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Theodore Austin-Sparks
(1888-1971) was born in London, but spent his school years in Glasgow,
Scotland. In his early ministry he pastored Congregational and Baptist
churches in the London area, during which he was associated with Oswald
Chambers, F.B. Meyer, Jessie Penn-Lewis, A.J. Gordon and A.B. Simpson.
Eventually coming to believe in the organic, rather than the
institutional, nature of the ecclesia, in 1926 he stepped aside from
traditional pastoral work.
Utilizing a former school
hall and residence, along with like-minded colleagues, he established a
fellowship community with a conference and training center in Forest
Hill in southeast London, dedicated to the deepening of believers’walk.
It became identified by the name of the road on which it was situated,
Honor Oak. Believers came from near and far, many staying for
extended periods of fellowship and instruction. Among them was Watchman
Nee who stayed for eight months during his visit to England. He
considered Austin-Sparks to be his spiritual mentor.
From Honor Oak he
and his co-workers ran a publishing ministry which distributed his many
books – which were transcriptions of his lectures, along with a
bi-monthly magazine that he had begun while a Baptist pastor and for
which he was the editor, A Witness and a Testimony (1923-1971).
One of his favorite hymns,
by George Rawson (1807-1889), reflected his passion: “We limit not the
truth of God to our poor reach of mind, by notions of our day and sect,
crude, partial and confined. No, let a new and better hope within our
hearts be stirred,” and then the refrain drawn from John Robinson
(1575-1625) sermon to the Pilgrim Fathers, “the Lord has yet more light
and truth to break forth from His word.”
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