Recently I had the opportunity of sitting down with Jez Field to discuss and enjoy some examples of remarkable gifts of the Holy Spirit from various periods of church history. It was such an enjoyable conversation and, as you’ll hear, we only got to a few stories, but they are so inspiring. To hear Spurgeon recount how he had a miraculously specific word of knowledge, and then to find the actual verbatim transcript of it happening, was just thrilling. And it all reminds us that as preachers and as those quietly sharing our faith with others, that God is active, and a ear to Him as we speak cou ..read more

The Unlikely Conversion of Sheilagh Kaiser I haven’t included any contemporary accounts on the Church History Review, but I am going to make an exception. I met Sheilagh at her Aunt Cassy’s funeral – or more precisely at the wake at a very smart house in the southern suburbs of Cape Town. Sheilagh gave what I expected would be a normal eulogy. But as she spoke of how she encountered God’s love I was thunderstruck that her Aunt Cassy, a quiet, humble ‘little old lady’,  had broken through so many points of resistance to share the gospel with her. This post may seem a little long – believe ..read more

Below are some of the books I read this year, with my honest opinions, and it may give you some ideas of what you might like to read in the coming year. By the way, if like me you’re a legalist who has to finish every book they begin, then I may have discovered a cure! I created an ‘Abandoned’ list for awful books. This enabled me to relegate an unfinished book without feeling I’d wasted time. So I recommend you develop your own ‘A list’ for 2024. I’ve not given you my complete 2023 reading list because, even with my A List, I still finished some books that were just not that good. I properly ..read more

How did this Christmas gem get forgotten? Philip Doddridge, the dissenting[1] pastor wrote 370 hymns. Most of them, amazingly, were written to accompany a sermon. So his sermon prep also included writing an original hymn based on the text he was preaching from! Isaac Watts was not only impressed with his songwriting skill, but his leadership too, and encouraged him to open a seminary to train other non-conformist pastors. He trained 120 new pastors.[2] This ‘Christmas Carol’ is Christmassy in that somewhat over-used sense only because of the opening line – everything else about it is pure gos ..read more

Andrew Wilson: Spirit and Sacrament / Thomas C Oden: A Change of Heart Two rather different books. Although I like Andrew very much, I didn’t expect to like Andrew’s book, having something of an inbuilt resistance to church traditions and, I hope, a rejection of the form of religion without the power. And I suspect the readers most influenced by Spirit and Sacrament have been non-charismatics and not the other way around. Nevertheless, the insights, the impulse towards restoring memory, and of course, acknowledging that even newly planted charismatic congregations do in fact begin to build a ..read more

one-on-one-beginningsDownload ..read more

Penllwyn Calvinistic Methodist Chapel (Google) Surprising Additions to the Churches A characteristic of the revivals in Wales, Ireland, and England in the 19th Century was church growth. The term ‘revival’ wasn’t often used merely to describe meetings where Christians were refreshed and revived, but included definite additions to church membership, and often in the thousands across many churches. The Rev T Edwards, one of Penllwyn’s pastors, writing in the first few days of the sudden outpouring of the Spirit in Wales in 1859, says, ‘The additions to the churches in a very short period have be ..read more

One of the delights of reading about revivals of the past is the fact that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. (Heb 13.8) And that we cry, ‘Oh that You would rend the heavens, and come down!’ (Isa 64.1) One of the key questions we’re left with is, ‘Can we make this happen? Can we get ready, or prepare?’ The pre-revival condition of the Welsh Bible-believing churches Eifion Evans writes that by 1858 ‘the churches had declined to an alarming state of deadness and barrenness. The means of grace had become more or less a formality, made unattractive to the world by the coldness even of ..read more

Wales, land of revival By 1859, Welsh pastors and churches were not strangers to sudden and overwhelming outpourings of the Holy Spirit. The nation had been powerfully impacted by the ministry of Howell Harris and Daniel Rowland a century before. Harris’s passion and service was legendary, and the sheer number of conversions was staggering. But there were numerous smaller revivals before 1859. It may be helpful to note that by using the word ‘revival’ I’m referring to an outpouring of the Holy Spirit which impacts both the church – existing born again Christians – but reaches beyond the churc ..read more

‘Thank God, the days in which we now live are days of blessedness and glory! The Kingdom of Christ is now everywhere making unexampled progress. Sinners are being brought to repentance, not in small numbers – ‘one of a city, and two of a family (or tribe)’ – but in multitudes!’ Thomas Phillips [1] Beginning with this post I am going to tell the story of the 1859 revival in Wales. I’ll confine myself mainly to two sources (although feel free to send me more in the comments section): Thomas Phillips’ The Welsh Revival: its origin and development (Banner of Truth), and Eifion Evans’ excellent Re ..read more