When Simeon moved to put benches in the aisles, the church wardens threw them out. He battled with discouragement and at one point wrote out his resignation.
“When I was an object of much contempt and derision in the university,” he later wrote, “I strolled forth one day, buffeted and afflicted, with my little Testament in my hand ”¦ The first text which caught my eye was this: ‘They found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name; him they compelled to bear his cross.'”
Slowly the pews began to open up and fill, not primarily with townspeople but with students. Then Simeon did what was unthinkable at the time: he introduced an evening service. He invited students to his home on Sundays and Friday evening for “conversation parties” to teach them how to preach. By the time he died, it is estimated that one-third of all the Anglican ministers in the country had sat under his teaching at one time or another.
There are things that emerges even from simple origins. And also if you want to make or change something you have to really work hard for it. That is like the work of Charles Simeon. At first no one take him seriously, no one wants to believe his preaching, but now, there are many followers of his teaching. It is like the action of the fans of the Kansas City Chiefs. The fans ad signed a Larry Johnson petition to throw him out. Charles Simeon even was thrown out at first, it did not take him long to be believed and followed.
Actually, GianniN (#1), from what I recall, it took years before Charles Simeon really developed much of a following. And it took something like ten years before all those locked box pews became unlocked and available for use. No wonder he battled discouragement.
I loved the story about how he stumbled on the passage about [b]Simon[/b] of Cyrene being compelled to bear Jesus’ cross. That was new to me. Wonderful. I also didn’t know about his innovation of holding Sunday evening services.
Charles Simeon spent an astounding long and fruitful 53 years in ministry in just one place, as Vicar of Holy Trinity, Cambridge, which he served until he died in 1836. His perseverance sure paid off!
And in an era when Evangelicals were bitterly divided between Calvinists and Arminians, he firmly refused to take sides. And I love how he put it, contrary to our persistent tendency as Anglicans to always seek a middle way. Simeon insisted that (at least in this case) the truth lay not in splitting the difference between the extremes but in simultaneously holding to BOTH EXTREMES. Right on. That’s true in more theological disputes than just that one.
David Handy+
3-D Christian: evangelical, catholic, and charismatic