Messages spoken at various Camps Farthest Out by Norman Renshaw.
Norman Renshaw was born in London in 1919, the youngest of three sons of Hubert and Annie Renshaw. His Christian faith became personal when he was baptized at thirteen. He had initially refused when his minister asked him about baptism, but later went to the minister himself and explained that he had accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior and Lord.
At the baptismal service, Norman made clear that he understood what he was doing. He wanted to be finished with the old Norman James Renshaw living on his own terms. For him, baptism was not about washing away dirt but about dying to the old life and allowing Christ to take over. As he later put it, “I got tired of him. I looked for a better man. And I found a better man in Jesus.”
As he came up out of the water, he experienced an overwhelming joy that lasted for weeks. Years later, he understood it as the gift of the Holy Spirit. He came to realize that the power of God had been available to him since his baptism, although he had not yet learned to live in it.
Norman trained at the Baptist college in Bristol and was ordained by the time he was twenty-four. He also married Elsie. During the Second World War, he served as a conscientious objector, a position he found somewhat ironic because he loved nearly everything about the military except the killing.
One of the deepest wounds of his early life was the death of his middle brother at nineteen, in 1935, during an operation under anesthetic. Norman was troubled that no one in the church had prayed for his brother’s healing. He later said he believed his brother might still be alive if the church had understood the healing ministry.
He also carried years of resentment toward his eldest brother, Gordon, who was five years older. Eventually, Norman confessed his hatred to God and then went to London to tell Gordon directly. Gordon listened and acknowledged that Norman’s description was accurate before offering his forgiveness. The reconciliation began a long process of change. Norman continued to struggle with his resentment, which he connected with his hay fever, for years afterward. He later described the experience as taking ten years to lose the hay fever. Gordon eventually became a deacon in his church.
Norman’s first pastorate was in the Welsh hills, where he traveled by bicycle to visit people. About two years after his ordination, while studying the Greek New Testament in his study, he became convinced that the healing ministry belonged in the life of the church. In 1946, he presented his convictions to a gathering of Welsh ministers. Most of them dismissed the idea, expecting him to outgrow it. Norman continued anyway, even though he felt that his commitment to healing made him suspect in the eyes of some church leaders. He later said that the deepest opposition he encountered came from the church rather than from the world.
Around 1949, Norman heard an American Baptist minister named Roland J. Brown speaking in Birmingham. He initially listened with suspicion, sitting at the back with two other young ministers. Brown taught from 1 Corinthians 12–14, emphasizing the law of love and the active work of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s life. Norman stayed afterward to learn more. From that encounter, he came to see that the greatest expression of the Holy Spirit’s work was the power to love.
The first Camp Farthest Out in Britain took place in January 1954, during heavy snow. Norman credited Roland Brown’s years of missions and schools of prayer in British churches with helping prepare the way for the camp. At that gathering, Glenn Clark invited Norman to come to America. He went on to speak at American camps for thirty-five years and delivered the keynote address at CFO’s Golden Jubilee in 1980.
In 1976, Norman and Elsie made a major change in their lives. He left his church eight years before the usual retirement age so they could travel full time with Camps Farthest Out. They stepped out without a job or a regular income, trusting God to provide. His congregation gave him eighteen months’ notice, but he remained a member of the church.
Their ministry took them far beyond Britain and the United States. Norman carried the full CFO program into Germany and Switzerland and later traveled to Zimbabwe, Kenya, India, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, and Poland. Wherever he went, he encouraged people to take what they learned at camp back into their local churches. He believed that the purpose of CFO was to strengthen the life of the church, not replace it.
At the heart of Norman’s teaching was one word: Abba. He wanted people to know God not merely as a distant ruler or an abstract religious idea, but as a loving Father. Yet he was careful to explain that this intimacy could only be understood through Jesus Christ. “If you want to know what Abba is like, you look at Jesus,” he said. “If you have seen me, said Jesus, you have seen Abba.”
Norman believed many people rejected a picture of God that had little resemblance to the Father revealed in Jesus. Calling God Dad was not an invitation to treat Him casually. It was a relationship made possible through Christ. As Norman explained, “You won’t become too familiar with God if you dare to call him dad because you can only dare to call him dad in the presence of Jesus.”
This emphasis on Jesus shaped his approach to the Bible and to religion itself. Norman had little interest in religion as a system of rules or traditions. “Jesus didn’t believe in religion. He believed in life,” he said. He also insisted that Jesus Himself was greater than the book that revealed Him. A Swiss pastor once told Norman that he had given him a new God and a new Bible. Nine months later, the pastor returned to say that his congregation had discovered the same thing. Norman treasured that response because he wanted people to encounter the living Christ rather than simply adopt new religious ideas.
Prayer was another central theme of his ministry. Norman described it not primarily as an activity or a set of techniques, but as a way of living in continual communication with God. One of his most memorable definitions was that prayer meant making yourself utterly available to God.
He was equally precise about praying in Jesus’ name. He compared prayer to drawing on the resources of heaven, explaining that every request had to bear Christ’s signature. Prayer was not a way to get God to do whatever a person wanted; it was part of living in a relationship with Jesus and learning to desire what He desired.
Norman also taught about forgiveness, including the need to forgive people who were long absent from our lives even if they were no longer living. He often told the story of a young woman troubled by nightmares about a father she had never known. He used the story to illustrate how old wounds could remain unresolved until forgiveness brought freedom. He called it the dead tree that had never been cut down.
He wrote No Strings Attached, a title he enjoyed signing for readers with the words “no strings attached.” His teaching on death also left a lasting impression. Agnes Sanford once said that his lecture on death was the best she had ever heard from anyone on any subject.
Norman and Elsie made their home in Thornbury, Gloucestershire, while continuing to serve Camps Farthest Out around the world. In his later years, Norman became frail and gradually lost his sight. He died around 2008, and Elsie died at the end of 2015 at the age of ninety-eight.
Norman Renshaw spent his life helping people discover a more personal relationship with God. He wanted them to move beyond fear, resentment, and religious formality and learn to live as children of a loving Father. He often reminded people that spiritual growth had to begin with honesty: “If you never get where you really are, you’ll never begin the journey.”
*Note:
Many speakers lived before the days of the internet and many had very limited biographical information available. The information in these biographies came mostly from transcripts of their messages, and relies heavily on their own spoken words. Please contact us if you have any corrections.