Author: Deji Okegbile

Early Methodism as a movement grew out of the Church of England as a renewing mission, preaching, and evangelism order ‘within wider Christian life than as a church.’ In the beginning, Methodism could be likened to ‘the Franciscans, who formed a movement within the medieval European church and not a separate denomination.’ Sadly, it was only a matter of time before Wesley’s followers would seek separation from the Church of England, which had a tradition of suppressing overly exuberant expressions of faith. [1] The danger is that we continue to hinder God’s mission and evangelism in order maintain our structure or...

As part of the daily morning and evening call to prayer and the midweek Wednesday’s prayer and fasting for Methodist reawakening, the Praying Partners, Methodist Church Nigeria today remember how a Camp Meeting, Mow Cop, on May 31, 1807, began the Religious Revival led by Hugh Bourne and William Clowes is known as Primitive Methodism. The church born at Mow Cop was ‘not of blood, nor the will of man, but of the Spirit of God who graciously hovered over the nation in the early years of the nineteenth century and awakened a new religious passion, of which open-air...

Where shall my wondering soul begin?  How shall I all to heaven aspire?  A slave redeemed from death and sin,  a brand plucked from eternal fire,  how shall I equal triumphs raise  and sing my great deliverer’s praise? – Charles Wesley Wesley Day, May 24, the day Methodists mark John Wesley’s life-changing experience at a meeting in Aldersgate Street, London, remains a pointer to personal conversion. Like many of us today, before May 1738, no one ‘would have said that John and Charles Wesley were anything but devout Christian men. Nevertheless, the change in them that formed the theology...