History of Elim in Ireland

by Pastor Stephen Hilliard
Elim had its beginnings in the town of Monaghan, now in the Republic of Ireland, and grew indirectly out of the Welsh Revival at the start of the twentieth century.
During that Revival, a young Welshman called George Jeffreys was converted and, shortly afterwards, experienced the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. He began to preach, at first in small places near his home and then, as his reputation grew, further and further afield.
While preaching in Sunderland, he was heard by two young brothers from Belfast, George and William Gillespie. They were so impressed that, on their return home, they wrote inviting him to speak at meetings they were organising in Bangor. They thoughtfully enclosed the fare - three ten shilling notes - and George Jeffreys duly arrived in Northern Ireland. Whilst there, he was asked to meet with a group of young men from Monaghan who shared his passion for evangelism and his belief in the power of the Holy Spirit.

A MEETING IN MONAGHAN
Those young men had a deep concern for the spiritual welfare of their native land and had been meeting to pray for revival in an old loft over the bottling store of a public house. On 7th January 1915, they met with George Jeffreys in Knox's Temperance Hotel to discuss how they might reach Ireland with the message of the Full Gospel.
They resolved that night that they would band together, under George Jeffreys' direction, to establish a permanent evangelistic work in Ireland, and would begin by holding a Gospel mission in the town. This they did, in a tent erected at North Street.
Though no church was established in Monaghan at that time, George Jeffreys considered those meetings to be the origins of the Elim Movement. He wrote later, "I regard Monaghan ... as being the birth place of this work." It was there that he first engaged in evangelism with the men and women who were to become his co-workers in Elim.

BUILDING IN BELFAST
After the Monaghan mission, the focus of the work shifted to Belfast. Meetings were held in a disused laundry in Hunter Street, and a congregation was formed, with George Jeffreys as pastor. The building was old and decrepit. There was hardly an unbroken pane of glass, and many of the holes were blocked with rags to keep out the wind and rain, as new glass was too expensive for the meagre resources of the evangelists. The street itself had an unsavoury reputation. Frederick Farlow, one of the young men from Monaghan, wrote, "The surroundings are anything but beautiful, in fact it is situated in one of the worst streets in the city, the name of which has had to be changed several times owing to the sinfulness of its inhabitants."
In 1917, George Jeffreys was officially ordained by a visiting Welsh Congregational minister, Rev. Moelfryn Morgan. Shortly afterwards, a church constitution was drawn up giving the newly formed fellowship the name Elim Christ Church.
Meanwhile, Elim was reaching into other parts of Northern Ireland. In February 1916, George Jeffreys began meetings in a tent in Ballymena. Over a period of five weeks, 120 people were saved and many were baptised in the Holy Spirit. During their time in Ballymena, George Jeffreys and his fellow workers first called themselves The Elim Evangelistic Band.
In July 1919, a disused church building in Melbourne Street at the bottom of Belfast's Shankill Road was acquired and refurbished. George Jeffreys and many of the Hunter Street congregation moved to this new and larger location and the Melbourne Street Church was recognised for years as the mother church of Elim.

THE SPREADING FLAME
Although it had not originally been George Jeffreys' intention to establish a denomination, the Elim Movement grew rapidly and was soon established as a legally recognised charity under the name 'Elim Pentecostal Alliance.'
Meanwhile, the work was extending to other parts of the Province and beyond. By the close of 1920, there were over twenty churches, including those in Armagh, Ballymena, Bangor, Belfast, Cullybackey, Lurgan, Moneyslane and Portadown. In 1919, the first issue of a new magazine, The Elim Evangel, appeared, to spread the news of what God was doing. Those early magazines were basic in format but the contents were exciting - a record of the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit at work in the lives of ordinary men and women. The pages read like extracts from the Acts of the Apostles. New Testament Christianity was alive and well in Ireland.
The issue for December 1920 lists the Elim workers of the day. In Ireland, there were twenty in total, six recognised as pastors, including George Jeffreys himself, twelve described as evangelists, and two deaconesses. In addition, there were three workers in Wales and three missionaries in the Congo. By the close of 1922 the number of workers exceeded thirty, including seven ladies. In a letter written at that time, George Jeffreys commented, "No salary is paid to any pastor or evangelist. Each one has to trust God individually."
Elim's founders knew their work was only part of the new, rapidly expanding Pentecostal movement that was sweeping across the world. God was doing something remarkable of which Elim was a small but significant part. Looking back, we can see how that tiny seed has developed to become the world-wide Pentecostal movement of today, the fastest growing section of Christianity. There are now over 550 million Spirit-filled believers across the world - almost 30% of all Christians.

CROSSING THE IRISH SEA
In the early 1920s, the decision was made to extend across the Irish Sea to England. This was a big step for the leaders of the newly formed Elim Movement. Some feared that England would provide a less favourable environment for their message. However, George Jeffreys readily accepted the new challenge.
The First World War had brought dramatic changes to life in Britain. Many of the old certainties and values had gone forever. Thousands of men had died in the trenches leaving penniless widows and fatherless children at home. Demobilised troops, many disabled in body or mind, came home, not to the 'land fit for heroes' they had been promised, but to unemployment and grinding poverty. The darkness deepened as western society moved into the period of economic chaos known as 'The Great Depression.'
The historic churches and their clergy could offer no satisfactory answers. Many of the latter were unbelieving liberals, denying the fundamentals of the faith, and were seen by ordinary people as no more than an arm of a discredited and uncaring establishment. Church-going, once an integral part of the British way of life, plummeted.
Into this vacuum stepped George Jeffreys and the Elim Movement. They proclaimed a clear message in days of confusion. Unlike the liberal clerics who paraded their unbelief before their dwindling and disillusioned congregations, they preached the Gospel with conviction. They offered a warm, vibrant style of worship that appealed to people alienated from the traditional forms of orthodox religion. They demonstrated the reality of the message they preached by praying for the sick and seeing them healed.
Ordinary men and women could see and feel that the Gospel was relevant to them and they flocked to Elim meetings in their thousands. The early years of that Elim 'invasion' of England were marked by outstanding growth and blessing, and some of the greatest evangelistic meetings Britain has ever seen. During the 1920s and 30s George Jeffreys and his Revival Party filled the largest public halls across the nation, often in the face of opposition from existing Christian bodies.
Frequently, they would arrive in a town without any advance publicity, with no known supporters there, and begin preaching to a tiny handful of the casually curious who drifted in. As miracles of healing took place and the Gospel was preached in power, word would get round and, within days, hundreds would be queuing for admission. This pattern was repeated in many towns and cities.