Churchill

One mark of a great biography is found in the ability to make a very old death newly devastating.

I turned the final page of the final volume on Winston Churchill by William Manchester (really, Paul Reid after Manchester's death), and felt the pangs of the inevitable, yet titanic loss of perhaps the greatest leader of the 20th century.

Here are a few reasons why you should love Churchill:

1) He, and Britain with him, stood alone against a seemingly invincible tyrant in Hitler. In the early 1940's, Hitler and Stalin--the last century's greatest monsters--carved up Poland like a turkey, before Hitler wiped out the rest of western Europe and pulverized England with wave after wave of bombers ("The Battle of Britain"). Remember, the Soviet Union was Hitler's ally, France was crushed with barely a fight, and the United States was entangled in isolationism. Britain stood alone. Yet they stood.

2) Churchill alone was able to call Britain from the moral equivocations of Neville Chamberlain (the previous Prime Minister) to a renewed moral vigor that would sustain them in the dark days ahead. Churchill knew that Hitler was posing both a moral and mortal threat to Britain and the West, and instilled with the courage of his convictions, was able to call Britain to stand upon the vast inheritance of Western civilization and withstand Hitler's onslaught. Only the light of moral conviction and ground courage in such moments, and Churchill lit the lamp.

3) Churchill, unlike the more pragmatic Franklin Roosevelt, saw the threat that Soviet communism posed to the free world and sought to thwart it. To give FDR his due, his pragmatism enabled him to navigate America's isolationism and eventually guide them into the war. He also was dynamic in his own right. Yet, he lacked Churchill's sense of moral conviction--that Western values are just of worthy of our blood as Western peoples. As a result, FDR consistently spurned Churchill in favor of "Uncle Joe" Stalin. FDR's progressive idealism blinded him to the evils of communism and he was unable at times to distinguish true friends and foes. Churchill, on the other hand, worked vigorously to restrain the shadow of Soviet tyranny.

4) He was a modern renaissance man. Not only could Churchill call forth courage in the face of seemingly invincible evil, but he was an unparalleled orator and parliamentarian, an artist of the highest caliber, and a Nobel Prize-winning author. In other words, he was a genius. Few men are endowed with such gifts--and quite a few of them are quite quirky. Even fewer are endowed with the ability to harness such intellectual gifts in order to lead a people.

On January 24th, 1952, Churchill's top aide, Jock Colville, walked in on him while he was shaving. Churchill told Colville that his father had died on that day many years before, and that he would die on that day as well. On January 24th, 1965, Winston Churchill indeed breathed his last. The Queen had a stone placed in the floor of Westminster that simply read "Remember Winston Churchill."

We could do much worse than heed those words and heed the man.

Of Heresy Hounds and Lukewarm Lovers

I was not called up to Falls Presbyterian Church so that I could simply share the Gospel with lots of people of behalf of the church. Rather, I was called to cultivate a culture within the church--a culture that desires to engage the surrounding community to the glory of God.

Such a culture is a direct outgrowth of the Gospel. Think, for example, of the beautiful portrait of God's love for sinners that is found in the Prodigal Sons parable of Luke 15. There, you see a heart that is both able and willing to retrieve a lost sinner at great personal cost.

Yet, while such a culture is a direct outgrowth of the Gospel, it is not an accidental outgrowth. Sinners within the church are not immediately perfected so that they display the very heart of God. Often times, they display the calloused, self-righteous heart of the Elder Brother in the Prodigal parable--unwilling to bear any burden for the "sinner over there."

This self-righteous heart is often manifested through two seemingly opposite personalities: The Heresy Hounds and the Lukewarm Lovers. The Heresy Hounds are not as concerned with salvation and growth as they are with precise formulations of complex truths. For example, some may have known Jesus for a short time, but if they haven't resolved whether they are infralapsarian or supralapsarian, they are to be viewed with suspicion and browbeaten (intentionally exaggerating here).

The Heresy Hounds fit the stereotype of the Elder Brother quite nicely, but the Lukewarm Lovers are just as deadly. The Lukewarm Lovers are willing to open the heavenly gates as far as possible to let people in, but end up forgetting that it is pierced hands that open those gates to some and not others. They are willing to take the Gospel for granted, and perhaps leave people ignorant in their sinful estate.

The church culture that flows from the Gospel and impacts the surrounding community is one that doesn't trample over the cross as part of a moral crusade or go around the cross in order to be sensitive. It brings sinners--inside and outside the church--before the beautiful, horrible cross.

All of that said, part of cultivating that culture is simply getting people from the church out into the community. There is something about being "out there"--often times in uncomfortable situations--that makes believers more dependent upon Jesus and desirous to see Him at work.

On Thursday, a handful of church members joined me for our first ever Turkey Trot. We were joined by one friend in the community. Only one? Jesus certainly doesn't mind only one (Luke 15). Again, sometimes it's just about getting out there!

On Saturday, 17 members of our church joined me at the Falls Presbyterian Church booth at the downtown Christmas market. We likely interacted (briefly) with over a hundred people, handed out Bibles, books, invitation cards, and hot chocolate. I ran into neighbors of mine and chatted with them for a while as well.

I learned a number of valuable lessons about this event for next year (i.e., arrive earlier, hand out cards more often, spread our people out amongst the crowd, better signage, etc), but here are a few blessings from Saturday:

1) About 15% of our church came out to this event they knew nothing about and on short notice.

2) In the process, we all were made a bit uncomfortable.

3) We also raised the profile of the church within the downtown community.

4) We relied upon each other. Outreach is a team sport. There is power in having different people with different gifts, all seeking the glory of the Lord who saved them.

One young man told me recently that he found one of our cards on a lawn he was about to mow. He wasn't sure if that was good news or bad--should we care that our cards are treated like trash? Not at all. Most of these cards--like most business cards--will be thrown away. But it takes a set of hands to throw one of these cards away, and we can pray for those hands. May our cards make their way onto park benches, lawns, and into trash receptacles throughout the Falls!