The Soul Winner (Updated, Annotated): How to Lead Sinners to the Saviour

by Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Some will even go to chapel not only because it’s the proper and respectable thing, but because they hope to gain customers by going.

we still have people among us in whose ears the thirty pieces of silver chink so loudly that the sound of the gospel can’t be heard.

One more obstacle to soul winning I want to mention is some people’s habits, choices, and company.

You can’t hope to be the means of saving men while they go to such places, and while they meet with the company found there. All the good they receive from the hymns they heard on Sunday is driven away as they listen to the entertaining songs in the tavern.

A Christian minister is quite justified in using every right and lawful means to wean people from their evil associations.

No matter what obstacles enter our path, we must seek the aid of the Holy Spirit, so they can be removed, souls saved, and God glorified.

Let me warn you not to look for all this at the beginning of ministry, for it is the work of time. Don’t expect this kind of result in the first year of your pastorate. It is the reward of twenty years of continuous toil in one place.

Young men sometimes make a great mistake in the way they talk to people who never met them until about six weeks ago. What they don’t realize is that they can’t speak with the same authority as one who has been like a father among his people, who has been with them for twenty or thirty years.

you’ll be wise to go into the ministry expecting very little assistance from the people in the work of soul winning.

Anticipate you will have to do it yourself and do it alone. Begin doing it alone, sow the seed, travel up and down the field, and always look to the Lord of the harvest to bless your labor.

We must pray again, and again, and again, and at last the cloud will appear and, with it, showers out of the cloud. Wait a while, work on, plod on, plead on, and in due time the blessing will be given, And let us not be weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not (Galatians 6:9).

Your work is to set your church on fire somehow.

You may do it by speaking to the whole membership, or you may do it by speaking to a few choice spirits, but you must do it somehow. Have a secret society for this sacred purpose. Turn yourselves into a band of celestial revolutionaries whose aim is to set the whole church on fire.

Don’t walk into the prayer meeting, as so many do, to say whatever comes to mind at the moment. Instead, do your best to prepare and make the meeting interesting to all who are there.

So, if a man wants to pray long, he can pray long somewhere else but not at the meeting over which I’m presiding. If he can’t pray publicly for a reasonable length of time, tell him to finish it up at home.

If you find your people can’t come in the evening, try to hold a prayer meeting when they can come. You might get a good meeting in the country at half-past four in the morning. Why not? You would get more people at five o’clock in the morning than you would at five o’clock at the other end of the day.

Try it, and you may find people who couldn’t come at any other time. Try one o’clock, or two o’clock, or three o’clock, or any hour of the day or night to get the people out to pray one way or another.

If they can’t be encouraged to come to the meetings, go to their house and say, “I’m going to have a prayer meeting in your family room.”

If they won’t come to the prayer meeting, we must go to them.

If we can’t stir the people without doing extraordinary things in the name of all that is good and great, let’s do extraordinary things. Somehow we must carry on with prayer meetings, for they are the very secret source of power with God and with men.

We must always be an earnest example ourselves.

Next, we want Christians around us who are willing to do all they can to help in the work of winning souls.

Try to get uncomfortably close with sinners. Talk gently to them until you’ve whispered them into the kingdom of heaven, until you’ve told them the blessed story that will bring peace and joy to their heart.

we want a group of well-trained sharpshooters who will pick people out individually and always be on the lookout for all who come in, not to annoy them, but to make sure they don’t go away without receiving a personal warning, a personal invitation, and a personal appeal to come to Christ.

Every man, woman, or child in our churches should be ready to work for the Lord.

Notice that I said, “When the atmosphere is created.” I chose that expression to remind us how little we can do, or, rather, that we can do nothing without God,

It is He who controls atmospheres. He alone can create them and maintain them. Therefore, our eyes must be continually lifted up to Him, from whom comes all our help.

say to yourself, “I must try to gather a number of people around me who will pray with me and for me.

who say to each one listening to the message, after every service, “Well, friend, did you enjoy that sermon? Was there something in it for you? Are you saved? Do you know the way of salvation?” Always have your own Bible ready and turn to the passages you want to quote with each of these questions.

be sure to hit on the right texts. You know the sort of texts I mean, those a seeking soul wants: For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost (Luke 19:10). He that believes in the Son has eternal life (John 3:36). The blood of Jesus Christ, his Son cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7). He that comes to me I will in no wise cast out (John 6:37). For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved (Romans 10:13).

This brother has a number of such passages printed in bold type and fastened inside his Bible, so he can refer to the right one in a moment.

If there is any place where I would choose to labor to win souls, it would be just on the borders of the infernal lake. Because I really believe it would bring more glory to God to work among those who are considered the worst of sinners.

the very worst sort of people are those who have long been professing Christians but are destitute of grace and are Christians in name only, because they are still dead. Sadly, people like that are among our deacons and church members,

As long as they remain within our body, they exert a most destructive poisonous influence.

We must let the tares grow until the harvest. But the best thing to do, when you can’t uproot the tares, is to water the wheat. Nothing keeps back tares like good strong wheat.

Unless you have a very clear sense of the complete ruin and spiritual death of your children, you won’t be capable of becoming a blessing to them. I pray you go to them, not treating them as someone sleeping who you can awaken by your own power, but as to spiritual corpses who can only be made alive by a divine power.

Your concern isn’t merely to teach the children in your classes to read the Bible, nor to simply instill the obligations of morality, nor even to instruct them in just the letter of the gospel. Your high calling is to be an instrument in the hands of God, for bringing life from heaven to dead souls. If your children remain dead in sin, your teaching on the Lord’s Day will have been a failure.