Friend, I want you...

Paul D. Wolfe

August, 2021

I know you can picture that poster.

That famous Uncle Sam poster.

We’ve all seen it. More to the point—and it is pointed—he’s seen you.

He’s looking right at you with a stern gaze, and pointing right at you with an outstretched index finger, and he’s saying, “I want you for the U.S. Army.”

With that gaze and that finger, who can refuse him?!

Here at the Huguenot Fellowship we don’t exactly have an Uncle Sam equivalent. But I do have several nieces and nephews myself, which makes me Uncle Paul, and I do have some grey hair and some grey whiskers now , so I’m happy to play the role.

Friend, I want you...

...to consider the part you might play in encouraging your local congregation to contribute to the Huguenot Fellowship, and thus join us in supporting Faculté Jean Calvin (FJC) in Aix-en-Provence, France.

Here at the end of August, church budget season is just around the corner. It won’t be long before local congregations are fashioning their budgets for 2022, including the mission works they’ll support.

The Huguenot Fellowship receives around 40% of our giving from churches. Is yours one of them? If not, maybe it can become one. And maybe you can let folks in your church know about FJC to help make it happen.

Perhaps your church has a missions committee, and there’s a point-of-contact who would be interested in learning about FJC. Or perhaps the pastor is that point-of-contact by virtue of his role as one of the leaders of the church. You know best. You’re there. You’re on location. And that’s exactly why we’d like to encourage you to consider letting others know in your church community.

And we stand at the ready to furnish you with any information and materials that would be helpful to you if you want to promote the cause. (Our website— http://www.huguenotfellowship.org/—is always a very good place to start.)

And no question, it is a worthy cause! For over 45 years, the evangelical protestant seminary that is FJC has been providing solid, scriptural instruction across the full spectrum of biblical and theological disciplines, equipping its students to serve the church and make Christ known. There are very few evangelical seminaries in France today, and FJC shines among them.

Interested in serving as an ambassador for FJC in your church? Email us at hello@huguenotfellowship.org and we’ll make sure you’re equipped!

Warmly,
Uncle Paul

Paul D. Wolfe
President, The Huguenot Fellowship
Pastor, New Hope Presbyterian Church, Fairfax, VA paul@huguenotfellowship.org

Good News of a Great Joy

Paul D. Wolfe

December 2020

“Behold, I bring you good news of a great joy...”

It’s that most wonderful time of the year, when our hearts and minds turn to the announcement of good news.

And as the President of the Huguenot Fellowship, I get to make an announcement here!

I’m thrilled to report that the governing board of Faculté Jean Calvin (FJC) has officially named the seminary’s professorship in Apologetics “The William Edgar Chair of Apologetics.” Hand in hand with that happy step, we at the Huguenot Fellowship have now created a special fund which will be devoted to supporting the Edgar Chair at FJC for years to come. This transatlantic partnership of our two organizations fulfills a desire to honor a dear brother and faithful servant who has been vital to both!

Over the course of a distinguished, decades-long career of teaching and writing, Bill Edgar has labored faithfully and fruitfully in the field of Christian Apologetics. Bill taught at FJC for eleven years before moving his family to the United States in 1989 to teach at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. In the thirty-plus years ever since, he has continued to be a devoted supporter of the seminary in Aix: serving as the President of the Huguenot Fellowship until 2019, as well as traveling frequently to FJC to teach there in person. Bill is now an internationally-renowned expert in his field, and a beloved member of the extended FJC family. To top it off, he and his wife Barbara have lovingly lived out together the faith he has taught and defended all these years, by their warm hospitality and gracious encouragement of countless friends and strangers around the world.

The theological discipline known as “Apologetics” involves the explanation and defense of the Christian faith in a world in which that faith is sometimes regarded with misunderstanding, or skepticism, or opposition...and sometimes all of the above! Apologetics brings together a wide range of subjects and interests—everything from theology to philosophy to popular culture to interpersonal relationships—in order to answer questions concerning Christianity and to show its truthfulness. Because Bill has devoted his life to this worthy calling, putting his name on the FJC chair of Apologetics was an irresistible fit—especially since he once occupied that professorship himself. This means that FJC Apologetics Professor Yannick Imbert, who once studied under Bill at Westminster, is now the first occupant of the Edgar Chair. Parfait!

We’ll have more to say about this new initiative in the months to come. But we wanted to get the word out here at the close of 2020. Like I said, it’s the time of year for good news. We couldn’t wait.

Want to get involved?

Then www.huguenotfellowship.org is the place to go!

There you’ll find a link (“Announcing the William Edgar Chair of Apologetics”) where you can learn more, make an initial contribution (including by stock donation), and sign up for email updates. We’d love to keep in touch with you via email and save some trees.

Our goal is to raise up to $1,000,000 over a multi-year campaign. This would enable us to contribute annually a portion of the salary for the Apologetics professorship. Now that we’ve hit the ground running, we should be able to support the Edgar Chair in this way beginning early in 2021. As I’m sure you can imagine, the events of 2020 have put FJC in a tight financial spot, so this new campaign presents us with a golden opportunity to keep the seminary going at a time when its message is so needed.

Please consider joining us as we honor our dear friend and seek to advance the cause of truth that he himself has served so well for so long.

Oh, and Merry Christmas too! Good news of a great joy, indeed.

Yours,
Paul D. Wolfe, President
The Huguenot Fellowship

15 Minutes

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

Still Building His Church

Paul D. Wolfe

June 2020

“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18)

On a recent Sunday morning I preached on that passage for our church here in Fairfax, Virginia. While standing in my living room. Alone. Seeing only one face looking back at me. Mine. On my computer screen. Because I was leading our worship service on my laptop via Facebook Live. The same way I have every Sunday since the Ides of March. Because, well, coronavirus. Such is church life here in the middle of 2020. These are the Days of Distancing.

It would be difficult to imagine a more apparent mismatch between message and reality. “You’re saying that Christ is building his church—but you’re saying it in an empty room because your congregation is scattered and has been for months! Shouldn’t you say that Christ will get back to building when your church has gotten back to its building?”

But good news: the mismatch is only apparent. Even during these strange, separated, scattered days, Christ is still building. Still bringing men and women to faith. Still building us up in that same faith. Still guiding and guarding and sustaining and strengthening churches all over the world.

And...still training up servants of the Word who will go out as his instruments. That’s where Faculté Jean Calvin (FJC) comes in.

To be sure, the spring semester at our beloved seminary in Aix-en-Provence was unlike anything they’d ever experienced. They found themselves relying upon technology in new ways, too. They, like us, have been learning the international language of Zoom. They found themselves having to come up with different approaches to teaching and learning and fellowship.

But guess what: they did! It happened. The teaching and learning and connecting all happened. COVID-19 was the mother of invention. Our brothers and sisters at FJC answered the providential call, and the work of the seminary went on.

Lord willing, next month they’ll hold a graduation ceremony. This, too, will have to be virtual. And it will take place slightly later on the calendar than they’d originally planned. But the Lord who’s building his church is a perfectly patient builder, whose timing and ways are always spot-on. And a new corps of FJC graduates will go forth as those forged for service—not only by what they got in the classroom, but also as a result of how the Lord challenged them in their final semester.

Join me in rejoicing, and praying for their fruitful labors!

Yours in Christ,

Paul D. Wolfe
President of The Huguenot Fellowship

P.S. As you might imagine, for FJC these are lean financial times. They’re trusting in the Lord to provide. If you’re able to make an additional gift this summer to participate in that provision, our mailing and online addresses are here on our website, waiting to be of assistance!

Not Afraid of Bad News

Paul D. Wolfe, President

He is not afraid of bad news.

Really? He’s not? He’s not afraid of bad news?

No, he’s not.

“The man who fears the Lord,” says the Psalmist, “is not afraid of bad news. His heart is firm, trusting in the Lord” (Psalm 112:7).

I thought of this Bible verse this morning when I glanced at my phone (alas, the early morning phone glance) and the very first headline that greeted me was, well, viral:

“France confirms 19 new cases as officials declare epidemic inevitable.” Cases, that is, of coronavirus.

It’s a fast-moving story, especially in Europe. By the time you read this, days from now, will the numbers be higher? Lower? Will the situation be more fearful? Less? I’m no forecaster of such matters.

But what I do know is that when you’re reading this Psalm 112:7 will still be true. Those who know and fear the Lord, they need not fear bad news. Not because there’s no bad news in this world. (Obviously there is. Everything from global pandemics to personal heartbreak.) And not because the Christian is insensible to such things. (He’s not. The night before he died Jesus himself recoiled at the thought of what was in store for him, and we servants are not greater than our Master.) But we need not fear bad news in the sense that even the worst that comes our way, our wise and loving Father in heaven will have appointed it for our eternal good.

In the lovely town of Aix-en-Provence in the south of France, there’s a seminary we love, La Faculté Jean Calvin (FJC). And there, in campus classrooms and in conversations over café, faculty and staff are training men and women to grasp the gospel of Jesus Christ in a fearful world so they can go forth with it in the midst of every kind of virus and see people set free. Free from paralyzing fear. Free from the guilt and power of sin. Free from the thought that something they breathe in might be their undoing.

The Huguenot Fellowship’s raison d’être is to support FJC—with prayer, with encouragement, with financial support. Here in 2020 they need it all, just as we do! So we’ll continue to stand with them.

Join us, won’t you?

Yours in Christ,
Paul D. Wolfe

P.S. I’m grateful to the many who have reached out to me upon my becoming President of the Huguenot Fellowship to express your support. M erci, mes amis! Never hesitate to contact me with questions, observations, ideas: 703.385.9056; paul@newhopefairfax.org. The door to my office is always open.

Passing the Baton

William Edgar

November, 2019

Dear Friends,

After more than thirty years of writing these newsletters, I will be moving to pass the baton over to our splendid new President, Paul Wolfe, although occasionally I may collaborate. I wish to express my profound gratitude for the opportunity the newsletter has afforded me to reflect on the need for the gospel in France, and especially to the kind readers, many of whom have expressed their appreciation. For the moment we do not plan any radical changes. So, the remaining text will be authored by Paul, in his maiden foray. Again, many thanks.

Very Truly Yours,
William Edgar

Paul D. Wolfe

And with that, I take the baton from Bill and I start running. And I hold on to Isaiah 40:31 as I get going: “they shall run and not be weary”!

As some of you are aware, at the most recent meeting of the Huguenot Fellowship, Bill Edgar brought to a close his lengthy and faithful tenure as our President. And the Board elected me to the role after him. (Thankfully, Bill and his wonderful wife Barbara will remain on our Board and continue to lend their wisdom and creativity.)

I suppose a word of introduction is in order. I have had the privilege of serving on the Board of the Huguenot Fellowship since 2015. The congregation I serve as Senior Pastor, New Hope Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Fairfax, Virginia, supported the Huguenot Fellowship for many years prior to my joining the Board, and has continued to do so. My wife Christy and I live in Fairfax with our three children, whom we have promised to take to France on vacation soon. And they are most unlikely to let us forget the promise!

The opportunity to serve the Huguenot Fellowship in this new capacity is simultaneously humbling and exciting for me. The seminary’s ministry is vital, my fellow Board members are fantastic, and the need for the gospel in France (of which Bill has already made mention) is great.

Which brings me back to Bill. Surely words of honor are in order too.

The Huguenot Fellowship was founded in 1977 for the purpose of rallying support here in the United States for the Reformed seminary in Aix-en-Provence, France, now known as Faculté Jean Calvin (FJC). That means it’s been 42 years! Forty-two years of getting the word out about FJC and supporting it from across the Atlantic. Forty-two years of newsletters and prayer, soirées and more prayer, receiving contributions from donors far and wide and providing crucial financial assistance to the seminary—and more prayer. And for thirty of those forty-two years, Bill Edgar has wisely led and guided us.

And he’s been uniquely qualified to do so. Bill has brought to the role of President his “perfect storm” of experience, wisdom, and dedication: not only did he grow up in France, but then he taught at the seminary in Aix for eleven years before moving his family to the United States in 1989 to teach at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. Bill knows France well: its language, its history, its people, its mindset. His ties to FJC have been close, strong, and long-lasting. Most of all, he’s spent a lifetime teaching and defending the very gospel that FJC continues to inculcate into the hearts and minds of its students. It would be difficult to overstate the impact Bill has had during his long service as our President.

As a way of marking this moment of transition in the life of our organization, would you consider contributing a special financial gift this year in honor of Bill’s service—a gift not only to support FJC in its ongoing mission, but also to express your gratitude for Bill’s extraordinary decades-long leadership? You may do so...
By mail: The Huguenot Fellowship; P.O. Box 877; Glenside, PA, 19038.
Online: Visit www.huguenotfellowship.org, and follow the “Contribute” link in the upper right.

Faculté Jean Calvin stands as a beacon for the gospel in France today, and the Huguenot Fellowship remains resolved to see that light shine for generations to come. Keep standing with us, dear friends!

Yours in Christ,
Paul D. Wolfe

David Powlison

Friday June 7th David Powlison, director of CCEF, beloved husband, father and grandfather, departed this world to be with Our Savior. He succumbed to pancreatic cancer. He was a great friend to many, a trusted counselor, and a prolific author and speaker. He was a complete human being, wise, funny, and absurdly well read. Our hearts go out to Nan, his extraordinary wife and to his talented children. A memorial service will be held Tuesday, June 18, 3:00 PM at Calvary Church in Souderton, PA. Praise God for his unique servant.

William Edgar

The Devastating Fire

May, 2019

Dear Friends,

How many deep emotions have come to the fore because of the devastating fire on the Notre-Dame roof? It is among the most celebrated buildings in the world. Victor Hugo wrote a long novel in which the cathedral is the subject, the hero, the story, and the harbor of such strange figures as Pierre Gringoire, Quasimodo, Clopin Trouillefou and Esmeralda. At one level, the edifice is a testimony to the creative capabilities of mankind. As Hugo puts it: “The man, the artist, the individual, is effaced in these great masses, which lack the name of their author; human intelligence is there summed up and totalized.” The anonymity is refreshing. But is that all?

The walls have never been silent. The cathedral was the birthplace of the Organum style of music, a direct ancestor of polyphony. Centuries later, the incomparable organist Louis Vierne died at the consul of the grand Cavaillé-Coll instrument, before a congregation of 300. There has also been celebration in the visual arts. Matisse painted the haunting “Notre-Dame, Une Fin d’Après-Midi.”

Is there a link to eternity in these stones? Abbot Suger, the pioneer of the Gothic style, wanted the rose windows and the geometric proportions of the floors to connect worshipers with the presence of God. Protestants might balk at this statement of Roman Catholic mysticism, and its overt Marian theology, but it is well to remember the cathedral was completed in 1260 after some 200 years of collective labors. This is well before the Reformation.

At the opposite end, many historians see in the fire a metaphor for the decline of the Christian faith in France. In the absence of the cohesion once brought by the Christian religion, the question being asked in Paris these days is whether the burning of one of the world’s great monuments can help bring unity to a deeply divided country. While many modern French people are content to be secular, or laic, as this unique term has it, it does not take much of a threat to call forth the deep-seated Roman Catholicism of their heritage. Deep but likely ineffective. Real Unity? True cohesion? Not likely.

Whether believers or not, many French people consider the cathedral should be rebuilt. So far, so good. It is a place where kings have been crowned and heads of state gathered to remember events and persons significant in French history. Already billions of Euros have been raised to that effect. In a rare moment of church – state cooperation president Emmanuel Macron and archbishop Michel Aupetit have agreed to restore this architectural wonder of the world. Predictably, some have objected that such a groundswell should be directed to alleviate poverty, not restore monuments.

So many themes are woven together here: French pride; tourism; Christian faith; traditionalism; church-state relations (since 1905 Notre Dame belongs to the government); and deep questions of French identity. We are hoping this devastating incident will raise questions not so much about French identity but about human identity. Buildings, particularly magnificent buildings such as Notre-Dame, have their place. But the most profound edifice in the universe is the household of God, “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord” (Ephesians 2:20-21).

This is the heart of our Seminary’s message. This is the only basis for a permanent unity in France or anywhere. Please pray that Aix-en-Provence could become the center for a great revival, and that through it the people of France could enter “a building from God, a house not made with human hands, eternal in the heaven” (2 Corinthians 5:1).

Very Truly Yours
William Edgar
President