Midwestern Baptist Seminary to house Charles H. Spurgeon collection
By Nathan Weinert, Associate Editor of the Hilltop Monitor

Four hundred thousand dollars was the price for a piece of William Jewell College and Baptist history. On Oct. 10, William Jewell sold the historic Spurgeon Collection to Midwest Baptist Theological Seminary (MBTS) for $400,000. The Collection-the personal library of renowned 19th century English Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon-had been in the possession of the College since 1906.

College officials said they viewed the action as being taken in accord with the College's role as steward of the collection, and that the decision to sell the Collection was made as a result of low usage and the necessity of expensive preservation.

"Usage was very low, and maintenance costs were going to be high," Sallee said. "We felt like our first responsibility was as stewards of the collection to take care of the collection and make it as useful and valuable to wider audiences, and given the costs going forward and the very low level of usage that it generated here, we felt like it could be better used and cared for someplace else."

"We had visitors, people who wanted to see it, in excess of about 200 a year. They would not actually use it, though, they would come and look at it," said Dr. Milton Horne, professor of religion and executive director of the Partee Center for Baptist Historical Studies. "Only historians who were interested in Victorian or Puritan studies would come to use it, and there are precious few of those. Nobody really used it any more."

Sallee said the decision to sell the library was actually made in May. "The Board [of Trustees] voted to make the sale in their May meeting in 2006, so we established a sale process and pursued a sale process on it," he said. "The Board of Trustees voted to sell it, then authorized the administration to do that, and we maintained a small committee throughout the process, so we were working with a couple of board members all the way through."

As the College solicited bids, Sallee said that there were two conditions it was looking for buyers to meet. "We had two criteria: One was financial, and it was wide open for them to set the price, so we didn't set a minimum bid on it," Sallee said. "The second criteria was their presentation and preservation plan-what they were going to do with it. . . their plan had to be one to effectively preserve and present in a way that would meet our original goal in this, which was the best stewardship of the collection." Sallee said that the College would not have sold the Collection to a buyer who would have broken the Collection up into parts. Sallee declined to name other bidders for the Collection.

The decision to sell the Collection was part of a larger process, according to Sallee. "This [decision] came out of a conversation that the Board has had over the last year regarding the property where the golf course is, the radio station and the Spurgeon Collection," he said. "Those were three assigned conversations to a task force, and this was the outcome of that conversation." In January the College outsourced KWJC-FM radio to the Educational Media Foundation. Sallee said that the task force did not make a recommendation on a change in status for the property which houses Claycrest Golf Club.

Sallee said the decision was made without consulting members of the faculty. "It was the administration and board of trustees [that made the decision]," he said. "We didn't consult on a broad basis on campus." Horne said that the Spurgeon Library had limited value as a scholarly resource for most contemporary scholars and religious leaders. "I feel good about the decision-frankly, from my perspective on theology, it was not a good theological collection, unless you were interested in Puritan studies. It was a pretty good Puritan library," he said. "If you were not interested in that, say you were a minister who wanted to use Spurgeon's library, it wasn't going to help you much to prepare a sermon because it's not contemporary. I hate to think of a contemporary minister using 17th and 18th century scholarship to prepare a sermon." MBTS administrators are excited about the acquisition.

"Spurgeon was the most monumental Baptist preacher of his age and possibly any age. His collection will remind of his concern for biblical preaching, Christ centered evangelism as well as valiancy in the defense of truth," Dr. R. Philip Roberts, president of MBTS, said. "The ongoing research opportunity the collection affords MBTS, we believe, will help keep us focused on training Baptist preachers just like him."

Sallee said that the library was in need of expensive preservation work that would likely have cost over $200,000. Horne said that the problems with the books ranged "from cleaning the mold off the pages to total rebinding." Although in the past an organization called Friends of the Spurgeon Library used to raise money to help repair the books, those funds dried up after the group began to have differences with the College's religious identity. "They grew dissatisfied with the religious identity of the College, and more or less began to trash us, and that's too bad," Horne said. "They wanted us to become like them, instead of their understanding of what kind of an institution we were."

According to Amelia Hendra, director of communications for MBTS, the seminary has extensive plans for presentation and preservation of the library. "MBTS will properly house the Collection in accordance with established standard library requirements; and each volume will be restored to its original condition," Hendra said. "A thorough inventory and catalogue of the entire collection will be made, using a computerized database." Hendra also said that the Collection will undergo an extensive preservation process. "We at MBTS believe that a preservation plan plays a vital role in maintaining a valuable asset such as this collection," she said. "There are four components in our preservation plan: evaluation and restoration; chemical and physical stabilization; preservation awareness; and reformatting options." Hendra said that presentable portions of the collection will immediately be displayed in MBTS' existing library while the rest of the collection is classified, catalogued and restored. "In the future, the permanent location of the Collection will be in MBTS' newly renovated and expanded library," Hendra said.

MBTS is in the process of developing plans for collection-centered programming, including a faculty chair and an annual conference. "MBTS Board of Trustees has just approved a recommendation to establish the Charles H. Spurgeon Chair of Biblical Preaching to ensure the utilization and promotion of the newly-acquired collection; and as a distinctive means to honor both the Collection and Spurgeon himself," Hendra said. "In addition, an annual conference called the Spurgeon Conference on Biblical Preaching will be regularly scheduled on pertinent themes featuring outstanding Baptist pastors and theologians who will be featured as an integral part of each conference."

Both Sallee and Dr. Hugh Stocks, director of Curry Library, said that no plans have been made for the Spurgeon Library space. The College acquired the Spurgeon Collection for $3,000 in 1905 when College trustee J.T.M. Johnson learned at the Baptist World Congress that the Collection was for sale. Spurgeon was one of the most famous Baptist preachers of the 19th century. The Collection was originally stored in Jewell Hall and the old Carnegie Library, but moved to into Curry Library when it was built in 1965. The Collection includes over 5,000 books.

As William Jewell prepares to part with the Spurgeon Collection, College administrators are confident that they have made the right decision for the future of the Collection. "We really felt like as stewards of the collection we needed to do what was best for the collection, and that's to have it somewhere where it's going to be well preserved and well presented and be an important part of the institution where it is," Sallee said. "They're going to use it well, and the collection will be best served by it being there, and if the collection is better served there, then Baptist history is also better served."