Spurgeon had an incredible ministry in London. So incredible, that when I first read about him, I thought that some of his accomplishments were legend, rather than fact. I first read about Spurgeon’s accomplishments in John Piper’s 1997 book A Godward Life, in a reading titled “Mountains Are Not Meant To Envy: Awed Thoughts on Charles Spurgeon”.
Piper tells us that Spurgeon preached as a Baptist pastor in London from 1854 until 1891 – thirty-eight years of ministry in one place. He died January 31, 1892, at the age of fifty-seven.
Here are some of Spurgeon’s incredible accomplishments. I’m trusting that you will be as amazed by this man as I am:
- His collected sermons fill sixty-three volumes equivalent to the twenty-seven volume ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica and stand as the largest set of books by a single author in the history of Christianity.
- He read six serious books a week and could remember what was in them and where.
- He read Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan more than one hundred times.
- He added 14,460 people to his church membership and did almost all the membership interviews himself. He could look out on a congregation of 5,000 and name the members.
- He founded a pastors’ college and trained nearly 900 men during his pastorate.
- More than twenty-five thousand copies of his sermons were sold each week in twenty languages and someone was converted every week through the written sermons.
- He often preached ten times a week in various churches as well as his own.
- He founded an orphanage.
- He edited the Sword & Trowel monthly magazine.
- He was estimated to have preached to over ten million people.
- He helped to start nearly two hundred new churches in Britain alone. By his death in 1892, over 20 percent of all Baptist ministers serving in England and Wales had been trained by Spurgeon.
- He wrote approximately five hundred letters per week
Spurgeon was married to Susie and had two sons who became pastors. Susie was an invalid most of her life and rarely heard him preach. Spurgeon suffered from gout, rheumatism, Bright’s disease and depression. In the last twenty years of his ministry, he was so sick that he missed a third of the Sundays at the Metropolitan Tabernacle. DiPrima writes that a part of the reason for Spurgeon’s premature death at age 57 was his immense workload.
Piper writes that Spurgeon had his sins. He tells us that may comfort us in our weak (envious) moments. Instead, he states that we should be comforted that his greatness was a free gift of God – to us as well as him.
So be amazed by Spurgeon and appreciate him and thank the God who gave him to us.