Early one Sunday morning, I walked into my two-year-old daughter’s bedroom and scooped her up out of bed. She was barely awake. As I carried her over to the changing table, I whispered, “Baby girl, today we get to go to church.”

Her eyes lit up, she let out a big gasp, and she shouted, “Scottie, Elise, William, Rowan?” I responded, “Yes, you’re going to see your friends today.” “Dada, I love church!” she said. “Yeah, baby girl, me too.”

Obviously, my daughter doesn’t fully understand why we regularly meet as a local church, but she gets the excitement. She has tasted how sweet it is when Christians gather to worship.

Why I Love Sundays

For many years, I’ve been known for saying that Sundays are my favorite day of the week. As a pastor, I’ve said this to my congregation repeatedly. Why do I love Sundays? It’s quite simple: Sunday is the day that I get to worship with my church family — my dear friends who love the God I love.

We don’t need a specific time or space to worship, of course. We can pray alone. We can read the Bible by ourselves. We can engage in various helpful spiritual disciplines in solitude.

However, there are elements of the Christian life that you simply cannot experience alone. Don Whitney puts it this way: “Christianity is not an isolationist religion. . . . There’s an element of worship in Christianity that cannot be experienced in private worship or by watching worship” (Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, 43–44). This is why the author of Hebrews exhorts us to prioritize our gathering together (Hebrews 10:24–25).

Sunday worship gatherings have been a big deal to Christians for a very long time. They were normal for the earliest Christians (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:2; Revelation 1:10) and were important to the second and third generations as well (Didache 14.1; First Apology of Justin Martyr 67).

I’m thankful that many contemporary Christians gather each Sunday for worship and fellowship. However, I worry that many believers lack the appropriate enthusiasm, attending church services largely out of obligation. I long for God’s people to enthusiastically anticipate the unique sweetness of gathering with God’s people week after week. I love Sundays, and here are five reasons why I think you should love Sundays too.

1. We get a taste of glory.

I love Sundays because they give me the best glimpse of the new Jerusalem.

One day, Christ will return, and we will live together in that glorious city, the new Jerusalem. When we think about this city, we might think about geography or location, about streets of gold or structures made of jasper. But that misses the main point.

The new Jerusalem is primarily a community, a people perfected by the work of Christ, enjoying his greatness and beauty together. When that day comes, all of God’s people will be permanently gathered. We will live in perfect harmony, enjoying one another and treasuring Christ together forever and ever.

The local church offers a sneak peek. Every Sunday when we gather, we’re seeing some of what the future holds. We are not yet perfected by Christ, but we are being perfected (Romans 8:29; 2 Corinthians 3:18). Each Sunday, the church is a little bit more like Jesus than we were when we gathered last week. And if our Lord permits, we will be a little bit more like him next week. Each week, I get a better picture of the glory that is to come.

“Sunday is the day that I get to worship with my church family — my dear friends who love the God I love.”

In the Old Testament, if a person wanted to be near the presence of God, he or she would go toward the tabernacle (or, later, the temple). The tabernacle was God’s dwelling place on earth. But today, God dwells with his church. Puritan writer Richard Sibbes says the church is “the tabernacle now” in this age. “Particular visible churches under particular pastors [are] where the means of salvation are set up. Particular visible churches now are God’s tabernacle” (A Breathing After God, 54).

2. We see spiritual gifts on display.

I love Sundays because they put God’s spiritual gifts on display.

God has gifted each Christian with spiritual abilities (Romans 12:6; 1 Corinthians 12:7; 1 Peter 4:10), and he means for them to build up the body. Some spiritual gifts manifest in informal settings, but others are best and most often displayed within the context of corporate worship gatherings.

When I walk into our church building and I’m greeted by Joyce, I see her gift of hospitality. As Garrett leads our music ministry, I see his gift of exhortation. As our kids participate in Sunday school, I see Jim’s gift of teaching. When the elements of our service run smoothly, I see Phil’s gift of administration. After the service, when I have a brief conversation in the foyer with a few members of our church, and they tell me about the meal train that came to them that week, I see gifts of mercy and giving on display.

Sunday is not the only day spiritual abilities are at work, but Sunday is the day when I get to see the gifts on clearest display.

3. We hear much-needed teaching.

I love Sundays because I love hearing God’s word faithfully taught by a pastor who knows and loves his congregation.

God has gifted his church with teachers to serve and bless the body of Christ (Ephesians 4:11–12). As Whitney writes, “Bible reading and preaching are central in public worship because they are the clearest, most direct, most extensive presentation of God in the meeting” (Spiritual Disciplines, 42).

Certainly, we can find good teaching in other contexts, but nothing can equal a sermon preached by your local pastor, carefully tailored for your particular congregation.

I have spoken to many pastors about how their relationships with congregants shape their sermons. Often, as a pastor prepares, the faces of his people keep coming to mind. Why? Because the pastor knows his people. He knows their stories. He knows their struggles. He knows the unique temptations they face. That knowledge of his congregation shapes the sermon he crafts for them.

Faithful teaching from a pastor who knows and loves his people is the most nourishing diet a believer can consume.

4. We experience spiritual growth.

I love Sundays because on them I experience great spiritual growth.

Spiritual growth is wrought by the Spirit of God. We cannot control it or manufacture it. However, spiritual growth happens most often — and most intensely — in those moments when we come face-to-face with the goodness and beauty of Christ. So if we intentionally put ourselves in positions and places where we are more likely to see the majesty of Jesus, then we are more likely to experience spiritual growth.

Therefore, we sing, we hear testimonies, we confess our sins, we revel in the gospel, we sit under faithful teaching, and we participate in the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Table. And in no context are we more likely to encounter those types of activities than when Christians gather on Sundays.

5. We remember we’re not alone.

I love Sundays because they remind me that many others believe what I believe and follow the one I follow.

Life can be hard and lonely. The cares of this world have the potential to exhaust us. And in a society that often celebrates evil and believes in lies, during the week it can feel like you’re the crazy one. But come Sunday, when I gather with believers for worship, I’m reminded I’m not alone, and I’m energized.

In the Old Testament, Elijah experienced deep discouragement and distress. He felt alone, as if he were the only person left in Israel serving God. But God assured Elijah that there were still seven thousand people who worshiped the one true God, and he was greatly encouraged (1 Kings 19:18). The same happens within us when we gather. We are greatly encouraged, refreshed, and energized.

Sunday Is Coming

This list certainly is not exhaustive. There are more good and godly reasons to enthusiastically look forward to Sunday worship gatherings.

God pours out so many beautiful blessings on those who gather faithfully with their local church. Even now, as I think about those blessings, my anticipation and excitement for Sunday is building.

Praise God, Sunday is coming!

In the early seventies, the Watergate scandal shocked the nation. One of the men involved was Chuck Colson, who later pled guilty and served time in federal prison. During this season, Colson came to faith in Jesus and converted to evangelical Christianity. In 1976, Colson published Born Again, which chronicles the events leading to his conversion and explains his radical life change. The book was an instant bestseller, making Colson one of the most influential evangelical leaders of his era.

Also in 1976, a dark-horse candidate from Georgia named Jimmy Carter won the Democratic presidential nomination, and then narrowly won the general election. Carter was barely known nationally, so his victory garnered even more attention. During his campaign, Carter professed to be a “born-again Christian.” Most political pundits and media outlets had no idea what that meant.

As the phrase grew in the public consciousness, many Americans assumed that born-again Christianity was a new Christian sect. However, as the media and pollsters investigated, they discovered the phrase “born again” was simply used by ordinary evangelical Christians to describe the supernatural transformation that people experience when they convert to Christianity.

Evangelical Christianity was certainly not new, but when the phrase entered mainstream America, it boosted evangelicalism’s profile. Evangelicalism’s enhanced notoriety and influence prompted Newsweek magazine to proclaim that 1976 was “the year of the evangelical.” The next year, world-renowned evangelist Billy Graham published How to Be Born Again. The book helped to reinforce the credibility of the phrase “born again” and, more importantly, it sent the message that genuine biblical Christianity was synonymous with “born-again Christianity.”

Modern or Ancient?

Some commentators asserted that the emphasis on born-again Christianity was an invention of the modern era. They claimed that the evangelical emphasis on the new birth was absent from most of church history. Evangelicals responded with Scripture.

Jesus said, “I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). The born-again experience is also known as regeneration. The apostle Peter asserts that this experience is made possible by the work of Christ (1 Peter 1:3). The apostle Paul also associates the new birth with salvation and the forgiveness of sins (Titus 3:4–7). Passages like these inspire an important question: How could detractors claim that born-again Christianity was a product of the modern era when the concept of the new birth so clearly comes from Scripture?

Most detractors would certainly agree that the concept of the new birth is indeed in the Bible, but they would also assert that the Christians of previous eras had a different understanding of the new birth than modern evangelicals do. They would argue that, for the bulk of church history, the moment of new birth was associated with infant baptism. In contrast, evangelicals associate the new birth with repentance and personal faith in Christ. Evangelicals believe that people are born again when they are converted to Christ.

New Birth in Church History

It’s true that new birth was associated with infant baptism for much of history. It’s not true, however, that everyone in the early church taught the new birth that way.

In fact, several influential early-church writers believed that the born-again experience was associated with repentance, confession, and salvific faith. This includes the Epistle of Barnabas, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, and Hilary of Poitiers (see Gregg Allison, Historical Theology, 649–67). However, as infant baptism grew in popularity during the third and fourth centuries, the vital association between regeneration and faith was greatly de-emphasized. Many Christians during the Middle Ages presumed that they had already experienced regeneration as infants at their baptisms. Therefore, it seemed unnecessary to preach about the new birth in adulthood.

REFORMATION

The Protestant Reformation brought a renewed focus on individual people believing the gospel, not merely participating in religious duties. The German equivalent of the term evangelical was coined by Martin Luther to describe the Protestant churches that exhorted their congregants to exhibit genuine faith in the evangel (the gospel).

The evangelical emphasis upon the new birth was later greatly promoted by Johann Arndt, a Lutheran theologian who studied under Philip Melanchthon. In the early 1600s, Arndt penned True Christianity, which greatly emphasized the new birth and piety. The book was circulated across Europe extensively for more than a hundred years and was tremendously influential on many future preachers, including John Wesley and George Whitefield.

GREAT AWAKENINGS

In the mid-eighteenth century, a series of powerful revivals swept through America, led by the preaching of men like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. Their preaching emphasized the new birth and called people to repentance. These revivals gave birth to American evangelicalism, which would be an influential force in American society throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

However, by the end of the nineteenth century, a fracture emerged among professing evangelicals between modernists and fundamentalists. The modernists denied Christian orthodoxy and sought to reinvent Christianity in the light of modern science. The fundamentalists intensified their commitment to Christian orthodoxy, but they also developed a militant posture toward culture. By the 1920s, these two groups were worlds apart.

Birth of a Label

After the modernist-fundamentalist break, the modernists repudiated the evangelical emphasis on the born-again experience, but many fundamentalists doubled down on its importance. They began describing themselves as “born-again Christians.” While the phrase would not enter the mainstream for several more decades, it gained momentum within some conservative Protestant circles during the thirties and forties.

In the 1950s, a young evangelist named Bill Bright founded Campus Crusade for Christ, which became the most influential campus evangelism ministry in the nation. Bright embraced the label “born-again Christian,” and by the early sixties, the new converts in his ministry were embracing the label too.

Another notable segment of evangelicals that embraced the label were the young adults being converted to Christ as part of the Jesus People movement of the late sixties. Then, Billy Graham began using the phrase “born again” extensively. Graham had been preaching since the 1940s, and he would occasionally use the phrase, but in the 1960s the born-again vernacular became much more prominent in Graham’s ministry. The events of the sixties put the phrase “born again” on the radar of nearly every American Christian. And the events of 1976 then put the phrase on the radar of every American.

Born-Again Appropriation

Another interesting phrase that entered the lexicon, in time, was “born-again Catholic.” Being born again had typically been a marker of evangelical Protestantism, but soon even Catholics began reporting born-again experiences.

For various reasons, however, these people wanted to remain within their Catholic tradition. The number of self-proclaimed “born-again Catholics” has been modest since the 1960s, but the number nearly doubled from 2004 to 2016 (see Samuel Perry and Cyrus Schleifer’s “Understanding the Rise of Born-Again Catholics in the United States”). While it may appear that a genuinely born-again person can remain a devout member of the Catholic Church, there are some serious warnings to consider.

Also, by the late 1970s, the phrase “born-again” was being used (and misused) by Americans to describe any transformational experience, even if the experience was not directly related to Christ and Christianity. The phrase was so frequently used that when Bob Dylan described his own conversion to evangelical Christianity, he was reluctant to use the phrase “born again” because it was so “overused” (“John Lennon’s Born-Again Phase”). One prominent example of this was John Lennon calling himself a “born-again pagan.”

Fading Label, Crucial Doctrine

What, then, is a born-again Christian? Born-again Christians are those who believe the gospel, and so put faith in Jesus Christ for salvation, and have experienced the supernatural transformation often called regeneration. They have experienced a conversion from spiritual death to spiritual life. John Wesley described this experience as the “thorough change of heart and life from sin to holiness” (quoted in Thomas S. Kidd, Who Is an Evangelical?, 4).

This doctrine of the new birth took center stage in preaching among evangelicals and conservative Protestants in the modern era. This emphasis was not merely semantics. It inspired many to make the new birth essential in their lives and ministries, which in turn profoundly shaped the trajectory of American evangelicalism as it moved into the twenty-first century.

Over the last twenty years, the phrase has faded in popularity somewhat, but the doctrine of the new birth remains a crucial element of American evangelicalism’s history and legacy. Extra labels will come and go, but the doctrine — and more importantly, the experience, if genuine — will remain.

It is often difficult to know how to navigate between religious factions on the right and the left. To the right may be those who emphasize good doctrine but seem to stand at arm’s length from the world. To the left may be those who emphasize social engagement and activism but seem to have compromised theological fidelity.

Yet we are not the first generation of evangelicals to grapple with this tension. The evangelicals of the early twentieth century also found themselves uncomfortably sandwiched between two increasing extremes. But, by God’s providence, several evangelical theologians in the mid-twentieth century began championing a different way. The most influential of them was Carl F.H. Henry.

Henry was a brilliant theologian, journalist, seminary professor, and evangelical luminary, best known as the intellectual giant who served as the first editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, the magazine founded by Billy Graham. One of the magazine’s later editors, David Neff, said, “If we see Billy Graham as the great public face and generous spirit of the evangelical movement, Carl Henry was the brains.”

More than anyone else, Henry set forth compelling intellectual arguments in favor of a new strand of evangelicalism — an evangelicalism that combined passion for right doctrine with passion for cultural engagement. Henry emphasized both evangelism and social activism. He insisted that evangelicals prioritize both theological scholarship and practical ministry training. And he modeled how to properly challenge those with whom you disagree, calling evangelicals to do so with kindness and humility. Henry gives us a blueprint for how we can be committed to both orthodoxy and orthopraxy.

Fiery Bolt of Lightning

Carl Ferdinand Howard Henry was born on January 2, 1913, to German immigrants and grew up in Long Island, New York. He was baptized in the Episcopal church and attended Sunday school, but religion was not important in the Henry household.

After graduating high school in 1929, Henry began work as a freelance reporter. Within three years, he was the editor of a major newspaper in Long Island. He had become a “hard-nosed journalist given to pagan pleasures,” as Timothy George writes in Essential Evangelicalism (9).

One day in 1933, however, Henry was sitting alone in his car during a violent storm, when a lightning strike frightened him. He described the experience like this:

A fiery bolt of lightning, like a giant flaming arrow, seemed to pin me to the driver’s seat, and a mighty roll of thunder unnerved me. When the fire fell, I knew instinctively the Great Archer had nailed me to my own footsteps. Looking back, it was as if the transcendent Tetragrammaton wished me to know that I could not save myself and that heaven’s intervention was my only hope. (Confessions of a Theologian, 45–46)

Soon after, Henry had a long conversation with a young evangelist named Gene Bedford. After that conversation, Henry embraced Jesus as Savior.

Henry enrolled at Wheaton College in 1935, where he met Helga Bender, the daughter of Baptist missionaries. Carl and Helga married in 1940, beginning a 63-year marriage. He also developed a friendship with fellow classmate Billy Graham during his Wheaton years. Their friendship would last a lifetime and yield much fruit.

After earning a BA and an MA from Wheaton as well as a BDiv and a ThD from Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Henry pursued a PhD at Boston University. It was during his time in Boston that he strengthened his friendship with Harold John Ockenga, pastor of the historic Park Street Church. Together, Henry, Ockenga, and Graham became the three primary leaders of the resurgence of evangelicalism in the mid-twentieth century.

New Kind of Evangelical

Henry and Ockenga wanted to propagate a new brand of evangelicalism that avoided the social pull to both left and right extremes. The proponents of this new strand — often called neo-evangelicals — wanted to be more socially conscious than the fundamentalism of the previous decades, even as they stood for the same basic doctrines. They also were willing to work across denominational lines, hoping for a broader coalition of Christian leaders.

Henry and Ockenga believed that Christianity had faltered culturally due to a lack of intellectual rigor among Christian leaders. The neo-evangelicals were convinced that if they were going to influence society, they needed to regain respect in academia. Evangelicalism would need to produce world-class scholars who could engage the elite intellectual centers, and thus “meet theological liberals on their own ground and beat them at their own game,” as Albert Mohler puts it.

With these goals in mind, Henry helped pioneer several key evangelical initiatives, including the National Association of Evangelicals (1942) and the Evangelical Theological Society (1949). In 1947, Ockenga and radio evangelist Charles Fuller launched Fuller Theological Seminary to be the flagship neo-evangelical institution, and they immediately recruited Henry to be the school’s founding dean. Henry remained on the faculty of Fuller until he became the first editor-in-chief of Christianity Today magazine in 1956. The magazine quickly became tremendously influential, largely due to Henry’s leadership.

These initiatives led to an explosion in evangelical scholarship. Before the neo-evangelical movement, evangelicals heavily relied on nineteenth-century conservative scholarship. Evangelicals were mocked for “relying on book reprints,” as Roger Nicole says (quoted in Awakening the Evangelical Mind, 168). However, in the second half of the twentieth century, evangelical scholars “produced works on history, psychology, pastoral theology, homiletics, family relations, the devotional life, denominational distinctive, and scores of other subjects,” Nicole says. “The problem in 1945 was that we had relatively few new conservative books; the problem now is that there are so many that few people can afford to purchase all those they would like to own.” As evangelical scholarship exploded, Henry led the way, earning his nickname “the dean of the evangelicals.”

Henry wrote more than forty books and countless articles, essays, and reviews throughout his career. His magnum opus was the three-thousand page, six-volume work God, Revelation, and Authority. This remarkable work thoroughly explores epistemology, divine self-revelation, hermeneutics, authority, and the nature of truth. Gregory Alan Thornbury sums up the project by saying that Henry wanted to present a theology that was “epistemologically viable, methodologically coherent, biblically accurate, socially responsible, evangelistically oriented, and universally applied.”

What Can We Learn from Henry?

If Henry were alive today, what might he say to modern evangelicals? An examination of Henry’s life and writings gives us insight into how he might address us.

Evangelism

Henry’s first exhortation might be toward evangelism. He writes,

It would be a supreme act of lovelessness on the part of the Christian community to withhold from the body of humanity, lost in sin, the evangel that Christ died for sinners and that the new birth is available on the condition of personal repentance and faith. (Evangelicals at the Brink of Crisis, 36)

Henry observed that far too many Christians had relegated evangelism to the professional evangelists — absolving themselves from any responsibility in the Great Commission by claiming that they weren’t gifted for the task.

During the early years of Fuller Seminary, Henry’s fervor for evangelism permeated the school’s culture. He fostered an “evangelistically alive missionary minded and warm collegial side of early Fuller community life,” as John Woodbridge puts it. Historian George Marsden has shared one student’s memory of Dr. Henry often arriving to lecture at early Saturday morning seminars looking “bedraggled in an old baggy overcoat [because] he would periodically spend half the night out in Los Angeles witnessing to derelicts and helping them find shelter” (Reforming Fundamentalism, 91). Henry was just as much an evangelist as he was a theologian or journalist.

“Henry was just as much an evangelist as he was a theologian or journalist.”

Henry balked at the idea that evangelism and theological studies were at odds. In his 1966 opening address to the World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin, he proclaimed the urgent need for biblically faithful theologian-evangelists. He knew that evangelistic efforts uninformed by good theology would lead to doctrinal confusion and weak discipleship. But he also knew that when theologians lack evangelistic fervor, they become too insular and persnickety. Henry challenged the delegates to “become theologian evangelists, rather than to remain content as just theologians or just evangelists,” John Woodbridge writes (Essential Evangelicalism, 82).

Justice

In 1947, Henry published his most famous book, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, in response to the idea that there were only two options for Protestants: theological liberalism or a culturally detached fundamentalism. This book was a clarion call for evangelicals to reject this false dichotomy.

Henry wanted evangelicals to lead the way in both theological integrity and social activism. He often said, “God is both the God of justice and justification.” Henry believed that the most important task was “the preaching of the gospel, in the interest of individual regeneration,” but he also believed that Christians ought to present the gospel “as the best solution of our problems, individual and social” (The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, 89).

God, in his self-revelation, gives us the best definition of justice. Therefore, Christians should be the greatest advocates for justice, on God’s terms, in any society — presenting God’s ways as the perfect picture of justice and righteousness. Henry writes, “Evangelicals know that injustice is reprehensible not simply because it is anti-human but because it is anti-God” (A Plea for Evangelical Demonstration, 14).

Uneasy Conscience challenged evangelical leaders to address justice-related issues and to condemn social evils such as racism, exploitation of labor, and aggressive warfare. According to Henry, we should not be able to “look with indifference upon miscarriages of justice in the law courts, usury, plundering the needy, failure to feed and clothe the poor, and over-charging for merchandise” (33). In true Kuyperian-fashion, he writes, “The evangelical missionary message cannot be measured for success by the number of converts only. The Christian message has a salting effect upon the earth. It aims at a re-created society” (84).

Politics

Henry called upon more evangelicals to call out injustice in their writings, believing this would change hearts and minds. He also knew, however, that merely changing minds was not enough. To inspire societal change, he knew Christians needed to help change policies too.

In his editorials, he often made arguments for specific pieces of legislation and policy changes. In Henry’s mind, it was not enough to simply get people to agree if such agreement did not lead to any practical effect. So, he was willing, as an editor, to publicly endorse specific ideas and frameworks in which the proper solutions to social ills could be found.

“Henry would challenge us to cut against the harmful ideologies of both the left and the right.”

The key for Henry, however, was to focus on ideas and frameworks rather than political parties. Henry would challenge us to cut against the harmful ideologies of both the left and the right. He would tell us to endorse good policies, regardless of which side of the aisle they come from, and he would warn evangelicals against becoming too loyal to one political party. Henry mostly agreed with conservative politics, but he insisted that evangelical leaders ought to avoid becoming mouthpieces for the conservative political movement in America. This put him at odds with the more conservative board members and financiers of Christianity Today, who wanted an outspoken politically conservative voice for the magazine’s editorials. This eventually cost Henry his job as editor-in-chief.

Henry understood the power of politics, but he also understood the limitations too. He knew that policy changes could go only so far in the effort to reshape society. If Henry were alive today, he would exhort us to be careful to not put too much stock in political efforts. He knew that evangelicals needed to pour their greatest energies into gospel preaching and evangelism.

Rhetoric

Along with greater social engagement, the neo-evangelicals wanted to strike a more positive tone than the fundamentalists of the previous generation. Henry did not shy away from giving scathing warnings whenever necessary, but he often voiced striking notes of optimism and hope.

In Uneasy Conscience, Henry asserts that evangelicals need to present their doctrine and ideas with a “dynamic to give it hope” (55). He wanted to engage with society, not just win an argument. After hearing the evangelical message, Henry wanted people to feel a sense of hope that there is indeed a better way.

He also understood that our rhetoric matters. He knew that irenic and hopeful rhetoric would allow him to build rapport with people who otherwise might discredit or ignore him. For Henry, however, being irenic and hopeful was not merely a tactic in some quest to win more people to his side. Rather, such rhetoric was theologically informed.

The ministry of Christ was personal and incarnational; therefore, Henry believed that the theologian must also be personal and incarnational. He wanted people to see the Savior through his life, so he sought to interact with others in the same manner as Christ. Timothy George, who spent significant time with Carl Henry, says, “The thing that stands out was his extraordinary humility and kindness toward others. . . . I never heard him speak in a bitter or disparaging way about anybody, not even those with whom he disagreed” (Essential Evangelicalism, 14). Modern evangelicals would be wise to follow Henry’s model.

Humble Giant

Marvin Olasky, former editor-in-chief of World magazine, shares an anecdote (recounted by Thornbury) from the life of Henry that gives us great insight into his humility.

For several years toward the end of his life, Henry wrote op-ed columns for World. Olasky said that every few weeks he would get a letter in the mail from Henry — typically a three-page article. And in each letter, Henry always included a self-addressed stamped postcard with the handwritten words: Accept or Reject. He never presumed that what he had to say was worthy of being published.

Henry was a remarkable leader and scholar. He was an impressive theologian. His evangelistic fervor was contagious. His kindness was sincere. His body of work is second to none in his generation. And his humility ran deep.

Soon after Henry’s death on December 7, 2003, David S. Dockery wrote this tribute: “Those who met him for the first time often stood in awe of his giant intellect. But soon, almost without exception, they became more impressed with his humility and gracious spirit.”

Banner Illustration taken from Essential Evangelicalism: The Enduring Influence of Carl F. H. Henry, edited by Matthew J. Hall and Owen Strachan, Copyright © 2015. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.org.