On Spurgeon the Pastor, with Geoff Chang (Pastors Talk, Ep 235)
What did Charles Surgeon believe as a pastor? On this episode of Pastors Talk, Jonathan Leeman, Mark Dever, and Geoff Chang talk about the best ways to learn about Spurgeon’s ecclesiology. They discuss whether or not Spurgeon was an advocate for the nine marks of a healthy church as well as his views on church membership. They finish their conversation by walking through Spurgeon’s thoughts on elders and church discipline.
- Spurgeon’s Ecclesiology
- Was Spurgeon an Advocate of the Nine Marks of a Healthy Church?
- Spurgeon’s View on Membership
- Spurgeon’s Thoughts on Elders
- What Did Spurgeon Think About Church Discipline?
Transcript
The following is a lightly edited transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Jonathan Leeman:
Hi, this is Jonathan Leeman.
Mark Dever:
And this is Mark Dever.
Jonathan Leeman:
And welcome to this episode of 9Marks Pastors Talk. 9Marks exists to help pastors build healthy churches. Learn more at 9Marks.org. And with us today, we have Geoff Chang, an elder at Wornall Road Baptist Church and a professor at Midwestern Theological Seminary. What’s your actual professorial title?
Geoff Chang:
Assistant Professor of Historical Theology.
Jonathan Leeman:
Historical Theology.
Mark Dever:
And you have another title?
Geoff Chang:
And the curator of the Spurgeon Library.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right, that’s right. You did your dissertation work on Charles Spurgeon, and that’s what we want to talk about today, specifically, the book that you recently published on this topic. Is that book a version of your dissertation?
Geoff Chang:
It is, yeah. It’s based on my research for my dissertation.
Chang On Writing About Spurgeon
Mark Dever:
Geoff, why do doctoral work on Spurgeon in America rather than in England?
Geoff Chang:
When I was doing my doctoral work, I was a pastor at Hinson Baptist Church in Portland, Oregon. I wanted to stay in that position. And Midwestern was this up-and-coming seminary that I was excited about and it had this amazing Spurgeon library and it was the right place for Spurgeon study.
Jonathan Leeman:
Are there more Spurgeon manuscripts, so forth, and material there at Midwestern than elsewhere?
Geoff Chang:
Increasingly so these days, yeah. I mean, there are still things in the UK that we don’t have access to yet, but boy, we are growing our collection. And if you’re looking to do a Spurgeon scholarship, Midwestern is a great place for it.
Mark Dever:
So would you say there’s more in Midwestern’s library on or about or by Spurgeon than at the libraries of Harvard or Yale?
Geoff Chang:
Yes. I would say so.
Mark Dever:
More than at the Library of Congress?
Geoff Chang:
I’m not sure. I don’t know.
Spurgeon’s Ecclesiology
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, the book is Spurgeon the Pastor, Recovering a Biblical and Theological Vision for Ministry. And what prompted you to pick him as a topic of research? And then finally this book. Why did you start writing on Spurgeon?
Geoff Chang:
The very first was thanks to Mark. Mark, thank you. I emailed you, I asked you what should I write on. And you responded very quickly, Spurgeon’s Ecclesiology, Edification Guaranteed.
And that set me on that path. Did you write that email very intentionally or is that just something that came to you quickly?
Mark Dever:
Was it edifying?
Geoff Chang:
It was.
Mark Dever:
Well, there we are.
Jonathan Leeman:
But this is a topic that’s been broadly overlooked. I mean, we certainly talk about his preaching, right? Everybody knows about that. But his ecclesiology, why has this been an area that’s been overlooked?
Geoff Chang:
Well, I think people have remained interested in Spurgeon kind of over the decades, but I think it reflects something of what’s been going on in evangelicalism. I mean, I think the influence of revivalism among conservative evangelicals, like late 19th into the 20th century, is reflected in a decreasing concern for the church, right, and turning to more pragmatic methods.
And you combine that with the battle against theological liberalism, a focus on first-order issues instead of second-order issues, and all those things. So you see that reflected in Spurgeon’s scholarship as people appreciate his evangelistic work, but less so in terms of his church.
Jonathan Leeman:
As in we don’t care about church generally, so why would we bother looking at this guy’s understanding of the church, essentially?
Mark Dever:
I think there is so much of his ecclesiology though, is in his preaching. I mean, I know you looked at a lot of other sources and that’s one of the things I appreciated about your dissertation, but it is true that even if you’re a preacher who only looks at Spurgeon’s sermons, you’ll know if you look through a lot of his sermons, you will find a lot of his ecclesiology in his preaching.
Geoff Chang:
Yeah. In fact, I think one of the best sources for some of his ecclesiology, is in his book Soul Winner, which is these lectures on evangelism to his students. But you see a lot of his pastoral theology come through that work also.
Mark Dever:
Mark, when you recommended when you sent that email to Geoff, were you aware of a dearth on this or was it clear in your head what Spurgeon
Mark Dever:
Well, it’s hard to be aware of a dearth. I was not aware of the work so I suspected there was a lack of it.
Jonathan Leeman:
I see. Okay.
Mark Dever:
And I was certain it would be edifying and rewarding because Spurgeon was so biblical. He was so careful. He was so happily obedient to the text, then I thought this was just going to be a delightful exploration. Even if, you know, I’m finding things I disagree with, it’d be good to see how he gets where he goes.
Jonathan Leeman:
Does he have an articulated, clear, principled ecclesiology that you can read like, read this one thing where he articulates his full ecclesiology, or are you pulling it out of, as Mark said, sermons or as you said, the Soul Winner? Where do you find it? Where does one go to see his ecclesiology?
Geoff Chang:
The clearest sort of one-stop shop for his ecclesiology would be an article that he published in The Sword and the Trowel. It was actually written by his brother, James, who was his associate pastor, but it was published in 1869, and it describes the discipline at the Metropolitan Tabernacle.
But he’s certainly, from that article and from all the other sources, you can tell that he’s working from this principled ecclesiology. He’s not just sort of trying to figure out what works in his context, but he has kind of clear convictions on what the Bible teaches on how to do church.
Spurgeon’s View of Prayer
Mark Dever:
Geoff, I’m convinced that if somebody from today went to the Metropolitan Tabernacle in 1870 or 1875, one of the main things that we would be surprised by would be in the weekly schedule, would be the importance of corporate prayer. Thoughts on that?
Geoff Chang:
Yeah.
Mark Dever:
Because that’s largely overlooked in evangelical circles today. Maybe in traditional smaller reformed circles, there’s more of an emphasis on corporate prayer and or a prayer meeting. But that we associate largely with the past.
It sounds kind of 19th century or quaint to a lot of people today. Whereas for Spurgeon, he seemed to have an understanding of prayer that was big and happy and growing and urgent and vital and including everybody and very important in the schedule.
Geoff Chang:
Yeah, absolutely. The prayer meeting on Monday nights was a big event in the life of the church. It was so influential in the churches that he planted, in the visitors who came and participated in the life of the church, that they would publish the sort of events of the church prayer meeting in the Sword and the Trowel because people just had a general interest in knowing what was going on in those prayer meetings. But beyond even that large corporate prayer meeting where thousands were showing up to pray, there would be prayer meetings every day of the week, basically, in smaller groups throughout the church.
Mark Dever:
My guess is most church planters today don’t spend much time thinking about a prayer meeting.
Jonathan Leeman:
I never hear about it.
Mark Dever:
That’s probably not in the training they get. It’s just that part of ecclesiology because it’s not a structure like elders or deacons or membership and voting. It’s just kind of evaporating.
Geoff Chang:
Yeah. Speaking of church planting and prayer meetings, one of the metrics that his church plants would often report back as a sign of health would be how many members are regularly showing up for prayer meetings.
They would… report that just as a way to encourage people, hey, this work is doing well. Look at the people who are praying, right? And so, yeah, that was a part of church planting, that was a part of their life as a church.
Was Spurgeon an Advocate of the Nine Marks of a Healthy Church?
Jonathan Leeman:
And Mark Dever’s new and revised version of 9Marks of Healthy Church Prayer is one of the marks. What about the other eight marks? Was Spurgeon an advocate of all nine marks? We got a prayer. What about expositional preaching?
Geoff Chang:
Yeah, I would say he’d affirm all nine marks. You know, insofar as he believed that the Bible should drive how we think about the church, we should do church. He believed in…
Jonathan Leeman:
exposition preaching
Geoff Chang:
Yes
Jonathan Leeman:
Gospel doctrine
Geoff Chang:
Yes.
Jonathan Leeman:
Biblical understanding of conversion
Geoff Chang:
Yes
Jonathan Leeman:
Obviously. Evangelism
Geoff Chang:
Yes
Spurgeon’s View on Church Membership
Jonathan Leeman:
A biblical understanding of church membership, we’ll get to that in a minute. Yes. Discipline,
Geoff Chang:
yes.
Jonathan Leeman:
Discipleship
Geoff Chang:
yes.
Spurgeon’s Thoughts on Elders
Jonathan Leeman:
Elders, did he have a plurality of elders?
Geoff Chang:
He did, but we can talk about that a little more.
Jonathan Leeman:
You say that without…
Mark Dever:
Well, and he led the church to adopt that when they hadn’t had that.
Geoff Chang:
That’s right.
Jonathan Leeman:
But why did you pause?
Geoff Chang:
Well, he places a greater emphasis on deacons. At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, deacons and elders function as two sorts of equal boards with different spheres of responsibilities.
So not so much elders having oversight of the deacons, but both of them working together. So it’s more like not elder-led congregationalism, but elder and deacon-led congregationalism.
Jonathan Leeman:
Gotcha. So the Church did vote, speaking of congregationalism, the Church did vote on various matters.
Geoff Chang:
Yes, very much.
Mark Dever:
And they were a Baptist church.
Geoff Chang:
Yes.
Mark Dever:
They certainly did not believe in baptismal regeneration as it would be taught in the East or Rome.
Geoff Chang:
And they required baptism, believers baptism for membership.
Why Should Pastors Learn From Spurgeon?
Jonathan Leeman:
Now, Geoff, you’ve written an entire book here on Spurgeon as pastor. Why should pastors today listen to and learn from him as a pastor and or ecclesiologist?
I mean, this guy was a phenom, right? I mean, can I really do what he did? Is there really something here for me as an ordinary pastor?
Geoff Chang:
Yeah, primarily what I’m trying to highlight from Spurgeon is his faithfulness. And when it came to his ecclesiology, you know, I think we have all kinds of reasons for why we might be tempted to take shortcuts when it comes to our ecclesiology, whether it’s its busyness, whether we feel like our church is maybe growing, getting too big to do pastoral visitation, or maybe it’s too small to implement discipline or maybe cultural pressures are making it tough to hold on to ecclesiological convictions.
You know, Spurgeon, I think, experienced all those things, even to an extreme measure. And yet amidst all those pressures, he continued to hold on to these convictions. You see them carrying out the same membership process for all 38 years of his ministry.
Jonathan Leeman:
We have this remarkable sentence, even as church membership grew from 50 to 5,000, Spurgeon’s view of pastoral ministry remained the same.
Geoff Chang:
Yeah.
Spurgeon On the Lord’s Supper
Mark Dever:
We talked about baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. Did they have the Lord’s Supper once a year, once a quarter, once a month, every week?
Geoff Chang:
When they first started, they were celebrating it once a month. As the church grew and it became harder for them all to be together to take the Lord’s Supper, he did allow for a second week to take the Lord’s Supper in the month. But eventually, he wanted to celebrate it more frequently.
He loved the communion with Christ in it. And so, they moved towards a weekly communion, though there was still the Great Communion, which was the first Sunday of the month which the whole congregation was encouraged to participate in that one.
Mark Dever:
And they did it like so many churches at the time did. They would have a kind of second service. It would be at the end of the morning service. They would invite non-communicants to leave, and then all the remaining in about a 30-minute service would go through the Lord’s Supper being distributed very much like it is in most Baptist churches today.
Geoff Chang:
Yeah, that’s right. That great communion service on the first Sundays of the month, the communion would be more integrated into the corporate worship, but on the other weeks, it would be what you’re describing there.
Jonathan Leeman:
So was he closed, close, open communion? How did he fence the table? Who did he invite to join?
Geoff Chang:
Certainly his own members, obviously. He did allow for visitors.
Mark Dever:
They had to have tokens.
Geoff Chang:
That’s right.
Mark Dever:
Even the members of his church had to have a token given to them by an elder after an interview in order for them to be allowed to take communion. Am I understanding that correctly?
Geoff Chang:
Yeah, that’s right. So members were issued communion tickets once a year, these sort of perforated tickets, 12 of them for the year.
Mark Dever:
And you’ve seen them?
Geoff Chang:
I have seen them. Yes.
Mark Dever:
Do you have copies of them where you are right now?
Geoff Chang:
No, I don’t. I saw them at the Metropolitan Tabernacle.
Mark Dever:
Okay.
Geoff Chang:
So members would get those tickets that would allow them admission to the table, but visitors could also get admission.
Mark Dever:
You should have these tickets, you should have invitations of these tickets printed up, facsimiles, and use them as publicity for the Spurgeon Library.
Geoff Chang:
Hey, I like that.
Mark Dever:
Give them out because it would immediately cause in all visitors’ minds an understanding of the importance of the Lord’s Supper.
Geoff Chang:
Yeah.
Mark Dever:
So it would be both interesting as a little item, it wouldn’t be expensive to produce, and it would teach a lesson just by its mere existence. It would provoke questions.
Jonathan Leeman:
Geoff, you didn’t know that Mark Moonlights as a marketer, advertising marketing guy, did you?
Geoff Chang:
I did know that. No, that’s good.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay, so how does a guest who shows up take the supper then?
Geoff Chang:
Yeah, so a guest who wants to participate, needs to come during the week and meet with one of the elders and basically have a membership interview. Something like a membership interview where he shares his testimony shares his understanding of the gospel, and he then would also get temporary tickets for however long he’s in London so then he can participate in the Lord’s Supper.
So he would allow visitors to participate. He would allow Paedobaptists to participate. So in that sense, he was open communion, but he was also still very careful to fence the table.
Jonathan Leeman:
Mark, would Capitol Baptist do interviews for receiving the supper for guests?
Mark Dever:
We have not.
Jonathan Leeman:
Would you?
Mark Dever:
I have no plans to do it, though I admire his carefulness.
Spurgeon On Baptisms
Jonathan Leeman:
Actually, I want to go back to baptism for a second. Can you walk us through his baptismal practice? I mean, did he do mass baptisms or spontaneous baptisms?
People would want to get saved on the Sunday and they’d come forward and baptize them like that. What was his practice?
Geoff Chang:
Yeah, no, baptism was tied to membership. I have never encountered an instance where he baptized someone that he did not bring into membership. So if you wanted to be baptized at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, you would have to go through the membership process.
If the elders and the congregation could discern a credible profession of faith, then you were scheduled to be baptized. One of the fun things about the Met Tab is that Spurgeon would always have the baptistry filled with water as a display of their convictions, their Baptist convictions, even when no baptisms were taking place.
And yet he would never just sort of baptize somebody on the spot. That was something that would require a process of somebody interviewing.
Jonathan Leeman:
You said he fenced the baptismal pool. What does that mean?
Geoff Chang:
Well, just means that he examined for a credible profession of faith before admitting someone to the pool.
Mark Dever:
So Geoff, if somebody is listening to this who likes Spurgeon, they probably like Spurgeon because they read some of his sermons or they read Morning and Evening. I think the other most common thing to be read these days is probably his autobiography. Would somebody learn much about Spurgeon’s understanding of church and church membership from reading his autobiography?
Geoff Chang:
You’d have to be paying attention. You’d have to be looking for that theme. But certainly, I mean, he has sections in there where he encourages young people to join the church to make a public professional faith, you know, and certainly, talking about his work as a pastor, you see his understanding of church membership come through.
Jonathan Leeman:
You read the entirety of the autobiography, the two volumes to your church, true? Wednesday nights?
Mark Dever:
The four volumes. I did the four volumes.
Jonathan Leeman:
Goodness gracious. And with your eyes, I’m sure as you went along, you picked up a lot of those.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, he would have little anecdotes about particular people who would be members or, sometimes backsliders even.
Jonathan Leeman:
Walk us through. You said anybody being baptized had to go through the membership process, and walk us through the membership process. It was pretty vigorous, as I recall you writing.
Geoff Chang:
Yeah, that’s right. So at least six steps. First, there’s an interview with one of the elders, kind of one of the lay elders. These are serious interviews.
I mean, the elders are really examining their understanding of the gospel, their testimony of conversion. Wonders of Grace by Hannah Winkle is a great resource that has a lot of these testimonies written down and published in her book.
Mark Dever:
And who is she?
Geoff Chang:
She is, isn’t she the daughter of Peter Masters?
Mark Dever:
I don’t know, maybe so…
Geoff Chang:
I think that’s right. So she’s connected with the Metropolitan Tabernacle. And then that’s the first step. In the second step, then Spurgeon would meet with every candidate for his own interview.
He would review the notes that the elder took and then try to ask follow-up questions. So as the senior pastor, he felt sort of that special responsibility for everyone joining the church.
Jonathan Leeman:
So he interviewed the 9,200, 9,281 people who, no, no, that’s not right.
Geoff Chang:
No, no, actually more like 14,000.
Jonathan Leeman:
14,000.
Geoff Chang:
Either he or later his brother, the associate pastor.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay. He interviewed them all. That’s stage two. What are steps three through six?
Geoff Chang:
The elder will then present the testimony to the congregation at a congregational meeting. The congregation would vote to assign a visitor to make an inquiry, which would be step four.
Mark Dever:
A visitor not meaning someone who comes and visits the church, but rather a member of the church who goes and visits on behalf of the congregation, examining the person wanting to be a member.
Geoff Chang:
That’s correct. That’s right. Yeah.
Mark Dever:
Not like we commonly use when we had a visitor in our church.
Geoff Chang:
Yeah, no, that’s right. Or also known as a messenger, they might call him a messenger. He’s going from the church to go investigate, to ask questions in this applicant’s place of work or his neighborhood, just asking about kind of his reputation, if people know that he’s joining the church, if there’s anything against this person that they should be aware of.
Jonathan Leeman:
Was that common in that day for Baptist churches to send members to a person’s place of work to inquire? We don’t know if other churches did that back in the 19th century. Geoff?
Geoff Chang:
I found references to this in congregationalist churches.
Jonathan Leeman:
Big C Congregationalists?
Geoff Chang:
Yes, yes. In England, they had this practice, and certainly the churches that Spurgeon planted adopted this practice also.
Mark Dever:
Maybe good questions for Greg Wills, and Caleb Morell.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, that’s fascinating. Okay, so sending people and then the last step or two?
Geoff Chang:
Yeah, so then that messenger comes back and reports to the congregation its findings. The person is actually brought into the congregational meeting and interviewed briefly and then the congregation votes.
And then the last step is just baptism and communion. They actually don’t join the church officially until they’ve taken communion and received the right hand of fellowship.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s remarkable. So some 14,000 people did this.
Geoff Chang:
Yes. Yes. No shortcuts, like I said.
What Did Spurgeon Think About Church Discipline?
Jonathan Leeman:
Now you have two surprising sentences. You say, over the 38 years of Spurgeon’s ministry at the Tabernacle, now here’s where I got that number I said a moment ago, 9,281 people were removed from membership, which was 67% of those who were brought into membership.
In other words, for every three members that the church took into membership, two of them would go through the removal process. So obviously this wasn’t all discipline. I assume this is people going to other churches and so forth. What’s the lesson here for us? Why is that significant?
Geoff Chang:
Yeah. I mean, think one of the things I say in my book is what’s remarkable perhaps is not that his membership when he died was 5,300 but that it was only 5,300, right? That they did the work of actually trying to keep track of the church.
And so I’ve got a good quote here from Spurgeon speaking to his students. He says this, “I would urge upon the resolve to have no church unless it is a real one. The fact is that too frequently religious statistics are shockingly false.
Let us not keep names in our books when they are only names. Certain of the good old people like to keep them there and cannot bear to have them removed. But when you do not know where the individuals are nor what they are, how can you count them?
They are gone to America or Australia or to heaven, but as far as your role is concerned, they are with you still. Is this the right thing? It may not be possible to be absolutely accurate, but let us aim at it. Keep your church real and effective or make no report.
A mere nominal church is a lie. Let it be what it professes to be.” You know, here he’s trying to have a real church, right? He’s the pastor.
He wants to have a real congregation. These numbers matter. It reflects their responsibility before the Lord, who’s there.
Mark Dever:
That’s excellent. Geoff, one of the things that I remember about Spurgeon is he was not only an evangelist himself, but he thought that if a man wanted to be in the preaching ministry, he must be at some level a successful evangelist. Am I misremembering that?
Geoff Chang:
No, you’re right. You might be remembering one of the qualifications for being a student at the pastor’s college. In order to be admitted to the pastor’s college, you had to have a seal of the Holy Spirit upon your ministry, meaning that in your preaching…
Mark Dever:
Conversions.
Geoff Chang:
…someone was converted under your preaching home.
Mark Dever:
What do you think about that? Should Midwestern be requiring that? Who’s right? Midwestern or Spurgeon? Geoff Chang?
Geoff Chang:
Well, I appreciate Spurgeon raising the bar on admission like that because everyone who was accepted into the pastor’s college would receive all their tuition covered, all their expenses covered. You had to have no other requirement.
You had to have no other kind of educational background or financial, but you had to have that, this sense of the Holy Spirit’s calling, evident fruit from preaching in your ministry. So, you know, if he’s going to provide all your tuition, I think it’s okay for him to require something like that.
Mark Dever:
Can I ask just one last sort of nerdy question? 9Marks. It’s a Baptist church. He’s a congregational church as well.
Geoff Chang:
Yes.
Did Spurgeon Nominate His Own Elders?
Mark Dever:
So, he had elders, he had deacons. How did they get nominated? I mean, did Spurgeon do it? Did the elders nominate elders? Did the deacons nominate deacons?
Did they use Acts 6 as a thing and just have people nominate from the floor at a member’s meeting, but then it’d be embarrassing maybe? How’d they do it?
Geoff Chang:
No, all the nominations came from the elders. Spurgeon would present them at the annual meeting each year, which meant that throughout the year Spurgeon was always on the lookout for potential elders.
So we have a letter here in our collection where he’s writing to the elders, just going through a list of names of his conversations with various men in the church and some saying, yeah, I can’t serve at this point. Others are eager to serve as elders. He is regularly looking out for elders, seeking those who serve the church in that capacity, and then nominating them once a year.
Mark Dever:
Sounds like what pastors do today.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, when he has 5,000 members, how many elders does he have?
Mark Dever:
Yeah. He didn’t have many.
Geoff Chang:
Around 30.
Mark Dever:
Oh, he did. Oh, I’m misremembering then.
Geoff Chang:
Well, for a church of 5,000, that may feel like not a lot, but around 30 to 35 kind of throughout his ministry.
Jonathan Leeman:
And would they meet like, you know, most elder boards today and whether you’re in a Presbyterian or a Baptist church, you’re meeting every other week, maybe sometimes once a week, once a month, something like that? Did his elders do that same sort of thing or was it more of what one author calls micro-eldering?
Geoff Chang:
Well, they certainly did that, the micro-eldering, but they also met regularly at least twice a month. If you read elders’ meeting minutes from the Met Tab during his days, they’re actually pretty boring because all they talk about is just like lists of names and who they’ve been meeting up with.
Mark Dever:
And Geoff, one of the most interesting things I remember from your book, if I remember it correctly, is not the elders’ meeting, it’s the members’ meetings. They would have members’ meetings not every other month or once a month, but sometimes once a week or multiple times a week because they had so many membership applications to deal with. Am I remembering that correctly or is that crazy talk?
Geoff Chang:
No, it’s exactly right. I mean, there’s their commitment to congregationalism. With so many people applying for the church, they were still committed to making sure that the congregation was the last step of affirming people into the membership process.
So they had to start finding different times in the week to meet. They would get together for like a short 15, 30-minute congregational meeting before the prayer meeting and then a short congregational meeting after the prayer meeting.
Jonathan Leeman:
In order to process members.
Geoff Chang:
That’s right. And in the course of a month, they would have, you know, a dozen congregational meetings just to get those people through the process.
Jonathan Leeman:
Mark just taking a tangent and jumping to a teaching point. Explain why in your membership meetings, you moved the receiving and dismissing of members to the very beginning of a members meeting.
Mark Dever:
Because we were concerned that if we left it till later, some of the people might have to leave to go home with young kids. So we just want the largest number of people present for that most important part of the meeting.
Jonathan Leeman:
And just to punctuate that most important part of congregationalism. It’s not about passing a budget. It’s about that covenantal affirmation we give to one another as we receive and then say goodbye to and sometimes discipline people from membership.
Speaking of discipline, I think this is the last topic I want to try to cover here. Did the Metropolitan Tabernacle practice church discipline?
Geoff Chang:
They did.
Jonathan Leeman:
If so, how often? Was it a common thing?
Mark Dever:
Well, I mean, they’re practicing it by the way. They’re doing tickets for communion to begin with.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s a good point.
Geoff Chang:
Right.
Did Spurgeon Practice Excommunication?
Jonathan Leeman:
What about excommunication? I guess that’s what I’m getting after. Did they practice that?
Mark Dever:
They don’t give you a ticket.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. I want a ticket.
Geoff Chang:
They do practice excommunication. It was always a congregational act of discipline led by the elders.
And you see them practicing it for a variety of issues. The kinds of issues that we face today, are embezzlement, sexual sin, adultery, neglect of religious duties, and theft.
Jonathan Leeman:
These things show up in the minutes, I assume.
Geoff Chang:
These things show up in the minutes, that’s right.
Mark Dever:
Are those minutes online? Can an interested pastor go look this stuff up online?
Geoff Chang:
They are not online, no. So you’d have to go to the archives. It’d be great if they could be published someday, but they’re not at this point.
Jonathan Leeman:
The process of discipline works sort of like, you know, I’ve experienced it, you brothers experienced it. Some private conversations followed by more private conversations, maybe with a few more people. And as Jesus talks about Matthew 18, eventually they tell it to the church.
And then does the church give them time? Like, at the next regularly scheduled meeting, if nothing changes, then the elders will come back to you to recommend, and then they come back and make a recommendation and the congregation removes it. Is that the process in Met Tab or is it different or what?
Geoff Chang:
That’s basically the process. There are some cases where the sin is more egregious, where the elders lead them to move more quickly in the discipline process, but most of them, it’s over the course of multiple congregational meetings. Yeah.
The tickets that we were talking about, that becomes actually a source for them of uncovering some of these discipline cases because if they find that certain members haven’t been attending for a number of months, that’s what alerts the elders, hey, we should go check on this member. And sometimes in some cases, they find that there are cases of sin which are uncovered.
Mark Dever:
So just to be clear then, let’s say 12 months in a row, Mark does not come, he doesn’t claim his ticket. So those tickets, there’s a particular ticket for me, or it’s recorded who takes the tickets, so they can tell what…somebody is looking and comparing the tickets to some role in a book, and they’re seeing what members, in fact, have not been coming to take a ticket for the Lord’s Supper.
Geoff Chang:
Yeah, that’s right. And the elders get a list of kinds of non-attenders. I think it’s three months that they get flagged, you know, as it were. And so in their elders meetings, they’ll get a list of those names and then begin pursuing those people.
Jonathan Leeman:
I said discipline was the last thing I wanted to cover. Any comments on his deacons and the ministry they did?
Geoff Chang:
Yeah, the deacons handled all the practical matters of the church, the finances, the caring for the poor, and maintaining the property. And there was a lot to handle with such a large institution.
Mark Dever:
We had a good conversation with Alex DePrime about this recently.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. And presumably, he must have had dozens and dozens of deacons at a time.
Geoff Chang:
No, actually his deacons were appointed to lifetime terms because that’s kind of what he inherited. So he was always very careful in appointing deacons, had I think at the end, maybe like 15 to 20 deacons.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay. And they’re handling these more tangible matters.
Geoff Chang:
Right.
Jonathan Leeman:
Mark, any final reflections from you brother on reading the just material as well as just other knowledge you have of Spurgeon as pastor and ecclesiologist?
Mark Dever:
Spurgeon is just of continual interest and he’s always edifying. So Geoff. You are doing great service to pastors by making his stuff more available and observing it for us. Thank you for your work, brother.
Geoff Chang:
Oh, you’re very welcome. I think Spurgeon will be grateful for 9Marks. Yeah, if pastors want to learn more about Spurgeon, definitely check out our work at the Spurgeon Library. Go to Spurgeon.org and you can take advantage of our resources there too.
Mark Dever:
Geoff, when I was there for the opening of the Spurgeon Library a number of years ago, there was a great, great-granddaughter of Spurgeon’s. Yes.
Who was there, she’s a Christian, a member of a Baptist church in London. And when I met her, she said in their Sunday school class, they were studying 9Marks of a healthy church.
Geoff Chang:
Hey, that’s great.
Jonathan Leeman:
At Met Tab?
Mark Dever:
No, no, no, it wasn’t Met Tab. It was some other Baptist church where she was in London.
Jonathan Leeman:
Got it. Again, the book is Spurgeon the Pastor, Recovering a Biblical and Theological Vision for Ministry by Geoffrey, spelled with a G, Chang. Brother, thanks for your time.
Geoff Chang:
Thanks for having me.
Mark Dever:
Thank you, brother.
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