John Wesley Had a Blog!!

Yes, I've been missing in action the past few days. Have you missed me? I've been hanging around a bunch of "large church pastors" at a Conference. No, I'm not talking about over-weight clergy. This was a gathering of clergy from the "top 100 United Methodist Churches in America." So, how did I end up serving one of those? Just goes to show you that God has both a sense of humor and a way of dispensing amazing grace.

Maybe I'll say more about what I learned at the Conference but for now I'm still spinning with one of those, "a funny thing happened on the way home from the Conference" kind of things. Betsy and I stayed at an old Hotel in Savannah. Our good buddy and travel agent Connie picked it out for us. Who was I to know that it was built over the site where good old John Wesley's parsonage was when he was on his brief...and I mean brief...stint to the young colony of Georgia from 1732-1733.

As I opened the trunk of the car there across the street stood John with his hand pointing in my direction. Well, it was a statue of John. Like old Simon Peter said when confronted with the accusation that he was tipping the bottle too much that Pentecost Day, it was not yet time for "Happy Hour," so this was not John in the flesh but he was standing there in all his glory.

John Wesley was an utter failure in Georgia. He came over from England to be a missionary to the local Indians but that did not work because he did not speak their language and even if he could have it would not have worked because he discovered that he also could not speak the language of the folks in Savannah.

John was a prude. O don't get me wrong, he was a good prude but he could not relate to the local "natives" or the local imports. Remember everybody was an import back then except the real natives.

The young ultra-religious Wesley ended up refusing Communion to a young woman to whom he was attracted but who did not respond with much affection to John. When she came forward to receive the elements he told her she had not filled out the proper forms. (loose translation of what actually happened..but it happened...I'm not making this up).

Her name was Sophie Hopkey. Are you impressed yet? I wrote a paper on this in seminary. Wesley ended up leaving Savannah rather hurriedly. It seems that Sophie's daddy was a man of influence and he was not a happy camper when he found out that Rev. Wesley had refused his dear daughter the rites of the church.

This is when John Wesley started his blog...Well...He did put it in his "journal"(the old way of blogging) that he felt a failure. John's journal later became very famous. Scholars are still going over this old way of blogging for clues into the founder of Methodism's thoughts. Anyway, all this is to say I feel even better about blogging knowing that John thought it was a way of sharing who he was and what he felt.

I stood below his outstretched hand the other day and thought of how far "we" have come. I laid down that night near the spot he must have placed his weary head and wondered how he felt as he "left Savannah." O John, did you have any idea what you started? You left feeling like you had wasted your time. I left the place of your "failure" having come from a conference of very alive United Methodist churches. And now John, it's on "my blog."

You went back to England still carrying the heavy weight of your "failure" in Savannah. Then one night you "stumbled" into a meeting on Aldersgate street where you simply wrote in your "old" blog that, "You felt your heart strangely warmed." The rest is history....our history.
Bless you,
jody jseymour@davidsonumc.org