QUOTE
It is an gross
oversimplification, however, to say that Methodism on the American frontier
went Awhere the people were.@[1] Early Methodism, according to
Lovett Weems, Aseemed more at home in rural settings@ and was more successful there.[2] Asbury developed
Aa distinct rural orientation adept
at expanding into thinly populated areas.@[3] Asbury and his contemporaries
deliberately chose to plant churches in isolated rural settings, avoiding even
the developing towns as Aalien to Methodist values and >famous for wickedness.=@[4] Eighteen of twenty Methodist
chapels in the Delmarva peninsula of Delaware in 1784 were in the countryside.[5] The Western
Christian Advocate in 1843 notes that in the Midwest, Athe towns were almost universally
avoided by our preachers as places of too much dissipation for the Gospel to
obtain a foothold.@[6] Asbury did not go where the
people were or would be; Asbury went where there was no competition to holiness
from outside influences.[7]
[1]Weems, Leadership In The Wesleyan Spirit, 21-22.
[2]Ibid., 23.
[3]Nathan Hatch, quoted by Weems, Leadership In The Wesleyan Spirit, 22.
[4]Weems, Leadership In The Wesleyan Spirit, 24.
[5]Ibid. For a broader description, cf. William H. Williams, AThe Attraction of Methodism: The Delmarva Peninsula as a Case Study, 1769-1820″ in Russell E. Richey, Kenneth E. Rowe, and Jean Miller Schmidt, eds., Perspectives On American Methodism: Interpretive Essays (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993), 31-45.
[6]Weems, Leadership In The Wesleyan Spirit, 24.
[7]Roger W. Stump, ARegional Migration and Religious Commitment in the United States,@ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 23, no. 3 (September 1984): 292-304. Stump=s experimental results favor the Aadaptation model’s prediction that religious commitment rises among migrants to regions of higher native commitment, such as the South, and fails among migrants to regions of lower commitment.@ Asbury=s placement of churches in isolated settings, therefore, creates a high expectation environment which will have a higher evangelistic influence on those living nearby; placing churches in town would give the majority of Asinners@ a greater influence over a minority of Methodists. Asbury did not need to locate churches in towns to draw a crowd, be visible or have an influence due to the camp meeting=s ability to draw a crowd during the nineteenth century.
NOTE (my response)
DISCERNMENT QUESTIONS
RESOURCES
Footnotes:
The quote is from Major League Disciple Making: An Overview of the Best Research on the Cell Church, an online course developed for the Institute for Discipleship at www.BeADisciple.com in 2009. Course materials, including these lectures, can be downloaded here: http://www.disciplewalk.com/IFD_MLD_Class_Links.html
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