George Canty reflects

Writer and apologist George Canty has
been a member of Elim for an amazing nine decades, joining
in 1923, when the Movement comprised just four churches
in England. Despite massive changes over the years, George
says the very same passions that shaped the Movement at its
birth still guide our churches today.
George Jeffreys’ campaigns
rocked cities. They
were not church rallies,
but thousands of nonchurch
people drawn by
the signs-attested Gospel.

one year old, the fourth
Elim church in England, met in a
fire-trap of a shabby hall above
a bicycle shop.
Called ‘Elim Hall’ – it was
locally rephrased as ‘eal ’em all’ –
Stephen Jeffreys had introduced
healing to the city in 1922. This
glory-hole was warmed by a
combustion stove and lit by onebulb
electric lights hanging on
long flexes. They would swing
in the rising warm air generated
by the packed congregation – to
us the sign of power generated
by our worship.

We knew so little and were
isolated as a ‘tongues’ cult. But
we were galvanised by tremendous
Bible assurance and pride
of proprietorship: our church,
our Elim, our Gospel.
Tom Barrett had brought
Pentecost to England, invited by
Anglican clergyman Alexander
Boddy. His Sunderland conventions,
held until 1914, sowed
the seed, and small Pentecostal
groups grew up around the
country. I had a mighty Acts 2
experience in 1926, and was
young among those 1,000 or so
first active Pentecostals – maybe
I am the only one left!
Elim’s birth was extraordinary.
With no plan to start a
Movement, George Jeffreys’
Pentecostal converts were not
welcome in churches. Pentecostal
identity rested on Spirit
baptism, attested by speaking
in tongues. George planted assemblies
to care for them, first
in Monaghan in 1915.

A little later, in 1924, men
like Nelson Parr and the Carter
brothers met in Birmingham to
gather existing groups together
in the fellowship of the Assemblies
of God. I sometimes
ministered with them and other
leaders such as Donald Gee, Albert
Missen, Willie Burton, and
James Salter. All now in glory, we
owe them so much!
My mother, just converted
and enthusiastic, press-ganged
me to play the portable Elim
organ in the city slums – Gospel
outreach, the typical first mark of
Pentecostals. Since then, I have
witnessed (and continue to be
part of) Elim’s exciting expansion;
the great campaigns, building
programmes, its Bible college
and its mission fields – including
martyrdom – growth achieved
not by sheep-stealing but as
fruits of evangelism. Today, that
same evangelism and charity
sees Elim in every continent.
We used to say ‘Elim is a
Movement, not a monument’. It
ranks today as a force nationally
and far afield.

I have found it assumed that
Elim’s beginnings were carried
on a wave of general religious
upsurge – that is not so. On
the contrary, evangelical waters
had then never run so low. The
engine of Elim was fired by the
baptism in the Spirit. Campaigns
of the Jeffreys family rocked cities.
Their audiences were not
church rallies, but thousands of
non-church people drawn by
the signs-attested Gospel.
Revival theories then saw
God’s action a three-day-a-week
operation from behind a closed
heaven to be opened only by
our strenuous spiritual effort.
They talk of showers; God talks
of floods. The first intrepid Pentecostal
venturers demonstrated
rains were falling from God’s
wide-open heavens. Christ’s
coming and the Spirit had torn
open the heavens, and they
needed no re-opening.

Pentecost is the greatest
revelation since the Reformation,
the re-discovery of the
Spirit and the Gospel for both
body and soul. Bitterly opposed,
for years, churches were driven
into back streets, mostly small
and under-staffed. But we knew
God was doing a new thing, the
prophesied end-time outpouring
of the Spirit, though then we
seemed poor representatives.
The Second World War was
an enormous second setback
to Elim. Years after hostilities
ceased, Britain lived on rations,
even for bread. Churches that
badly needed repairs could
buy few materials. I spent years
re-establishing churches, their
congregations scattered and
buildings flattened.
But we knew the Word was
true. Evidence is all around us
today. From nothing, Elim had
to begin everything; our printing
press, our Bible college, our
churches.

At my first Elim Conference
in 1937, pastors and
wives met in the minor haIl
of the Clapham church. The
Jeffreys’ campaigns planted
many churches, which had
to be pastored by campaign
converts, often very young.
In Hull, we had a series of
teenage pastors.