June 2025 Being a “do-gooder”: John Wesley’s Rule

For a few days this week, I’ve spent a lot of time in waiting rooms and visitor’s spaces at a hospital in Indianapolis. My sister lives there and I wanted to be with her while her husband was having a scary cancer surgery.

The hospital, what local people just call Methodist, is actually officially IU Health Methodist Hospital, and it covers multiple city blocks. The Indiana University Medical School is within those blocks as well.

But it all started with the Methodist Church, more than 125 years ago.

Back in 1899, the Methodists decided to build a hospital to serve central Indiana and began raising funds to build a building. It went on from there.

This particular healing place is but one of likely thousands the Methodists have established over the years to serve their fellow man.

Christians all over the world across time, not only Methodists, have reached out to serve God by serving their communities, building hospitals, schools, orphanages and food pantries.

That mission of serving God by helping people befits a Christian group whose founder is known for what is called, I just learned, “John Wesley’s Rule.”

Pictured above, you probably have heard of it.

It’s a practical description and application of how a Christian should serve others.

A historical timeline at the hospital featured several quotes from John Wesley that provide some insight into the man who founded this Chistian denomination in both England and the United States in the 1700s. While students, John and his brother Charles started a club for students at Oxford University that emphasized living a holy life. Wesley’s methods, or methodological approach, eventually gave his adherents the name of Methodists.

You may know something of the current problems and theological disagreements within the United Methodist Church.

That’s not today’s topic.

Today, as my family benefits from the long-reaching benefits of this Christian work that created this place of healing and research, I’m thankful for John Wesley and his rule that bears repeating as a model for us all.

Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as you ever can.

-John Wesley, 1703-1791
-Founder of Methodism, Anglican minister
and Christian theologianI don’t mind being called a do-gooder, do you?