Charles Simeon

Ray Bakke, in his book which I mentioned in the previous blog, The Urban Christian, tells the story of reading a book that profoundly changed his life and his understanding of his urban calling.

It is a book I've wanted to read for a long time. I hope to purchase it in Cambridge and read it during our travels in Great Brittain. Moule's biography of Charles Simeon (1759-1836), published in 1895.

Bakke writes:

"Simeon had been a student of the theological faculty of King's College, Cambridge, in England. The famous university town was not as pretty in the late eighteenth century as it is now - in fact, it was a mess. Rural people were pouring in from the impoverished countryside to fuel the Industrial Revolution. The well-to-do Cambridge residents and students hated these poor people who filled the crumbling hovels in the back streets of the city.

Simeon walked through the city and stood outside the 700-year-old Holy Trinity Church, naively praying, "Lord, give me this church so that I may minister to these people." The Church had been Catholic, and then Anglican, and was now reduced to a tiny congregation, most of whom were quite indifferent to the plight of the masses outside the church. The bishop made Simeon the vicar because he had no one else interested in this unappealing situation.

Simeon began his ministry by going from door to door through his parish, approaching people with the words, "My name is Simeon. I have called to enquire if I can do anything for your welfare." His friendliness so affected the poor peasants that they began to attend the church. Unfortunately, their smelly clothes and unwashed state offended the better-off members who paid rents to the church for their pews. They were appalled by the company they were forced to keep and protested to the bishop to get rid of this man who was ruining their church. The bishop kept Simeon on, saying that a little life was better than death.

The paid-pew crowd had not finished yet. They locked their pews so they were not available in the mornings, and hired a guest lecturer to preach to them on Sunday afternoons, in the manner to which they were accustomed. Undaunted, Simeon bought timber out of his forty-nine-pounds-a-year salary and made portable benches for his Sunday-morning congregation. Each week he would set them up in the aisles and foyer, before opening the doors and invite the people of the city to enter.

This went on for eleven years, and Simeon's patience was sustained by the philosophy "if half the people get a double blessing, I'll be satisfied." Then, in Simeon's twelfth year, revival came. The wall of conflict came down, and the congregation united. Simeon stayed there for fifty-four more years, and his career was astonishing. He continued to work with the poor. He was dean five times of the theological faculty of Kings College, and he influenced and informed dozens of young pastors. Like Luther, he never stopped lecturing.

Out of the ministry he founded, God raised up Inter-Varsity; the Cambridge Seven; a mission to China; and C.T. Studd and Henry Martyn, who went to India and translated the Bible into Urdu. Simeon created a network of influence throughout England as his young pastors began to find their way into all its industrial cities.

Each month he traveled to London to meet William Wilberforce, Lord Shaftesbury, members of Parliament and others in the Clapham Sect. They had one agenda: to abolish slavery in the British Empire. When Britain colonized Australia with convicts, it was Simeon who appointed a chaplain to accompany the first boatload to Sydney. This chaplain created the Archdioce of Sydney, and Simeon's mark is still on the Anglican church in that city."

Bakke continues, "As I read Moule's biography, I began to feel a kindred spirit with all these people who had been concerned with urban-mission issues more than a hundred years ago. I knew my life was being changed. Here was a pastor with an urban mission who worked with the poor, was an evangelist, discipled people, lectured at the university, wrote magnificent commentaries and still had time to go to London to work to stop the slave trade. I had a vision of what urban pastors and churches can do. The relationships of evangelistic, social, academic ministries with pastoral caring and political activity all came together in the career of Charles Simeon."

I'm looking forward, on my sabbatical, to reading this book about Simeon. Even more than that, I'm looking forward to returning refreshed and renewed in my urban calling in Indianapolis!