I often refer to Shubal Stearns, as I did last Sunday. It is because he was an extremely important man when it came to the evangelization and the establishment of Baptist churches in the South.
Stearns was saved during the Great Awakening under George Whitefield. He was immersed by the Baptist pastor Wait Palmer in Tolland, Connecticut. At that point, he began preaching and was eventually ordained to the gospel ministry. After this he moved to Virginia, where he was joined by his brother-in-law, and brother in Christ, Daniel Marshal.
The Baptist historian Morgan Edwards has given us one of the few descriptions of this man. He wrote, “Mr. Stearns was but a little man, but a man of good natural parts and sound judgment. Of learning he had but a small share, yet was pretty well acquainted with books. His voice was musical and strong, which he manages in such a manner as… to make soft impressions on the heart, and fetch tears from the eyes in a mechanical way; and anon, to shake the very nerves and throw the animal system into tumults and perturbations.” In other words, he preached with a great deal of emotion, and his emotion moved the hearts of others.
When Stearns and Marshal received a letter from a friend in North Carolina, they moved their families and ministries further south. That little group of sixteen arrived on the banks of the Sandy Creek on this day in 1755, and they began to reach out among the settlers in what was then mostly wilderness. Amazingly, the Lord blessed, and in a year’s time there were 606 members in the Sandy Creek Baptist Church. But even more amazingly, in seventeen years the church at Sandy Creek had become the mother to 42 other churches, sending out 125 preachers.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it could be said of us that we accomplished a tenth of what Shubal Stearns and his brethren accomplished?