After decades of conversation serving up a mosaic of understandings of
Wesleyan evangelism (focusing on proclamation, initiation, and
embodiment), Jack Jackson offers a clearer portrait of Wesley’s
evangelistic vision, understood through the lens of “offering grace.”
Any
discussion of Wesley’s vision of evangelism must center on the
proclamation of the story of God in Christ. But for John Wesley
evangelism was much more than preaching for conversion. This book offers
a fresh conception of Wesley’s evangelistic vision by analyzing his
method of gospel proclamation. Wesley was not constrained by the
truncated vision of evangelism that has been dominant since the late
nineteenth century, one that all too often centers on group preaching
with a sole emphasis on conversion. Rather, he stressed a number of
practices that focus on a verbal proclamation of the gospel.
These practices occur in a variety of settings, only one of which is
public preaching, and result in a number of responses, only one of which
is conversion. Of crucial importance for current theological students,
clergy, and church leaders around the world, the book demonstrates that
visitation, for the purpose of spiritual direction and evangelism, was
in many ways the critical leadership and pastoral practice of early
British Methodism. This book offers important insights into early
Methodism that inform both contemporary practices of evangelism and
Christian leadership for both clergy and laity.
