Dr. Geoff Chang, who joins us from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary to discuss the dedicated pastoral work of the 'Prince of Preachers'. As we navigate through Dr. Chang's book "Spurgeon the Pastor," you will gain more insight on Charles H. Spurgeon's shepherding of a 19th-century megachurch. Dr. Chang helps us glean from Spurgeon an understanding of the pivotal role concerning corporate prayer in the life of a church.
Step into a world where the collective voice in prayer becomes the heartbeat of a congregation, with Spurgeon's practices serving as a beacon for our own times. Our conversation focuses on the power of shared supplication, reinforcing the necessity of maintaining a dynamic prayer life amid today's distractions and keeping a Gospel centered approach to congregational prayer as a cornerstone of faith.
We delve into the personal prayer life of Charles H. Spurgeon, unearthing his personal devotional poems and the sacredness of his family worship. The tender balance Spurgeon achieved between his public ministry and his home life offers an inspiring blueprint for nurturing faith within the family. Dr. Chang provides a rare glimpse into Spurgeon's inner sanctum, revealing how this historical figure's domestic devotion can guide us in creating a spiritually rich home environment. It's an honor to share this dialogue with Dr. Chang, which promises to fuel your own walk with Jesus and deepen your appreciation for the timeless lessons from Charles Spurgeon's life as a servant of Christ.
Dr. Geoff Chang, who joins us from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary to discuss the dedicated pastoral work of the 'Prince of Preachers'. As we navigate through Dr. Chang's book "Spurgeon the Pastor," you will gain more insight on Charles H. Spurgeon's shepherding of a 19th-century megachurch. Dr. Chang helps us glean from Spurgeon an understanding of the pivotal role concerning corporate prayer in the life of a church.
Step into a world where the collective voice in prayer becomes the heartbeat of a congregation, with Spurgeon's practices serving as a beacon for our own times. Our conversation focuses on the power of shared supplication, reinforcing the necessity of maintaining a dynamic prayer life amid today's distractions and keeping a Gospel centered approach to congregational prayer as a cornerstone of faith.
We delve into the personal prayer life of Charles H. Spurgeon, unearthing his personal devotional poems and the sacredness of his family worship. The tender balance Spurgeon achieved between his public ministry and his home life offers an inspiring blueprint for nurturing faith within the family. Dr. Chang provides a rare glimpse into Spurgeon's inner sanctum, revealing how this historical figure's domestic devotion can guide us in creating a spiritually rich home environment. It's an honor to share this dialogue with Dr. Chang, which promises to fuel your own walk with Jesus and deepen your appreciation for the timeless lessons from Charles Spurgeon's life as a servant of Christ.
Welcome to the Be Disciples podcast with heroes Kyle Morris and David Glavin. A few of our other guys are out. We got Dakota Smith and Mexico with a team on a mission trip. We've got Chance Holler on a mission trip, headed to Africa today. But today we have a special guest with us. We have Dr Jeff Chang from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Welcome to the podcast. Hey, so good to be with you guys. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it is awesome. I've loved my time at Midwestern. I was online most of the time, but I only live an hour away, so I got to participate in conferences and really any opportunity to come up there. So thank you for all that you guys are doing there. It's been awesome. That's so good to hear. Thank you, brother. Yeah, I'm repping my sweater shirt today.
Speaker 1:So, make sure we'll get enough Midwestern publicity marketing, but also, yeah, it's just been, it's been really fun. So introduce yourself. What's your role at Midwestern? What are you doing there and talk about? Really your just your history in the past or it, and then your family?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, jeff Chang. I've been here at Midwestern for four years. I teach historical theology. My official title is assistant professor of historical theology. I also teach church history, baptist history, it classes on ecclesiology. As I said, I've been here for four years. We before coming here, I was a pastor in Portland, oregon, where I served at Hinson Baptist Church for 10 years as an associate pastor. Prior to that, I was at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington DC, where I was a pastoral assistant for a couple of years. Yeah, but now here in Kansas City, I'm an elder at Warnell Road Baptist Church. I'm married to Stephanie. We have three kids. What else Is that covered? Is that covered at all?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, certainly. I mean you did leave out. Curator of the Spurgeon.
Speaker 3:Library, Of course.
Speaker 1:I mean of course, that's a little bit important.
Speaker 3:Yeah, one of the amazing things that we have here at Midwestern is Charles Spurgeon's books are here, kansas City, missouri. Yeah, we have this beautiful space built to house them, but more than just sort of a museum for you to walk through. We also have a kind of a growing research center centered on Spurgeon scholarship. So we have scholars visiting, accessing our resources. Just this past fall we made a huge acquisition, bringing over from Spurgeon's College, uk, their collection of Spurgeon materials, and so we. It's just a phenomenal collection that we have here at Midwestern. So it's a privilege for me to get to sort of steward that think about how to use it for advancing Spurgeon scholarship but also for telling the story of Spurgeon's life and ministry. So if you're ever in the Kansas City area, do stop by the Spurgeon Library. We'd love to host you for a visit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's I. Every time I'm on campus I walk in because I have to go and just look around and spend a little bit of time in there. So, yeah, you have to check it out if you're on campus. Don't don't miss out on that. But before really we get into the main topic, I do want to make sure that I talk about your book. Here we have a book that I pre-ordered and read right away Spurgeon the Pastor. And so you've really taken a different look at Spurgeon, where most really emphasize his preaching, obviously because that's what he was known for the Prince of Preachers. And so tell us just a snippet, say somebody's listening to this, and they're like who is Spurgeon? I don't know that guy. Just give us a brief overview of Spurgeon and then tell us about your book, what, what really gave you the vision to write a book about Spurgeon the pastor and to kind of review what he did as a shepherd of the church and as a leader?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, charles Haddon Spurgeon. He was a 19th century Baptist pastor, probably the most famous preacher of the 19th century. His sermons were sold by the tens of thousands, week by week. He had a remarkable ministry there in London, one that reached really the whole world. Out of his ministry came, as I said, thousands of sermons. He founded an orphanage, he founded the pastor's college. He sent out members of his church to plant other churches, to work with other missionaries, to pioneer different benevolent works throughout London. So really just a remarkable ministry.
Speaker 3:With all that being said, though, as a, as is the case with the title of my book, what I wanted to highlight was just the fact that fundamentally, he was a pastor. Yeah, he was not kind of a, a somebody occupying a preaching station, he was not running a paraturch ministry. At the end of the day he was a local church pastor trying to be faithful, care for his congregation, and that really was the base, the foundation kind of, of everything else that he did. So my book, spurgeon the pastor, just takes a look at how he pastored the largest kind of mega church of the 19th century, really the only one.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:A church that, by his death, had over 5,000 members. But what's so remarkable about that fact is he really meant to be a faithful pastor. So of those 5,000 members, he wanted to think about how to? How to bring them in correctly. You know, do things like membership interviews, have the congregation vote on each application, examine each candidate. He, once he brought them into the church, he and his elders worked hard to keep track of their members, provide pastoral care, do pastoral visitation. You know, pursue members who were sort of falling through the cracks and they hadn't seen for a while. They practiced things like church discipline and members meetings. They had prayer meetings and all kinds of other discipleship structures in place and certainly that church was an amazing engine for gospel ministry throughout the world.
Speaker 3:So I tell that story in my books Spurgeon the pastor. It's so much fun to read, especially if you are yourself somebody who's in the local church and you know all the challenges that we face. But to see Spurgeon try to be faithful in his challenging context, I think it's super encouraging. And really that's the heart of my book, wanting to emphasize that past, all the amazing fruit and all the incredible numbers of the things that he accomplished. Most of all, he was being faithful to his biblical and theological convictions about what the church ought to be, and that's, I think, the best model we can have for ourselves. Not that we would ever duplicate his ministry, but that we would try to imitate his faithfulness. And that's, I think, the gulf of the Christian life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you certainly pointed out the principles that we need to take from Spurgeon, biblical principles, and how he put those into practice. I remember you were speaking one time about some elder notes that were written out about a meeting with a potential new member and kind of their notes, taking notes on their thoughts, on their understanding of the gospel.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the membership interviews, that's right Membership interviews.
Speaker 1:have they really grasped this?
Speaker 1:And that's something that had been implemented here at our church, but it was a good like reminder why we do them. Sometimes they they can become stale or routine and it's like no, these are really important and we need to make sure that one we're connecting with that individual and making sure that they they're saved, they know the gospel and they understand what Jesus has done. So that was just their fresh reminders in this book. Fresh reminders if you're been in the pastorate for a long time, it really helps. Or if you're just entering in. Why are all these things important? Why do we do these practices? Why did Spurgeon do them, and so you do a really good job highlighting all those, which was very refreshing, kept kept my eyes fresh on what was going on in our church.
Speaker 2:So very good.
Speaker 1:Thank you for that. Yeah, very welcome. Yeah, if you want to check out his book, I will put a link down in the description of his book where you can go. You can purchase it. But I recommend and also I'll put the Spurgeon Library in Midwestern links down there so everybody can go check it out. Again, it's in Kansas City, Missouri, and if you're in the area you have to go, you have to see the campus. It's beautiful, and check out the Spurgeon Library and so thank you for writing that book. It's definitely spurred me on in this direction of Spurgeon on Prayer, which is our main topic for today.
Speaker 1:Really focusing on his, on his pastorate and then how he led his people in prayer. So we've implemented a prayer meeting this last year. I've read only a prayer meeting. I read your book, some others, to just kind of stir the understanding of why Spurgeon did prayer meetings and prayer meetings aren't new, you know. It's not like it's this new concept revolutionary. Let's do prayer meetings. That's been around for a long time where churches get together and pray. But there was, I think, some unique things about his prayer meetings in his pastorate, what he expected of his congregation and to train them up in understanding why prayer is so important. So I you know all those things really highlighted the purpose. Hey, we need to focus on prayer meetings and we need to make it a priority in our church to pray together corporately. And so really let's start there. Spurgeon and the prayer meeting you know what, when it came to pastor in his church, why a prayer meeting and why was it so important to him?
Speaker 3:Yeah, great question. Certainly, as you said, prayer meetings have been around a long time. I would say they've been around since the New Testament. Yeah, we see the church in Jerusalem. There, you know, they very quickly come under pressure from the Pharisees not to preach the gospel anymore and Paul and John are. Peter and John are threatened in that. And so the believers get together and they pray and it says there was a prayer meeting in Jerusalem that the room was shaken and all those believers were even more emboldened in the preaching of the gospel.
Speaker 3:So the early church is praying. We see that example. We see Paul's commands to pray to the church. So it's no surprise that throughout church history, as you said, churches have always come together to pray, not just individual prayer but corporate prayer, coming together to pray as a congregation, as a church. You know it's much more than just like an activity of the church. I mean it was part of our philosophy of ministry. We believe that. You know, we cannot coerce anyone to salvation. We cannot manipulate anyone to make a decision for Christ. At the end of the day, the Holy Spirit has to move. The Holy Spirit has to open blind eyes, awaken dead hearts. Salvation belongs to the Lord, and if we really believe that as Christians, then we don't think that. You know, as good as I think my preaching is, it's not good enough to raise the dead right In fact I probably put some people to sleep instead of raising the dead in my preaching.
Speaker 3:So you know, my congregation needs to understand that. I certainly need to believe that, which means I need to urge my people to pray. You know, like, okay, I'm gonna do my best to preach faithful sermons but at the end of the day we have to ask the Lord to move. If there's gonna be any spiritual growth in our church, if there's gonna be sinners converted, it's gonna be God's work and he wants us to ask for it. He doesn't want us to just kind of presume that it'll happen, but we have to come to him in dependence, trusting him to work. And so a lot of young people these days, like Spurgeon, would hold to a Calvinistic theology, understanding that God is sovereign in salvation. I think that's wonderful, but I think most of all that ought to be reflected in their prayer lives. And a church can have all the Calvinistic doctrine that it wants, but if it's not coming together to pray, then what's the point of that theology? Right? So a prayer, coming together for congregational prayer is a part of your philosophy of ministry. You preach the gospel and then you gather your people to pray. And if you, spurgeon would say, if you're unhappy with your preacher, if you're finding him dry and unfruitful and just preaching, he would ask you well, are you praying for him? Are you supporting him? Are you lifting up his arms like Aaron and her lifting up Moses' arms? Are you supporting him in prayer? And if not, then maybe the problem is with you, maybe the problem is with the congregation. So yeah, it has to be part of your philosophy of ministry.
Speaker 3:It also is so much kind of a sign of health in the church. It's striking to me as I read Spurgeon. He would send his students off to plant churches and they would often write back reports and one of the things that they would report on, in addition to how the church was growing, any new conversions, baptisms, those kinds of things but they would also report how many people are showing up to prayer meeting. And I always thought that was so striking because for Spurgeon that was one of the best indicators of the health of the church, not just the size of it. I mean, size is one thing, that's great, but how healthy is that size? Out of that 300 members are only 10 people showing up to pray. What does that tell you about the church? So he really felt like to keep up the prayer meeting was a work to instill in his people a deep dependence on the Lord and understanding that they couldn't do this work of the ministry on their own. One of the best signs of health then was that they would come together to pray together to ask the Lord for help.
Speaker 3:The church is not just this kind of he says. The church is not just a machinery that you can keep going. You just do these structures and everything just runs on its own. No, it's a living thing, it's an organism. It needs life and that life is the spirit. And therefore, as Christians, we never just go about the work of the church mechanically, as if we can just kind of keep it running, but no, we come to the Lord in prayer asking for his help. Two points there. A lot more I could say. I'll let you respond, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean I grew up in Baptist churches, southern Baptist churches, and I've seen success and then I've also seen lukewarm places and any time it was lukewarm and it was just kind of going along in the routine. The prayer meetings were like five people and they were just getting together faithfully every week and in a room and praying together. And not that five people praying for a church isn't going to move God's heart. God loves his church but it definitely was a sign of where the people were at at that time. And so going into this at our church that's, I was like what's this going to be like? We've seen growth and it's been really awesome and people are coming and we're preaching the word and it's just been a fun time in ministry.
Speaker 1:I mean four years ago this church was about 70 to 75 people and now we're pushing 400. And so it's just been an awesome thing to see people come. And so when I was like, OK, this prayer meeting's been on my heart, it's been on my heart for a year. I've been praying, I've been reading, I've been prepping, that is kind of the fear like who's going to come, who's going to show up. I want people to come because I want them to see God work.
Speaker 1:And really by the second prayer meeting, kind of that shyness of praying corporately, people speaking and praying aloud, kind of wore off. And man, it was great to just hear the hearts of the people, what God's been doing in their lives, the needs of the church praying for the lost. Being able to come together and do that has been fruitful already. So it's been great to see that and so definitely been a fun time watching the Lord work. And so thank you for sharing that. But, David, I'm going to pass it off to you. I know you got a few questions on prayer in the church specifically.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I had specifically a question going off of the Spurgeon's insistence upon and leading his church into prayer and hosting prayer meetings. In your study and your understanding are there some struggles. What were some of the struggles and successes or joys that came out of that specifically in Spurgeon's ministry? Where are there notes or things that kind of show where he struggled with leading the church in prayer and what are maybe some successes and things where that was successful?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think every prayer meeting will have some challenges. I think in my book I talk about a visitor from Boston going and attending one of the prayer meetings there and him finding the whole thing kind of dead, sort of just kind of going kind of poorly. And it wasn't until then. Spurgeon kind of takes the reins of the prayer meeting and leads out in a prayer that things really began to kind of pick up. But he gives a really dramatic telling of that story. But I think not every prayer meeting will be so dramatic. I think there would be prayer meetings where it's just great you go there, you pray with the church, you pray for good things, you're edified and then you walk away having done good work. It's not this sort of dramatic experience necessarily, and I think that's OK. As the pastor, though, you will always need to fight against that kind of mechanical approach to prayer meetings and to the church, reminding your people once again why you do what you do and putting the heart of prayer into that prayer meeting. Other struggles, I mean he often talks to the students about not letting people pray too long. I think earlier on, when he would lead those prayer meetings, you have some certain members who would just kind of ramble and then they go. They're praying out loud more for their own sort of for their own sakes, rather than thinking about the people that are there with them, and so they carry on too long and it becomes difficult and burdensome for those who are attending. So Spurgeon says cut those people off. You can't let them dominate the meeting. You have to help them, right?
Speaker 3:I think Spurgeon also was very careful to curate the kinds of things that they were praying for. I think sometimes people want to bring very personal kind of individualized prayer requests to the prayer meeting. But Spurgeon always made sure that there was a sense of urgency about what was being prayed for and an understanding of why these things mattered spiritually. He would particularly emphasize ministry opportunities that the church had. He would invite folks from the orphanage or from the various evangelistic ministries or they would pray for their students that were being sent out. Those kinds of things were at the heart of what he prayed for.
Speaker 3:Yeah, in terms of the successes, it's just remarkable that every week thousands turned out to pray. With the congregation so large, clearly not everybody could pray out loud, but still, in coming together and being led in prayer, they found that to be edifying and needed for the life of the church. And there will be many reports of people who said, man, like you know, I loved hearing Spurgeon preach on Sunday, but it was coming to that prayer meeting on Monday. That really left an impression, you know, and many of these people who, visitors who attended the Monday night prayer meeting, would walk away convinced that they needed to do that in their own churches also. You know something like that. So the influence of that Monday night prayer meeting from the Metropolitan Tabernacle was a powerful thing in its own right. Yeah, I've had to think about.
Speaker 1:You know Spurgeon's cultural context you know, when he was doing this.
Speaker 1:You know he was somebody people wanted to come see, whether they were Christians or not. Spurgeon had a reputation of his preaching. People wanted to come listen and that was great. They came and heard the gospel.
Speaker 1:But today we have different types of distractions of life. You know Spurgeon, you know talks about the different vices of life, you know alcoholism and things that people are getting into, spending time at the bars, which we still have that today. But now we have these devices in our hands. We have all these things to like keep us busy and which I feel like over time has caused like, well, let's do less services at the church. Well, let's do less things.
Speaker 1:And it's kind of allowed for the prayer meeting to slip in some places or for these things that Spurgeon instituted that weren't programs. They were things dedicated to the Lord, for his glory and to bring people into relationship with God, and so, yeah, I've kind of had to like weave through, like what is? He had difficulties in certain things and then now today we're going to have to navigate that as the, as the pastorate, to say you know, these are things we need to be disciplined in our walk with the Lord and prayer is a part of the that discipline and and then pastoring the church, shepherding them in that direction. To say prayer is important and we need to get rid of some of those other things in order to pray and not that those things are always bad, but but we need to evaluate the priority of our life and I feel like Spurgeon did a good job of like you need to be here on Monday, right?
Speaker 1:There's no excuse not to be here on Monday night to pray with the church and he almost kind of had that in his, in his sermons. You kind of felt that like, oh man, he's really shepherding the church to come and to listen and to participate, to be discipled and then to go serve and to go evangelize. And you, just, you, just, in the words that he's preaching, you could, you could tell that that's how he was shepherding and that was awesome to see. And I try to evaluate myself in that way as much as possible, because that's what I want people to do I want them to continue to grow on their walk with the Lord. And Spurgeon had that and that was the shepherding, the pasturing part of his, even in his preaching. You could, you could read that in his sermons.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah. John Calvin talks about prayer being the chief expression of faith. If the primary way we express our faith in Christ is through prayer, then coming together to pray as a church is the most fitting thing we could do right Congregationally. Certainly we do that in the context of our Sunday morning gatherings and we can do that in our small groups, but to come together for a meeting devoted to prayer, yeah, I think that's a powerful thing. I think something unique happens in that kind of context it not only grows our trust in Lord, but it knits the people together Now, as we seek the Lord together in prayer.
Speaker 2:We've talked about Spurgeon's leadership and leading the church into prayer and the importance of prayer in the church. Are there any insights that you can give on Spurgeon's personal prayer life and how he exemplified that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, not a ton. I mean meaning he was very private about his prayers. I think he took Jesus commands there in Matthew six seriously right that he kept private prayer private. So I mean, examples of that would be that he was often reluctant. People wanted to publish his prayers but he often kind of refused to do so. I think it was only until after his death that his son published a volume of his prayers, of his Sunday morning prayers, and you can purchase that volume.
Speaker 3:When he wrote a volume on family worship, his publishers wanted him to include prayers in those kind of daily devotionals and he again refused. He just thought people need to learn to pray with their own words. They don't need me writing their prayers for them. So he very much saw prayer, especially private prayer, as something not to be rehearsed but something that we could very spontaneously do before the Lord, pouring our hearts out. One of the things that we have here in the Spurgeon Library is a volume, a notebook, of handwritten poems by Spurgeon, unpublished, handwritten kind of private devotional poems and, lord willing, in May this will be released so you can be on the lookout for that. It's going to be called Christ Are All, but these are just Spurgeon's own private devotional poems never before published.
Speaker 3:That's awesome Coming out for the first time this spring, so we've transcribed them. B&h Academic is publishing them. But these 180-something poems, all kind of showing kind of his heart before the Lord, his confession of sin, his feeling of weakness, his times of joys, his earnestness in the ministry, all these things come out in these poems which are, I think, a reflection of his prayer life, and what you get is just striking this man who walked before the Lord, who, as much as he talked about dependence on the Lord in public, you see that showing up in private also. So yeah, so much we could say about that. But I commend that volume of poems to you. Yeah, coming out this May.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. I mean I can't imagine he wrote so much and he had time to write 180 poems. So obviously that was probably very private, something he did more for himself, between him and the Lord. You know that was something he practiced, but that gives us insight. He spent time in prayer and then he wrote things down, you know, in poem form, and expressed his relationship with the Lord through that, and obviously we see that in the Psalms. I mean, we see poems, songs written to the Lord, and so that was a practice for a really long time. But we see Spurgeon copying the things that are in Scripture and then implementing that into his daily devotion and then into his pastorate and leading the people. And so, yeah, that's amazing. I know, david, you also had an emphasis on family you know, Spurgeon devotions.
Speaker 1:You even mentioned that family worship or family devotion in prayer. What was Spurgeon's instruction on that? I know he wrote a lot of devotion. We have a lot of devotions today that are Spurgeon's works that we use individually and in the homes. But what was his counsel, his leadership in making sure families were discipling, parents were discipling their kids in the home. Being in the Word, what was his message on that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, family worship was an important institution for him and his household. He was, you know, very much a peer attendant. In that sense he would lead his family in worship twice a day, once in the morning, once in the evening. I get the sense that they kept those meetings pretty simple. He would often lead them, he would lead in prayer, they would sing a hymn and then he would read a passage of Scripture and as he read that passage of Scripture he would comment on it, looking for little teaching opportunities, and that would be about it. I would get the sense that they would that each meeting would take maybe 30 minutes, maybe less, just a brief time to gather the house together and lead them in some spiritual reflection and prayer and worship and reading of Scripture. So, yeah, I think he would encourage families to do that, to be consistent in that. He would encourage fathers to lead in that and not to go overboard with those things, but just to be consistent in them and seek to edify and challenge those who are in your house.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's awesome to know that he was. That was a time that he stuck with. It didn't matter who was at his house, but the time of day, hey, we're going to be in prayer and in the Word, and that's what we do here and it's interesting to read his sons.
Speaker 3:They always talk very positively about their father, charles Jr and Thomas, and they explicitly talk about how those times of family worship were actually really sweet. As young boys they enjoyed those times. I don't get the sense that Spurgeon was ever boring or really stiff and formal in those times of family worship, but it was very warm. He wouldn't mind using humor. He used humor. He was such a fun personality to be with and certainly when it comes to family worship I think he kept an appropriate kind of familial tone to it so that his boys could look back on those times and really really appreciate them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's great to see the example of a pastor, a pastor in his family, leading his family in prayer, taking care of his home. We know that Spurgeon was a busy man. At a certain point he became extremely busy but, making sure that his wife and his children knew who Jesus was, spent time in the Word with him, and that's a reminder for us as pastors. We can't forget our ministry at home and we can't neglect it, because that will definitely negatively impact our church. And so Spurgeon did that in the home, in private. People were at his house, he displayed that and that's really important for us. And so I kind of want to transition here, kind of as we're winding down, as we land the plane.
Speaker 1:We've been talking about Spurgeon. If you mentioned John Calvin, we have tons of individuals in church history that we look to Martin Luther, svingli, I mean, we could go, you could just name them, you could rattle them off. But from your perspective as a professor of historical theology, as we look at the past, why do we need to know about these guys? Like, what's important for us as the church to study them, to learn from them? Like, why do we do it? What makes it an important piece of the way we function as a church.
Speaker 3:Yeah, what a good question. A pastor once told me that church history is the pastor's best friend, and I think what he meant by that is that for us Christians today, we don't have to figure all the lessons of life out for ourselves for the very first time. Rather, there is a long history of faithful Christians who have come before us, who have wrestled with thought through all kinds of theological, cultural, apologetic challenges, and there's all kinds of wisdom to be had in studying what they've said and learning from their examples. So that will be one thing, certainly as a source of wisdom for us today. I would also say it's an important apologetic for Christianity.
Speaker 3:We don't believe that Christianity began just with our grandparents, but we believe Christianity has been around since the time of Christ. And so the question is how do we get to our point here today? How did the church? What has the church been through? What have been the movements, the challenges? How have we come to where we are today? And that's an important question for Christians to understand about who they are. It's sort of like learning your family history. So you've got to learn something about church history to be able to better understand who you are today and church history.
Speaker 3:And one more thing church history certainly has been the story of all kinds of theological challenges. The gospel that we hold today again didn't just drop out of heaven in our time, but rather has been something that has been sharpened and clarified over the centuries, especially as false teaching has come along and those who have been faithful to hold on to the scriptures as the final authority have more and more looked to the scriptures to see okay, what does the Bible teach on these things? And have clarified what it is that we as the historic Christian church believe. And so, even as Baptists, we stand in that stream of historic Christianity, we stand in that stream of Protestant Christianity and we make our contribution, especially about what the church is, you know, that community of baptized believers. So just to understand who we are in terms of what we believe, I think church history is so helpful in that. So, yeah, so for all those reasons pastoral wisdom as an apologetic for Christianity and for kind of theological training I would say church history is vital for all that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we do a men's Bible study on Thursday mornings, that we've been going through the book of Acts and, and it's been so helpful studying church history, historical theology, because there's moments in Acts that there are some pivotal moments to where you're like, why do we believe this over this, and what time in church history was that debate had and where do we see, you know, you know, especially in connection with the Reformation? And so I mean, there's all of that to discuss as you're studying Acts and understanding why we do things the way we do them today and seeing how they did it in the early church. And so, yeah, that's been very helpful. It's added a layer to help challenge guys in their understanding of God's Word, and then how the church has handled that throughout history is vital to the way we do things today. And so, yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1:One last thing before we go. You know why should maybe a prospective student come to Midwestern? I know why I did, but I want to hear from you why would? Why would a student want to go there? Kind of what's a little bit of the vision of Midwestern that that would say, hey, this is a place for you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, these days with online education there are a lot of options. I think there are benefits to online education, especially if you're in a good season of your life in your church and you know your family set there. It's difficult to move. Online education can be a great option, especially alongside kind of a vibrant ministry in a local church. That being said, I don't think that it can replace or even, you know, kind of quite match what the kind of education one can get residentially.
Speaker 3:If you're thinking about theological training, to be in a classroom with a top notch professor, you're going to learn things in that setting far more than I think you will in an online setting. So for Midwestern, it's an hour away, as you said, from you guys. Perhaps that would be attractive for someone who's thinking about theological training. But even more, I mean the kinds of professors we have here are all. They're all top notch. They are at the top of their fields in theology and in training in the Bible, languages and church history and all the rest.
Speaker 3:I think one thing that I've been super encouraged by in terms of Midwestern is this vision that we have about being for the church. That really does come out in all the classes. You know we yes, it's important to train people for the academy. Even so, we want those scholars to have an eye towards serving the local church. But even more, I think we see our primary ministry as training for people, as pastors, as church leaders, as small group leaders, as biblical counselors, as women's ministry directors, so all the kinds of ministries that are embedded in the local church, and so the teaching that you'll get here really will have that as its aim.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so much more to say, but there you go.
Speaker 1:Well you hit on it for me when I heard Dr Jason Allen say this is for the church, and then to take a couple classes and go yeah, these classes are built for the church. For me, to use it, it's not just a slogan that's being thrown out there to attract people, it's integrated into the classes, into the teaching. All the professors I've had, they're all serving in a local church, whether that's the senior pastor, it or as an elder, and so you just have that connection the whole time as as your to your professors and to the local church, and so it's not just a slogan, it's really happening there. Then that's what I've been encouraged by to see that we have another individual here at our church who's in the MDiv program, now one of our deacons, and so, yeah, it's been. It's been awesome to be able to send people there and and to trust it and to know who's there and what's going on. I love that there's multiple opportunities a year just to come, visit and go to a conference, whatever that may be, because then you get to hear from the professors themselves and then a lot of guests as well.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, so after that, leave us. Leave us with one thing, leave us with your favorite Spurgeon quote. What's one of your favorites that he? I know he's got tons. He's the most quotable person ever, but what's your favorite?
Speaker 3:Yeah, Favorite's really tough. But here I'll read this quote. Since we've been talking about prayer, I'll read a quote that he says to his students at the pastors college. He says this if I were you, I would make the prayer meeting a special feature of my ministry. Let it be such a prayer meeting that there's not the like of it within 7,000 miles. Keep up the prayer meeting. Whatever else flags. It is the great business evening of the week, the best service between Sabbaths. Be you sure to make it so Very good, Very good.
Speaker 1:There you have it Well. Thank you so much, Dr Jeff Chang, for joining us Again. Go check out the Spurgeon library. Go check out Midwestern. They also have their undergrad in Spurgeon College. There's plenty to check out there. All the links will be in the description to his book and all of these things that we've talked about today. So thank you so much. It was an honor to have you on the podcast and I know that our church will especially enjoy this time to learn more about God's Word and Spurgeon and specifically around prayer. So thank you again. Yeah, you're very welcome. Good to be with you guys. Thank you so much.