John Wesley

John Wesley (1703–1791) was an Anglican priest and evangelical preacher whose organized revival movement became Methodism. He emphasized salvation by faith, disciplined Christian practice, and growth in holiness.

Charles Wesley: An English Methodist leader and hymn writer, and John Wesley’s younger brother. His hymns gave the revival a shared devotional voice alongside John’s preaching.
Methodist societies: Organized groups of people who met regularly for instruction, worship, and mutual accountability within early Methodism. Wesley used these societies to sustain religious commitment beyond revival meetings.
Arminianism: A Christian theological tradition emphasizing human freedom and the possibility of resisting divine grace. Wesley’s theology rejected unconditional predestination and affirmed a universally offered grace.
Holy Club: A group of Oxford students who pursued regular prayer, study, and charitable work in the 1720s. John and Charles Wesley’s disciplined Oxford group earned the nickname associated with Methodism’s beginnings.
Methodism: A Protestant Christian tradition that developed from the eighteenth-century revival led by John and Charles Wesley. The movement Wesley organized became a worldwide Christian tradition after his lifetime.
George Whitefield: An English Anglican preacher and leading figure in the eighteenth-century evangelical revival. His partnership and later disputes with Wesley exposed their disagreement over predestination.
Class meeting: A small Methodist group in which members met for spiritual conversation and mutual oversight. Class meetings made personal discipline and pastoral care part of ordinary Methodist life.
Prevenient grace: In Wesleyan theology, divine grace that precedes and enables a person’s response to God. It explains how Wesley could affirm both human responsibility and salvation by grace.
Aldersgate experience: John Wesley’s 1738 religious experience during a meeting on Aldersgate Street in London. Wesley later described a renewed assurance of faith during this meeting.
United Methodist Church: A Protestant denomination formed in 1968 through the union of the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church. It is one major later denomination within the tradition shaped by Wesley.

Linked from 30 pages