Partnership with Priority

FORTHCOMING TITLE, ETA NOVEMBER 2026

Recovering the Gospel-Centered Mission of the Church

What should the church prioritize in its mission—gospel proclamation or social action? In Partnership with Priority, John Sypert turns to Charles Haddon Spurgeon to answer one of the most pressing questions facing the modern church.

Drawing deeply from Spurgeon’s sermons, institutions, and vast ministry output, this book reveals a missiology that is both compassionate and convictional. Spurgeon refused to pit word against deed. Instead, he championed a dynamic partnership between gospel proclamation and mercy ministry—while insisting that the preaching of Christ must always remain primary.

Written with pastoral sensitivity and scholarly rigor, this volume challenges contemporary assumptions about “holistic mission” and offers a biblically grounded alternative rooted in Spurgeon’s lived practice. Sypert shows how Spurgeon’s orphanages, pastor-training college, church planting, and global mission efforts all flowed from a clear theological vision: love expressed through deeds, anchored by the priority of the gospel.

This book will help you:

• Clarify the relationship between evangelism and social action
• Learn from Spurgeon’s real-world ministry, not abstract theory
• Recover a gospel-centered vision for missions and church life
• Think biblically about mercy, justice, and proclamation today

224 pages.

John Sypert argues convincingly, with compelling primary source engagement, that Spurgeon, though he contended and practiced “word and deed can be partners in missions,” the soteriological thrust of gospel proclamation “should be the ultimate priority in the church’s mission.” 

Tom Nettles
Senior Professor of Historical Theology, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky

With excellent research, sound argumentation, and solid writing, Sypert demonstrates irrefutably that Spurgeon prioritized the proclamation of the gospel in the mission and ministry of the local church, while still maintaining a place for a vibrant social ministry. In this, Spurgeon offers a healthy model for pastors and churches today.

Alex DiPrima
Pastor, Emmanuel Church, Winston–Salem, North Carolina; Author, ‘Spurgeon and the Poor: How the Gospel Compels Christian Social Concern’