Page 36 - Heros of the Faith - Textbook w videos short

my Lord Jesus who has done so much for me’. And, with that aspiration in mind, he moved in 1742 from his
previous curacy in Todmorden, Yorkshire, to nearby Haworth.

By the time Grimshaw died 21 years later, there had been an amazing transformation in that bleak Yorkshire
village and the whole surrounding area. Drunkards had become sober, wasters had been changed into
industrious family men and the gospel flame spread far and wide.

Awakening
Instead of the mere handful of communicants who attended his early communion Sundays, by the end over 500
battled wind and winter snows to join the congregation for the communion services; while, in the summer
months, about 1000 would regularly attend, all waiting with eager expectation to share the blessing of those
occasions.

When Whitefield or Wesley were due to visit Haworth, as many as 6000 would pack the large surrounding
graveyard, some even clinging onto the church steeple.

Summing up Grimshaw’s ministry, John Newton could write: ‘The desert soon became a fruitful field, a garden of
the Lord … and the barren wilderness rejoiced and blossomed like the rose’.

This was not all. The influence of Grimshaw’s dynamic and passionate ministry stretched far wider than
Haworth. Towns, villages and hamlets throughout the area saw him arriving on his sturdy white pony to preach
in barns, chapels and the open air, wherever he could get a hearing. The ‘Great Haworth Round’, as it was
dubbed, was established in 1748, a ‘circuit’ stretching initially from places as far flung as Hartlepool and
Sheffield, with hundreds of preaching stations dotted in between.

Sometimes Grimshaw would preach up to 20 times a week, gathering the converts into small societies, which he
or his itinerant helpers would visit on a regular basis. And always he was back in Haworth on Sundays,
sometimes preaching there four times a day.

John Wesley said of Grimshaw, ‘A few such as him would make a nation tremble. He carries fire wherever he
goes’. Described as ‘a natural orator’, we read that Grimshaw preached in a ‘lively and impassioned manner …
riveting the attention … and attracting the more curious who had barely ever entered a church’.

Love for the brethren
Sadly, none of his manuscript sermons have survived. But, throughout his writings and from the recollections of
his hearers, we have ample illustration of his priorities and style.

His own advice as to the sort of preaching we need is significant: ‘Hear the best men. Hear a soul-searching, a
soul-winning, a soul-enriching minister; one who declares the whole counsel of God … one who makes hard
things easy and dark things plain’.

One of Grimshaw’s outstanding characteristics was his genuine love for all true believers, whatever their
denominational label. ‘I love them and will love them and none shall make me do otherwise’, he declared
roundly. Once he told his friend John Newton that at least five Dissenting congregations had sprung into being
from his own ministry. Men whom he had influenced and who had been converted later became either Baptist
or Independent pastors, often drawing many of their members out of Grimshaw’s own congregation.

He was more disturbed, however, when his young convert James Hartley began a Baptist cause in Haworth

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