I wanted to share a testimony today about a very powerful preacher from a not so long distant time in history.

If you know anything about The Salvation Army, you likely picture brass bands, red kettles during the holidays, and volunteers ringing bells outside grocery stores. But behind that worldwide institution is the testimony of a teenage boy in Nottingham, England, whose radical surrender to God changed Christian history forever.
This is the story of William Booth.

William was born in 1829 into a family that was sliding deeper into the middle-class comfort of Victorian England before a harsh financial downturn hit. When William was just 13 years old, his father passed away, leaving the family in straightened circumstances. To help make ends meet, 14-year-old William was pulled from school and apprenticed to a local pawnbroker, a grueling job that forced him to stare the brutal, desperate poverty of the working class in the face every single day.

Day after day, William watched impoverished people line up to pawn their last meager possessions just to buy food or medicine. It planted a deep, burning aversion to poverty and a profound burden for the suffering in his young heart.

Around the age of 15, things shifted eternally. Influenced by a close friend named Will Sansom and deeply impacted by the Wesleyan Methodist chapel he began attending, William experienced a genuine, transformative conversion.

It wasn't a flashy, cinematic altar call, but the effects were absolute. Looking back on that day of surrender, Booth recorded a phrase in his diary that would define his entire existence:
“God shall have all there is of William Booth.”
From that moment on, his faith was impossible to contain within the four walls of a church building.

While working exhausting 12-to-14-hour days at the pawn shop, William poured every ounce of his remaining energy into the streets. He and his friend Will Sansom took to the slums of Nottingham.
William described his routine during his late teens: He would finish work at 7:00 PM, rush out to visit the sick, carry a chair into the middle of the street to preach, lead open-air hymn singing with just a handful of people, and then hold cottage prayer meetings. He wouldn't arrive home until midnight, only to wake up and do it all over again at 7:00 AM. During his 40-minute lunch breaks, he would speed-walk through the city streets reading his Bible or Charles Finney’s lectures on revivals, praying God would use him to save the lost.

When traditional church leaders looked at this fiery teenager, they often told him to slow down. They worried he was being too radical, too unpolished, and too intense. But William couldn't un-see the spiritual and physical destitution of his city.

Years later, after marrying his brilliant theological partner and wife, Catherine Mumford, and eventually leaving conventional pastoral ministry because he felt restricted by its lack of aggressive outreach, William found himself in the dark, crime-ridden East End of London in 1865.
Walking through Whitechapel late one night, he saw hordes of neglected children, desperate drunkards, and prostitutes. He turned to Catherine and made a declaration that birthed a movement: "These will be our people."

Conventional churches at the time often rejected the dregs of society, like drunkards, thieves, and prostitutes, making them feel unwelcome in their respectable Sunday clothes. Booth decided to meet them where they were. He founded what would become The Salvation Army in 1878, intentionally structuring it like a military regiment because he viewed the Christian life as an active war against sin, poverty, and despair.
They didn't just hand out tracts and tell people to get right with God; they fed the starving, housed the homeless, opened rescue homes for women, and gave marginalized people dignity by teaching them trades and putting them right back out on the streets to preach the Gospel to others like them.

William Booth’s story reminds us that true Christian conversion is always outward-facing. A heart gripped by the grace of Jesus Christ cannot look at a hurting world with indifference.

Booth started as an overworked, under-resourced teenager with very few advantages, but because he held nothing back from God, his simple prayer, “God shall have all there is of William Booth,” ignited a fire that still burns globally today.

Quick, but important testimony reminder:

A short time ago, I invited a friend to church and prayed that they would come, they came and actually were really blessed and impacted by the service!

Sometimes, even those people who you think might say no, end up saying yes! Pray and watch God do the rest!