The Field Preacher Who Found the Forgotten Flock

In 1739, the Anglican clergy of Bristol, England, had largely abandoned the coal miners of Kingswood. These workers — their faces blackened with soot, their families crowded into hovels — were considered too rough, too poor, too far beneath the respectable pews of parish churches. The shepherds of England's established church had turned inward, tending their comfortable livings while thousands went spiritually starving.

Then George Whitefield dragged a reluctant John Wesley to an open hillside and challenged him to do something unthinkable for an Oxford-educated priest: preach outdoors, in a field, to people no pulpit would welcome. Wesley was horrified. He later admitted he considered it "almost a sin" to preach anywhere but inside a proper church.

But he went. And when he stood on that muddy rise outside Bristol and opened his mouth, something broke open. Miners wept. Families who hadn't darkened a church door in years pressed forward. Wesley would later write that he saw white streaks running down their coal-dusted cheeks — the tracks of tears cutting through the grime.

Where the appointed shepherds had scattered the flock through neglect, God raised up a voice to gather them back. It is precisely the promise Jeremiah announces. When the shepherds destroy and scatter, the Almighty declares, "I myself will gather the remnant of my flock." And from David's line, He would raise a righteous Branch — not a king who hoards power, but one whose very name is Yahweh Tsidkenu, the LORD Our Righteousness. No sheep forgotten. No one left in the field.