The First Methodist

The First Methodist: A Novel of John Wesley The First Methodist is a work of historical fiction that follows the extraordinary life of John Wesley (1703–1791), the founder of the Methodist movement and one of history's most consequential Christian figures. The novel begins with a five-year-old boy pulled from the burning Epworth rectory — a child his mother Susanna calls "a brand plucked from the burning." From that night forward, John carries the question that will drive his entire life: Why was I saved, and for what purpose? The story traces his journey from the disciplined household of a remarkable mother, through the intellectual corridors of Oxford where he founded the Holy Club, across the stormy Atlantic to the failed mission in Georgia, to the fateful evening of May 24, 1738, when his heart was "strangely warmed" at a small meeting on Aldersgate Street. That moment of conversion transforms a man who knew about God into one who truly knew God. But Wesley's story is not only spiritual. It is deeply human. We follow his failed loves — Betty, Sophia, Grace — and his disastrous marriage to Molly, each relationship shaped by the same fear that silenced him when it mattered most. We see him preach to thousands of coal miners in open fields, face angry mobs armed with stones and eggs, build a community at the London Foundery that served the poor as much as it fed the soul, and fight relentlessly against the slave trade until his final days. The First Methodist is the story of a man who was always afraid — and always went anyway.