Preachers today can learn a valuable lesson from this unusual Anglican priest. The primacy of preaching is to offer Christ to those who need him. One of the great twentieth century authorities on Wesley, Albert Outler, wrote that Wesley's "chief intellectual interest and achievement, was in what one could call a folk theology: the Christian message in its fullness and integrity, in 'plain words for plain people'" (John Wesley, [Library of Protestant Thought], Oxford University Press, 1964, p. vii). In a nutshell, Wesley preached for people to understand. Let this principal attribute of Wesley guide our efforts in communicating the gospel.

A second thing that preachers can still learn from Wesley is that he held a firm conviction regarding the Bible's authority. For although Wesley was as widely read as any academic of his time, he also confessed himself to be homo unius libri — a man of one book. We would be hard pressed to find an existing Wesleyan sermon that was not based on a scripture text — verse, chapter, or book of the Bible. In his theological method he always held to the primacy of the biblical text. Wesley's preaching, with scores of biblical allusions, bears this fact out. He often followed the church year in his selection of preaching texts, and by so doing he preached the "whole counsel of God" over time.

In his own words Wesley writes of his relationship to Holy Scripture. The following excerpt comes from a letter to James Hervey, a former pupil and one of the original Oxford Methodists. This letter is from the Telford edition of Wesley's letters and is dated 20 March 1739:

Permit to speak plainly. If by "Catholic principles" you mean any other than scriptural, they weigh nothing with me. I allow no other rule, whether of faith or practice, than the Holy Scriptures. But on scriptural principles I do not think it hard to justify what I do. God in Scripture commands me, according to my power, to instruct the ignorant, reform the wicked, confirm the virtuous.

Consistently, from the Epworth parsonage to the end of his preaching ministry as an octogenarian, Wesley planted himself firmly in holy writ. Thus, if contemporary preachers want to learn from Wesley, then they must stand under the authority of Scripture. But like Wesley, we do not regard the Bible as an idol or wooden icon to worship, but rather a living document of God's word set loose in the world.

A third point we contemporary preachers can learn from Wesley is the truth that reminds us that ministry in general and preaching in particular are simply callings that entail hard work — and a lot of hard work. We preachers regularly suffer the fools who invoke the old and relatively inaccurate joke having as its punch line something like "I wish I had to work only one hour a week." Perhaps various ministers operate under this one hour burden, but they are few and far between. Preachers worth their salt recognize that preaching and ministry are labors of love. John Wesley is "exhibit A" of this reality. He worked hard and worked hard for a very long time. In our day when a tiny minority of preachers skate by on glitz and the cult of personality, Wesley's work ethic reminds us that he was a "lunch bucket" type of preacher. Although he was probably one of the best-known personalities in 18th century England, he in no way capitalized on his fame. Rather he worked hard because the driving force of his life was service to God and spreading scriptural holiness throughout the land.