Outsiders: 15 Leaders Who Followed Christ and Changed the World

by Paul Chappell

New Testament Christianity is a counter-cultural faith. It has always been so, and it always will be.

Most courses of theology taught only the doctrines of the Church apart from Scripture and with the study of the writings of early Church fathers. Ironically, doctors of theology thought that lecturing on the Bible was simplistic and beneath them. For Wycliffe, however, the more exposure he had to Scripture, the more he loved it. And the more he loved it, the more concerned he became that what he had been taught and was teaching was inaccurate.

“They burnt his bones to ashes and cast them into Swift, a neighboring brook running hardby. Thus this brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wycliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed the world over.”

“Though they dug up his body, burnt his bones, and drowned his ashes, yet the Word of God and the truth of his doctrine, with the fruit and success thereof, they could not burn; which yet to this day . . . doth remain.”2

Despise not the day of small beginnings. Who would have guessed that the young boy growing up on a sheep farm would reshape Europe with the gospel? Who knew that the thoughtful, quiet scholar at Oxford would give England the Bible? “For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see . . . ” (Zechariah 4:10). No person or place is too small or insignificant to be used by God. Serve Him faithfully where you are.

Keep learning and growing. It was Wycliffe’s developed skills, particularly in logic and in Latin, that allowed him to have such an impact in preaching and translating the Bible. Has God given you an aptitude or gift? Develop it, and put it to use.

Purposefully invest in others. Wycliffe could have spent his life simply preaching and pastoring, but his decision to train gospel preachers had an ...

In Isaiah 55:10–11, God tells Isaiah, who was similar to Wycliffe in that he did not see a national turning to God during his faithful ministry, that God’s Word always makes a difference. Sometimes it is like fresh rain and bears immediate results, and sometimes it is like snow and doesn’t bear results until a later season when it melts: “For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” Wycliffe sent out God’s Word, and in two hundred years, it would dramatically change Europe as the gospel spread.