Into the Open Fields

Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind. LUKE 14:21

On a February afternoon in 1739, on a rise of ground at Kingswood near Bristol, a young clergyman of the Church of England stood up without a pulpit, a church or a licence to preach there, and began to speak to a crowd of coal miners. There were about two hundred of them. Within weeks the crowds at Kingswood numbered thousands. Whitefield had not invented open-air preaching — John the Baptist, Christ Himself and generations of dissenters had done it before him — but for a priest of the established church in the eighteenth century it was a startling thing, and it changed the course of the revival.

Why he went

Whitefield went into the fields because the churches were closed to him. He did not set out to defy the church; he loved the Church of England all his life and never left it. But his preaching of the new birth had made him unwelcome in many pulpits, and he could not keep silent. He had also seen, in Bristol and London, how many people never came near a church at all. The colliers of Kingswood had no church of their own, and were thought to be beyond reach. If they would not come to the gospel, the gospel would go to them.

And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. LUKE 14:23

He found in Scripture ample warrant for what he did. Preaching on the parable of the great supper, in his sermon The Gospel Supper, he remarks that the master’s command to go out into the highways and hedges “gives a sanction, methinks, to preaching in the fields,” and to places other than the synagogues. In another sermon he answers critics who thought it disorderly: to think “that Jesus could not preach in a field as well as on consecrated ground; this is judaism, this is bigotry.” Christ preached on a mountain, from a boat, by a well. The apostles preached in the market place and by the river side.

What the fields meant

The open air changed more than the setting. In a parish church the congregation was sorted by rank, the gentry in their pews and the poor at the back. In the field there were no pews. The collier stood beside the merchant, and both heard that they must be born again. Whitefield preached the same gospel to both, and he noticed that those who had no reputation for righteousness to protect were often the quickest to receive it.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. LUKE 4:18

It changed Whitefield too. He learned to speak to a crowd that could walk away. He learned to use plain words, vivid pictures and direct appeal. His voice, by all accounts, was extraordinary; Benjamin Franklin, standing in a Philadelphia street, tried to calculate how far it carried and concluded that he might be heard by many thousands at once. For thirty years, in Britain and America, the fields were Whitefield’s parish. He was preaching in the open air the day before he died.

And he did not despise the hearing that followed. In his sermon Directions How to Hear Sermons he urges his hearers to come not out of curiosity but with a sincere desire to know and do their duty, to give diligent heed, to apply what they hear to their own hearts, and to pray before, during and after the sermon.

The cost

Field preaching was not romantic. Whitefield preached in rain and cold and heat. He was pelted with stones, dirt and worse; at Moorfields in London he preached amid the noise of a fair, with drummers and showmen trying to drown him out. He was mocked in the press, satirised on the stage, and denounced by bishops. His health was ruined by it. He did it anyway, year after year, and when his friends urged him to rest he would not.

I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. 1 CORINTHIANS 9:22

His farewell sermon of 1769 contains a remark that explains his attitude. If it were fashionable to be a Methodist at court, he says, the church would not thrive the better for it, for “religion never thrives under too much sun-shine.” He expected opposition, and he thought it did the church more good than harm.

Where care is needed

The fields also exposed Whitefield’s weaknesses. He was an actor by gift, and a crowd brought out the actor in him. He wept freely, dramatised the stories of Scripture with great vividness, and could hold an audience spellbound. Many who came to hear him came for the performance; some who were moved went away unchanged. Critics then and since have said that his preaching owed as much to the theatre as to the pulpit, and there is some truth in it.

He knew the danger himself. In Directions How to Hear Sermons he warns that “popularity and applause cannot but be exceedingly dangerous,” even to a well-informed mind, and should fill any thinking man with a holy jealousy lest he take to himself the honour due only to God. The lesson is plain. A preacher’s gifts are God’s gifts, and they are meant to point beyond him. Crowds are not proof of the Spirit’s work, and tears are not the new birth.

For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake. 2 CORINTHIANS 4:5

Where are the fields now

Few of us will preach to thousands on a hillside. But Whitefield’s walk to Kingswood still asks a question of every church: who are the people no one has troubled to reach, and what would it take to go to them? The gospel does not belong in buildings. It belongs wherever there are sinners, and that is everywhere.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Think of a group of people near you whom the churches have largely left alone. Pray for them by name this week.

2. Ask whether your church’s habits make it easier for some kinds of people to hear the gospel than others. What might change?

3. If you speak about Christ to others, examine whether you want them to admire you or Him.

4. When you hear a sermon, follow Whitefield’s directions: come prepared, listen closely, apply it to yourself and pray.

5. Read The Gospel Supper in the Ochorus library and consider where the highways and hedges are in your own town.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You preached on mountains and by the sea, and You sent Your servants into the highways and hedges. Send Your gospel out again.

Give Your church hearts for those whom no one else will reach, and courage to go to them.

Keep every preacher, and keep me, from loving applause. Let the crowd see You, not us.

Fill Your house, Lord, from the streets and lanes and fields, until every place has heard Your name. Amen.