Welcome to Mortification of Spin, a casual conversation about things that count with Carl Truman, Todd Pruitt, and Amy Bird.

Mortification of Spin is a weekly podcast from the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.

Let's join this week's conversation.

Thank you. Welcome to Mortification of Spin. I'm Amy Bird. I'm here with my co-hosts Carl Truman, who is professor at Grove City College, and Todd Pruitt, who is pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church.

And today we are super excited to be interviewing soon-to-be celebrity pastor of Grace Community Church.

Ray Rhodes, he has been married for over 30 years. He's got six daughters, four grandchildren.

He's the founder of Nourished in the Word Ministries, and he has written a long-awaited

biography. Is it the first full-length biography, Ray?

That's right. It's the first full-length biography, Ray? That's right.

It's the first full-length.

There was a short biography in 1903, but that's the only biography of Susanna.

Yeah, of Susanna Spurgeon, wife of Charles Spurgeon.

And I just remember when I was pregnant with my third, you know, the time that I got away every evening when the girls went to bed was spent reading Spurgeon's autobiography, those two big volumes. And I felt like I was learning a lot about Susie then because she helped put that together. So Susie Spurgeon, author, church planner, provider of good books to pastors, mom of twins, letter writer, hiker, lover of beauty, housewife, theologian, extraordinaire, friend to orphans.

There's just so much about this woman's life. What took so long to write this book, Ray? And what got you

interested in writing it? Yeah, I've been a Spurgeon fan for a long time, as many pastors have.

And so I decided to go back to seminary late in life and work on a D-Men at Southern Baptist

Theological Seminary. And while I was there, I had to choose a thesis topic, and I was looking into Spurgeon,

seeing if there are any angles left in his life.

And since then, I found there are many angles left in his life that have not really been explored.

But I looked into his marriage a bit, and I wrote my thesis on the spirituality of Charles and Susanna Spurgeon in their marriage.

And after seminary, I began talking with folks in the publishing world and there seemed to be a great interest in a biography of Susanna.

And so the more I peeled back the layers on her life, the more I discovered and how exciting and encouraging and faithful

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