Wesleyan Pastoral Ministry, Evangelism, and Global Missions — Unit 7: Wesleyan Missions: Coke, Asbury, and the Missionary Societies

Key Verse

"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:19-20, NKJV)

Learning Objectives

When you finish this unit, you should be able to:

1. Explain why Wesleyan doctrine gives a strong reason for missions: God's love for all people and the call to spread holiness.

2. Describe what Wesley's phrase about the world being his parish meant, and how Wesley sent preachers to America.

3. Tell the story of Thomas Coke and the first Methodist missions to the West Indies.

4. Explain Francis Asbury's part in sending Methodism across a new country, and why that was missionary work.

5. Name the first Methodist missionary societies, and answer the main objections to Wesleyan missions.

The Voice of This Course

This course is written from inside the evangelical Wesleyan tradition, for pastors who belong to it or want to understand it. We hold that the Bible is the inspired and final authority. Where historians or other Christians raise hard questions, we state them fairly and then give our answer. The story of missions includes great faith and also human failure, and we tell both.

Why Wesleyans Send Missionaries

Every Christian tradition that believes the Bible has a reason to send missionaries. The Wesleyan tradition has special reasons that come from its own doctrine.

God loves all people. Wesleyans teach universal atonement: Christ died for every person, not only for some (see Course 2, Unit 2). John 3:16 says God so loved "the world." First Timothy 2:3-4 says God our Savior "desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." If this is true, then no people, tribe or nation is outside the offer of the gospel. A Wesleyan missionary can say to anyone, "Christ died for you."

God is already at work. Wesleyans teach prevenient grace (see Course 2, Unit 3). Before a missionary arrives in a village, the Holy Spirit has already been drawing people toward God. The missionary does not bring God to a place where He is absent. He announces what God is already stirring in hearts, and he can expect a response.

The goal is holiness. The Methodist movement saw its purpose as spreading scriptural holiness. A missionary does not only seek decisions. He seeks disciples who are born again and grow in love (Matthew 28:19-20 says "make disciples" and "teaching them to observe all things"). This is why Wesleyan missions have always built schools, classes and churches along with preaching.

The Lord commands it. Behind all these reasons stands the command of Jesus in the Key Verse, and His promise in Acts 1:8 that the Spirit would make His people witnesses "to the end of the earth." Paul asked, "How shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent?" (Romans 10:14-15, cited here by reference).

"The World Is My Parish"

On 11 June 1739, at the time he was being shut out of many Anglican pulpits, Wesley wrote in his Journal that he looked upon all the world as his parish. He meant that he was called to preach the gospel wherever people needed it. He was an ordained Anglican, but he would not let parish borders stop the message. This is the root of Wesleyan missions. It was not a plan for a society but a way of seeing.

In his sermon "The General Spread of the Gospel," Wesley also expressed the hope that the knowledge of the Lord would fill the earth, as Scripture promises (see Habakkuk 2:14). He believed that God would use ordinary means, including the preaching of His people, to bring this about.

Wesley's own first missionary effort was not a success. He went to the colony of Georgia in 1735 as a clergyman, hoping also to reach native peoples, and returned in 1737 troubled and unsure of his own faith (see Course 1, Unit 3). Aldersgate in 1738 changed him. The missionary who has not himself known the forgiveness and assurance of Christ has little to give. Wesleyan missions begin with a changed heart.

Sending Preachers to America

Methodist societies had begun in the American colonies through laypeople who moved there. Wesley sent his first official preachers in 1769: Richard Boardman and Joseph Pilmore (also spelled Pilmoor). In 1771 Francis Asbury and Richard Wright volunteered to go. Asbury was about twenty-six years old and had been a lay preacher in England.

When the American Revolution came, most of Wesley's English preachers went home. Asbury chose to stay. This choice mattered greatly. He remained with the American Methodists through years of war and suspicion, and he held the societies together.

Thomas Coke

Thomas Coke (1747-1814) was born in Wales and educated at Oxford. He became an Anglican clergyman, and later joined Wesley and became his close helper. He was a man of great energy and a restless desire to see the gospel reach new places.

Coke and America. After the Revolution, the American Methodists had no ordained ministers who could give them the sacraments. The Church of England clergy had mostly left. In 1784 Wesley ordained Coke as a superintendent for the American work, and he ordained Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey as elders. Coke traveled to America with them. At the Christmas Conference in Baltimore in December 1784, the Methodist Episcopal Church was organized (see Course 1, Unit 6). Coke and Asbury were set apart as joint superintendents, and Asbury was ordained and elected by the preachers.

Coke and missions. Coke is often called the father of Methodist missions. He drew up a plan for supporting missions to peoples who had never heard the gospel, and he gave his own money and strength to them. In December 1786 he sailed with a small group of missionaries, intending to go to Nova Scotia. Storms drove the ship off course, and they landed on the island of Antigua in the West Indies on Christmas Day. Methodism was already present in Antigua through Nathaniel Gilbert, a planter who had encountered Methodism in England, and through African believers who had kept the societies meeting. Coke's party found a field ready for the harvest. This is a good example of prevenient grace at work: God had been there before them.

From that point the West Indies became a major Methodist mission field. Coke crossed the Atlantic many times to visit and encourage the work. The missionaries preached to enslaved and free people alike. The planters often opposed them, because teaching enslaved people to read, to worship and to see themselves as made in God's image seemed a threat to the slave system.

Coke's last journey. In his sixties, Coke set his heart on a mission to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and the East. He sailed in December 1813 with a company of missionaries. He died at sea in 1814 during the voyage. His companions went on and began the work in Ceylon. His grave was the ocean, but his vision continued.

Francis Asbury and the Missionary Journey Across a Continent

Asbury is remembered as a bishop and organizer, but he must also be seen as a missionary. He crossed a young nation again and again on horseback, going to villages, farms and the western settlements where no church existed. He did not marry, and he lived simply. His Journal records the hardships of travel, illness, his prayers and his plain preaching. He died in 1816.

Asbury's approach was this: he trusted traveling preachers (the "circuit riders") who rode circuits of preaching places, formed classes, and moved on, leaving lay leaders to keep the groups meeting (see Unit 9). He placed preachers where the people were, and the people were moving west. Asbury's mission was to the frontier of his own country. Missions need not cross an ocean to be missions. Acts 1:8 speaks of Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the end of the earth. All are mission fields.

The Missionary Societies

Wesley's followers needed an organization to send, support and care for missionaries. Several societies arose.

The Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (Britain). After Coke's death, the work he had begun was carried into a wider organization. The Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society was formally organized in 1813 and supported missions in the West Indies, Africa, Asia and the Pacific.

The Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church (United States). Founded in New York in 1819, it supported missions among the American frontier and native peoples, and later overseas.

An early example of a mission within the new nation was the work of John Stewart, a free African American man, who began preaching among the Wyandot people at Upper Sandusky, Ohio, in 1816. His ministry shows that early Methodist missions were not only carried out by white Europeans. African Americans, native peoples and women have always had a large part in the story.

In later years the Holiness churches formed their own mission boards, as Unit 8 explains. The pattern was the same: churches that believed in holiness and universal grace needed a structure to send out workers and to support them.

Questions Historians and Critics Ask

Question 1: Was Wesley himself committed to missions?

Some historians point out that Wesley focused his energy on England and did not found a missionary society. The formal societies came after his death. They ask whether missions were truly part of the original Methodist vision.

Our answer. It is true that the societies came later. But Wesley sent Boardman, Pilmore, Asbury and others to America, blessed Coke's plans, and ordained Coke for work abroad. His statement about the world being his parish and his hope for the spread of the gospel show his heart. A movement's vision is seen in what it does as well as in the structures it builds. The early Methodists were sent people long before they were a sending society.

Question 2: Were missions just a tool of empire and slavery?

Critics say that Western missionaries came with armies and traders, took the culture of the colonizer, and sometimes benefited from unjust systems. This is a serious charge.

Our answer. We should not deny that some missionaries shared the blind spots of their time, or that missions and empire were sometimes entangled. A fair historian also notes that many missionaries preached to the enslaved, taught reading, opposed cruelty, and were opposed by powerful planters for it. Methodists themselves sometimes weakened their stand: the early American Methodist rule against slavery was suspended soon after it was passed. We do not defend every act. We hold to the standard of Scripture: the gospel is for every nation, and no culture or government owns it. Later Wesleyan missions learned to put local leaders forward (see Unit 8).

Question 3: Is it right to send missionaries when all religions lead to God?

Some Christians and many others today say the idea of converting people of other faiths is arrogant.

Our answer. We respect all people and we meet them with love, not force. But the New Testament teaches that salvation is found in Christ (see Acts 4:12; John 14:6). If that is true, silence is not kindness. Love requires telling. And the Wesleyan doctrine of universal grace makes the gospel an invitation to every person, not a claim of superiority.

Question 4: Missionaries died young. Is the cost too high?

Early missionaries to the West Indies and to Africa often died of disease within a short time. Some ask whether it was wise to send them.

Our answer. The cost was real, and good missionary work today includes careful health, training and care. But Paul counted his life of no value to himself if he could finish his course and the ministry received from the Lord Jesus (Acts 20:24, cited by reference). The Church honors those who gave their lives. It also learns, and it prepares workers better.

Pastoral Application

A small church of about forty people in a mountain town is told by its pastor that the denomination has a mission offering. A deacon objects: "We are too poor. We have no missionaries. Missions are for large churches."

The pastor can teach from this unit in steps.

First, he shows that missions began with small beginnings: a group of lay Methodists in the colonies, a young man on a horse, a storm-driven ship. God uses small people.

Second, he teaches Acts 1:8. The church has a Jerusalem (its own town), a Judea (nearby villages), a Samaria (people unlike them) and an end of the earth. He asks the church to name one place in each.

Third, he begins a monthly missions gift, however small. Every family brings what it can. He explains that a coin from a poor church is welcome to God, as the widow's coins were (Mark 12:41-44).

Fourth, he asks the district or conference how the church can share in the work already being done, and he asks missionaries or national workers to visit and to write.

Fifth, he prays with the church for sending. Perhaps the Lord will call someone from among their own young people.

Summary

Wesleyan missions rest on the command of Christ, universal atonement, prevenient grace and the goal of spreading holiness. Wesley's word that the world was his parish expressed this vision, and he sent preachers to America beginning in 1769. Francis Asbury stayed through the Revolution and carried Methodism across a growing nation. Thomas Coke, ordained as superintendent by Wesley in 1784, organized the American church with Asbury, led the first Methodist missions to the West Indies after landing in Antigua in 1786, and died at sea in 1814 on his way to Ceylon. The Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society was organized in 1813 and the Methodist Episcopal missionary society in 1819. Critics ask whether Wesley was committed to missions, whether missions served empire, whether sending missionaries is arrogant and whether the cost is too high. We answer from Scripture and history, honestly admitting failures and holding to the gospel for all nations.

Further Reading

• John Wesley, Journal (the entry of 11 June 1739).

• John Wesley, sermon "The General Spread of the Gospel."

• Francis Asbury, Journal.

• John Wesley, Notes on the New Testament, on Matthew 28 and Acts 1.

• John Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (1766).

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