Samuel Chadwick

As the young pastor of a self-satisfied English congregation in the 1880s, Samuel Chadwick was so frustrated over his lack of power in the pulpit that he collected his sermons in a pile and set fire to them. The result was immediate: the Holy Spirit fell on him. The new vitality in his preaching was evident in his very next sermon, at which seven people came to Christ. Within a few years his reputation had grown to the point that the chapel was full a half-hour before the service, and police had to be called to control the crowds. In his final years as principal of a training school for preachers, he wrote his most well-known book, The Way to Pentecost, which was being printed when he died in 1932.