Wednesday, August 17, 2005

One more anagram

Charles Simeon = "Sims" each loner

Making the nickname for his young Cambridge followers into a verb, "to Sim," this anagram indicates that Simeon, something of a maladjusted loner himself, loved to gather folks together in bonds of fellowship and edification. He felt no Christian--and especially no Christian minister--could grow and mature (from milk to meat, to use the biblical image) without this sort of mutual admonition and apprenticeship.

If I am correct--and I don't know his biography yet as well as I need to--Simeon's efforts contributed to what eventually became the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. And I can attest that this principle of fellowship is deeply and productively embedded in the culture of that parachurch ministry.

Or . . .

I, charmless one

 This was how he tended to describe himself, though others disagreed!


Posted by Grateful to the Dead at 13:34:19 | Permanent Link | Comments (1) |

Monday, June 20, 2005

Who was Charles Simeon?

Charles Simeon (1759 - 1836): Keeping it real to build up real ministers. Keenly aware of his own character flaws, finding it difficult to make friends, this "original campus minister" nonetheless had a fire in his bones to bring life back into the dead faith of Cambridge undergraduates and divinity students. Once an evangelical hothouse, by Simeon's day Cambridge had fallen into a doldrums, slipping into irrelevance as the bastion of an outwardly powerful but inwardly dying religious establishment. In weekly rap sessions (believe it or not, the highlight of many undergraduates' social schedule!); touching personal letters of pastoral advice; and straightforward, no-frills sermons of great power, Simeon personally mentored hundreds of effective pastors within both Anglicanism and the non-conformist churches of his day. His warm-hearted, lively style cut across the day's nominal Christianity, reproducing itself in the ministries of his young admirers and spreading evangelical revival within a lost and tired English church.
Posted by Grateful to the Dead at 12:45:52 | Permanent Link | Comments (2) |