Jim McConnell's Autobiography 1877 - 1957

Canadian pioneer farmer in Ontario, Saskatchewan and British Columbia

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22.    

(eds. note: This entire page recounts Jim's personal spiritual journey away from the established Protestant Church to an Evangelical sect called the friends ; there is no family/Canadian historical information on this page.)

I had been brought up in the old Methodist Church and had lived now fifty-two years in the way and teaching of first the Methodist Church, and now the United Church. I had always faithfully believed in my mother and father's religion, and they had both lived and died in the Methodist way and faith. Besides this, I had read all the lives of John and Charles Wesley, and I had always admired the lives of these men who had founded the Methodist Church. But I had to admit that then I had not seen and now I did see the perfect way Jesus lived and manifested right - right here in this present day. What they preached and taught was quite easy to understand because it was just what we read in the New Testament, and we could see the same sacrifice in the lives of these men. I began to understand how the Wesleys had really improved the worldly way, but as I now saw it, they had fallen away short of following the humble and easily understood teaching of Jesus as it is in Matt. 10:1-25 and especially verses 24-25, where Jesus said the Disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his Lord. We know that Jesus had no home and no money as he went about preaching and teaching God's way and truth, and all those who followed his teaching had done as he did. They were all homeless travelling preachers.

I had always promised myself that if I knew what Jesus would ask his followers to do in our day, I would be willing to follow. Now here was the way of Jesus brought right to our own door step, for at our invitation, they had held a couple of Gospel meetings in our house.

But there was another reason and perhaps the main reason why I did not decide at first to accept and follow this way. I was too shy and backward and never one to dispute or argue my own case. To give up the important office the Church had given me and come out and become identified with these poor travelling preachers in this humble lowly way seemed at first too important a change to make.

I asked our preacher about it, and his counsel to me was: "These men are holding something back. They do not declare their name or what they are. I would have nothing to do with them, lest they take you out of a good church into some way that would be wrong and foolish for you."

The United Church Conference was coming in May, and I was appointed as a delegate to attend. I had never been to a Church Conference, and in looking forward to it, I wondered if what could be seen in this inner circle would darken or blot from my mind what I had seen of God's true way. I attended the Conference expecting to get more of a spiritual inspiration than I had ever received in our Church. There were some good speakers there who gave good sermons such as I had often heard before, and there was much talk of the general advancement of the Church in numbers and in all the different departments.

A large new church had been built in Vancouver and the Pastor told of how he had received large donations from wealthy people by explaining the great benefit of a church in raising the moral standard of the people. Then the Home and Foreign Missions were spoken of, and many statements given of sums of money collected and spent in different ways. Many accounts and statements which I cannot remember now were brought up and passed unanimously. It seemed to me that this Conference emphasized one thing more than anything else: that was the need of money and more money to carry on the many parts of the Church.

If I had not heard God's way and truth preached to me before I might have been impressed by this, but as I had had a look at man's way and God's way, immediately I knew what was the right way, for Jesus had never taught the need of money, nor had any of his followers in the Book of Acts ever spoken of the great need of money as they faithfully put into practice all that Jesus had taught them. Besides this, Paul in Timothy 1:16 said he was a pattern to all who would hereafter believe on Jesus.

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