Many pastors have longed for a taste of Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s (1834–1892) preaching gifts and ministry success; very few have desired the pronounced suffering that accompanied them. Spurgeon’s preaching drew thousands and won droves of converts; his popularity also led to services at the Surrey Music Hall and the disaster there that broke his emotional health.1 Evangelicals tout the great preacher’s convictions about Scripture as exemplary; in his own lifetime those convictions led to widespread censure from former students and allies.2 Spurgeon’s recorded sermons show him a master of preaching to distressed and buffeted souls; he could not have preached these sermons without being distressed and buffeted himself.3 Many admire someone faithfully ministering through so much sorrow and adversity, but few wish these trials for themselves.

However, suffering and ministry were a package deal for Spurgeon: they were bound together in the nature of gospel ministry. A variety of works have examined the ways Spurgeon’s sufferings shaped his life and ministry;4 in this article I argue that ministry and suffering were theologically connected in Spurgeon’s vision for pastoral ministry. Spurgeon argued that suffering is necessary for faithful ministry for a variety of reasons but especially because of the distinctive relationship that pastors have with Christ—they were his conduits of the grace of God to others. Suffering is also necessary for ministers because of its benefits: it makes pastors experience the truths they preach to their people, keeps them humble, and gives them the sympathy necessary for their labors. After reviewing the relevant literature on Spurgeon’s sufferings and ministry, I demonstrate this vision for ministry in Spurgeon’s thinking, looking especially at his addresses to other ministers at his yearly pastor’s conference and several passages from Lectures to My Students. In conclusion, I argue that while Spurgeon’s understanding of ministerial suffering was influenced by contemporaries, it had distinctive elements and should inform the way his life and ministry are understood. I also suggest an avenue for contemporary application—that pastors today interpret their peculiar trials in light of their peculiar pastoral identity.

1. Suffering and Ministry in Spurgeon Scholarship

Scholars have frequently examined Spurgeon’s physical, mental, and spiritual sufferings.5 Spurgeon underwent great physical sufferings from gout and other ailments, often so significant as to take him out of preaching and ministry for weeks at a time beginning in 1867. These episodes became increasingly acute in 1879 until his death in 1892.6 Spurgeon’s mental sufferings were also deeply impactful on him, especially his lifelong battle with depression, insomnia, and violent mood swings that came subsequent to the Surrey Music Hall disaster.7 Scholars also recognize what appears to be a distinction in Spurgeon’s recollections between his mental and more specifically spiritual sufferings.8 Aside from mental struggles—“is any man altogether sane?”—Spurgeon described a spiritual darkness coming over his soul, seeming to be related to despair over his salvation.9

Scholars have also addressed the relationship between Spurgeon’s suffering and his theology. Peter J. Morden goes as far as to say that “the reality of suffering loomed large over his ministry,” suggesting that Spurgeon’s experience of suffering was a decisive factor in shaping his ministry and preaching.10 Morden also describes the rich reflections Spurgeon made on suffering, showing that he believed suffering (1) to be under the good, sovereign care of God; (2) to bring believers into fellowship with Christ; and (3) to promote believers’ greater usefulness towards others both in their witness to non-Christians and in their sympathy toward fellow suffering believers.11 Nettles highlights similar themes, noting that Spurgeon articulated a clear theology of God’s goodness and purposes in suffering at the beginning of his ministry and kept it in spite of his grievous sufferings over the years.12 A recent dissertation has thoroughly examined Spurgeon’s battle with depression, his theological interpretation of it, and the variety of ways he sought to alleviate it.13

Spurgeon’s preaching and theological convictions remain central features of Spurgeon scholarship.14 Recently, Geoff Chang has argued that what is often missed in these rich reflections on Spurgeon the preacher is Spurgeon the pastor: Spurgeon was not only a communicator, but arguably more the leader of a local congregation, and this feature of his life deserves close examination.15 Chang exposits Spurgeon’s practical ecclesiology and how he led his local church by convictions and wisdom as evidence of his view of ministry. However, he does not engage many of Spurgeon’s stated views on the nature of ministry, pastoral identity, or the connections Spurgeon makes between peculiar sufferings and the pastoral office.

So, while there are many reflections on the relationship between Spurgeon’s sufferings and his ministry, these do not take into account his explicit statements about pastoral identity and how that identity served to connect suffering and pastoral ministry. This article demonstrates that Spurgeon embraced and exhorted other pastors toward an “all-out ministry.” He viewed faithful pastoral ministry as entailing a labor that strained mere mortals and was attended by suffering. Among other reasons, pastors must suffer because they serve as conduits of the grace of God in Christ and must embody the gospel they preach. These necessary sufferings, far from diminishing a minister’s effectiveness, prove positively beneficial for his effectiveness.

2. An All-Out Ministry

In his exhortations to other ministers, Spurgeon envisioned pastoral ministry as necessarily straining, insisting that pastors serve the Lord Jesus with all their zeal and might and implying that a genuine minister would be consumed by ministry. Many times he said things like, “Jesus is worth being served with our best, yea with our all, and that in an intense and all-consuming manner.”16 Spurgeon also routinely called pastors to “display the utmost industry and zeal,” to consecrate their lives as sacrifices to the Lord, to use their gifts solely for ministry and no other purpose, and “to give your second-best never.”17 While many could affirm these sorts of statements as commendable pastoral piety, the way Spurgeon applied words like “intense” and “all-consuming” to pastor’s lives was startling. For example, Spurgeon came close to encouraging an early death by overwork for ministers: “If by excessive labor we die before reaching the average age of man, worn out in the Master’s service, then, glory be to God. We shall have so much less of earth and so much more of heaven.”18 Elsewhere he added that true ministers will have the marks of stern labor on them, that some pastors will inevitably die from overwork, and that pastors who are not doing absolutely everything they could are slothful.19 At his most intense, Spurgeon insisted that ease in ministry is evidence of a false ministry, one which will be hard to account for at the judgement seat of Christ: “the man who finds the ministry an easy life will also find that it will bring a hard death.”20 Strain was so essential to ministry that its lack revealed a false ministry.

Spurgeon lived what he taught, preaching over 10,000 times in his life, sometimes preaching while so sick that he had to be carried from the pulpit.21 Though overwhelmed by the growing demands of his various ministries, he never seemed to seek relief from his responsibilities.22 More striking than these actions were Spurgeon’s remarks on his view of overwork. In an evening sermon toward the end of his life he recalled how, in the first years of his ministry, friends discouraged him from preaching ten times a week out of fear of him ruining his constitution. His response, after years of these preaching habits and their resulting effects on his health, is telling: “If I have done so [broken down his constitution], I am glad of it. I would do the same again. If I had fifty constitutions I would rejoice to break them down in the service of the Lord Jesus Christ.”23 Genuine service to the Lord Jesus in gospel ministry disregards natural concerns about health, if health must be sacrificed to fulfill one’s service to the Lord. While there were some mediating comments in Spurgeon’s works on this front—especially his commendation of strategic rest in Lectures to My Students—his strongest and most frequent exhortation was for ministers to give themselves to demands of gospel ministry at any cost.24 This feature of Spurgeon’s pastoral theology is summarized well by his comment that ministers ought not to be “specimens … of fine preservation, but living sacrifices.”25 The conclusion to this article explores how this feature of Spurgeon’s pastoral theology was contextually influenced and is not wholesale commendable to modern pastors.

Spurgeon’s practice also significantly moderated his comments about strain in the ministry. For example, beginning in 1871, Spurgeon took yearly trips to Menton, France, for convalescence and recovery, with trips varying in length, usually around two months.26 He and Susannah also moved to “Westwood” in 1881, a house purchased specifically to alleviate some of Spurgeon’s ailments and give him rest through the purported better weather there.27 Both of these pursuits were necessitated by Spurgeon’s deteriorating health. They do, however, reveal that Spurgeon sought relief from suffering and practiced his remarks about rest for the sake of long-term usefulness. These practices also imply that his remarks about labor in ministry were more related to his vision for pastoral identity than a universal prescription for pastoral practice.

One reason Spurgeon insisted on the consuming nature of ministry was because of its practical and spiritual demands. First, personal spiritual care for God’s people wears the pastor down, who is “most irregular as to his rest; the only thing regular about him is labor and disappointment, and yet faith makes him a happy man.”28 While irregular rest is not commendable as a model for ministry, many pastors have found seasons where this is necessary to care for God’s people. According to Spurgeon, this wear on the pastor is evidence of him faithfully meeting the needs of his flock—the shepherd at ease is content to let a few sheep die!29 Again, Spurgeon lived what he preached, particularly in his commitment to personally oversee the large membership of Metropolitan Tabernacle—once doing forty membership interviews in a single day.30

A second reason for pastoral strain was the fact that pastors were responsible to care for those who, though saints, were still sinners. “I think I have heard that sheep have as many diseases as there are days in the year but I am sure that the other sort of sheep are liable to ten times as many,” Spurgeon remarked; thus, “A pastor’s work is an anxious one. All sorts of difficulties occur with our fellow servants.”31 Faithful pastors attempt to cure the various spiritual ills their people struggle through and deal with dissension and opposition because of sin in the church. Pastors may also be subjected to a “crushing stroke” in the form of betrayal by a trusted leader or grievous sin by a member.32 Though Spurgeon himself did not experience a significant amount of opposition from his people, he expressed deep awareness of the difficulties of fellow Baptist ministers with their churches.33

The greatest strain of ministry, however, is the task of regularly dealing with the realities of salvation. The weight of these realities subject the faithful pastor to mental and spiritual trials:

Our work, when earnestly undertaken, lays us open to attacks in the direction of depression. Who can bear the weight of souls without sometimes sinking to the dust? Passionate longings after men’s conversion, if not fully satisfied (and when are they?) consume the soul with anxiety and disappointment. To see the hopeful turn aside, the godly grow cold, professors abusing their privileges, and sinners waxing more bold in sin—are not these sights enough to crush us to the earth? … all mental work tends to weary and to depress, for much study is a weariness of the flesh; but ours is more than mental work—it is heart work, the labour of our inmost soul.34

Pastoral work is heart work. It is the labor of one’s soul—ministers burn through their own spiritual strength for others and are left weak. Moreover, they have passionate longings for success in their evangelistic labors, and their souls become depressed when they see the variety of ills that Christians fall into. Finally, and perhaps most related to Spurgeon’s own experience, faithful pastors “bear the weight of souls,” the immense realities of the eternal fate of men and women weigh on ministers who would seek their good. Spurgeon’s own crushing anxiety and even physical sickness before preaching in the first years of his ministry demonstrate how his own sense of responsibility in preaching weighed on him.35 All of this being said, Spurgeon’s view of pastoral work alone explains why he argued that faithful ministry must be attended by suffering.

But Spurgeon also articulated the nature of pastoral ministry in a way that connected it to suffering. Spurgeon viewed pastors as conduits of the power and grace of God to others. While a great honor, being a conduit of God’s power was attended with suffering, or as Spurgeon often put it, being strained by the weight of the power of God.36 One time Spurgeon warned pastors that the flame of zeal and the Spirit’s power would consume them:

Can the Spirit of God, even the Infinite deity, ride in such frail chariots as these, without straining the axle, and making the whole machine to quiver, as if it would be utterly dissolved beneath its burden? When God visits us with soul-saving power, it is as though devouring flame came forth from heaven, and made its abode in bosoms and where this is the case, there well may be a melting away of all strength. Yet let it be so: we humbly invite the sacred burnings.37

It is not only failure to win converts that would strain and consume pastors, the consequences of spiritual success and power would strain them! A pastor preaching and ministering savingly has God’s Spirit working in and through him to give spiritual life to others. Particularly, there are seasons where “God visits us with soul-saving power,” a special unction of the Spirit, and when this happens, the “infinite God” is riding in the “frail chariot” of the minister. This of course “strains” the “axle,” that is, the minister’s body and soul—the weight of God’s special, soul saving presence is too great a weight for a mortal to bear without cost. While this should not be understood in a sacramental or priestly sort of sense, Spurgeon saw the strain of ministry on a pastor’s life as a result of God visiting and working through them to give life to others.38

This instrumental nature of ministry undergirds pastoral suffering throughout Spurgeon’s encouragements to pastors. In one address, Spurgeon exhorted ministers to embody the truths they preach. If they do, “life will go out of us to others.”39 Asserting that God uses a quickened man to quicken others, he went on to say, “may the living waters flow into us, and then flow from us till thousands shall receive a blessing, and communicate it to others.”40 Ministers must be filled with zeal for the Lord and genuine spiritual life because the essence of ministry is to have divine life and power flow from them to others. A vibrant analogy from John 2:7–10 fleshes out this idea: “Through suffering comes blessing. When our Lord means to give his household wine, that our festivals may be full of gladness, what does he do? He says ‘fill the waterpots with water.’ We must be filled with affliction to the brim.”41 He went on to say that once ministers are filled with suffering, the Lord would say, “draw out the water,” and the minister’s suffering (the water) would be turned into spiritual life and joy for the people of God (the wine).42 He then rejoiced that this, the first of miracles, not only occurred at Cana but occurred still in Great Britain in the gospel ministry of the suffering pastors around him.43 Once again ministers are pictured as conduits of blessing to God’s people; their suffering was necessary because of the instrumental nature of their ministry. This instrumental view of ministry is uncommon today; those suspicious that it is unbiblical or necessarily sacramental should examine Paul’s descriptions of ministry, which, while not as explicit as Spurgeon’s, contain parallel implications.44

Spurgeon was, however, careful to distinguish between Christ’s once-for-all sufferings and a pastor’s necessary sufferings in ministry, particularly in his appropriation of Colossians 1:24 to pastoral ministry:

Further than this, your relation to Christ is of such a sort that you are to “fill up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ for his body’s sake, which is the church.” His atoning griefs are finished; into that wine press, none of us can set a foot. But those sufferings by which men are won to Christ are far from being finished…. Every sufferer who bears pain, or slander, or loss, or personal unkindness for Christ’s sake, is filling up that amount of suffering which is necessary to the bringing together of the whole body of Christ, and the upbuilding of his elect church.45

While careful to distinguish the once-for-all atoning sufferings of Christ from any suffering a pastor might bear, Spurgeon took this text to mean that there were necessary sufferings for the “bringing together of the whole body” and “the upbuilding of his elect church.” Particularly, it was pastors who stood in the special “relationship” to Christ such that they were the ones who must fill up these necessary sufferings. From a different biblical text, Spurgeon argued that pastors “stand in his [Christ’s] stead.”46 Pastors are like Christ in a peculiar way, especially in their ministries, which results in their necessary sufferings. Pastors thus appear in Spurgeon’s view not only as instrumental, but also as incarnational, embodying the reality of Christ’s sufferings in their ministries.

Another way that Spurgeon connected a pastor’s relation to Christ to suffering was by describing ministry as service. In an address to ministers describing ministry as stewardship, Spurgeon said, “Ministers are servants: they are not guests, but waiters; not landlords, but labourers.”47 He went on to compare a servant to the under-rower of a galley, who would be in the worst and most laborious position, applying it in this way:

Brethren, let us be content to wear out our lives even in the worst position, if by our labour we can speed the passage of our great Caesar…. We are not captains, nor owners of the galley, but only the oarsmen of Christ…. As we are, by office, servants in a special sense, let us cheerfully bear the chief part of the self-denial and travail of the saints.48

The pastoral office is service “in a special sense”; pastors must serve and bear difficulties in ways parallel to but distinct from other Christians. While Spurgeon is primarily preaching against a pastorate where pastors were “Lords” who domineered over their flocks, he also used this image to insist on ministerial sacrifice. Servants are not only humble; they are consumed with their work and willing to take on the worst and most difficult labor for their master. This sense of service was central to Spurgeon’s picture of the pastor.

So far, we’ve seen that Spurgeon insisted on strain from ministerial labor to the point that faithful pastoral ministry entailed suffering. The very nature of faithful care for God’s people and preaching entailed practical sufferings; moreover, pastors must be filled with fire from Heaven that would consume them if they would be genuinely successful in ministry. Pastors should therefore expect loss in their service to God’s people, being physically, mentally, or spiritually consumed for their sake. And because they were servants of Christ, pastors should not only bear but embrace this strain. As we shall now see, these sufferings, far from hindering a minister’s effectiveness, positively bless him.

3. The Blessings of Necessary Sufferings

Spurgeon had a strong belief that sufferings could benefit believers in a variety of ways, and he particularly reflected on the good that a variety of evils could produce for pastors.49 He would articulate two particular benefits of suffering: first, how suffering forms a pastor’s character, and second, how it enables him to understand and minister to his people.

First, suffering drives people to the realities of faith in Christ, making pastors experience and test that which they preached to others. The following passage gives a vibrant, characteristically witty picture of how Spurgeon saw suffering working for a minister’s good:

I venture to say that the greatest earthly blessing that God can give to any of us is health, with the exception of sickness. Sickness has frequently been of more use to the saints of God than health has. If some men, that I know of, could only be favoured with a month of rheumatism, it would, by God’s grace, mellow them marvelously. Assuredly, they need something better to preach than what they now give their people; and, possibly, they would learn it in the chamber of suffering. I would not wish for any man a long time of sickness and pain; but a twist now and then one might almost ask for him. A sick wife, a newly made grave, poverty, slander, sinking of spirit, might teach lessons nowhere else to be learned so well. Trials drive us to the realities of religion.50

With Spurgeon’s irony and humor is a striking picture of the usefulness of suffering for the pastor. Sickness in moderation— “a twist now and then”—is a greater blessing to pastors than consistent health! It is a great “earthly blessing” because, for proud ministers, it may “mellow,” or humble them. Additionally, “the chamber of suffering” may teach a pastor better truths to preach to his people, because “trials drive us to the realities of religion.” In times of ease and prosperity, pastors might rely upon themselves and not look to the promises of God, consider eternity, or rely on the strength that comes from the Spirit. Various trials, however, force one to engage with and experience these gospel realities. This is essential for ministry, because a pastor not living the truths he preaches is unthinkable and condemnable. Indeed, “does a man know any gospel truth aright till he knows it by experience?”51 He must know the truth by experience before he can preach it to others. Applying this general principle to particular pastors, Spurgeon implied that the particular sufferings ministers undergo especially outfitted them for their unique spheres of service. A man’s weaknesses and inward trials, far from disqualifying him for office, “may,” actually, “even have been imposed upon him by divine wisdom as necessary qualifications for his peculiar course of service. Some plants owe their medicinal qualities to the marsh in which they grow.”52 The peculiar usefulness and spiritually healing qualities a pastor possessed might be a result of his peculiar trials.

Spurgeon also commended two other blessings of suffering: the protection of a pastor’s character and sympathy for his people. Suffering is necessary for maintaining a pastor’s character and usefulness, as Spurgeon found in his own experience: “I am sorry to say that I am made of such ill stuff that my Lord has to chasten me often and sorely. I am like a quill pen that will not write unless it be often nibbed.”53 He did not regret his pains and crosses, however, as long as the Lord would “write with me on men’s hearts.”54 He then went on to say that “that is the cause of many minister’s afflictions, they are necessary for our work.”55 Apart from affliction, many pastors would be relatively graceless and without the character necessary to bear fruit in ministry.

The particular grace of humility flows from affliction. With a distinctive interpretation of 2 Corinthians 12:7, Spurgeon posited that Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” was a vexing nuisance rather than a great affliction, so that Paul would be humbled that such a nuisance could try him.56 Pastors likewise have vexing trials, besetting weaknesses “so small that you despise yourself for taking notice, and yet it frets your soul.”57 These distinctive trials give pastors the necessary blessing of humility, and because of the deadly temptation to pride, the Lord gives these trials often:

If we do not carefully keep our right place, our Master will not fail to chide us, and give our pride a taking down. How many of our afflictions, failures, depressions, arise out of our being unduly lifted up! I feel sure that no man, who is honoured of God in public, is quite a stranger to that chastening behind the door which keeps proud flesh from being unduly exalted.58

Spurgeon noticed that few could handle acclaim and success in public ministry without being “unduly lifted up”—that is, becoming proud and giving themselves the glory for ministry success. This pride came naturally to successful pastors, therefore, those who are “honoured of God in public” must experience “that chastening behind the door”—trials and afflictions—to keep them from continuing in this deadly pride. Regarding spiritual depression, Spurgeon argued that the most likely time a minister would experience this particular affliction was in times of great success.59 Citing the example of Elijah, who after a great victory fled for his life in fear, Spurgeon noted that “the Lord seldom exposes His warriors to the perils of exultation over victory,” knowing that few could endure such a test.60 Therefore, so that ministers would not be carried away by their success, “the gracious discipline of mercy breaks the ships of our vainglory … and casts us shipwrecked, naked and forlorn, upon the Rock of Ages.”61 The Lord grants affliction to a pastor in times of success to keep him humble and deliver him from pride; as one submits to this affliction, it forces him to cast himself upon Christ and experience the promises of the gospel afresh. Suffering and success were cyclical in Spurgeon’s picture of ministry: suffering led to the kind of grace that granted spiritual victories in ministry. These victories tempt a minister to pride, so the Lord grants more affliction to humble him. These afflictions lead to a fresh experience of the gospel, and thus more spiritual fruit. This back-and-forth relationship between suffering and spiritual fruit in ministry is why Spurgeon could say to fellow ministers, “Heaven shall be all the fuller of bliss because we have been filled with anguish here below, and earth shall be better tilled because of our training in the school of adversity.”62

Another benefit of suffering for ministers is that it gives them a sympathy for their people: “Good men are promised tribulation in this world, and ministers may expect a larger share than others,” so that they “may learn sympathy with the Lord’s suffering people, and so may be fitting shepherds of an ailing flock.”63 Angels could preach the same message that pastors preach, but it is a minister’s suffering and weak humanity that uniquely qualify him for office—because this office is directed toward the good of other weak and suffering humans.64 This necessity of sympathy extends even to temptation: “we need to be tempted in all points, so that we may be able to comfort others.”65 The idea of the necessity of suffering for ministers’ sympathetic effectiveness is most clear in Spurgeon’s remarks about preaching. While describing the dreadfulness of a despairing heart, Spurgeon asserted, “but if you have never had such an experience, my dear brother, you will not be worth a pin as a preacher. You cannot help others who are depressed unless you have been down in the depths yourself.”66 The aims of preaching include helping the depressed, lifting up the downcast, and comforting the despairing. To benefit others, a preacher himself must himself be helped, lifted up, and comforted in all of the various soul distresses people might experience. A preacher’s sufferings, often mysterious, are explained by the needs of others.

Spurgeon insisted that pastors undergo the spiritual trials their people suffer so that they can minister to them in those trials. In one of his addresses at the yearly pastor’s conference, Spurgeon argued that pastors often pass through the valley of the shadow of death “on account of others.”67 He then related a story where he was in deep spiritual despair throughout the week, and preached on the text, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” from his own experience of spiritual darkness. After the sermon, a suicidal man came up to Spurgeon and told him that he preached as if he knew his own soul. Spurgeon was able to save him from suicide and led him to Christ. He commented on this experience, “I know I could not have done it if I had not myself been confined in the dungeon in which he lay.”68 Applying this story to the lives of his audience of pastors, Spurgeon argued, “you and I have to suffer much for the sake of the people of our charge. God’s sheep ramble far, and we have to go after them; and sometimes the shepherds go where they themselves would never roam if they were not in pursuit of lost sheep.”69 The language here indicates that suffering was not just beneficial for sympathy but actually necessary for pastoral effectiveness. Additionally, with a shepherding metaphor, Spurgeon noted that “God’s sheep ramble far”—they have a variety of spiritual experiences and wanderings. Therefore, shepherds must go in their spiritual experience where they would never otherwise be in order to pursue these sheep. So, while a pastor might wonder why he is in “an Egyptian darkness” or why “such a horror chills your marrow,” he was actually right in step in his calling, pursuing one of God’s people (even unbeknownst to him) who was having a similar experience.70 Spurgeon related this vision to a broader audience, writing in the Sword and Trowel, “May not severe discipline fall to the lot of some to qualify them for their office of under-shepherds?”71 He averred that pastors must be able to sympathize and thus they must suffer like their people, saying, “the complete pastor’s life will be an epitome of the lives of his people … their needs will be the reason for his griefs. As in the case of the Lord Himself, perfect equipping for his work only came through suffering, and so it must be for those who are called to follow him.”72 Pastors must suffer in a way parallel to Christ to effectively minister to their people—suffering is their “perfect equipping” for the work of ministry. Like Christ, some of their sufferings can only be understood in a vicarious way: they suffer peculiar griefs on account of the spiritual needs of their people. This conception points again to the incarnational idea central to Spurgeon’s picture of the pastor. Since pastors stand in Christ’s stead and are conduits of his grace, they must resemble him, even in undertaking suffering on behalf of others—again, in a way distinct from Christ’s once-for-all sufferings.

4. Conclusion

I will conclude by (1) making an observation about what influenced Spurgeon’s thinking about strain in ministry, (2) suggesting how his views of ministry and suffering might re-shape current understandings of Spurgeon’s life, and (3) applying his theology of ministerial suffering to pastors today.

As titanic of a figure as Spurgeon was, his view of straining and consuming labor in ministry did not come out of a vacuum. In one of his characteristic exhortations to other ministers insisting on intense labor in ministry, he said, “I like Adam Clarke’s precept: ‘kill yourselves with work, and then pray yourselves alive again.’”73 Clarke was a prominent Methodist minister who lived from 1762–1832; Spurgeon’s explicit reference to his precept is illuminating for two reasons.74 First of all, Clarke was an Arminian, so Spurgeon’s approbation of his precept (taken with his stringent opposition to Arminianism) indicates his deep appreciation of Clarke’s embrace of a “kill yourself with work” type attitude toward ministry. Secondly, Spurgeon’s citation of Clarke shows that there were other ministers outside of Calvinistic Baptist ministry making sharp remarks about the necessity of intense, zealous, and sacrificial labor on the part of pastors. The ideas of intensity, difficulty, and self-sacrifice in ministry were also clearly expressed in Charles’s Bridges’ The Christian Ministry: With Inquiry into Causes of Its Inefficiency, which, while directed toward Establishment ministers, was published and read widely in Spurgeon’s day.75 In other words, the embrace of strain and overwork in ministry had a broad approbation in Spurgeon’s nineteenth-century context in a variety of theological streams. Spurgeon also cited John Calvin and Robert Hall as eminent divines and some of the best preachers of their eras, relating their effectiveness to the fact that they were “patient sufferers.”76 Interestingly, Calvin and Hall both suffered from significant problems that were likely related to overwork and exhaustion.77 In commending their lives, Spurgeon may have seen himself in the historic stream of pastors who were made effective for others by means of their suffering labors. All this being said, while Spurgeon was one of the most articulate and influential proponents of the “all-out ministry,” his ideas about overwork in ministry were not unique to him.

In this context, Spurgeon’s distinctive contribution was his interpretation of ministerial sufferings, particularly his presentation of pastors as conduits of God’s grace and the notion that pastors must suffer the things their people would suffer. What brought these two ideas together was the notion that pastors stand in a peculiar relation to Christ, not in a sacramental sense but as his special messengers and ministers, whose lives must embody and incarnate the gospel message they preached. For Spurgeon, Christ’s sufferings were not only the basis of the gospel, they also had to be embodied and lived out by every minister of the gospel, especially in their ministry successes.

This insight provides a new lens to understanding Spurgeon’s massive labors and his theology of suffering. While many remark on Spurgeon’s great labors and accompanying sufferings, they do not connect these features of Spurgeon’s life to his theology of ministry.78 Spurgeon labored relentlessly because he held particular convictions about pastoral ministry. He believed that the strain from his overwhelming ministry responsibilities were not only necessary for a faithful minister but would positively work for his good and make him more effective. These convictions help explain what otherwise might be considered an unwise disregard of rest or a superhuman view of what God required of pastors. Most practically, Spurgeon’s view of the pastorate helps explain (rather than just hold up for amazement) some of the more famous facets of his ministry—such as him preaching over 10,000 times in his life and doing forty membership interviews in a single day.

A final historical suggestion: Spurgeon’s theology of ministry ought to be the primary lens by which we see his sufferings, rather than his sufferings being seen as a decisive factor in shaping his ministry. In other words, instead of viewing suffering as “looming large” over Spurgeon’s ministry, we should view Spurgeon’s theology of ministry as looming large over all of his sufferings. It was his view of ministry that led to his sufferings, motivated him to continue in spite of them, and was the consistent lens by which he interpreted the various sufferings he patiently bore. Seeing his theology of ministry rather than his experience of suffering as decisive in shaping Spurgeon does more justice to Spurgeon’s own words, the context in which he ministered, and his view of the Master whom he served so diligently—who suffered and was consumed for the sake of his people.

How might today’s pastors retrieve Spurgeon’s “all-out ministry”? While Spurgeon is not the pastor after whom to model your workweek, he is an incredible resource for interpreting the trials of ministry. What does a minister do with his seemingly random physical, mental, and emotional vexations? How should a pastor respond to what appears to be an out-of-nowhere and troubling temptation? Does an intractable group at your church aiming for your resignation mean it’s time to look elsewhere? Spurgeon wisely directs these bewildering trials to immensely encouraging truths about a pastor’s identity: the pastor’s suffering is fulfilling his likeness to Christ, producing his humility, helping him experience what he preaches, and giving him sympathy for his tempted and tried people. Spurgeon’s example shows that interpreting ministerial difficulties within a theological vision for pastoral identity motivates endurance in ministry. In a time when pastors appear to be extremely discouraged and unlikely to finish a career in full-time ministry, there appears to be a great need for this kind of help.79 Those responsible for training future ministers should also seek to learn from Spurgeon (and the tradition of pastoral theology that he represents) that faithful ministry begins and is enabled by faithful reflection on the calling of pastors to be representatives of the suffering Savior.80

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[1] For a recounting and examination of the Surrey Music Hall Disaster, see Tom Nettles, Living by Revealed Truth: The Life and Pastoral Theology of Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2013), 595–600. Spurgeon himself said it was the “greatest ordeal” of his life, Charles H. Spurgeon, Autobiography, reprint ed. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1962), 1:431. See also Geoffrey Chang, Spurgeon the Pastor: Recovering a Biblical and Theological Vision for Ministry (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2022), 248.[2] I am referring here to the Downgrade Controversy at the end of Spurgeon’s life. See Chang, Spurgeon the Pastor, 249–50.[3] For example, in an address to fellow ministers, Spurgeon commented on the effectiveness of his preaching to save a suicidal man through one of his Sunday sermons: “I know I could not have done it if I had not myself been confined in the dungeon in which he lay.” Charles H. Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry: Direction, Wisdom and Encouragement for Preachers and Pastors, reprint ed. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2018), 172. For a fuller account of the circumstances surrounding this phrase, see below.[4] Spurgeon’s sufferings have been explored in two popular level volumes: first, Zack Eswine, Spurgeon’s Sorrows: Realistic Hope for Those Who Suffer from Depression (Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2015), and second, a chapter length treatment in Elizabeth Skoglund’s Found Faithful: The Timeless Stories of Charles Spurgeon, Amy Carmichael, C. S. Lewis, Ruth Bell Graham and Others (Grand Rapids: Discovery House, 2004). For a recent, definitive biography that treats Spurgeon’s preaching at length and explores his theology of suffering, see Nettles, Living by Revealed Truth, 595–629.

[5] These categories are most explicit in Peter J. Morden, “C. H. Spurgeon and Suffering,” Evangelical Review of Theology 35 (2011): 308–11. Nettles, while describing all of these aspects of Spurgeon’s sufferings, sees them as more united in his experience.

[6] Morden, “C. H. Spurgeon and Suffering,” 308; and Nettles, Living by Revealed Truth, 597–603.

[7] Morden, “C. H. Spurgeon and Suffering,” 309; and Nettles Living by Revealed Truth, 597–603.

[8] Morden, “C. H. Spurgeon and Suffering,” 310–11.

[9] The first quote is from Charles H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, reprint ed. (Scott’s Valley, CA: Pantianos Classics, 2018), 122. Peter Morden, C. H. Spurgeon: The People’s Preacher (Surrey: CWV, 2009), 70–71, describes the spiritual dimension of the fallout from the Surrey Music Garden disaster in Spurgeon’s life.

[10] Morden, “C. H. Spurgeon and Suffering,” 325.

[11] Morden, “C. H. Spurgeon and Suffering,” 315–22.

[12] Nettles, Living by Revealed Truth, 595–96, 630.

[13] William Brian Albert, “‘When the Wind Blows Cold’: The Spirituality of Suffering and Depression in the Life and Ministry of Charles Spurgeon” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2016).

[14] Spurgeon’s preaching has been the subject of several volumes, including biographies that see his preaching as a primary way in which to view his life, see J. Morden, C. H. Spurgeon, and Patricia Stallings Krupa, Charles Haddon Spurgeon: A Preacher’s Progress (New York: Garland, 1982). For a classic biography that argues that Spurgeon’s theology, especially in the controversies of his life, are central to understanding him, see Iain Murray, The Forgotten Spurgeon (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1966).

[15] Chang, Spurgeon the Pastor, 2–5.

[16] Charles H. Spurgeon, The Suffering Letters of C. H. Spurgeon, ed. Hannah Wyncoll (London: Wakeman, 2007), 23.

[17] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 129, 154, 214, 306–7.

[18] Charles H. Spurgeon, The Sword and the Trowel (May 1877): 211, cited in Nettles, Living by Revealed Truth, 600.

[19] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 42, 95, 306–7.

[20] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 212. For the second passage that appeared to threaten condemnation at the judgement seat of Christ, see An All-Round Ministry, 239.

[21] Chang, Spurgeon the Pastor, 11.

[22] Spurgeon, The Suffering Letters of C. H. Spurgeon, 10–12; and Nettles, Living by Revealed Truth, 616–18.

[23] Charles H. Spurgeon, “For the Sick and Afflicted,” Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1863–1911), 22:45.

[24] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 164; and Lectures to My Students, 126.

[25] Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, 123.

[26] Albert, “‘When the Wind Blows Cold,’” 166.

[27] Nettles, Living by Revealed Truth, 619.

[28] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 164.

[29] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 164.

[30] Chang, Spurgeon the Pastor, 121.

[31] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 201.

[32] Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students 126–27. Interestingly, in this passage Spurgeon comments on how dissension and strife among God’s people affects ministers more acutely than other men because of their tender dispositions. Since this is a rare instance in Spurgeon’s writings about the reasons for ministerial trials, I have left it out of my analysis.

[33] See Chang, Spurgeon the Pastor, 173–75, for the relative unity and health of Spurgeon’s own congregation, especially seen in his immense joy in congregational meetings.

[34] Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, 122.

[35] This is recounted in Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 162.

[36] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 139–40.

[37 Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 139–40.

[38] Spurgeon attacked sacramental views of pastoral ministry throughout his works, especially against the priestly views of ministry on the rise in the Anglican church in his day. See Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 72–74, for an example of his anti-clerical polemics.

[39] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 150.

[40] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 150.

[41] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 300.

[42] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 300.

[43] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 300.

[44] See for example, Col 1:24–2:5; 1 Cor 2:1–5; 4:8–13; 2 Cor 6:3–10; 13:3–4.

[45] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 299.

[46] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 297.

[47] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 199.

[48] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 199.

[49] Morden, “C. H. Spurgeon and Suffering,” 315–22.

[50] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 300.

[51] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 88.

[52] Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, 122.

[53] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 123.

[54] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 123.

[55] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 123.

[56] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 166.

[57] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 166.

[58] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 200.

[59] Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, 124.

[60] Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, 124.

[61] Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, 124.

[62] Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, 129.

[63] Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, 121.

[64] Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, 121.

[65] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 39.

[66] Spurgeon, The Suffering Letters of C. H. Spurgeon, 16–17.

[67] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 172.

[68] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 172.

[69] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 172.

[70] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 172.

[71] Charles H. Spurgeon, “Laid Aside—Why?,” The Sword and the Trowel (May 1876): 195–98.

[72] Spurgeon, “Laid Aside—Why?” 195–98.

[73] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 212.

[74] J. W. Ethridge, The Life of Adam Clarke, reprint ed. (Albany, OR: AGES Digital Library, 1997), 16, 438.

[75] The first publication of The Christian Ministry was in 1830. For difficulty in the ministry according to Charles Bridges, see The Christian Ministry, reprint ed. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2009), 11–16.

[76] Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 163

[77] For Calvin’s sufferings related to the punishing work and study habits early in his life, see Bruce F. Gordon, Calvin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 22. Robert Hall also had a variety of health problems that may or may not have been related to his labors; however, he had a mental breakdown that was related to the pressures of his ministry, see Cody Heath McNutt, “The Ministry of Robert Hall, Jr.: The Preacher as Theological Exemplar and Cultural Celebrity” (PhD thesis, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2012), 41–45.

[78] Nettles, Living by Revealed Truth, 599–601.

[79] For a sampling of some of the concerning statistics on pastoral well-being, see “38% of U.S. Pastors Have Thought about Quitting Full-Time Ministry in the Past Year,” Barna Research Group, 6 November 2021, https://www.barna.com/research/pastors-well-being/.

[80] One thing I have not examined in this article is how Spurgeon stands in a stream of the Christian tradition that articulates the peculiar nature of pastoral ministry as entailing suffering. For an article length treatment of this theme in Calvin, see Leland Brown, “The Standard-Bearer: Pastoral Suffering in the Theology of John Calvin,” Themelios 47.2 (2022): 326–36. Major works of pastoral theology in the Christian tradition also articulate this, including Richard Baxter’s The Reformed Pastor, John Chrysostom’s Six Books on the Priesthood, and Gregory of Nazianzus’s Oration 2.

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