NB THERE WERE PICTURES AND QUOTATIONS IN THIS SERMON AT THE POINTS MARKED ‘Document x’

You’ve heard the reading and you’re probably thinking – ‘Oh no, not another sermon about using our gifts. Get your heads down boys.’ I know how you feel. I once worked with a pastor from Madagascar and if I heard one sermon on this I heard a dozen. But I’d like to do it a little differently today.

I want to talk a little bit about three features of how people came into membership of the Metropolitan  Tabernacle at the Elephant and Castle during Spurgeon’s time there between 1855 and 1892. There were 14,700 new members during his thirty-seven year pastorate. He made a point of interviewing each new member It wasn’t an interrogation but a warm pastoral desire to know every one of his people. Very often, his brother James would carry out the baptisms – over 10,000 of them or about forty a month - but he wanted to interview each new member of the church. So they’d have some preliminary interviews with deacons and get a ticket to see ‘the guv’nor.’

He would ask them questions about their understanding of Christian faith. And they’d have to go public on it, too. Here are a couple of passages to show how this procedure was done: documents one and two. So, the Tabernacle would expect some understanding of the doctrines of grace. How would you get on in an interview like that?

Next he asked them about their Christian experience. This is how he did that: document three. Was there a sense of being lost without Christ? Of having no hope apart from him? Was there a  warmth of heart when talking about salvation? Was there a love for fellow Christians? In the other denominations too? Doctrine alone is not enough. Experience alone is not enough. Doctrine and experience are in an indissoluble love marriage. How would we fare in an interview like that?

Now, no one can ever presume to know for sure whether someone else is a true Christian or not. There are certain signs and tests. But it does not belong to us either to judge or pronounce. And Spurgeon didn’t presume to take upon himself the judgement of a person. So, at the end of all this, he would probably say something like this, ‘My good fellow, you seem to be a converted man and I hope that you are truly a Christian.’

Then came the third element of the interview: ‘Suppose you join the church, what are you going to do for your fellow men?’ This was the test of the candidate’s willingness and desire to do something to help others. What is most interesting is that Spurgeon saw this as not something grafted on to the Christian life but as a natural outworking of Christian character. It was inspired by something he’d read: document four.

And time and again the truth of a Christian’s profession was discovered in this area. He had no patience with those who took themselves to be God’s gift to the work. He had his own ways of dealing with those – there is the story of the man who came to Spurgeon saying the Lord had told him he was preach at the Tabernacle the following Sunday. Spurgeon replied by telling him how surprised he was that the Lord hadn’t told him too or any of the officers of the Church. No, Spurgeon had the opposite difficulty. It had never occurred to most of the new members that they could be useful.

But time and again, that humility was the gateway to true and fruitful service. Yes, Spurgeon had some of the most important people of the day contributing but the majority in his lists of helpers are the individuals carefully listed who gave minuscule sums. The Sword and the Trowel. They gave their time and energy too. And all were equally valued as ‘the ordinary expression of Christian character.’  And in connection with the work of the Tabernacle, there was so much to choose from. Pastors’ College. Orphanages. Colporteurs. Sixty-six agencies by the time of his death.

How would we fare in that interview? Have we really broken free from the notion that only the pastor is a Christian worker? Or that only the younger people work? I well remember in a couple of churches where I’ve served being told that ‘we older ones were taught to know our place in the Church and that place was a passive one. That’s why we don’t pray  aloud - but we’re faithful in our way.’

Well, we do all we can to explode the distinctions between clergy and lay people. Also between what we do for God on a Sunday and how we serve him in everyday life. We need to ask this question. How do you fare in putting your faith into practice? Are you like those people interviewed by Spurgeon who simply didn’t think themselves worthy of being allowed to help? And yet who discovered an avenue for the expression of their Christian character in simple everyday service?

You see, I don’t think  it’s difficult at all to make the leap from London in the late Nineteenth Century to Raglan in the early twentyfirst. The same tasks need to be done. Oh yes, there is still a need for people to be on all the rotas: cleaning, mowing, reading, praying. Sunday School, youth club, tea and coffee, music, sound engineering, painting. But the great never ending twin ‘task unfinished which drives us to our knees’ goes on. ‘True religion’ is still according to James to provide companionship for the lonely and help for the needy – it’s just that the lonely are lonelier than ever before – yes, here in Raglan - and the poor are dying in our lounge. The pillar of compassion. The pillar of the Word: The Great Commission hasn’t been rescinded yet – it’s just that we know in depth how far the world is from Christ.

In fact as each generation comes into being, the harvest field is as it was the first day of the foundation of the church. As it was in the smoky, smoggy explosion of industry and Empire that was London in the 1860s 70s and 80s. And it’s up to you as it was up to the Londoners to be hired in the market place, to get into that field, to work the three hours, or the six hours, or the one hour and then to go home to have your work assessed.