2023 Evangel Gathering - Friendship and Flourishing for Missions

W orkshops • 47

2) “Wesley emphasized: Every preacher a distributor of Christian literature.” “The Methodist preachers covered the circuit of congregations assigned to them on horseback, and all they carried with them were two saddle bags: one contained a change of clothes, the other held a supply of Methodist books for sale.” 23 3) “This was a primary rule for the Methodist preachers: from four to five o’clock in the morning they would read the Scriptures together with the exegetical notes published by Wesley, and the hours from six to noon were spent over several parts of the ‘Christian Library’ or similar literature.” 24 4) “This portion of the Wesleyan preacher’s daily schedule often gave ground to posterity for terror and admiration, and may perhaps be too difficult to follow today. However, it can provoke us to reconsider where we put the emphases of our own life’s work.” 25 b. Taylor University was founded by a group of itinerant (horseback riding) preachers who received their ordination by studying the Bible and reading the spiritual classics as Wesley had instructed.

4. The Evangelical Missionary Movement

a. Dilley and Woodberry demonstrate how the Protestant missionary movement’s emphasis on the printed Scripture as well as spiritual classics and other printed resources has had a major impact for good on the Church in the Global South. 26

b. Scorgie shows an example of this impact on the church in China. 27

23 Bockmuehl, 14. 24 Bockmuehl, 14. 25 Bockmuehl, 14–15.

26 Andrea Palpant Dilley, “The World the Missionaries Made,” Christianity Today , January 2014; Robert Woodberry, “The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy,” The American Political Science Review 106, no. 2 (2012): 244–74; Anizor, Price, and Voss, Evangelical Theology. 27 Glen G. Scorgie, “The Diffusion of Christian Mysticism: From the Medieval Rhineland to Contemporary China,” Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 20, no. 1 (2020): 1–24,