Required reading
Lectures to my students by Charles Spurgeon (Available from Amazon or free here) - Read Chapter 2 (The call to the ministry).
My summary
Today Spurgeon lectures his students about the call to the ministry.
Firstly Spurgeon establishes that the concept of a call to the ministry is Biblical.
Then Spurgeon gives signs by which a young man can know if he is called to the ministry. There should be:
(i) an intense, all-absorbing desire for the work;
(ii) an aptness to teach and some measure of the other qualities needful for the office of a public instructor;
(iii) a measure of conversion work going on under his efforts;
(iv) preaching acceptable to the people of God.
Thirdly Spurgeon relates some examples of those whom he has dissuaded from the ministry.
What grabbed me
An excellent chapter.
I think the point about the desire for ministry is particularly important: 'In order to a true call to the ministry there must be an irresistible, overwhelming craving and raging thirst for telling to others What God has done to our own souls; what if I call it a kind of storge such as birds have for rearing their young when the season is come; when the mother bird would sooner die than leave her nest. It was said of Alleine by one who knew him intimately, that “he was infinitely and insatiably greedy of the conversion of souls.” When he might have had a fellowship at his university, he preferred a chaplaincy, because he was “inspired with an impatience to be occupied in direct ministerial work.” “Do not enter the ministry if you can help it,” was the deeply sage advice of a divine to one who sought his judgment. If any student in this room could be content to be a newspaper editor, or a grocer, or a farmer or a doctor, or a lawyer, or a senator, or a king, in the name of heaven and earth let him go his way; he is not the man in whom dwells the Spirit of God in its fulness, for a man so filled with God would utterly weary of any pursuit but that for which his inmost soul pants. If on the other hand, you can say that for all the wealth of both the Indies you could not and dare not espouse any other calling so as to be put aside from preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, then, depend upon it, if other things be equally satisfactory, you have the signs of this apostleship. We must feel that woe is unto us if we preach not the gospel; the word of God must be unto us as fire in our bones, otherwise, if we undertake the ministry, we shall be unhappy in it, shall be unable to bear the self-denials incident to it, and shall be of little service to those among whom we minister. I speak of self-denials, and well I may; for the true pastor’s work is full of them, and without a love to his calling he will soon succumb, and either leave the drudgery, or move on in discontent, burdened with a monotony as tiresome as that of a blind horse in a mill. “There is a comfort in the strength of love; Twill make a thing endurable which else Would break the heart.” Girt with that love, you will be undaunted; divested of that more than magic-belt of irresistible vocation, you will pine away in wretchedness. '
If you don't love being a minister, then you're in the wrong place.
Next week's reading
Read Chapter 3 (The preacher's private prayer).
Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
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