The goal of the Spurgeon Library Conference is to look not to but through Spurgeon so that we might encounter the risen Christ and be encouraged and equipped in our service to Him. This year’s theme was “The Gospel Devotion and Evangelical Activism of Charles Haddon Spurgeon.” Through these lectures, we consider Spurgeon’s example and encouragement for our private devotional life AND our outward gospel activism. In other words, we want to be helped in our obedience to Paul’s words in 1 Tim. 4:16:
16 Pay close attention to your life and your teaching; persevere in these things, for in doing this you will save both yourself and your hearers.
We want to avoid what Spurgeon warns his students about in the first lecture in Lectures to My Students:
Too many preachers forget to serve God when they are out of the pulpit, their lives are negatively inconsistent. Abhor, dear brethren, the thought of being clockwork ministers who are not alive by abiding grace within, but are wound up by temporary influences; men who are only ministers for the time being, under the stress of the hour of ministering, but cease to be ministers when they descend the pulpit stairs. True ministers are always ministers. Too many preachers are like those sand-toys we buy for our children; you turn the box upside down, and the little acrobat revolves and revolves till the sand is all run down, and then he hangs motionless; so there are some who persevere in the ministrations of truth as long as there is an official necessity for their work, but after that, no pay, no [prayer]; no salary, no sermon.
Well, what an awful thing that would be for church leaders to be “clockwork ministers” and for our churches to have “clockwork ministers.” Rather, for the sake of Christ and his people, we want to be ministers who pay careful attention to our life and doctrine, who preach out of our nearness to Christ and who model a life of active obedience to Him. That’s the kind of ministry that we trust the Lord will bless. May these lectures encourage you to pursue that kind of faithfulness wherever the Lord has you serving.
Session 1: “Spurgeonic Women: Five Women Who Embodied the Evangelical Ideals of C. H. Spurgeon” with Alex DiPrima
Session 2: “Spurgeon’s Devotional Life” with Don Whitney
Session 4: “The Pastors’ College: Spurgeon’s Vanguard in the Fight for Souls” with Alex DiPrima
Session 5: “The Pastoral Burdens of C. H. Spurgeon in his Unpublished Poems” with Geoff Chang