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Learning the Art of Pastoring from C. H. Spurgeon
IN THE 19TH CENTURY, Charles Spurgeon pastored the largest evangelical church in the world, reaching a membership of over 5,000 toward the end of his ministry. Despite its size, the Metropolitan Tabernacle operated fundamentally like any historic Baptist church. They built a large meeting space so that they could all gather together weekly for worship and prayer. Spurgeon preached 45-minute sermons. The congregation sang hymns acapella. They held congregational meetings. They maintained a rigorous membership process. They practiced church discipline. By all appearances, Spurgeon’s approach to pastoral ministry was not in itself all that unique; it was only unique when considered in light of the size of his church. Of course, the church was not always as large. When he began pastoring in London, the congregation was only a few dozen people. Spurgeon was a solo pastor working alongside five deacons. The church grew rapidly under his preaching, reaching a membership of over 1,000 in just five years. Spurgeon had to adapt on the fly and adjust his approach in order to care for so many people. The structures that worked for a church of under a hundred members were no longer sufficient for this church of over a thousand. In making those adjustments, Spurgeon never changed his core pastoral convictions. Spurgeon believed in the primacy of preaching and the right administration of the ordinances. He held to regenerate church membership. He was a firm believer in congregational polity and he believed in the pastor’s responsibility to shepherd Christ’s flock. Even with such a large congregation and many more joining, Spurgeon refused to compromise his convictions about what the church or the pastor is to be. In many ways, this dynamic of holding fast to convictions while being flexible in adjusting to changing circumstances is like a dance. Just like the waltz or lindy hop has a basic framework or structure, so the pastor needs firm convictions about what the church is to be and do. Within that structure, dancers have a lot of room for creativity and adaptation. Likewise, pastors need to be flexible and creative as the needs and circumstances of their congregation change. Pastoring is not a mechanical process of following 10 steps to success or the latest formula for growth. Pastoring is an art. What did this look like for Spurgeon? How did he go about the art of pastoring?
Worship Gatherings
As an heir of the Reformed tradition, Spurgeon believed that Christ alone reigns over the church through his Word. This truth is seen supremely in the church’s worship. While Christians worship God in all of life, when it comes to the corporate gathering of the church, God has revealed how he is to be worshiped. This is what theologians call the “Regulative Principle.” Like the English Puritans before him, Spurgeon believed that the elements of a church’s worship gathering should only contain what is commanded in Scripture. This included prayer, congregational singing, Scripture reading, preaching, and the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
As a result, the services at the Metropolitan Tabernacle were marked by simplicity. While other churches of the day experimented with new forms of entertainments, instruments, styles of preaching, and liturgies from other traditions, the worship at the Tabernacle remained the same throughout Spurgeon’s ministry. In fact, it wasn’t all that different from the church’s worship under previous pastors such as John Gill or Benjamin Keach. As
one deacon stated, “The services of religion have been conducted without any peculiarity of innovation. No musical or aesthetic accompaniments have ever been used. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but they are mighty.”1
But despite its simplicity, the worship at the Tabernacle was not stale or predictable. While the elements of Spurgeon’s liturgy were fixed, he had no problems varying the order of elements, the content of prayers, the number of hymns, the length of Scripture readings, and more. As Spurgeon planned each service, he allowed the sermon text to uniquely guide the themes and emphases of each service. Speaking to his students, he advised them, “Vary the order of service as much as possible. Whatever the free Spirit moves us to do, that let us do at once.”2 Rather than letting the Regulative Principle become a straight-jacket, Spurgeon urged his students to remain sensitive to the leading of the Spirit.
In many ways, Spurgeon modeled this dynamic in his preaching. Throughout his ministry, Spurgeon was committed to preaching expositional sermons based on Scripture. “Let us be mighty in expounding the Scriptures. I am sure that no preaching will last so long, or build up a church so well, as the expository.”3 While Spurgeon did allow for topical sermons and other kinds of sermons, he believed that the main diet of a church’s preaching should be expository sermons. As a result, the vast majority of Spurgeon’s 3,563 published sermons are an exposition and application of a Scriptural text. However, Spurgeon refused to work mechanically
1 NPSP 5:350. 2 Lectures 1:68.
3 AARM 44
through books of the Bible. Instead, every week, the most difficult part of his sermon preparation was prayerfully searching for and waiting for the Spirit to lead him to the text that his people need to hear. In other words, Spurgeon believed every sermon he preached to be freshly given to him by God. The result of such a practice is 40 years’ worth of sermons that are remarkable in their originality and diversity of application, illustration, and theological insight. Spurgeon’s sermons adapted to the challenges and circumstances that his congregation faced.
Prayer Meetings
In addition to the Sunday gatherings, Spurgeon was also committed to holding weekly congregational prayer meetings. Each Monday night, thousands would turn out to pray together for the ministry of the church. Spurgeon believed that prayer was the engine that fueled the work of the church, and he taught his people to prioritize these meetings.4
Prayer meetings were not only necessary; Spurgeon also sought to make them lively. To maintain freshness, he regularly varied the themes of each meeting. By default, the church always prayed for church members, the preaching of the Word, and the salvation of the lost. Throughout the year, the church also devoted prayer meetings to the various ministries of the church—the Orphanage, the Pastors’ College, and the many evangelistic and benevolent ministries of the church. Once a month, the entire meeting was devoted to praying for missions, and the church often heard from visiting missionaries such as Hudson Taylor and Johann Oncken. At times, Spurgeon ordered the meeting around different theological themes.
All of this produced a weekly prayer meeting that was world-renowned. As famous as Spurgeon was for his preaching, those who visited the Tabernacle were often more encouraged by the prayer meeting than the Sunday services. Visitors from all over the world “carried away with them even to distant lands influences and impulses which they never wished to lose or to forget.” 5
Church Membership
As a Baptist, Spurgeon believed the church was to be distinct from the world. The church’s distinction was to be expressed not through foreign customs or isolated communes but through the practice of regenerate church membership. The church was to include those who had a credible profession of faith, giving evidence to their new birth. Baptism, then, was the entrance into membership, and the Lord’s Supper was the ongoing expression of membership in the church. Whereas many Baptists in his day watered down church membership and disconnected the ordinances from the discipline of the church, Spurgeon held these ecclesiological convictions firmly.
In his 38 years of ministry, Spurgeon brought over 14,000 people through the membership process at the Tabernacle. Each of these applicants interviewed with
4 S&T 1881:91. 5 Autobiography 4:81.
an elder and again with the pastor, were visited by a messenger from the church, and were voted on by the congregation. Every applicant who was baptized at the Tabernacle was brought into church membership. Additionally, even as visitors flooded into the church, Spurgeon “fenced” the Lord’s Table and required all participants to either be a member of the church or to interview with an elder before taking the Lord’s Supper.
At the same time, though the membership process was rigorous, it was never meant to be daunting. Preaching on church membership, Spurgeon warmly declared:
Whenever I hear of candidates being alarmed at coming before our elders, or seeing the pastor, or making confession of faith before the church, I wish I could say to them: “Dismiss your fears, beloved ones; we shall be glad to see you, and you will find your intercourse with us a pleasure rather than a trial.” So far from wishing to repel you, if you really do love the Savior, we shall be glad enough to welcome you.6
In interviewing candidates, Spurgeon examined their understanding of the gospel, but he also took into consideration their background and age. Youth joining the church had to go through the same process as everyone else, but the elders did not expect from them the maturity of an adult. Those without an education might explain the gospel in a folksy way, but Spurgeon did not require an advanced vocabulary—only a credible profession of faith. If any were unable to articulate the gospel, they were not condemned but arrangements were made to meet with a church member to study the Bible. While Spurgeon held to regenerate church membership, this conviction created opportunities for him to shepherd even in the membership process.
Pastoral Care
Beyond bringing people in, Spurgeon believed that the membership rolls should mean something. In many churches, the membership rolls had simply become a sentimental record of those who, at one time, belonged to the church. Sometimes, they contained members who had not attended in decades, had moved away to Australia, or were dead! At the Tabernacle, Spurgeon strived to make the church’s membership an accurate representation of those who were regularly partaking of the Lord’s Supper and walking in fellowship with one another.
With this conviction about church membership, it is in the area of pastoral care where Spurgeon needed to exercise the most creativity. As the church grew into the thousands, Spurgeon adjusted by teaching on the biblical office of elders and leading his church to appoint elders for the spiritual care of the church. Apart from the tireless labors of his elders, he believed that the church would have been a sham. With elders in place, Spurgeon also divided the congregation into districts and assigned elders to oversee the different districts. This division of labor allowed the elders to shepherd the congregation meaningfully and to not grow overwhelmed by the task.
Members were also given communion tickets that helped track their attendance at the Table. If any member did not attend the Lord’s Supper for three consecutive months, the church clerk would notify the elders, and they would follow up. Yet non-attendance did not mean immediate removal. Instead, the elders saw this as an opportunity for pastoral care. Often, the member’s non-attendance reflected financial, physical, or spiritual difficulties, and the leaders stepped in to care for these members. The elders strived to exercise patience and wisdom in all these
6 MTP 17:198-199.
cases. Sometimes, non-attendance was the result of serious, unrepentant sin. In such cases, church discipline would need to be pursued, a matter that once again required great wisdom and care. Today, many pastors struggle with holding to biblical convictions in their ministry. As a result, they find themselves blown about by every wind of doctrine or the latest form of pragmatism. They are like dancers who have forgotten the framework of the dance and, as a result, their movements are erratic. Other pastors have clear convictions about pastoral ministry, but within that framework, they exercise their ministry mechanically, with little creativity or dependence on the Spirit. They are like dancers who follow the basic steps of the dance but do little else beyond that.
Spurgeon reminds us that pastoral ministry is an art. Pastors must hold fast to their biblical convictions while demonstrating flexibility, patience, and creativity as they seek to implement those convictions amid their unique congregations. What that means is that Spurgeon’s example does not give us a blueprint for how we are to pastor. We are not him, and our churches are not the Metropolitan Tabernacle. Even as we’re challenged and helped by his example, our task is to know our people, to depend on God in prayer, and to turn again and again to his Word. Only then will we be able “to shepherd the flock of God that is among you” (1 Pet. 5:2).
DR. GEOFF CHANG | Curator, Spurgeon Library, Assistant Professor of Historical Theology.
