House System

Amy Wilson Carmichael (1867 – 1951) was born in the small village of Millisle in Northern Ireland but found her life’s passion as a missionary in India where she initially opened an orphanage and later founded the Dohnavur Fellowship. The Fellowship, located in Tamil Nadu, just thirty miles from the southern tip of India is a society devoted to saving neglected and ill-treated children. Amy served in India for 56 years without taking a furlough. She never married but was called ‘Ammai’ (mother) by hundreds of unwanted children she helped to save. She was also a prolific writer, publishing nearly 40 books and many poems.

John Charles Chapman (1930 – 2012) was a leading Australian evangelist for more than 50 years, best known for his relentless passion for spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. Beginning his ministry as a school teacher, John later pursued theological training and spent over 25 years as Director of the Anglican Department of Evangelism in Sydney. Affectionately known as ‘Chappo’, his wide preaching, teaching and writing ministry saw him speaking to groups throughout the Sydney diocese, in Australia and overseas, particularly in London, where he was a regular visitor. He spoke and preached at Oxford and Cambridge Universities; played a major role in Billy Graham crusades and, in later years, he passed on his wisdom on evangelism and preaching to generations of ministry trainees and college students.

John Newton (1725 – 1807) was the son of a commander of an English merchant navy ship who himself became a ship’s captain. He had a very hard childhood after his mother died when he was just seven years old and his adolescence was characterised by personal bad choices and abuse by others. He was heavily involved in the slave trade when his ship sailed through a terrible storm and, thinking the ship would sink, he called out to God for deliverance. This experience began his conversion to evangelical Christianity. He left the merchant navy in 1754, after he recognised the inhumanity of the slave industry, and studied theology before becoming an Anglican minister in 1764. He wrote many beautiful hymns, the best known being ‘Amazing Grace’. At age 82, Newton said, "My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things, that I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Saviour."

John Wycliffe (1320 – 1384) was an English Scholastic philosopher, theologian, lay preacher, translator, reformer and university teacher at Oxford in England. He became increasingly disillusioned with the practices of the Roman Catholic Church and increasingly convinced that the Scriptures were the authoritative centre of Christianity. As a result, he argued strongly for a translation of the Bible into the common (English) language. Although he and his followers (called the Lollards) faced great opposition from the established church at that time, he completed his translation (now known as the Wycliffe Bible) directly from the Vulgate (the 4^th Century Latin translation) in 1382. Today, the world-wide organisation, Wycliffe Bible Translators, whose vision is for communicating the Gospel in the languages people understand best, still bears his name.