John Wesley (1703 –1791)

John Wesley lets us know very clearly that preaching alone — however important that is — cannot produce and maintain spiritual awakening:

I was more convinced than ever, that the preaching like an Apostle, without joining together those that are awakened, and training them up in the ways of God, is only begetting children for the murderer. How much preaching has there been for these twenty years all over Pembrokeshire! But no regular societies, no discipline, no order or connection; and the consequence is, that nine in ten of the once-awakened are now faster asleep than ever.

— John Wesley’s Journal: Thursday August 25, 1763.