John Wesley continues to carry his message of salvation and holy living across North America and Great Britain. The man from Aldersgate is very much alive in The Man from Aldersgate, actor Roger Nelson’s portrayal of the 70-year-old Wesley’s sometimes humorous, sometimes touching, often moving reminiscences.
The popularity of this 70-minute oneman show, developed for Nelson over a decade ago, shows no signs of abating. When we first interviewed Nelson (CT, Oct. 2, 1981, p. 84), he was just beginning the odyssey that has become a full-time occupation. Supported by a board and organization known as the Friends of John Wesley, Nelson has taken the famous founder of Methodism around the world—onto some of the world’s lowliest and some of its greatest stages.
Nelson did not dream of making Brad L. Smith’s play a career when he first performed it in 1979. But opportunities kept coming, first from other states, and then from other countries. The Man from Aldersgate has now played in 29 different countries.
Nelson has even played John Wesley on the great outdoor preacher’s own turf. Last August, he marked the two-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of Wesley’s first open-air sermon on Hanham Mount in Bristol, England, by giving a full-length performance at the very spot. He also gave a short message outside the gates of Wesley’s Chapel and at a number of other venues around Bristol, literally following the footsteps of his character.
Last year Nelson took Wesley to an audience of 1,800 in the Stratford Festival Theater in Ontario, Canada, for one night. This month Nelson’s Wesley is on stage for two weeks at Stratford-upon-Avon in England. There, following each performance, he and a team of “Friends” will meet people for tea and biscuits and discussion. He is also returning to the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, where he had a single performance in 1989. This year’s engagement will run for two weeks in a theater in Carrubbers Christian Center next to John Knox’s house on the Royal Mile.
The Man from Aldersgate’s outings are not limited to churches or theaters. A new video, recorded during a live performance earlier this year, has just been released to replace an earlier version that has had wide usage. A companion study course has also been developed. Nelson says the original video has been edited into five sessions, and with the accompanying study guide is “designed to force people to think through what they believe—just as John Wesley had to do.”
Thus, in an unusual way, John Wesley the preacher lives on. Whether on the boards in Shakespeare’s Stratford-upon-Avon, or in Bangkok, Thailand, where a translated Wesley was the means of bringing a teenage girl to Christ, or in the United Arab Emirates where a Muslim Iraqi learned how to be born again, Roger Nelson continues to see fruit from the life and ministry of Wesley the preacher.
By Carol R. Thiessen.
