A Vile Thing

While John Wesley's preaching was received with open hearts by the masses of England, the church which ordained him found it to be offensive and soon one pulpit after another was closed to him.  After watching George Whitefield preaching to great crowds outdoors, Wesley who had always been hesitant to do that kind of preaching wrote in his journal, "At four in the afternoon, I submitted to be more vile and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation, speaking from a little eminence in a ground adjoining to the city, to about three thousand people."  Such preaching became the norm for the rest of his preaching years as well as the norm for Francis Asbury and the circuit riders who rode into the history of frontier America.  

As they did so, thy followed in the footsteps of Jesus.  When we read the gospel of Mark, we see Jesus preaching in the synagogues (Mark 1:21, 39),  but in the last verse of the first chapter we read about a movement in a different direction.  After healing a leper, the man made whole went out telling everyone he met what Jesus had done for him.  The result of his testimony was such a popularity that Jesus, "..stayed out in the country and people came to Him from every quarter."  Certainly, others had preceded Him in this practice, but to see Jesus preaching in such a way reminds us of our call to take the gospel beyond the walls of the church building.  

One of the reasons for the rapid growth of Methodism in the eighteenth century was because it became a spiritual movement not bound by walls.  It was a movement that did not wait for the coming of people, but one that moved into the places where ordinary and common folks gathered.  It was movement that welcomed the poorest, the dirtiest, and the most despised social outcasts of the day.  Whether our church sends out street preachers or not, it is called to find a way to make the overlooked and ignored people of our day know that they are a part of the people of God.