A Methodist local preacher is a layperson who has been accredited by the Methodist Church to lead worship and preach on a frequent basis. With separation from the Church of England by the end of the 18th century, a clear distinction was recognised between itinerant preachers (later, ministers) and the local preachers who assisted them. Local preachers have played an important role in Methodism since the earliest days of the movement, and have also been important in English social history. These preachers continue to serve an indispensable role in the Methodist Church of Great Britain, in which the majority of church services are led by laypeople. In certain Methodist connexions, a person becomes a local preacher after obtaining a license to preach. In many parts of Methodism, such as the Allegheny Wesleyan Methodist Connection, there are thus two different tiers of ministers—licensed preachers and ordained elders.

Local preachers have been a characteristic of Methodism from its beginnings as a revival movement in 18th-century England. John Wesley tried to avoid a schism with the Church of England, and encouraged those who attended his revival meetings to attend their parish churches, but they also attended Methodist preaching services which were held elsewhere and met in "classes" (small cell groups). It quickly became necessary to build "preaching houses" where the Methodist meetings could be held. These began to function as alternative churches, often depending on the attitude of the local Anglican clergy.

One such preaching house was The Foundery, which served as Wesley's base in London. In about 1740, Wesley was away on business and had left a young man, Thomas Maxfield, in charge of The Foundery. Since no clergymen were available, Maxfield took it upon himself to preach to the congregation. Wesley was annoyed by this and returned to London in order to confront Maxfield. However, his mother, Susanna Wesley, persuaded him to hear Maxfield out, suggesting that he had as much right to preach as Wesley. Wesley was sufficiently impressed by Maxfield's preaching to see it as God's work and let the matter drop, with Maxfield becoming one of Methodism's earliest lay preachers.^{[page needed]}

Methodism formally broke with the Anglican church as a result of Wesley's 1784 ordination of ministers to serve in the United States following the American War of Independence. Before the schism, Wesley had as accredited preachers only a handful of fellow Anglican priests who shared his view of the need to take the gospel to the people where they were. Because of their small number, these priests were necessarily itinerant, travelling around the country like Wesley himself. Their travelling pattern, like that used until the mid 20th century by judges, gave rise to the use of the word circuit to describe a group of churches overseen by a single minister; this word is still in use today.

Because of the limited number of ordained ministers he could call on, Wesley appointed local preachers who were not ordained but whom he examined, and whom he felt he could trust to lead worship and preach: though not to minister sacraments.

As the independent Methodist Church developed following the schism and Wesley's death, a pattern was soon established in which ordained ministers, whose number was still limited, were attached for a short period (at first three years, subsequently five, and now more usually seven or more) to a circuit. The circuit minister had pastoral oversight and administered sacraments, but the majority of services were led – and sermons preached – by laypersons. Local preachers would regularly spend a whole day with a local church (called a Society), leading one or more services and undertaking pastoral visiting. Many travelled significant distances in the course of a day, often on foot.

In its essentials, this pattern has remained in British Methodism to the present day. Although by the end of the 19th century most circuits were staffed by several ministers, there were almost always more churches in the circuit than ministers, many of them offering two or three services every Sunday. The need for local preachers has never declined and in many circuits an active local preacher may well be involved in preparing and leading worship on seven or eight occasions in a thirteen-week quarter.

Methodism has always acknowledged and valued the ministry of women, a Wesleyan influence going back to Susanna Wesley herself. In early British Methodism, a number of women served as local preachers (the heroine of George Eliot's Adam Bede is represented as one). The Methodist Church of Great Britain recognizes Mary Bosanquet-Fletcher (1739-1815) as the first female Methodist preacher. Methodism itself was subject to schism giving rise, in England, to several Methodist connexions including the Primitive Methodists and the Bible Christians as well as the majority Wesleyan Methodist Church. The separated denominations went much further than the Wesleyans in making use of women as local preachers and as ordained ministers. In Wesleyan Methodism from 1803, women were restricted to addressing women-only meetings. This restriction meant that women preachers in Wesleyan Methodism found it increasingly difficult to exercise their ministry and even though in 1804 the Wesleyan Conference was very short of male preachers, it would not sanction the use of women. Some women, such as Sarah Mallett, however, ignored this ban. From 1910 the blanket ban was repealed, and from 1918 on, Wesleyan Methodism recruited and deployed women local preachers on exactly the same basis as men. When Methodist Union in England took place in 1932, the ordination of women in the separated denominations ceased until 1971, but the equal status of women as local preachers continued.