Not So Mr. Average
I know perfectly well that, wherever I go and preach, there are many better preachers . . . all that I can say about it is that the Lord uses me.
Dwight L. Moody, The Life of Dwight L. Moody
It’s a long way from being one of nine children of a widowed mother to being one of the greatest lay preachers in history. Moody was not a clergyman. He never attended seminary and was never ordained. He had very little education. Reading his original writing can be painful. It is filled with misuses and misspellings. What he lacked in formal education, however, he made up for with commitment, zeal, and humility.
Seller of Shoes
Unlike many of the great evangelists, Moody was born into a less than orthodox home. His family were Unitarians, a group that rejected traditional Christian beliefs and emphasized the rational over the spiritual. The family did not read the Bible. Moody grew up wanting to make something of himself in business, although he only had a fifth-grade education. When he was seventeen, he left Northfield, Massachusetts, for Boston and began looking for work. Unable to find anything better, he settled for employment in his uncle’s shoe store. His uncle, Sam Holton, made Moody promise that he would attend church and Sunday school. Moody did.
At the time, Moody was more concerned with making money, probably due to the poverty he left behind. When his father died, he left his family in debt and creditors took everything. And two months after she buried her husband, Betsey Moody gave birth to twins. Life was hard and no doubt made Moody think wealth was the answer. He set a goal to save one hundred thousand dollars, a substantial sum even now, but much more so in the nineteenth century.
It was Sunday school at Mount Vernon Congregational Church that changed Moody. His teacher was Edward Kimball, a Christian committed to his students. Moody had been on his mind. More accurately, he was burdened for the young man. On April 21, 1855, Kimball made his way to the shoe store where Moody worked—and walked past it. A few moments later, he pushed his doubts aside, mustered his courage, and entered the store to talk to Moody about his salvation. He found young Moody shelving shoes; he also found a willing listener. That day, Moody gave his life to Christ. He was eighteen years old.
He became active in the church, but it took four years before he became a member. The church required a certain ability to explain what Christ did for the world and for an individual that, for some time, Moody didn’t possess. Still, he persisted, and was eventually granted membership.
Chicago
In 1856, Moody decided to leave Boston, and made his way to Chicago to find his fame and fortune. Boston had been an uncomfortable fit for young Moody but he found Chicago more to his liking. He returned to the business he knew: shoes. Some think he could have been an empire builder despite his lack of education. That would have been fine with Moody, had something not stirred in his soul. His faith was changing his vision. He became convinced that he should be more concerned with souls than shoes, and spiritual matters over business.
He found a mission on North Wells Street and asked if he could teach a Sunday school class. Churches are always looking for volunteers, but this particular fellowship had more teachers than students. If he wanted to teach, they told him, then he’d have to create his own class. That was fine with him.
He established a mission in one of the slum areas of Chicago. He approached families, drawing the children with candy and pony rides and drawing the adults, who were poor German and Scandinavian immigrants, with English lessons and prayer meetings. Soon he had his class—and more. In 1861 he began working in full-time ministry, dividing his responsibilities between his Sunday school and the YMCA. He had been involved with the latter for some time and would become influential in its success.
Sunday school was good to him in another way: he met and married Emma C. Revell, one of the Sunday school teachers. Together they would have three children.
What had begun as a Sunday school turned into the Independent Church, which laid the foundation for what would become the great Moody Memorial Church. He later became the president of the Young Men’s Christian Association, which had come over from England, and served in the position for four years.
“Enough, Lord!”
The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 changed the city, and changed Dwight L. Moody. The blaze began Sunday evening (Moody had been preaching when the congregation heard the fire bells) and blazed into Tuesday, October 10. It consumed over three square miles of the city and left Moody’s home, his church, and the YMCA in ashes. Everything was lost. It also destroyed the businesses of many of his supporters. Despite the widespread devastation of the fire and the financial challenges in its aftermath, Moody remained hopeful and enthusiastic, setting out on fund-raising expeditions to other cities. It was while Moody was on one such trip to New York that, while walking down Wall Street, he was suddenly awash in the presence and power of God. It flooded him with such intensity that he would never be the same.
I could not appeal. I was crying all the time that God would fill me with His Spirit. Well, one day, in the city of New York—oh, what a day!—I cannot describe it, I seldom refer to it; it is almost too sacred an experience to name. Paul had an experience of which he never spoke for fourteen years. I can only say that God revealed Himself to me, and I had such an experience of His love that I had to ask Him to stay His hand. I went to preaching again. The sermons were not different; I did not present any new truths, and yet hundreds were converted. I would not now be placed back where I was before that blessed experience if you should give me all the world—it would be as the small dust of the balance.1
Moody had left Chicago the leader of a successful church and president of the city’s YMCA, and came back a preacher with an expanded vision.
England and the United States
The Chicago fire could destroy buildings, but not the faith of Moody and his church. While the church began to rebuild, Moody set his eyes on the world. Moody would add “traveling evangelist” to his list of accomplishments.
Moody believed people could be reached through music, and that meant finding a musically talented man who would be willing to travel abroad with him. At a YMCA meeting he heard Ira Sankey sing, and immediately knew he had found his music man. All that remained was convincing Sankey of the fact. It took months, but Sankey finally agreed and left his government job to join Moody.
Moody and Sankey received an invitation to preach in England from a pair of Anglican ministers. However, both pastors died while Moody and Sankey were in transit, leaving them without sponsors for the trip. Despite this, Moody went on to preach in several cities to small congregations. Their situation changed in the city of Newcastle, where the services were well-received and many converts were made. For two years they preached overseas then returned to Chicago, now internationally renowned.
Moody never considered himself a great preacher. “I know perfectly well that, wherever I go and preach, there are many better preachers known and heard than I am; all I can say about it is that the Lord uses me.”2
While he took many cues from Charles Finney, he made adjustments better suited to the age of industry: a simple nondenominational sermon, lots of music, spiritual counseling, and a robust organization. Many of his techniques laid the groundwork for other evangelists to follow, including Billy Graham.
Doing More
The work of evangelizing an entire generation would require more than one man or even a dozen. People were needed to go into the field with the gospel message, but they needed training. The man who had, at most, a grammar-school education became an administering educator. “If this world is going to be reached, I am convinced that it must be done by men and women of average talent. After all, there are comparatively few people in this world who have great talent.”3
To this end Moody created the Northfield Seminary for Young Women in 1879. Two years later he opened the Mount Hermon School for Boys. In 1886 he began the Chicago Evangelization Society, which later became Moody Bible Institute, an organization that continues to train people for ministerial work.
Moody was an evangelistic entrepreneur, starting these and other organizations that still carry on the work begun over a century ago.
Passing
Dwight Moody died on November 16, 1899 at the age of sixty-two. He thought often of that future day and several times spoke of the next life:
Someday you will read in the papers that D. L. Moody, of East Northfield, is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it! At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now. I shall have gone up higher, that is all; out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal—a body that death cannot touch; that sin cannot taint; a body fashioned like unto His glorious body.
I was born of the flesh in 1837. I was born of the Spirit in 1856. That which is born of the flesh may die. That which is born of the Spirit will live forever.4
Moody changed the face of evangelism and showed that the work of ministry doesn’t reside just with the ordained.