Paul D. Wolfe
15 minutes.
That’s how close they came to an unimaginable catastrophe.
On April 15, 2019, as the fire in Paris’ Notre Dame cathedral raged on, they were just 15 minutes away—maybe even 10—from a collapse within the building that probably would have meant its complete destruction.
That’s how close they came.
That’s what I learned a few nights ago when I watched the riveting documentary, “Notre Dame: Our Lady of Paris,” which chronicles the events of that awful day and night, when so much was lost, and so much was spared.
By just 10 or 15 minutes, the firefighters who bravely entered that glorious building in a desperate attempt to save it were able to control one particular area of flame that had nearly spread to the point that the cathedral would have been totally lost.
The documentary was simultaneously heartbreaking and thrilling. So much was lost that day, and they were close to losing the whole building. But they didn’t. Thanks to their skilled and noble efforts, much was spared, so that Notre Dame still stands on that site, and the work they’re doing now is that of restoration, and not rebuilding from scratch and memory.
What struck me as I watched that program was the revelation that heroic efforts had saved Notre Dame—efforts that few knew about at the time, carried out by men and women whose names almost nobody knows to this day.
Thinking now about the church (and not just a church building), isn’t that the way it often goes in God’s economy? Even now Jesus Christ is building his church—and in some cases preventing spiritual damage and destruction—by means of the unseen heroic efforts of relatively unknown dedicated servants.
And isn’t that what’s happening right now in Aix-en-Provence, at the Faculté Jean Calvin (FJC)? The men and women who serve at that seminary are not known widely to the world, and their efforts day after day to instruct and pastor and pray and manage the seminary will be known to very few in this life. But that’s exactly how Christ is building his church in France, and beyond. That’s exactly how Christ is training his present and future servants.
Thus it’s a privilege for us, as we give and pray and encourage, to know that we’re standing with them, and supporting them. No major television network is going to broadcast into millions of homes around the world a documentary about what’s going on at FJC. But I say, we don’t need them to. We walk by faith and not by sight. By faith we see glory that won’t see the light of day this side of heaven. And that’s why we stand with them. Dedicated servants. Heroic efforts. Day after day.
On September 13, FJC held an opening ceremony to launch the new semester, as well as hand out the diplomas from the past school year, which COVID-19 had sent online. The work of the seminary goes on, even in the strange and trying year that is 2020!
Yours in Christ,
Paul D. Wolfe, President
The Huguenot Fellowship