Scottish Baptist evangelist and educator Oswald Chambers (24 July 1874 – 15 November 1917) was associated with the Holiness Movement in the early 1900s. His daily devotional, My Utmost for His Highest, is his most well-known work.
Oswald Chambers
Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, to pious parents, Oswald Chambers and his family relocated to Stoke-on-Trent in 1876 when his father, Clarence Chambers, joined the North Staffordshire Baptist Association as a Home Missions evangelist. Later, when his father returned to the pastorate, they moved to Perth, Scotland, and finally to London in 1889 when Clarence was named Traveling Secretary of the Baptist Total Abstinence Association. Oswald Chambers joined Rye Lane Baptist Chapel and was baptized at the age of sixteen. Chambers was well-known for his intense spirituality even as a youth, and he helped evangelize the underprivileged residents of nearby lodging establishments. Chambers also displayed artistic and musical talent.
Oswald Chambers attended the National Art Training School, which is now the Royal College of Art, from 1893 to 1895. He was given the opportunity to pursue further education on a scholarship, but he turned it down. He studied painting for the next two years at the University of Edinburgh, where he was significantly impacted by the sermons of Free St. George’s Church pastor Alexander Whyte. He left for Dunoon College, a tiny theological training institution established by the Rev. Duncan MacGregor near Glasgow, after feeling called to ministry while he was still in Edinburgh. After MacGregor was hurt in 1898, Chambers quickly became the school’s instructor and assumed most of the administrative responsibilities.
Oswald Chambers Theology
Richard Reader Harris, KC, a well-known barrister and the founder of the Pentecostal League of Prayer, had an impact on Oswald Chambers while he was a teacher at Dunoon. Reader referred to Chambers in 1905 as “a new speaker of exceptional power.” Additionally, Chambers met a Japanese Holiness preacher named Juji Nakada through the League, who stoked Chambers’ developing interest in global evangelism. Nakada and Chambers set sail for Japan through the United States in 1906. After teaching for a semester at God’s Bible School, a Holiness institution in Cincinnati, in 1907, Chambers worked with Charles Cowman, a co-founder of the Oriental Missionary Society, for a few months in Japan.
By the end of the year, Oswald Chambers returned to Britain to find the Holiness movement split between proponents and opponents of starting a new denomination and between those who supported and opposed the languages movement. Chambers chastised individuals who used glossolalia as a test of the Holy Spirit’s baptism, but he did not condemn it.
In 1908, while sailing back to the United States, Oswald Chambers got to know Gertrude Hobbs, a friend’s daughter whom he had known in passing. After getting married in May 1910, Gertrude (whom Chambers lovingly referred to as “Biddy”) gave birth to their only child, Kathleen, on May 24, 1913.
Prior to their marriage, Chambers had contemplated a ministry collaboration wherein Biddy, capable of typing 250 words per minute in shorthand, would type and copy his sermons and lessons.
Christian Discipleship
The Pentecostal League of Prayer bought a “embarrassingly elegant” building in Clapham Common, Greater London, where Oswald Chambers built and served as principal of the Bible Training College in 1911. Chambers took in pupils of all ages, backgrounds, and social classes as well as those in need because he felt he should “give to everyone who asks.” “No one was ever turned away from the door and whatever the person asked for, whether money, a winter overcoat, or a meal, was given.” By July 1915, forty of the 106 resident students who had attended the Bible Training College between 1911 and 1915 were working as missionaries.
YMCA Chaplain
Oswald Chambers was accepted as a YMCA chaplain and suspended the school’s operations in 1915, one year after World War I broke out. He served with Australian and New Zealand soldiers who subsequently took part in the Battle of Gallipoli while stationed at Zeitoun, Cairo, Egypt. Chambers elevated the spiritual tone of a facility that the military and the YMCA had envisioned as merely a social service organization offering healthy substitutes for Cairo’s brothels. A group of other YMCA employees foresaw the departure of soldiers from his facilities when he informed them that he had chosen to substitute Bible courses for concerts and movies.
“What the skeptics had not considered was Chamber’s unusual personal appeal, his gift in speaking, and his genuine concern for the men.” Soon, hundreds of troops crowded inside his wooden-framed “hut” to listen intently to sermons like “What Is the Good of Prayer?” “I can’t stand religious people,” a soldier said, to which Chambers retorted, “Neither can I.” In order to avoid raising expectations elsewhere, Oswald Chambers annoyed his YMCA superiors by giving away refreshments that the organization felt should be marketed. Although Chambers put up a donation box, he wouldn’t ask soldiers to cover the cost of tea and cakes.
Death and Influence
On October 17, 1917, Oswald Chambers developed appendicitis, but he refused to go to the hospital because he believed that those injured in the long-awaited Third Battle of Gaza would require the beds. A surgeon conducted an emergency appendectomy on October 29. However, Chambers passed away from a lung hemorrhage on November 15, 1917. In Cairo, he was laid to rest with full military honors.
The Complete Works of Oswald Chambers
Chambers had edited the text of his first book, Baffled to Fight Better, which he had titled after a favorite Robert Browning quote, prior to his passing. Chambers’ widow spent the rest of her life, first in extremely difficult circumstances, transcribing and publishing books and articles that were edited from the shorthand notes she had written while attending Zeitoun and Bible College. The most popular of the thirty booklets was My Utmost for His Highest (1924), a daily devotional consisting of 365 500-word excerpts from Chamber’s speeches. The book has been translated into 39 languages and has never been out of print.
Awards and Recognition
Established by the YMCA of Hong Kong, Chambers House is one of the four academic student houses of the YMCA of Hong Kong Christian College. It was specifically named in Chambers’ honor; other houses are named for YMCA founder George Williams, J. Hudson Taylor, and Robert Morrison.
