From the TeachingtheWord Bible Knowledgebase

Just five miles from our office is an important but little-known site in the history of the Body of Christ in America. It speaks volumes about the crying need of our day - a new generation of missionaries to the American church, which is once again a vast mission field.

Unless you really know where to look for it, you are unlikely to find the Strawbridge Meeting House in Carroll County, Maryland. Here, in 1768, Irish immigrant Robert Strawbridge founded the first Methodist meetinghouse in the United States.

Born in 1732, Strawbridge was a member of an English Anglican family living among the staunch Roman Catholics of Ireland. He was a carpenter by trade and nearly six feet tall. At age 24 he was converted to Christ through the ministry of itinerant Methodist preachers sent into Ireland by John Wesley. At age 26 Robert Strawbridge began preaching the Gospel at various places in his native Leitrim County and elsewhere in Ireland. In 1759, while on a preaching journey, Strawbridge met Elizabeth Piper and they soon married.

Missionaries to America

Robert and Elizabeth were burdened to bring the Gospel to America. In the early 1760s they emigrated to what was then the eastern part of Frederick County, Maryland (later part of Carroll County). The Strawbridges were the first Protestant family in the area; central Maryland was overwhelmingly Roman Catholic at the time.

According to the 1801 journal of pioneering Methodist bishop Francis Asbury, Strawbridge founded the first Methodist meeting in America in 1768 in a log cabin he constructed on a rented 50-acre farm between Westminster and New Windsor, Maryland. John Evans, a neighbor of the Strawbridges, was the first convert to Christ under their ministry. By 1773 roughly half of the nearly 1200 known converts to Christ through the ministry of those sent out by John Wesley and his associates resided in Robert Strawbridge's preaching circuit, which covered parts of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

Strawbridge's meeting house, which was used until 1809, has been reconstructed on its original site. Nearby are statues of both husband and wife, and the home in which they lived. Robert Strawbridge went to glory in 1781 at age 49, and Elizabeth joined him in the presence of Christ ten years later. Both are buried in the Bishop's Lot in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Baltimore.

The Simplicity That Is In Christ

The Methodist meetings of Strawbridge's time were characterized by New Testament simplicity. The reading of the Scriptures, reverent worship in song and an offering, expository preaching of the Word, prayer, and the ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper formed the Biblical core to which nothing was added and from which nothing was taken away.

In the sparsely-populated America of Revolutionary times, a circuit-riding Methodist preacher like Robert Strawbridge covered many miles on horseback over long hours and days, in all seasons, and in all kinds of weather. Conversions were not the counterfeit work of high-powered sales techniques but were the genuine work of the Word and Spirit rooted in "the simplicity that is in Christ" (2 Corinthians 11:3). Souls were saved by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit as the result of the full-orbed preaching of the necessity of Christ's cross as the only hope of depraved sinners, both for this life and the life to come.

Needed: A New Generation of Missionaries to America

What a far cry this is from the philosophy of the Purpose-Driven movement of our day, which declares that a newly-planted church must draw large numbers or be quickly abandoned, and therefore everything possible must be done to remove "the offense of the cross" (Galatians 5:11) and to avoid anything that might bring the criticism of the ungodly.

Indeed, we need a new generation of missionaries to America. Even the so-called Evangelical church has become a mission field in which many who remain dead in their trespasses and sins have been falsely assured that they are members of the kingdom of God. Sadly, the once-spiritually-strong Methodist church is among the many churches and denominations that have, for the most part, long since descended into that wretched condition. May God raise up more Robert Strawbridges in our day, who are willing to be "fools for Christ's sake" as the Apostle Paul was:

Let a man so consider us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover it is required in stewards that one be found faithful. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by a human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I know of nothing against myself, yet I am not justified by this; but He who judges me is the Lord. Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each one's praise will come from God.

...

For I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last, as men condemned to death; for we have been made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake... We are weak... we are dishonored! To the present hour we both hunger and thirst, and we are poorly clothed, and beaten, and homeless. And we labor, working with our own hands. Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure; being defamed, we entreat. We have been made as the filth of the world, the offscouring of all things until now.

I do not write these things to shame you, but as my beloved children I warn you. For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. Therefore I urge you, imitate me.

...

Now some are puffed up... But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord wills, and I will know, not the word of those who are puffed up, but the power. For the kingdom of God is not in word but in power. (1 Corinthians 4)

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