THE immediate closure of Spurgeon’s College, the Baptist theological college in south London founded in 1856 by the celebrated preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon, was announced on Friday.
The announcement got here amid warnings in regards to the viability of the theological-education sector, as many colleges struggle to draw enough students (News, 2 August 2024).
A press release from the Board of Trustees said that a partnership with a charitable foundation had “provided vital financial support and offered assurances to each the College and the Office for Students of continued funding”. This had been “unexpectedly terminated” suddenly on 21 July.
“As a result, the College can now not sustain its financial operations and has been left with no alternative but to enter the insolvency process immediately.” The statement referred to wider challenges within the higher-education sector, “driven by declining student numbers and an increasingly complex and difficult financial landscape”.
A press release from the Office for Students said that as much as 200 current students were affected, and that support can be provided to assist them to transfer to a course with one other educational provider.
The board of the Baptist Union of Great Britain said that it was “deeply saddened” by the closure of the school, which had trained many men and women for Baptist ministry and “shaped leaders and church communities through many generations, the importance of which is immeasurable”.
The college’s annual reports filed with the Charity Commission show large deficits, with expenditure of greater than £3.3 million in 2024 against income of £1.1 million. Expenditure had risen by almost 75 per cent since 2020 while income had fallen by 15 per cent.
Trustees had set an optimal reserves level of £1,587,000, but unrestricted free reserves stood at £232,793 in 2024. This was before the sale of the Spurgeon heritage collection — hundreds of the founder’s books, manuscripts, letters, and artefacts — to the Spurgeon Library at Midwestern Seminary, Kansas City, Missouri, within the United States, for £1.6 million.
The charitable foundation referred to within the trustees’ statement is known to be the Graham Dacre Charitable Foundation, established by the Christian philanthropist Graham Dacre to “help young people thrive”. The annual report says that a latest partnership with the muse had resulted within the repayment of £5.4 million of its loans.
In 2022, Spurgeon’s became the primary theological college within the UK to be granted full taught-degree awarding powers by the Office for Students, giving it the flexibility to validate other institutions (News, 21 July 2023).
The college was “actively assisting in securing the supply of theological education within the UK at university level”, the annual report said. The OFS also gave the school a triple gold award, the very best possible, under its Teaching Excellence Framework. Besides preparing candidates for ordination within the Baptist Union of Great Britain, it offered an expanding variety of undergraduate and postgraduate courses, and aimed to introduce two latest degree programmes every year.
In April 2023, Pastor Rick Warren, the founding pastor of Saddleback Church, an Evangelical megachurch in California, became the Chancellor of Spurgeon’s, recording videos supporting the school’s fund-raising campaign in an effort to achieve Christian philanthropists — a part of a campaign developed with a Texas-based fund-raising company.
The trustees acknowledged within the annual report that the school was “vulnerable to a decline in student numbers at a time when church attendance is decreasing and congregations find it harder to afford to pay a minister, and the economic situation makes it harder for college students to afford even the subsidised fees charged”.
In the General Synod last month, a matter from the Revd Dr Christopher Landau revealed that the variety of C of E ordination candidates entering residential training fell from 218 to 65 in the last decade to 2024. Seven of the ten colleges had fewer than ten latest students initially of the last academic yr.
