Charles Spurgeon and the Pastor’s College

Charles Spurgeon was a pastor with a God-sized vision. He pastored the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London for over forty years in the mid-nineteenth century. Under his preaching, thousands were regularly fed and challenged from God’s Word. Under his leadership, the church launched a wide-variety of ministries.

On his fiftieth birthday, in 1884, the church hosted a Jubilee Celebration for Charles and his wife, Susannah. As part of the festivities, a colleague read the list of the ministries connected to the church. Spurgeon had a hand in starting and overseeing most of them.

There was the Pastor’s Aid Fund; the Colportage Association; Mrs. Spurgeon’s Book Fund; the Evangelists’ association; the Ladies’ Benevolent Society; the Gospel Temperance Society; the Coffee-House Mission; the mission to Policeman; the Stockwell Orphanage; the Sword and Trowel magazine. And that’s just the start of the list. In total, there were well over sixty ministries.

But of all the worthy ministries Spurgeon helped start and maintain, there was one ministry he held most closely to his heart. The was one ministry he prized above all others. That was the Pastors’ College.

In 1882, after starting and supporting a wide-array of ministries, Spurgeon indicated the priority he placed on the Pastors’ College when he wrote:

When we think of the value of a well-instructed minister of the gospel, and of all the beneficent institutions which are sure to spring up around him, we sometimes think the work of training ministers to be superior to all other services done to the Lord and his church. (Sword and Trowel, 1882, “Annual Report”)

Spurgeon liked to recount how Adoniram Judson, the well-known missionary to Burma, had once told a friend that if he had $1,000 dollars to invest in the Lord’s work, he would put it into planting colleges to train those serious about ministry.

Spurgeon expressed his enthusiastic agreement with Judson by saying, “to this we have labored with all our heart, and soul, and strength to make the Pastors’ College a seed-garden for the church and for the world” (S&T, April 1881).

Spurgeon started the Pastors’ College in 1856 out of his desire to see a school dedicated to training what he called “unmistakable gospel ministers.” He was clear on the kind of training his students should receive:

“The Scriptures must be their chief class-book, theology their main science, the art of teaching their practical study, and the proclamation and exposition of the gospel their first business” (S&T, June 1875).

He was equally clear on the kind of teachers needed in his school: “The tutors should be men of equal learning and grace, sound scholars, but much more sound divines, men of culture, but even more decidedly men of God” (S&T, June 1875).

He generously gave of his time and finances to teach and support the students in the Pastors’ College. He was also unashamed to call on other believers to give liberally to the support of the school and it students.

We wonder not that such Colleges should be liberally supported, but rather we marvel that more lovers of the Lord do not devote their substance to this superior purpose, in which the deed is done more fully unto the Lord himself than in almost any other form of doing good. (S&T, 1882, “Annual Report”)

I believe Spurgeon was right in his assessment of the supreme importance of a school dedicated to training up future servants for Christ’s Church and His global mission. Heritage is focused being a “seed-garden” for the church—training men and women who will be spiritual leaders in the years to come.

As Heritage College and Seminary comes to the close of another school year and prepares to graduate a wave of men and women to serve Christ and His Church, I’d invite you to invest in this worthy work. You can do that here.