Surprising Details Offered About Significant Though Faulty Firestarters

Reviewed in Canada on December 6, 2023

Rev. Dr. Ed (& Janice) Hird has offered a compilation of interesting and thrilling cameo presentations that focus on the life and leadership of twenty spiritual firestarters who lived between the 16th – 21st centuries. As an Anglican renewal leader and past president of Alpha Canada, Ed demonstrates well-researched depth and breadth in his understanding and appreciation of a variety of traditions and streams, such as key Puritan, Methodist, Baptist, Christian and Missionary Alliance, Pentecostal, and Vineyard leaders. I found a number of little-known and interesting details about the life and marriages of several of these amazing leaders. Though they had their own significant faults and struggles, God’s Firestarters were faith-filled, Spirit-led and empowered leaders who helped ignite revivals and renewal movements beyond their own limitations. If you want some fuel for your own spiritual fervor, read Ed’s treatments of such people as Susanna Wesley, William and Catherine Booth, Evan Roberts, Aimee Semple McPherson, Chuck Smith, John Wimber, J. I. Packer, and more. As you learn about these folk, perhaps you will also become one of God’s Firestarters in your own context!

Roger Helland, DMin. is the prayer ambassador of The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and author of Pursuing God’s Presence, The Devout Life, and Missional Spirituality. He lives near Calgary with his wife Gail.