The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from the lifetime of works from the Prince of Preachers, Charles Haddon Spurgeon. The following excerpt is from Speeches at home and abroad, Pilgrim Publications, page 72.
"All our members should be at work, with no exceptions, unless it be such as extreme sickness or disability."
I was taken aback the other day when I heard a minister of large experience, who has been for many years a pastor of a very useful church, say that he did not think that more than five per cent of the members of our churches were actually serving God by direct Christian effort.
I began to inquire among my brethren, and although I challenge the statement as applying to the church of which I am the pastor, I have reason to believe that it is sadly near the truth as to many churches; for while a large number of workers would be reckoned up in our statistics, it would be found that the same persons are filling several posts of service, and so are counted several times over.
Those who work in one direction are usually the first to occupy yet another part of the field; but a still larger proportion were doing nothing beyond paying their subscriptions, listening to the preaching of the gospel, and, I hope, behaving themselves with moral decency. It is really a very degrading state of things, if such is largely the case.
My esteemed brother, who is a very apostle of Christ, Mr. Oncken of Hamburg, in forming Baptist churches in Germany, lays down as one of the first questions to be asked of a person applying for membership, “What will you do in the service of Jesus Christ?”
Perhaps the candidate says, “I can do nothing,” and in that case the pastor replies, “I cannot receive you; we can have no drones in this hive.” Or perhaps the candidate will reply, “What do you think I can do?” and the pastor will say, “Something you must do; you can only become a member of this church by engaging in some Christian service.”
I would almost carry it so far as to say, "Unless you are laid aside by illness, you must continue to do something, or be excommunicated ipso facto by your doing nothing.” That might be too extreme a rule; but the spirit of it is right.
If it were a generally understood regulation that one of the conditions of church membership was service, we might see our churches rising to a far higher degree of zeal for God than they have ever yet attained.
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