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My story: from Welsh mining village to worldwide ministry

Life's answers?

MY STORY
From Welsh mining village to worldwide ministry
By Selwyn Hughes
CWR. 384 pages. £ 9.99
ISBN 1 85345 296 3

Autobiography is always a dangerous genre. 'Let another praise you, and not your own mouth', says Proverbs 27.2. So, I am sure without intending it, there are some passages of this book which come across like an unfortunate list of achievements.

However, having said that, Selwyn Hughes has quite a story to tell, and why shouldn't he tell it! Without doubt, he has had a major impact on broad evangelicalism over the last 40 years. This has come about chiefly through his Crusade for World Revival Organisation and his Every Day With Jesus Bible notes.
Born into a Welsh mining village in 1928, among a family which had been touched by the 1904/05 revival, Selwyn came from a Pentecostal background, and his original emphasis was on the need for Bible-centred classic revival with conviction of sin in the power of the Holy Spirit. Having gone to Bible college in Bristol, he entered the ministry in the Assemblies of God churches and moved through four pastorates fairly quickly in Helston, Wales, Yorkshire and Colchester. The story then leads on to outreach in London during the 'swinging' 1960s, until opportunities opened up for a wider evangelistic ministry and conference speaking on Caring and Christian counselling , the purchase and use of Waverley Abbey House, near Farnham, which has become the HQ for CWR, and finally his family tragedies and personal battle with cancer.

There is much over which to rejoice in the book. With a great gift as a communicator and entrepreneur, Selwyn explains his own early ministerial temptation to be more interested in the text of Scripture than in the Lord himself. How many preachers need to hear that warning? He is very clear on the reality of hell and the need for salvation. He has a great emphasis on reading Scripture and takes a clearly conservative line on many central issues of the faith. Also at times there are very perceptive comments which break through. How about this one, 'Relationships do not so much cause problems as expose them'? There is also a refreshing readiness to confess to mistakes made and personal faults.

However, we are not left with a real understanding of the man and the book leaves a lot of questions dangling. He has been involved with some characters who he himself labels 'controversial' and over whom he now confesses that he has doubts. Yet there is no real explanation of how he views all this now. Similarly, he speaks of an occasion in his early ministry when he felt himself to have been supernaturally healed, and taking part in healing crusades. Yet when it came to his own wife's illness and his own more recent medical problems, there is little or no reference to divine healing.

I myself followed a year's counselling course with CWR at Waverley Abbey years ago and found much that was helpful and stimulating. I suppose the question that many of us have is that his organisation is called Crusade for World Revival, and sadly we have not seen a true revival in this country. That is not Selwyn Hughes's fault. But what we have seen in the last 40 years is the rise in our society of a rather self-centred therapy culture and Selwyn has become perhaps the most well-known exponent of Christian counselling in Britain. Is that where an organisation founded on the desire for revival was meant to end up? Selwyn Hughes has helped and continues to help many people live as dedicated disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ and for this, under God, he must be thanked.

Perhaps it will only be in a thorough and more objective biography rather than an autobiography that the more difficult questions will find an answer.

JEB
John Benton