Statue in Wilmore, Kentucky

 Francis Asbury
 (1834-1892)

  “We should so work as if we were to be saved by our works;
and so rely on Jesus Christ, as if we did no works.”
—Francis Asbury



More Online Resources

The Doctrines and Discipline of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (1817)

Francis Asbury: Building Methodist Church

The spread of what we know as the Methodist Church in America was led by Francis Asbury (1745-1816). He was saved in England as a teenager and almost immediately began preaching. By age 26 he had responded to John Wesley’s call for preachers to go to America and 13 years later he was a national leader of the Methodist Episcopal movement.

Asbury preached to free and slave, Black and White. He was outspoken against slavery. He ordained the first Black Methodist deacon, Richard Allen, a former slave and the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. For 45 years, Asbury road an average of 6,000 miles a year.

He preached anywhere people would listen—open fields, courthouses, tobacco houses, squares, and homes. In addition to preaching, he had the ability to recruit, train, and organize circuit riders to cover the mostly rural countryside with him.

Many of the circuit riders had little formal education but their personal conversions had been so dramatic that they had a driving passion for winning others to Christ.

The Methodist book of Doctrines and Discipline provided biblical principles from important Scripture texts. Pastors built their sermons and lesson plans for discipleship classes on that base. In spite of danger, fatigue, and sickness, through the efforts of Asbury and the other circuit riders the Methodists grew from 1,200 to 214,000 members in his lifetime. He ordained 700 preachers and founded several schools and colleges.

Church services were called “meetings.” In addition to the meetings, the circuit riders or “saddlebag preachers” also taught Bible classes where they examined the members to determine what they were learning from Scripture. Sunday schools for children were organized where they were taught academic subjects in addition to learning the Bible.