, highways, streets, and village squares, in churches when invited, wherever he could gather a crowd. And gather them he did, often in the thousands. Wesley preached his last open air sermon on October 7,1790. It is estimated he rode 250,000 miles throughout the British Isles, most of it on horseback, and preached upwards Of 40,000 sermons. He sometimes began preaching at 5:00 AM. In a time of massive social upheaval, with factories opening, agriculture declining, and city populations rising rapidly, vast numbers of people among the poor and laboring classes had never heard the Christian gospel and were entirely untouched by the ministry of the established church. These were the people Wesley was reaching.

What did John Wesley actually say when he preached? There was a new emphasis on the conversion of the heart and assurance, but Wesley’s thought was within the compass of British Protestant understandings. Wesley’s message is most easily grasped if thought of as a series of stages in the life of a Christian. The grace of God, God’s undeserved love and power in our lives active at each stage, is the key to his thought. Wesley gives names to the working of God’s grace at each point.

Begin with the fact of human sin. All people, because we are fallen creatures, rebel against God. This binds us and hinders us from receiving the bounty of God. Intentional acts of willfulness add to this burden, leading to guilt and a sense of being lost. Often we try to set things right ourselves through compulsive, legalistic, driven behaviors. God, meanwhile, does not sit idly by, but, even before we turn to him, moves in our souls by means of what Wesley calls “prevenient” or “preceding grace.” Though not a new idea, this is a distinctive emphasis in Wesley’s thought. Prevenient grace stirs our consciences, moves us to do good, and creates a hunger for God, eventually driving us to our knees. Finally there comes a moment of breakthrough. We know we have been set right with God through Jesus Christ; we become conscious of God’s “saving” or “justifying grace.” It has been a fact all along, but now we know it. We say, “Aha!” (or possibly, “I felt my heart strangely warmed”), and then begin to experience the love God. The emphasis on experience is another distinctive Wesley emphasis.

Wesley used several words for what comes next  sanctification, regeneration, holiness, and (a word that led to misunderstanding) perfection. By his “sanctifying grace” God not merely changes our status from guilty to acquitted, but changes our actual selves, does something not only for us, but in us. We begin to grow in Christlikeness. When Wesley calls this perfection he means a process of growth in love, not a realized state. Finally comes assurance, another distinctive Wesley note. Assured of union with God, we are filled with peace, joy, and love. Later in his life, Wesley modified his doctrine of assurance, allowing that in some cases, moments of doubt and fear may still intrude, but the dominant note for him, throughout his long life, was that Christians enjoy a “blessed assurance.” John Wesley was not only a great evangelist, but also great organizer.

The Christian life for him was not a matter between the individual believer and God, but a set of relationships. The Wesleyan movement prospered and spread around the world because Wesley organized small groups wherever he went and entrusted their leadership to lay persons who would remain behind.

—Glorious Companions: Five Centuries of Anglican Spirituality 116-120

Below is an excerpt from one of Wesley’s sermons.

Men are generally lost in the hurry of life, in the business or pleasures of it, and seem to think that their regeneration, their new nature, will spring and grow up within them, with as little care and thought of their own as their bodies were conceived and have attained their full strength and stature; whereas, there is nothing more certain than that the Holy Spirit will not purify our nature, unless we carefully attend to his motions.

—On Grieving the Holy Spirit