Robert Strawbridge, Irish Preacher in America

Methodism's first "church" in America was the "Log Meetinghouse" in Frederick County, Maryland, a meeting started by Robert Strawbridge.

Strawbridge had been licensed to preach in Ireland. Some time after that, he emigrated to America and began preaching. As soon as he built his cabin on the frontier, he left to preach. This was to be his pattern: set his family up, and then he went to the Lord's work.

Strawbridge was always a layman, but saw preaching and organizing converts into societies as his main task. He was described as a heavy man, stout, "built for service," as one man remembered.

The records of those days are thin. The Methodist preachers on the frontiers did not leave many records. They were looking for the last cabin on the trail, taking the Gospel to every place they could. One thing we do know is that because Strawbridge was a layman, he could not serve the sacraments.

While the Annual Conference of Methodists did not allow lay preachers to serve the sacrament, BIshop Asbury made an exception in Strawbridge's case, because of his singular effectiveness.

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I am just a few posts into this blog, and the reading and re-familiarizing I am doing with some of the early figures in methodism is revealing something. It's not profound, it's nothing that you wouldn't expect, but I feel like it has crept up on me: the early Methodist preachers saw their main task as winning people to faith in Jesus Christ. Evangelism, pure and simple.

Wesley advised his preachers that they had "nothing to do but save souls;" they were to "spend and be spent;" they were to "speak and spare none." And it is stating the obvious to say that if they had not done that work, there would be no Methodist church today.

So... why did we stop doing such work? Why is it that it generally cannot be said of Methodists that we have nothing to do but save souls? Why are we so halting in our presentation of the Gospel, if, indeed, it be preached? At what point does an organization say, "OK, we used to do THAT, but now we're about THIS...?" And when, exactly, did the Gospel change so that it demands THIS rather than THAT?

I guess I wonder why I have this sense that we would be offended if John Nelson were our pastor?