It was sad to hear that Spurgeon’s College has closed after 169 years.
Over those 169 years thousands of students have studied there. It is impossible, this side of eternity, to calculate the benefits to the Kingdom of God that have emerged from the college.
My first contact with the college was in the 1980’s when I travelled there to do some research on its founder CH Spurgeon. At that time there was still a lot of Spurgeon memorabilia, particularly a collection of hand-written sermon notes and annotated printers’ proofs of many of the great man’s sermons.
I remember being struck by the fact of how brief the notes were that Spurgeon took into the pulpit. He was clearly an internal processor, who had prepared the message his head and only required a skeleton of the sermon to jog his memory.
Another object from Spurgeon’s history was the pulpit from a church in Colchester from which a last-minute stand-in preacher preached the sermon that led to Spurgeon’s conversion. The pulpit which stood outside the college chapel always reminded me that God can use anyone to change a person’s life through the gospel. It also reminds me that we can never calculate the spiritual potential there is in one person coming to faith in Christ.
In Latvia it was a former Spurgeon’s student, William Fetler, who established the ministry training college that met in the same building that is now occupied by the Latvian Biblical Centre where I teach preaching. When he was the Spurgeon’s College principal, Spurgeon’s son Thomas said that if Fetler had been the only student who had trained in his time, it would have been worthwhile.
I am grateful to Spurgeon’s College for my own training for a master’s degree and then a doctorate in preaching. I am grateful to Michael Quicke, who, as college Principal, started the master’s degree in preaching in the 1990’s and Stephen Wright who developed the programme and opened up the possibility of doing doctorate on peaching. Stephen was my doctoral supervisor.
I am glad that I did this post-graduate work at Spurgeon’s because it opened my eyes to a wider field of thinking about the theory and practice of preaching. This helped to shape my own approach to preaching and teaching preaching. This in turn helped to shape the School of Preachers’ programme in Latvia and the writing of my book on preaching, God is in the House.
Six years ago, I was able to show my gratitude to the college by helping as an associate lecturer, teaching on the preaching courses and doing some marking. This was an immense privilege and helped me to hone my teaching skills.
One of the Spurgeon’s lecturers, Seidel Abel Boanerges, has become a good friend and has participated on our School of Preachers programme in Latvia.
Now the times they are a-changing. Spurgeon’s College is gone but its influence will continue through its former staff and students.