ABSTRACT
Local preachers, unordained but trained, were the backbone of Methodism, always taking far more services than the small body of regular ministers. Their preaching engagements were organised on printed plans, of which this is a typical instance. Primitive Methodist Preachers' Plan of the Brandon Circuit'. Brandon was in Suffolk, close to the Norfolk border. The lay leaders of Congregational and Baptist churches were the deacons. Their primary responsibility was chapel finances while the minister looked after the congregation's spiritual welfare. The deacon described here served for many years from 1858 at Maesyrhelem Baptist Chapel, Radnorshire, during the ministry of David Davies, the father of the writer. John Harvey, a Primitive Methodist minister stationed at Keighley, delivered an address on local preachers to the ministers of the Leeds district, meeting at Barnsley, in 1864. He laid down that the first qualification of local preachers was 'a fluent utterance'.
