What a challenging quote! Challenging because, with you Gordon, I think Spurgeon is onto something very important in his attitude to serving the Lord even when he is ill.  We are so quick to say our family needs us and our body needs us to rest and, for the long term, we need to ensure we have plenty of R & R, and there is wisdom in all of this. We can’t afford to be absent husbands and fathers if we are married with kids.
BUT… we are much slower to say that our families will make sacrifices together and that the need for people to hear the gospel now is so urgent we will do all we can now to reach more people, and that if our bodies wear out we will have new ones anyway in the age to come. 

I sense that, if in times past gospel preachers may have been guilty of neglecting their families, we may be guilty now of putting our families ahead of the Lord.  I don’t feel comfortable in expressing this, but I think we may be at risk of not working hard enough what we are called to do as preachers and pastors.

It seems to me, as a non-clergyman who has lots of friends who are clergymen, that families can probably cope with a lot as long as values and expectations are shared.

The problems I’ve observed have sometimes emerged when the minister asks his family to accept sacrifices without actually checking (and repeatedly checking) that they deeply share his passion for the lost and his willingness to make those sacrifices. Where they feel ripped off by what ministry does to their family life, often with good reason, that’s a recipe for problems.

There speaks the counsel of caution and prudence, TP, and in the post you link to as well. But I can’t help feeling that Spurgeon’s last quote quite deliberately flouts caution and wisdom, which had he exercised them may (God alone knows) have seen another ten years added to his life and ministry.

In life’s marathon, practical wisdom seemed to have slowed him down from 400m pace to 800m pace. Illness did the rest.

Spurgeon died at 57
Luther died at 62
Calvin died at 54
(As sourced from Wikipedia, which yes, I feel guilty about)
It may have been the life-expectancy of the day, yet I can’t help but wonder if their workloads contributed to cutting their years of ministry short.

My experience of those in full-time ministry is that on the whole they tend to be workaholics, who need to trust themselves less and God more.

Is Paul commending this sort of Gospel-work induced exhaustion of Epaphroditus in 1 Timothy 3:29? Isn’t ‘rest’ integral to God’s people, reminding us we are dispensable and it’s God’s world?

As a wife of a busy gospel-proclaimer, I find Spurgeon’s life and words very challenging.
I worry far too much about my husband’s health and rest and far too little about those who need to hear about Jesus!
Thanks heaps for writing about this Gordo.

Fascinating read Gordo — and thanks for all your comments.

I especially appreciate Ian Carmichael’s comment about family life.
“The problems I’ve observed have sometimes emerged when the minister asks his family to accept sacrifices without actually checking (and repeatedly checking) that they deeply share his passion for the lost and his willingness to make those sacrifices. Where they feel ripped off by what ministry does to their family life, often with good reason, that’s a recipe for problems.”

I’ve seen and heard of cases where the wife has suffered enormously due to being neglected for the sake of the church, even during times of her own health crisis — one case in the days following a birth — and the Pastor was later held up as an example of sacrifice for the sake of the gospel! In the examples I’m thinking of it was not <i>his</i> sacrifice to make — the Pastor sacrifices his wife. That doesn’t sit right with Paul’s marriage advice with Paul’s advice in Ephesians 5 or acknowledgement that marriage will divide loyalties in 1 Cor 7.

Maybe if all ministers were single they could be hit with this Spurgeon quote… but marriage and children seem to be pretty high on our <i>ministry priorities</i> in Paul’s eyes. 1 Timothy 3 “4He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. 5(If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?)”

How can kids obey or respect their father if they don’t even know him because he’s always working?

I wonder if writing that 10th Kudos-earning book <i>really is </i> as important as playing with your kids? Let’s not forget the propensity for the male ego to see ‘our thing’ as more important than ‘the family thing’ — even when our ‘thing’ is the gospel.