Sometimes we need to read history so that we don’t repeat it. Other times we need to read it so that we do.
I wrote my book Gospel Patrons because I believe our generation’s greatest need is for history to be repeated. Five hundred years ago a mighty reformation shook Europe, and subsequently, the world. Two hundred and fifty years ago a powerful evangelical revival awakened millions in the colonies that would become the United States of America. Today, in the twenty-first century, I pray God will again touch down and give the masses a fresh sense that he’s real and true.
The conviction driving my book is that God works through people to change the world—and he’s not done yet. I believe our world can be different, and I believe God wants to work through us to make it different. My aim was to ask and answer two very important questions: First, How has God worked through people to change the world? And second, How do we become those kind of people?
I began to find my way toward answering these questions on a sunny November morning in Sydney, Australia…
The Story of Gospel Patronage
My wife and I stepped into an elevator filled with people dressed in blue and black suits, pushed the circular button for floor 31, and waited. When the doors opened we approached the receptionist and stated our names. A few minutes later a silver-haired businessman named Simon emerged through the double doors.
“John and Renée, lovely to meet you,” he said. “Shall we head downstairs for a cup of coffee?”
Our meeting with Simon had been arranged by a mutual friend who thought I might be interested to learn about something called Gospel Patronage. I had no idea what that term meant, so as we chatted, I asked him directly, “Simon, I was told I should ask you about Gospel Patronage. What is it?”
“My own story,” Simon said, “began several years ago as I was about to launch a new company. I realized that if the business succeeded then I stood to make a lot of money. I also knew I needed a strategy in place to be able to prosper financially without failing spiritually. So I began to look for examples in history and soon found that when God raised up preachers and missionaries to lead the great movements of the gospel, He also raised up patrons to come alongside those leaders as partners in the work.
“For example,” Simon continued, “in the 1500s an Englishman named William Tyndale wanted to translate the Bible from the original Greek and Hebrew into English. For 1,000 years the Bible had been locked in Latin, but most Englishmen couldn’t read Latin and therefore did not know the Bible. Tyndale wanted to change that. He wanted his countrymen to meet the God of the Bible, a God they had heard about but never known. The problem was Bible translation was illegal; you could be killed for it. But God intervened through a godly businessman named Humphrey Monmouth. Monmouth protected Tyndale, he provided for him, and he even used his merchant ships to smuggle the first English New Testaments throughout England. Very few people have ever heard of Monmouth, but his partnership with Tyndale changed the world.”
I was spellbound and couldn’t wait to learn more about these backstage VIPs, whom Simon called “Gospel Patrons.” Humphrey Monmouth called Tyndale off the bench and put him in the game. What drove people like that? What made them so different from the average church-goers of their day and ours? They weren’t content to be spectators; instead, they engaged. Simon’s stories painted a picture I had never seen, and as I began to dig a little deeper, I was eager to share it with others: the idea behind Gospel Patrons was born.
This article was adapted from Gospel Patrons: People whose generosity changed the world by John Rinehart.
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John Rinehart is a California-based writer and speaker. He has degrees in both business and theology, is married to Renée and has two children.
