A Tribute To Pastor Charlie Chilton

The sad news came late Wednesday evening in the modern form. Online social sights, phone calls and even text messages revealed that our longtime pastor, and the man who married my wife and I, Charlie Chilton, had passed away after a significant battle with cancer. The news wasn't unexpected, but still difficult to accept, as is often reality. The outpouring of memories and condolences spread just as fast across the little corner of the internet that knew this man. So what else could be said that hasn't already been expressed in one form or another? The lives that this man of God touched were not segregated only to the communities in northern Virginia that he most recently called home, but throughout the world, to far corners that many of us will never see with our own eyes. Pastor Charlie, as he had affectionately become known, was a church planter, and he had a longtime connection with the people of the Philippines. With this in mind I revel in one of my fondest memories of this man. On a brisk April Day in Washington, DC my wife and I were invited to hear Pastor Charlie guest preach at a local church on Wisconsin Avenue. This was well after our wedding, and we had not been blessed to hear him speak in some time, so we pounced at the chance to visit with him again. But we knew from the onset that this would be no ordinary sermon. Pastor Charlie was going to preach to a Pilipino congregation, and he was going perform the service in Tagalog, a native language of these people of which he was fluent. This was my first foreign language service (though not my last) and I was curious if my ignorance of the words spoken would cause my attention to slip. My wife and I settled into a pew halfway into the church and watched our mentor take the pulpit. We surveyed the sanctuary to find that we were most likely the only ones in the modest congregation that did not speak Tagalog. But soon we knew that the language barrier did not matter. Pastor Charlie preached words of truth with passion and authority that were foreign to our ears. We understood almost nothing. But listening to his voice and watching the reaction of the people there was no doubt about the message he was spreading. The truth of Christ was being spoken that day if only in a slightly different form than we were used to and my wife and I understood the beating heart of truth if not each syllable in which it was packaged. There was no grand revelation of a foreign language as brought to us by some mystical power. There was simply the knowledge and peace that the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ was ringing forth and the people in this small sanctuary were receiving and praising. There is no translation needed for that. That would be the last sermon we ever heard from Pastor Charlie and it was an honor to be included. I will most likely never become fluent in Tagalog, nor ever hear a message in that language again, but I do not consider what I heard that day to be a waste. I was forced to hear that sermon with my heart, ignoring my more common senses, and I was blessed by the Lord. It was a great gift. On April 19, 1951, in his farewell address to congress, General Douglas MacArthur said the following: I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barrack ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that "old soldiers never die; they just fade away." And like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Pastor Charlie was blessed both with the light to see his duty and the chance to spread that light over all of God's creation. But unlike General MacArthur's declaration, the Christian does die, however briefly, but will live eternally with Christ in Glory. That is where Pastor Charlie rests today, his accomplishments for the Kingdom never to fade away, his face cradled by the Lord of Lords, hearing the refrain "Well done, good and faithful servant."