“I am a servant of Christ to a foreign nation for the unspeakable glory of life everlasting which is in Jesus Christ our Lord.” – Patrick

My family name was originally O’Driscoll until it was changed a few generations ago by relatives hoping to more fully assimilate into American culture after immigrating from Ireland. Though I was raised Irish Catholic I knew virtually nothing about Saint Patrick other than the green beer, parades, shamrocks, leprechauns and drunken Red Sox fans that celebrated in his honor every March 17th.

Technically, Saint Patrick is not even a saint as he was never canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. Additionally, Patrick was not even Irish. Rather, he was an Englishman who was a Roman citizen that spoke Latin and a bit of Welsh.

Patrick was born around 390 A.D. When he was roughly 16 years of age he was captured by pirates and taken to Ireland on a ship where he was sold into slavery. He spent the next six years alone in the wilderness as a shepherd for his masters’ cattle and sheep.

Patrick was a rebellious non-Christian teenager who had come from a Christian family. His grandfather was a pastor, and his father was a deacon. However, during his extended periods of isolation without any human contact Patrick began praying and was eventually born again into a vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ. Patrick endured the years of isolation in rain and snow by praying up to 100 prayers each day and another 100 each night.

In his early 20’s God spoke to Patrick in a dream telling him to flee from his master for a ship that was waiting for him. Amazingly, Patrick made the 200 mile walk without being caught or harmed to find a ship setting sail for his home just as God had promised. The sailors were out of food for the journey, and after Patrick prayed a herd of pigs miraculously ran toward the ship providing a bountiful feast for the long voyage home.

Upon returning home, Patrick enrolled in seminary and was eventually commissioned as a pastor. Some years later God spoke to Patrick in a dream commanding him to return to Ireland to preach the gospel and plant churches for the pagans who lived there.

The Roman Catholic Church had given up on converting such “barbarians” deemed beyond hope. The Celtic peoples, of which the Irish were part, were an illiterate bunch of drunken, fighting, perverted pagans who basically had sex with anyone and worshipped anything. They were such a violent and lawless people numbering anywhere from 200,000 to 500,000 that they had no city centers or national government and were spread out among some 150 warring clans. Their enemies were terrified of them because they were known to show up for battles and get naked, drunk and partake in wild orgies before running into battle naked and drunk while screaming as if they were demon possessed. One clan was so debased that it was customary for their new kings to copulate with a white mare as part of his inauguration.

This week is unofficially “Spurgeon Is the Man” week. In tribute to arguably the greatest Bible preacher outside of Scripture. Continued from Part 1 and Part 2.

Prayer

Spurgeon prayed both spontaneously by breaking from the affairs of his day to speak with the Lord, and also during scheduled times of prayer for himself that included walks in the woods, days away at a cottage, and months away in France for Sabbath, study, and prayer. Prayer for him was so significant that he aptly said, “Prayer has become as essential to me as the heaving of my lungs.” His commitment to prayer extended to a team of hundreds of intercessors who were appointed to pray for his preaching and people’s hearts during the church service. They prayed on their faces in the church basement that was aptly titled the “war room.” Occasionally when Spurgeon prayed over the sick they were healed and many believed he had the gift of healing. He also told his preaching students that his power, authority, and insight came from continually praying the text of his sermon before preaching it. His church prayer meetings were on Monday nights and as many as 1,200 people attended to pray as the Spirit led, which did not included printed prayers or long prayers because he hated both.

In examining the role of prayer in the ministry of Spurgeon, one aspect in particular intrigued me. His biographies frequently note that he preferred to pray while walking outdoors. This led to his purchase of a larger home outside of town later in life that included a beautiful garden surrounded by enough quiet acreage to enable him to prayer walk often. His accounts of these times were that they were deeply refreshing to his soul, particularly in seasons of great stress and despair.

In emulation of his example, I began praying for God to give me a quiet place where I could regularly go to have silence, solitude, and sufficient acreage to prayer walk. God was exceedingly gracious and provided a wonderful place. It is less than an hour drive from my home and is overseen by a loving Christian couple who maintain it as a small retreat center nestled on forty manicured acres of forest buttressed up against a slough from which I can canoe onto a lake. They have given me my own small apartment there to enjoy one day a week, enabling me to prayer walk, write, and even stay the night if I so desire. Like Spurgeon, the burdens of pastoring a large church in a major city can become daunting and I find having a quiet retreat in creation to prayer walk for long hours without interruption is often nothing short of a life saver.

Joy

Spurgeon viewed pleasure as a gift from God and did not gravitate toward Gnosticism or asceticism in the practice of the spiritual disciplines. Rather, he enjoyed his freedom in Christ to its fullest. Though scandalous to many, he drank beer, wine, and brandy. Further, after a visiting pastor proclaimed the evils of smoking to Spurgeon’s church, he simply replied, “I shall go home and smoke the best cigar I have got to the glory of God.” Like Spurgeon, I have received much criticism over the years for my enjoyment of such things as alcohol consumption in moderation. I have found him to be a great encouragement to live by Scripture and conscience rather than critics and legalisms.

One of the things I have most appreciated about Spurgeon is his witty and seemingly continual sense of humor. Spurgeon was known to have a robust sense of humor that spilled out into his preaching much to the consternation of his many critics. Still, Spurgeon shared the Bible’s love of irony and sarcasm, and his great wit endeared him to people who appreciated the fullness of his emotional life. It made him a real human being from whom people enjoyed learning the Bible. Among my favorite Spurgeon quips is his statement that he loved church committees and believed the ideal committee consisted of three people, two of whom stayed home. Curiously, one of the least known books ever published by Spurgeon is actually a collection of his writings on the subject of humor, Eccentric Preachers. I greatly enjoyed reading it in conjunction with a sermon I preached about humor in preaching, as it argued for the place of humor and personality quirks in preaching.

Mercy

Spurgeon was committed to activism and social justice, going so far as to preach against slavery, which made him very unpopular in America, where his printed sermons were banned and burned. Spurgeon was also a very merciful man who opened and oversaw an orphanage for needy children. Many called the orphanage the greatest sermon he ever preached. His wife, Susannah, had a particular burden for poor pastors who could not afford books to assist their studies of Scripture. She raised money for a pastors’ book fund that gave away thousands of books to needy pastors.
What I find encouraging about the example of Charles and Susannah is their humble willingness to use their influence and resources for the service of others in need. Too often, it seems, those preachers who are so devoted to study are sadly less enthusiastic to do good works and serve those in need. I am continually convicted that he preached the gospel both in word and deed without being caught up in the kind of debate that raged in his day about the social gospel versus the propositional gospel. Spurgeon simply served the whole person with the whole gospel, which again helps to explain his success in reaching all strata of society.

In light of Susannah’s example I now give away a few thousand copies of each of my books to mainly young pastors and church planters. In addition, we give away my sermons online for free to the tune of a few million downloads a year at www.marshillchurch.org and on iTunes and YouTube. We also give away theological content at www.theresurgence.com and host free training events for pastors. Thus, we have seen thousands of pastors taught free of charge through Mars Hill and other Acts 29 churches around the nation and the world.

Evangelism

The hyper-Calvinists in his day disdained Spurgeon for his passion for lost people to meet Jesus and his continual offering of the gospel of grace to the masses, which led to the baptism of 14,692 converts during his ministry. Despite much mean-spirited opposition, Spurgeon never shied away from calling all people to repentance and used unconventional means, such as meeting in a public theater (not a church) and preaching from a stage (not a raised pulpit), in an effort to be more culturally relevant with his ministry style. Curiously, however, he forbade the use of choirs, organs, and other musical instruments in his church services.

Spurgeon has deeply impressed upon me the importance of always inviting people to repent of sin and trust in Jesus. He rightly shared God’s heart for lost people and his example reveals that one can believe in both election and evangelism, as the Apostle Paul did also. Too often those of us who are theologically reformed spend more time criticizing evangelistic methods than doing evangelism ourselves. I too consider myself something of a reformed evangelist and appreciate that Spurgeon shared a deep love for lost people that God used to save many lives.

This week is unofficially “Spurgeon Is the Man” week. In tribute to arguably the greatest Bible preacher outside of Scripture, I will post several blog posts on why he is the man. Shout outs are coming after the last post to all of those who guessed that it was Spurgeon in this post.

Dead guys often make the best mentors.

In our age of new and “improved” theological beliefs that blow like chaff through the church, it is both illuminating and inspiring to draw from the deep well of saints who have faithfully gone before us, and, as Paul said, ran their race well until they saw Jesus face to face. Perhaps my favorite dead mentor is the great English reformed Baptist Bible preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834–1892). His biographies have provided some of my most enjoyable and formative reading.

History

Spurgeon was the oldest of seventeen children, though nine died in infancy. Due to financial hardship, at the age of eighteen months he was sent to live with his grandfather, who was a strong Calvinistic preacher. At a young age he began reading his father and grandfather’s theological books and listening in on their theological conversations with other men. On one occasion, the visiting preacher Richard Knill prophesied over Charles, “This child will one day preach the gospel, and he will preach it to great multitudes.”

Free public education was not available in his day and so his father paid for a private education for Charles. By the age of ten, Charles was reading the Puritans with great delight. He likely would have attended Cambridge, but because he was a nonconformist (believing the church should not be governed by the state) who did not support the Church of England, the school was not open to him and so he never received a formal theological education. Some of his most formative theological training came not from his pastor, but rather from an elderly school cook named Mary King, who spent considerable time teaching the young Charles reformed theology.

Spurgeon began preaching shortly after his conversion to Jesus Christ at the age of sixteen. He soon became the best-known Bible preacher in the world in his day, and perhaps the best preacher in the history of the church outside of Scripture besides John Chrysostom (347–407). Spurgeon preached up to ten times a week and was heard by twenty million people from his pulpit over the course of his lifetime.

Four years after his conversion, at the age of twenty, he was appointed the pastor of London’s famous New Park Street Church, which was previously led by the distinguished reformed Baptist theologian John Gill. Spurgeon was such a magnetic draw that the previously struggling church, which had dwindled to a few hundred people, soon outgrew their building and had to move to Exeter Hall, and then to Surrey Music Hall. Spurgeon often preached to crowds of more than ten thousand without any amplification and his church became the world’s largest by the time of his death.

More Tomorrow.

An Interview with Dr. Sam Storms

In the book Signs of the Spirit by Dr. Sam Storms we see articulation of many things about Jonathan Edwards' view of the spiritual life. Edwards' Religious Affections were written in the time of Revival or what folks might call a Holy Ghost Party. The outcome from Dr. Storms book is a fresh and encouraging look at getting to really understand one of the greatest works by an American theologian. This book is in no way trying to help people police the work of the Holy Spirit. In fact the attempt is to get people understanding Edwards' thoughts on believers who love Jesus to have a heart aflame for God and life. By staying biblically grounded one can truly embrace full humanity, emotions, intellect, spiritual affections in the redeemed image of God. Please take a listen to Sam Storms thoughts.

An Interview with Dr. Alistair McGrath

The right for believers to interpret Scripture lies at the core of Protestantism. Dr. McGrath writes his latest book Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution – A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First to help the church today remember the roots and adaptability of Protestantism. With a balance of criticism and encouragement, McGrath clearly presents the development of Protestantism over the past 500 years. He concludes with great insight on the tremendous upside of Protestantism in that it continues to be close to the culture yet faithful to preaching the gospel. We are very thankful for his flexibility to do this interview over the phone with us (especially with the time difference involved!).