We are working at developing a 'mercy network' of pastors and church leaders around South Africa. We are hoping to come alongside godly guys in difficult places who are needing encouragement and resources.Yesterday we drove down to Standerton and had a wonderful meeting in a tent with a young man who graduated from Christ's Seminary and is planting a church in a township there. It's exciting to hear him talk about his desire to be faithful to the Word, commitment to biblical preaching, and his refusal to compromise in the face of all sorts of pressure. It was sad to hear him speak of the thirty seven orphans who are part of his small church, of others who live with their uncles and are being sexually abused or used almost as servants, of the drunkenness that is devastating the townships, and especially sad to hear him speak of the one message that the other churches in the area are preaching, the prosperity gospel. "No matter which church you go to," he told us, "you hear the same sermon about prosperity."On the way down to Standerton, we took some time to read parts of Spurgeon's Soul Winner. What a classic! And what a reminder of how the more things change the more they stay the same.I was especially struck as Spurgeon spoke of some pastors who seem to have, "all the milk of human kindness dried out of them."That's an intense statement. He's talking about pastors who don't feel for others and the results that lack of concern will have on their congregations.He writes, "Having no feeling himself, such a preacher creates none, and the people sit and listen while he keeps to dry, lifeless statements, until they come to value him for being, 'sound', and they themselves come to be sound, too; and I need not add, sound asleep also, or what life they have is spent in sniffing out heresy, and making men offenders for a word.Into this spirit may we never be baptized!Whatever I believe or do not believe, the command to love my neighbor as myself still retains its claim upon me and God forbid that any views or opinions should so contract my soul and harden my heart as to make me forget this law of love. The love of God is first but this by no means lessens the obligation of love to man, in fact the first command includes the second. We are to seek our neighbor's conversion because we love him, and we are to speak to him in loving terms God's loving gospel because our heart desires his eternal good."