Of Bobble-Heads and Trading Cards

We spent the day in London yesterday, not a bad way to spend my birthday (I will need to be very creative for Rachel’s next birthday as today will be hard to top). We toured Wesley’s home where he spent the last years of his life, his grave, and a preaching chapel he had built after the closing of “The Foundry” (a building used by Wesley to house the poor, a boarding school, a chapel, and a printing press). The house was tastefully preserved with his original furniture, death bed, books, and prayer closet kneeler still in tact. They even had a replica of Wesley’s chamber horse (the 18th century version of exercise equipment like the ab-roller or bo-flex) for the girls to try out. Rachel had a go at it too. Most meaningful to me would have to be entering Wesley’s prayer closet. I could just picture him rising at 4:00a.m., as was his custom, entering the small room off his bedroom, closing the door, and connecting with God through prayer. When we look at the impact of this tiny man, it is clear to see where the power of his influence derived—-behind those doors.

A thought came to me this evening. We have many pastors in our conference who toil endlessly and selflessly, accomplishing great things behind the scenes that often go unnoticed. Perhaps as a way of memorializing their efforts we could design commemorative Bobble-Heads and trading cards. The Bobble-Heads would nicely display oversized caricatures of the preachers’ heads bobbing up and down, as if they were nodding in agreement to a fine sermon, mounted on tiny bodies of the preachers sporting their Sunday best. The trading cards would vary between posed photographs and in-action preaching shots, complete with statistical information on the back (i.e. number of baptisms performed, years of service, weddings officiated, etc.). I can almost hear the children speaking with excitement, “I’ll trade you one Pastor Steve for a Pastor Dave…It’s his rookie year!!!”

Absurd though it seems, I am afraid some people went a similar direction following and even during John Wesley’s day. Even toward the end of his life, people were producing porcelain figurines of Wesley and other collectible trinkets. Wesley lived with celebrity notoriety. I must say, I found it somewhat disappointing to walk into the chapel and see how it didn’t take long after Wesley’s death for the simply, yet elegantly, constructed preaching house and place of worship to become transformed into a type of Methodist preacher “Hall of Fame” complete with busts and commemorative stone plaques posted throughout the chapel. It was quite a contrast to the New Room in Bristol (the oldest Methodist meeting house formed by Wesley), which preserved the simplicity and essence of what these meeting houses were all about. I can’t help but wonder, “What would John think about all this?”

I think his grave marker says it best, it’s not about the instrument, “Give God Glory!”