The Keswick Convention’s repeated transformation

Keswick has always been about transformation.

The Convention’s founder Thomas Dundas Harford-Battersby, Vicar of St John’s Keswick, was a man troubled by a lack of holiness in his own walk with God. It was while on holiday on the Cumbrian coast at Silloth that he was first introduced to a new teaching that would lead to a personal transformation by a work of God’s Holy Spirit. In just three weeks, he and his friend Robert Wilson organised their own “Holiness Convention” in June 1875 using a tent in the garden of Harford-Battersby’s Keswick vicarage (see photo of the 150th anniversary book cover*). Hundreds attended, and such was the success it was decided to hold another the following year, and so it has continued for 150 years.

Over those years, thousands of lives have been transformed. Some have returned home from the Convention changed, ready to live for and serve God in a new way in their daily lives. Countless others have heard the call to vocational full-time service either in their own country or out on the worldwide mission field. Initially it was thought that the introduction of a call to service and mission would distract from the main purpose of the Convention, however a natural reaction to the life transformations experienced at Keswick was a willingness and desire to serve. Hudson Taylor spoke at early meetings and eventually missionary giving at the Convention funded several Keswick missionaries, the first, of course, being Amy Carmichael. The archives contain many reports sent by Keswick missionaries to the Missionary Committee recording what God was doing in and through their work for him. Such was the impact of the Convention’s call for lives to be transformed, that many other Christian organisations and mission societies trace their roots back to Keswick.