Oswald Chambers’ Correspondence School

How would you have liked to be a student at Oswald Chambers’ correspondence school?

Between 1910 and 1914, it was entirely plausible.

3,000 students went through the classes — and received their essays back, stamped with “Oswald Chambers.”

How did Oswald Chambers’ correspondence school work?

Every week, his sister Gertrude (who was NOT Biddy) sent out his lesson.

The students worked through it, answered the questions, or wrote essays.

They then mailed the packet back.

Sometime, somewhere, I have no idea how, Oswald Chambers read the essays, graded them, and Gertrude sent them back.

For five years.

He was a very busy man!

Who could take the course?

Apparently, anyone who filled out the membership form.

Here’s what it looked like in an advertisement from God’s Revivalist Magazine, May 5, 1910.

(Note, this date was two weeks before Chambers married Gertrude Hobbs!)

(They went on a honeymoon to the United States right afterward!)

The application, addressed to “Rev. Oswald Chambers, Cincinnati, Ohio,” asked for their name, address, and answers to four questions.

Here were the questions:

• Are you a Christian worker?
• How long have you been a Christian?
• Have you any method of Bible Study?
• What time are you prepared to devote per day to the lessons?

This particular summer, Chambers and his bride were in the United States speaking at camp meetings.

He also dictated a book to his bride in the one week they spent alone in the Catskills!

The rest of the time, Chambers was busy grading papers, speaking, and visiting God’s Bible School.

Oh, and spending time with his new wife–right?

What was in the course?

This is what it says:

The fee for each student for the session from June to September will be one dollar.

This fee entitles the student to all the correspondence classes have to give. There is no further expense, no text books, etc. to be secured.

With the first lesson will be sent a sheet of hints, a demonstration lesson, and a “specimen” study.

No one needs to fear joining us; the utmost consideration will be given to each paper. The idea of these classes is an intensely practical one, without the least element of competition.

The questions on the application form are needed to classify the students. A week will be given for studying each subject, and a free week while it is being corrected. A new study will be sent every second week.

What is a “specimen study?”

I have no idea, unless it’s a passage from the Bible — which is what Chambers usually used!

Who took the class?

I don’t know. Chambers spent five months teaching at God’s Bible School in 1906, and he found many friends in America.

He often wrote for God’s Revivalist Magazine over the years, and the publishing group published his first two books. (Biddy, of course, arranged all that).

He used this course when the couple returned to London at the end of the 1910 summer.

There, he and Biddy opened the Bible Training College in Clapham Common. It ran from January 2011 until the summer of 1915, when Chambers became a YMCA chaplain during WWI.

Many of his students — his real descendants — went on to serve in missionary and pastoral positions.

When I interviewed many of their descendants in 2018, the majority were still in Christian service.

Chambers’ only child never married or had children.

It was his students who carried on his legacy.

Thanks be to God.