The industrial revolution was billowing out changes to all of society at a never before seen rate. Changes which cast people into a darkness of soul greater than the soot billowing from the industrial machine. As the world was driven into this new era the structures of society, founded on an agrarian community, were unable to accommodate the changes. The home, the church, labor, government, education, all buckled on the verge of collapse under the weight of change.
In the age of the industrial revolution, John Wesley saw the church’s patterns of the past no longer worked, but a solution for the future alluded him. Then a friend, George Whitefield, would call Wesley to leave the security of his pulpit to go into the fields to preach the good news of Jesus. The challenge to Wesley from Whitefield was for Wesley to go to where the people were at rather than waiting for to come. The truth is they were never going to come. In no time Wesley would find himself standing on a coal pile in the faint light of dawn preaching the good news of Jesus to minors as they entered the murderous bowels of the earth.
Once again the pulses of change are colliding against the structures of our life. The great empires built on industry are no more and we are in a world struggling to find a new normal without a pattern or guide to follow. The home, the church, labor, government and education are all buckling under the unrelenting weight of change.
Wesley would leave the comfort of his pulpit to go where the people were at because they were never going to come to him. What about us today? Where are the coal piles today?
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Blessings,
Pastor Stephen