John Wesley Play

I wrote an original, historically accurate John Wesley play for our John Wesley Sunday in February 2005. Parts were played by children and adults.
Janet

This is an original play by Janet Jennings (e-mail address: prodesse@bright.net). It was used at Gay Street United Methodist Church in Mount Vernon, OH, in February 2005. Permission is hereby granted to adapt and use this script.

Meet John Wesley

NARRATOR 1: __________________________

If you go outside our church building and look around, you will see other churches. Next door is the Episcopal, across the street is the Presbyterian, and over on Main Street is the Congregational. There are many more. Did you ever wonder why ours is called the United Methodist Church? Why Methodist? It’s because of an amazing man named John Wesley.
Wesley was born in England about 300 years ago. His father was a rector, or as we would say, a pastor, of a church. The Wesley family lived in a two-story cottage with a thatched roof. A thatched roof is made of dried grass, and one winter night it caught on fire! All the family leaped out bed and ran outside to safety, but where was John, or Jacky, as they called him? Again and again his father tried to go back into the smoke-filled house to search for the boy, but had to turn away. Six-year-old Jacky woke up and found he couldn’t get out of the burning house, but he stayed calm. He pushed a dresser over to the upstairs window, and climbed up on it. Someone saw him looking out, and then some men got the idea to form a human ladder to reach him. Just minutes after he was rescued, the burning roof caved in. His mother…. but wait a minute…I think I see John Wesley coming now!

WESLEY:
(Enters from the rear using a cane, speaking as he walks, goes up to front, turns around.)
“A brand plucked from the burning!” Yes, in the words of the Bible, Zechariah 3:2, to be exact, I was a “brand plucked from the burning.” My mother was sure that God had saved me from that fire for a reason, and after that she prayed I would be faithful to God’s purpose for me.

NARRATOR 1:
I’ve heard that your mother, Susannah Wesley, was a remarkable person.

WESLEY;
Oh, my yes. Life wasn’t easy in the early 1700’s in England. My mother had 19 children and my father made very little money. I was the 15th child born. Only 10 of us grew to be adults, my two brothers, my seven sisters, and me; the others died. That was common in those days. My mother was a strong and spiritually mature woman. Oh we knew she loved us, but she was very strict with us children. She taught us as babes in the cradle to cry softly. And she taught all ten of us to read and write and do our numbers. She made sure that each of us got six hours a day of schooling and she scheduled one hour a week for a private conference with each of us. The people in Father’s church were shocked that she was teaching my sisters. You see in those days, most people thought girls didn’t need to know how to read or write.

NARRATOR 1;
The Early Learners are now going to show us the Wesley family being taught at home by their mother. (Narrator 1 returns to seat. During the next scene, Narrator 2 takes place at lectern.)

(Early Learners and teachers walk up steps to stage.)

SCENE 1: (Early Learners with one teacher portraying Susannah Wesley)
Note to participants: Feel free to change dialogue.

SUSANNAH: Now Martha (or Samuel, if a boy), I want you to read this chapter from the Bible. Mary, Emilia, Hetty, practice your handwriting. Jacky, today is June 17, your 5th birthday. Do you know what that means?
JACKY: No.
SUSANNAH; It means you are old enough today to start your education. Today you will learn the alphabet. Now repeat after me. A,B,C,D,E
JACKY: A,B,C,D,E
SUSANNAH; F, G, H,
JACKY; F, G, H
SUSANNAH; Good. By this afternoon you will be able to say all 26 letters.
All my children but one have learned the alphabet in six hours. You are wearing your best clothes because it’s your birthday and you are starting your education so you can learn to read God’s word from the Bible.

Early Learners and teachers leave stage.

NARRATOR 2: (girl)________________________________________

Susannah was such a patient and good teacher, that all three of her boys, Samuel, John, and Charles, when they turned 10 years old, were chosen to go to a boarding school in London called Charterhouse School. They didn’t have to pay; they got scholarships. It was too far away to go home for visits, even at holidays, but the Wesleys exchanged lots of letters. Do you remember those years at boarding school, Mr. Wesley?

WESLEY;
Oh, yes, oh, yes. Of course it was hard being away from my parents and sisters at such a tender age. At school, they made us get up every morning at 5:00 AM. A lot of times we didn’t have enough food to eat. But Mother was so proud that I was learning Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Before I left home, Father sat me down and made me promise that every morning I would run three times around the school yard before breakfast. And I did it, too! In the 7 years I spent there, I never missed a day. And to this day, I can ride horseback for miles, preach sermons out in the fields, ride some more and sleep on the ground under God’s starry sky and get up ready to go the next morning at 4 AM. For fifty years I’ve ridden all over England on horseback. I think it was that boarding school life that made me strong.

NARRATOR 2;
When John was 17, he graduated from Charterhouse School. Then it was off to Oxford, also on a scholarship. His younger brother Charles joined him there a year or two later. At first the Wesley boys were like most other college students—they studied, but in their free time they played chess and backgammon and tennis, danced, and drank coffee in the coffee house---but then things changed. They became more serious. John decided to become a priest in the Church of England like his father and he and a small group started meeting in their room for serious Bible study.

The boys are going to show us how the other students reacted to this change.
All boys K-5 go up on stage. Two, representing John and Charles, carry black Bibles. Friend 1 carries a chessboard.

SCENE 2: OXFORD AND THE HOLY CLUB (all the boys in 2-3, 4-5)

Two boys, representing John and Charles, are carrying black Bibles. They enter from one side. The others come in from the other side.

FRIEND 1: Jack, Charlie, how about meeting us at the coffee house this evening? I challenge you to a game of chess.
CHARLES: Thank you, not tonight.
FRIEND 2: Why not? We haven’t seen much of you two lately.
JOHN: This is Wednesday, and we have our weekly Bible study tonight.
FRIEND 3: Weekly Bible study?
CHARLES: That’s right. We always study God’s word at 7:00 P.M. on Wednesday nights. We would like to have you join us.
FRIEND 1: No, thank you. There’s a chessboard and a cup of coffee waiting for me. Besides, I’m not interested in your “Holy Club.”
FRIEND 2: Me either. I’ve heard about your group. You’re becoming a bunch of Bible Moths if you ask me. Don’t you want to have some
fun once in a while?
JOHN; Oh, no. We meet on Wednesday exactly at 7:00. We are quite methodical about it, actually.
FRIEND 1: Methodical is right. Always doing things according to a method. Hey! That’s a good name for you—Methodists.
ALL: (As they walk away) Methodists! Methodists! Methodists! The Wesleys are Methodists!

John and his brother shrug their shoulders and walk away in the other direction.

NARRATOR 2;
Didn’t that bother you, Mr. Wesley, to be made fun of and called names?

JOHN WESLEY;
I must confess it did at first. But God played a trick on those fellows. The reason they called us “Methodists” was because we had a regular way of doing things, we always met on the same night, for example, and we always began with a prayer. I think we learned our set ways from our mother. The other students didn’t understand why we were so methodical, and they made fun of us, calling us names, and one of the names stuck. “Methodists.” (chuckles)

Narrator 2 leaves lectern and Narrator 3 begins reading.

NARRATOR 3: __________________________________
John and Charles did not just study the Bible, They tried to do what it said. After reading “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” they decided they could live on just a little money and give the rest away. In those days, people without jobs who couldn’t pay their bills were put in prison. In fact, once John Wesley’s father was put in prison for not having money to pay his bills. England did not treat its poor people well in the 1700’s. Children as young as 5 or 6 were made to work in factories instead of going to school. People starved and died of illnesses and no one seemed to care. But John and Charles tried to help. They visited prisons, started a school for poor children, and gave money to hungry and sick people.
Then one day John Wesley met a man named General Oglethorpe. Let’s listen in on that that meeting.

SCENE 3: SENT TO GEORGIA (Ernie Hamilton as General Oglethorpe and Steve Tier as John Wesley)

GENERAL OGLETHORPE: Now, here’s the plan, John. I want to set up a new colony in America in a place called Georgia. My dream is to have a place for people coming out of debtors’ prison to make a fresh start. I’m also going to open it up to people who are being persecuted for their religion in Europe. But my new colony needs a spiritual leader. I know of your work with the lower classes, and I think you would be excellent. Would you consider it?

JOHN; It’s true I am an Anglican priest, and I am interested in going to the new world with you and working in your new colony. I do believe God is calling me to be a missionary in the New World to the Indians I’ve heard about.

GENERAL OGLETHORPE; Fine. And your brother Charles. I understand he has an excellent education from Oxford and a gift for music. Do you think he could be persuaded to sign on as my personal secretary?

JOHN; I’m sure of it. I think you will find his services entirely satisfactory.

GENERAL OGLETHORPE; Excellent. Go home, make arrangements, pack your trunks. We’ll set sail for America in six months.

(Shake hands. Leave stage.)

NARRATOR 3;
So John Wesley and his brother Charles sailed to America, but things went badly there. Most of the rough and rowdy settlers didn’t have time for, or even respect for, Wesley. After two unhappy years, they gave up and sailed for home. Would you care to comment on those years, Mr. Wesley?

JOHN WESLEY:
We went to America full of enthusiasm, Charles and I. And I have a hard time telling you this…even now….but…I was a failure. Oh, the mistakes I made. I didn’t know enough about what conditions would be like in the new world. And the Indians, well, I couldn’t find a way to reach them at all. (Pulls out handerchief, pauses) I had learned a lot from my books, but I had so much to learn about life. (Shakes head, sadly.)
(Brightens up.) Painful as it was, Charles and I came to realize that God was teaching us a lesson, teaching us to be more humble.

NARRATOR 3;
But God had future plans for the Wesleys. Something had happened while they were on board the ship that changed the course of history.
A big storm came up. Everybody on board thought they were going to sink and die. The captain, the crew, the other English people were all screaming and panicking. But there was one group of men, women, and children who stayed calm. Those people were from Germany. They called themselves Moravians.

The girls in Grades 2, 3, 4, and 5 are going to show us what the Moravians did on board the ship calledThe Simmonds during that terrible storm.

Narrator 3 leaves lectern and Narrator 4 goes up.

SCENE 4: MORAVIANS ON SHIP DURING STORM (All the girls K-5)
Seated on floor of stage, rocking back and forth as if in a bad storm on board a ship.

GIRL 1: (Hands folded in prayer) Oh, God, we know that you are with us and will deliver us safely from this violent storm.

GIRL 2: (Hands folded in prayer) And if it be thy will not to deliver us safely from this storm, we give thanks for eternal life with thee.

GIRL 3: Let’s join hands and sing a hymn to help calm the little ones. (They join hands and sing “O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home.”) p. 117 Hymnal

ALL: “Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.”

NARRATOR 4: ____________________________________

And you never forgot those people, did you, Mr. Wesley?

WESLEY:
No. I thought, Here they were just uneducated German peasants, Moravians, they were called, and they had a faith in God I didn’t have. A faith that God would take care of them through storms at sea. The captain was scared, the crew was scared, and I, a priest in the Church of England, was quaking in my boots with fear. I wanted what they had.
Well, I was very depressed for a year or two after I finally got back to England. I kept thinking about the mess I’d made of things in Georgia and about those Moravians on the ship.

NARRATOR 4:
And then after this low point in Wesley’s life, God touched John Wesley in a new way. Tell us about the exciting thing that happened, Mr. Wesley.

WESLEY:
I remember like it was yesterday. I had gone to a Bible study that night—somewhat unwillingly—but I went. It was on a street called Aldersgate and that’s why from then on I called it my Aldersgate experience. And as I sat there listening I had the strangest feeling. My heart felt strangely warmed. And—it’s hard to explain—but I felt I did accept Christ and I knew God had taken away my sins. From that day on I felt full of joy and energy for the Lord!

NARRATOR 4:
Many people didn’t know what to make of this new enthusiasm. In fact, after John preached, some churches asked him not to come back again. One by one churches closed their doors to Wesley. John had a friend named George Whitefield who was doing something unheard of in those days. He was preaching outside the churches. He invited Wesley to join him. People
were shocked. Jesus had preached to crowds outdoors, but dignified priests of the Church of England didn’t do such silly things! But Wesley did it. He began drawing large crowds, many persons who had never been inside a church building. He won many people to Christ.
Some crowds were not friendly. John went to the church where he grew up and they refused to let him in. So do you know what he did? He went out into the nearby cemetery and stood on his father’s gravestone and preached. And many lives were changed that day. Once a man came with rotten eggs in his pockets, intending to throw them at John Wesley, but a friend of Wesley’s bumped up against the man on purpose and smashed the eggs in his pocket. Did he ever smell bad! Another time someone set an angry bull loose to scare Wesley, but the bull stopped before reaching him. Once a man punched him in the jaw, but Wesley continued to preach the word of God. Wesley was not a big man; he stood 5 feet 4 inches tall and never weighed more than 126 pounds, but he was fearless when it came to preaching the word of God.
So you never had a church of your own, Mr. Wesley?

WESLEY:
No, I was a priest all my life, but I never had my own church. I traveled from town to town on horseback with my Bible and my sermons in my saddlebags. I even read books on horseback. I went wherever the people were and preached. Many days I’d preach to the coal miners before they went into the mines at 5 AM, and then maybe I’d preach 3 or 4 more sermons that day. When enough people in a town seemed interested, I organized them into a small group and then put someone in charge. One of the gifts God gave me was the ability to organize. And people didn’t like it, but sometimes I put a woman in charge. My mother used to have Bible reading in our house when Father was gone, and she led many people to Christ, so I knew God could use women just as well as men. I called my groups Methodist Societies. They caught on and, to make a long story short, they became the Methodist Church. They begged me to come to America, but I didn’t go. Instead I sent Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke to be missionaries. I didn’t want to start a new church. My intention was to improve the Church of England. God brought about the new church. But no, I never had my own church. The world was my parish!

NARRATOR 5: __________________________________________

Traveling 5,000 miles a year, mostly on horseback, John Wesley seemed to be everywhere. He became one of the most famous men in England. In those 50 years of traveling and preaching he saw England go through the Industrial Revolution. Because of his work making life better for the poor, and helping them to stop abusing alcohol, some say he prevented a bloody revolution such as the one in France. He opened a free school for the poor, he opened a hospital clinic, and the last letter he ever wrote, at age 88, was against slavery in America. He published 400 books, including a dictionary. He wrote rules for hymn singing that you can read today in the front of our hymnal. All the Wesleys were musical, and John wrote hymns, but not as many as his brother and nephews. Did you know his brother Charles Wesley wrote 9,000 hymns? John was even fascinated by Benjamin Franklin’s experiments with electricity!

(At this point, John Wesley climbs the steps onto the stage and lies down.)

NARRATOR 5:
He fell ill in early March, 1791. Let’s join the friends of John Wesley at John’s bedside.

Final Scene: All the adults available go up on stage and gather around John Wesley lying in bed. (The bed can be folding chairs lined up.)

PERSON 1: He’s almost 88, and just last week he was preaching, still winning souls for God.
PERSON 2: Do you remember what he said on his 80th birthday? He said, “May God grant that I never live to be useless.”
PERSON 3: I don’t know where he got the strength.
PERSON 4: It was his great love for God and people that kept him going.
PERSON5: I think I’ll never forget his advice on the use of money. “Gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can, for as long as ever you can.”
PERSON 1: And that’s exactly what he did.
PERSON 2: He did so much good.
JOHN BRADFORD: Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors; and this heir of glory shall come in.”
WESLEY: (Sits up and speaks weakly but clearly: “THE BEST OF ALL IS—GOD IS WITH US!” Then sinks back and dies. Everyone on stage bows in prayer and stays in place while narrator finishes.)

NARRATOR 5;
And so with those words, “The best of all is—God is with us!” John Wesley died on March 4, 1791, At least 10,000 people filed past his coffin to pay their respects to this great Englishman. His funeral was held in the early morning, because they knew they could never handle the crowd that would come if they held it later in the day.
Some would say John Wesley died a poor man. All he owned when he died was one silver spoon and his well-worn saddlebags. But to the world he left (dramatic pause) the Methodist Church.
THE END

SOURCES

John Wesley’s Britain, an informational map published by the British Tourist Authority, Thames Tower, Black’s Road, London W6 9EL.

McNeer, May and Ward, Lynd. John Wesley. Abingdon Press, 1951. (from church library, Gay Street UMC.)

Tewell, Thomas K. “Stuff,” Sermon preached at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City, Nov. 14, 2004.

Vickers, John A. John Wesley, Founder of Methodism. Ladybird Books Ltd., Loughborough, England, 1977. Purchased at Wesley’s Chapel in London.

Wesley and His Times, video borrowed from Media Center, East Ohio Conference, United Methodist Church.