Stanley Howard Frodsham was a British pastor, editor, author and teacher and one of the founding figures of the Pentecostal movement in Europe. He was the editor of the Pentecostal Evangel and the author of 15 books.
Life and Ministry
Frodsham was born in 1882 in Bournemouth, England in a Christian home. As a young man he read a history of Hudson Taylor which he found inspirational. He later attended a YMCA in London, where he described a conversion experience. He then travelled to Johannesburg, South Africa where he worked for YMCA for a year in a secretarial role - a work that had just been established there. After this he travelled to Canada in 1906. On his return from Canada in 1908 Frodsham visited Alexander Boddy in his church in Sunderland, where a series of Pentecostal meetings had been taking place. Frodsham describes receiving the baptism in the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues. He returned to Bournemouth where he hosted the British-Norwegian Pentecostal pioneer, T. P. Barratt in 1909. Frodsham began publishing a Pentecostal paper, "Victory," that same year. He became a pastor for the Assemblies of God in 1916, and was elected General Secretary within five years. By 1921 he would also be elected as editor of the Pentecostal Evangel, and all other publications of the Assemblies of God. In 1910, Frodsham returned to Canada where he met and married Alice Rowlands. In 1928, Frodsham wrote a history of the Pentecostal movement to date, called "With Signs Following". In all he wrote 15 books throughout his ministry. In the 1940s Frodsham became involved in the offshoot Latter Rain Movement which led to controversies among Pentecostals of the period and eventually led to Frodsham's retirement. A resolution of the Assemblies of God was adopted reinforcing their official disapproval for the movement and a statement to that effect was published in The Pentecostal Evangel after Frodsham's retirement. Owing to his writing and editing, Frodsham was affectionately known as "God's prophet with a pen".
