Apr
21
2012
Charles W. Colson, 1931-2012
Charles "Chuck" Colson has gone home to be with the Lord. The Prison Fellowship ministry family invites you to join in celebrating his life.
Someone once asked me, "Don't you know he's a convicted felon?" The question made me laugh. Yes, I knew that. I was a senior in high school when Watergate happened. We watched the proceedings on TV in my Government class. I read his autobiography, Born Again, not long after it was released, and I heard him speak about it at the Governor's Prayer Breakfast in Lansing, Michigan in 1976.
Chuck Colson himself never lost sight of the fact that he was a convicted felon. He also never lost sight of God's gracious forgiveness through Jesus Christ. He founded Prison Fellowship Ministries, and led it to become a powerful force for spiritual, educational, and social change in prisons throughout American and around the world. But that is not the ministry or the realm in which I came to know and appreciate him. Rather it was in his leadership in Christian worldview thinking. In his Lansdowne, Virginia office, carefully protected in a glass case, there is one of C.S. Lewis's pipes. I believe history will recognize Chuck's place in a very small group of men including Abraham Kuyper, Francis Schaeffer, and of course Lewis, as leaders most responsible for framing evangelical Christians' thinking about our faith in relation to the world.
He helped us understand How Now Shall We Live?, what Loving God really means, and how to be The Body [of Christ]. Traveling and speaking indefatigably, he sowed the message that Christianity is the explanation for everything. He built a core of worldview-equipped, Kingdom-seeking lay leaders, called Centurions. He advanced the value of Evangelicals and Catholics Together: Toward a Common Mission, the crucial importance of life, marriage, and liberty, and in his most recent major release, Doing the Right Thing. He was a father who, as his daughter Emily has shown us (though he was not the main subject of this book), truly cared about the hurting. His BreakPoint radio commentaries helped millions to think more Christianly about current events.
I don't know of anyone in our generation who has so effectively coupled Christian compassion with Christian intellectual leadership.
Over the last couple years he was much concerned about the legacy he would leave. Some of us might think what he had done would have been plenty, and if it had been for the sake of his own name, he might have thought so, too. It wasn't about his name, though. For him it was about taking the opportunity his unique public platform afforded him to bring Christian leaders together in unity. What he prayed and worked for most over the past few years was to see a movement of Christian churches, ministries, and individuals working together for the purposes of Christ's kingdom, to bring about renewal, awakening, and transformation in our culture. He was at it until the end. He was speaking on "Breaking the Spiral of Silence" when he fell ill and was taken to the hospital a few weeks ago. I'm told that he was talking about it with BreakPoint leaders who visited him in the hospital late last week.
I think we're on track toward seeing this movement develop; at least, I pray that we are. There is much to be done.
Along the way to prison, Chuck Colson discovered how desperately he needed the grace and life of Jesus Christ. I've never been behind bars except to visit, but my need is no less. Neither is yours. Chuck's purpose in all his ministry was to lift up the powerful and saving name and life and ethics and truths and glory of Jesus Christ. Now he is raised up with Christ.
12 Comments
I'm so thankful for Chuck's ministry and "The Body" and "Being the Body" are great tomes on The Church and her tenacity through the Holy Spirit.
[...] Tom Gilson at The Gospel Coalition [...]
He will be missed. Chuck was the reason I went into prison ministry myself.
While I have had serious significant difficulties with some of Brother Chuck's misguided views, e.g. his errors concerning what is Biblical for both 1. Catholicity (e.g. ECT) and 2. Creation (e.g. as with most of today's sad "evan-jelly-cals" failing firmly to hold to the only rational view of six regular days for creation of God's Word only rejected by recent modernist compromisers who 1. fail seriously to hold Scripture as God's Word and ultimate authority and 2. arrogantly pretend to know more than the previous 19 centuries of the Church who never imagined another view, including all the Reformers, exhaustively defended at http://www.creation.com as well as http://www.trueorigin.org),
NEVERTHELESS I know and aver what Paul sternly warned in Romans 14:4 (1901 ASV) "Who art thou that judgest the servant of another? to his own lord he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be made to stand; for the Lord hath power to make him stand." Who am I therefore foolishly to imagine other than that the Lord has made him stand far greater than I stand, for His own pleasure as with all of us, in Christ. Soli Deo Gloria!
[...] From the Gospel Coalition [...]
[...] articles are being written about this beloved brother. I thought this article was exceptional. Personally, I have enjoyed and learned from many of Colson’s books and [...]
[...] This had potential to do terrible damage to the church and its gospel witness. Remarkably, the obituary at The Gospel Coalition mentions ECT along with Colson’s other accomplishments as if it is [...]
[...] para hacer un daño terrible a la Iglesia y su testimonio evangélico. Cabe destacar que la nota necrológica en la Gospel Coalition menciona la ECU, junto con otros logros de Colson, como si fuese [...]
[...] This had potential to do terrible damage to the church and its gospel witness. Remarkably, the obituary at The Gospel Coalition mentions ECT along with Colson’s other accomplishments as if it is [...]
[...] This had potential to do terrible damage to the church and its gospel witness. Remarkably, the obituary at The Gospel Coalition mentions ECT along with Colson’s other accomplishments as if it is [...]
[...] This had potential to do terrible damage to the church and its gospel witness. Remarkably, the obituary at The Gospel Coalition mentions ECT along with Colson’s other accomplishments as if it is [...]
[...] Chuck Colson (1931-2012). In the NY Times, Michael Gerson has provided a warm, personal, and Christ-honoring reflection of the passing away of his mentor and friend, Chuck Colson. Chuck Colson was indicted in 1974 in his role in Watergate. In prison he was converted, and over the last three and half decades, he has powerfully witnessed to the life-changing power of Jesus Christ. For a list of his important books, see Tom Gilson’s article on Colson’s life. [...]