Gary Best

John Cennick: The Forgotten Evangelist Gary Best

This is the first ever full-scale biography of John Cennick, who was an outstandingly successful eighteenth-century preacher. He was the first layman to be used as a Methodist preacher by John Wesley and was a significant contributor to the success of Methodism in the Bristol area, especially Kingswood. Charles Wesley encouraged him to also become a hymnwriter, editing his early hymns. Cennick then became the right-hand man of the Calvinist Methodist, George Whitefield, becoming not only 'the apostle of Wiltshire' but the main leader of the work of that branch of Methodism in London and a close friend of the Welsh evangelist Howell Harris. Upset by the dissensions within Methodism, he became first a member and then an ordained deacon within the Moravian Church and their chief evangelist - working across parts of England and Wales, but mainly in northern Ireland, where he established fifteen chapels, over forty religious societies and over two hundred preaching places. It is estimated that between 1739 and his early death at the age of just 35 in 1755 he preached on between eight and nine thousand occasions, sometimes in the face of appalling mob violence. His story - and why John Wesley sought to erase his contribution - provides a real insight into the religious revival initiated by the Methodists and Moravians.