No Small Churches

When you think of Charles Spurgeon, you probably don’t think of small churches and small congregations. In fact Spurgeon seldom preached to fewer than 6,000, and on one occasion his audience numbered almost 24,000 and this before the invention of the microphone.

During his lifetime Spurgeon preached to approximately 10,000,000 people and became on of history’s most read preachers.

But Spurgeon himself is a testimony to the power of a small church.

On Sunday, January 6th, 1850, a blizzard hit England, and 15-year-old Charles was unable to reach the church he usually attended. Instead he turned down Artillery Street to the local Primitive Methodist Church, finding only a few people standing around the stove.

The Preacher didn’t even bother to turn up.

Finally a thin-looking man stood up and read Isaiah 45:22 Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth. The speaker, struggling for something to say kept on repeating the text until he spotted young Charles in the back and pointed to him with a bony finger, crying out “Look young man! Look! Look to Christ!”

Spurgeon later said of that day, “As the snow fell on my road home, I though every snowflake talked with me and told of the pardon I had found.”

On his arrival home his mother saw his expression and exclaimed, “Something wonderful has happened to you.”

It had, and in doing so proved that smaller ponds often yield the biggest fish.

Ashes of Wycliffe

On the last Sunday of 1384, whilst presiding over the Lord's Supper, John Wycliffe was struck with paralysis and fell to the ground. His friends carried him to his bed, where he died on December 31, 1384.

Forty-one years later, still hated by his enemies, his bones were exhumed, burned and thrown into the river.

As an ancient biographer wrote: "They burnt his bones to ashes and cast them into the Swift, a neighbouring brook running hard by. Thus the brook conveyed his ashes to the Avon, the Avon into the Severn, the Severn into the narrow seas and they into the main ocean. And the ashes of Wycliffe are sybolic of his doctrine, which is now spread throughout the world."