by Winfield Bevins, Acts 29 planter of Church of the Outer Banks in North Carolina

It has been 500 years since the birth of the great Protestant reformer, John Calvin.  He was born July 10, 1509 in the town of Noyon in Picardy, near Paris France.  He studied law and eventually earned his doctorate in law.  In 1531, he converted from Catholicism to Protestantism.  In March 1536, Calvin published the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, which became one of the most important documents of faith for the Protestant Reformation.  

Calvin’s Ministry

Through God’s providence, Calvin ended up in Geneva, where he would become the dominant leader of the Reformation movement.  During his ministry in Geneva, Calvin preached over two thousand sermons.  On average, he preached twice on Sunday and three times during the week.  His sermons usually lasted more than an hour.  He preached without notes directly from the Hebrew or the Greek.  

 

Calvin and Church Planting

It is widely known that John Calvin was a theological giant and leader of the Reformation.  However, what is not widely known about the reformer is his influence on church planting.  From 1555 until the time of his death in 1564, he trained and sent numerous missionaries into France.  What followed was a church planting movement of epic proportions.  Only seven years after the work began, there were over 2000 Reformed churches in France!  Reformed Protestants eventually grew to over two million people in Frances alone.  

Growth was not without a great price.  Fierce persecution followed and in 1572, nearly seventy thousand Protestants lost their lives in the St. Bartholomew Massacre.  This caused a mass exodus of Protestants from France. However, their suffering was not in vain; they planted thousands of churches through Western Europe and eventually came to the United States.  

Conclusion

John Calvin left a great legacy of academic achievement, doctrinal integrity, and missionary zeal.  He also deserves to be remembered as the father of a great church planting movement that influenced the Western world for Christ.  Today, John Calvin has nearly one hundred million spiritual ancestors who are committed to his legacy of Sovereign grace.