WILLIAM & CATHERINE BOOTH (PART 11)

William Sees the Need for Spiritual Growth

William knew that these new converts needed much more than just to be saved. He knew that they needed teaching so that they could grow enough to take care of their own faith.

Taking the Converts to the Chapel

So, the next Sunday, the two Wills headed for The Bottoms again, gathered a crowd, and marched them all to the Wesleyan chapel. They burst into the church in the middle of a service, just following the fourth hymn, and seated their “catch” in the front rows—the best seats in the house. William enjoyed the service immensely, but at the end, the Reverend Samuel Dunn came down not to congratulate William, but to reprimand him.

The Reprimand from Reverend Dunn

Rev. Dunn directed William’s gaze to a row of seats tucked away behind a partition in the back of the chapel, out of sight—and virtually out of earshot of the preaching—and pointed to the obscure side door that provided access to these seats. Rev. Dunn told William that the front rows in which he had seated his “guests” were reserved for those who could contribute to the cause of Methodism—the poor, he said, were to enter through the side door and sit in the back seats. They were, by all means, welcome to attend every service, but they were to stay out of the way and were not to interfere with the other parishioners’ enjoyment of the service. William accepted the rebuke humbly, but this snobbery was the beginning of the end of William’s association with the Methodists.

William’s Early Preaching Career

Even though he was only 17, Young William was placed on the schedule of circuit preachers’ speaking engagements. He began speaking at the Broad Street Chapel, as well as in other villages around Nottingham. Keeping up his open-air meetings, he continued to develop as a preacher over the next few years.

Move to London and Continued Ministry

When he was 19, he finished his apprenticeship at the pawnshop and he looked for another job in Nottingham; finding nothing, he decided to move to London. He eventually found a position in a small pawnshop and was allowed to live above it. In his free time, he began attending the Methodist Chapel in Walworth, and he soon found himself registered there as a preacher.

Focus on Open-Air Preaching

His circuit’s presiding elder gave him little encouragement, and when William realized that he was finding more converts by canvassing the streets than by preaching in the chapels, he asked to be removed from the preaching rotation so that he could spend the little time he had to preach in the open air. The presiding elder grew even more suspicious and assumed that he was conspiring with the reformers, so he withheld William’s membership ticket the next time it came up for renewal.