John Wesley University

John Wesley University was a private interdenominational Christian college in High Point, North Carolina. In 2018, the university merged into Piedmont International University in Winston-Salem.[1]

John Wesley University was the oldest undergraduate theological education institution in North Carolina. It started in fall 1903 as the Greensboro Bible and Training School in Greensboro as a result of a revival held by Rev. Seth Rees and Rev. Charles Weigle. The school closed abruptly after the 1931 spring semester owing to insurmountable financial difficulties.[5]

Following an all-night prayer service with well-known former Methodist Episcopal Church South evangelist Jim H. Green (1880-1955), the group decided to reopen the Greensboro Bible and Literary Institute on January 15, 1932 in the same facilities with many of the same teachers and students. The new name was People's Bible School.

The revamped school, which started with four faculty (from the previous institute) and 18 students, was later known as John Wesley College (1956), Laurel University (2011), and John Wesley University (2016). This college distributed the People's Herald periodical, later The Crusader. The college remained non-denominational while promoting a distinctively Wesleyan-Holiness view on entire sanctification, with fellow Methodist Evangelist John R. Church as its first board chairman.[6][7]

The college was influential in the founding of the People's Methodist Church, which later merged with the Evangelical Methodist Church. A small "chain of tabernacles" was created so ministry students would have inexpensive venues to preach and conduct revival services during the Great Depression.[8]