Develop a Discipleship System
History of the Office of Lay Speaker in United Methodism
The office of lay speaker in The United Methodist Church, originally known as exhorter, has existed in the church almost from the beginning of Methodism. We do not know the exact time that the first exhorter began to speak, but one of the earliest references to this precursor of the office of certified lay speaker occurred in 1746, only two years after the first annual conference of Methodism, a meeting of Wesley’s British Methodist preachers.
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