50. William Culbertson (1905–1971)
50
William Culbertson
1905–1971
In whatever man does without God, he must fail miserably—or succeed miserably.”1 So wrote saintly George MacDonald, and his counsel is desperately needed by Christian leaders and organizations today. An evil idea is abroad in the land that spiritual life is not important to spiritual leadership. So long as the leader projects a “successful image” and manifests “dynamic,” he will be successful. Holiness of life, spiritual growth, and obedience to the Word of God have been replaced by promotion, public relations, and obedience to the latest conclusions of the Madison Avenue geniuses.
I do not want to be misunderstood. Christian organizations ought to learn all they can about business methods and leadership principles. Our Lord reminds us that “the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light” (Luke 16:8), and we ought to borrow their wisdom (shortsighted as it is) and put it to work for God. But we dare not undermine the spiritual foundations on which God’s work is built. Alas, there are Christian organizations today that have a “form of godliness” (so as not to upset the donors), but in which godliness as a force is sadly lacking. Not that there are chinks in the armor; sad to say, the armor was taken off long ago and the organization left naked and ashamed before her enemies. To change the picture, the veneer on the building will peel off little by little, and the foundation of sand will crumble. One day the whole edifice will fall, and a great fall it will be.
In my own ministry, I have met several Christian leaders who knew how to exercise spiritual leadership without sacrificing good business principles. To borrow the old Youth for Christ slogan, they were “geared to the times but anchored to the Rock.” One such man was William Culbertson, bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church, dean of education at Moody Bible Institute (1942–48), and president of that school for twenty-three fruitful years. Wilbur M. Smith stated it perfectly: “My first impression and the lasting one is that he is a man of God.”
William Culbertson was born on November 18, 1905, into a very godly home in Philadelphia. He was an only child but not of the “spoiled” variety. He trusted Christ as Savior at age nine, and the experience was so real to him that shortly afterward he led his uncle to the Lord. He graduated from West Philadelphia High School in 1924 (where he had taken four years of Greek!), and that same year entered the Reformed Episcopal Seminary in Philadelphia. The Reformed Episcopal Church had been founded by G. D. Cummins in 1873, mainly because of doctrinal “deterioration” in the American Episcopal church. The group was opposed to the “ritualism and sacerdotalism” of the parent body. James M. Gray, another president of Moody Bible Institute, also belonged to this denomination.
After Culbertson graduated from seminary in 1924, he became pastor of Grace Reformed Episcopal Church, Collingdale, Pennsylvania. He studied at Temple University in Philadelphia and taught at Philadelphia School of the Bible (now Philadelphia Bible College) and at his alma mater. In 1939 he graduated from Temple and was granted an honorary DD from Reformed Episcopal Seminary. He pastored St. John’s-by-the-Sea, Ventnor, New Jersey, and the Church of the Atonement, Germantown, Philadelphia, before moving to Chicago in 1942 to become dean of education at Moody Bible Institute.
Will H. Houghton was president of the school at that time, and he was excited about the new dean God had provided, a man who blended deep spirituality with solid education and common sense. Culbertson’s years as a bishop in his denomination (he had been elected in 1937) gave him wide experience in “managing spiritual business,” and his academic credentials gave him acceptance in the field of education. Preaching and teaching were his first loves, and he especially enjoyed teaching the Pauline epistles and Bible geography. It was an open secret on campus that when Culbertson was bored with a speaker or a meeting, he would study the maps at the back of his Bible! Houghton died on June 14, 1947, and five days later Culbertson was appointed acting president. He never moved into Houghton’s office, nor did he exercise any “evangelical politics” to succeed Houghton. Members of the administrative staff urged him to seek the position of president, but he quietly refused. Then on February 4, 1948, the trustees named him president of the school, and he accepted.
According to S. Maxwell Coder, who succeeded Culbertson as dean of education, “William Culbertson moved the Moody Bible Institute out of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century.” Some of the new president’s associates did not think he moved things fast enough. One of his favorite expressions was, “Well, let’s sleep on it.” But when you examine the progress report for his years of administration, you cannot help but conclude that God used him and many things were accomplished. The physical campus was greatly improved, the curriculum updated, and the spiritual life of the campus family strengthened. Old ministries were expanded (or quietly buried), and new ministries inaugurated. All of this was accomplished during a turbulent era in American church history, when more than one Christian organization either compromised the faith or went out of business. God “called home” Culbertson on November 16, 1971. His last words summarized the deep spiritual passion of his entire life: “God—God—yes!”
It was my privilege to know Dr. Culbertson, and it was my further privilege to be chosen to write his biography, William Culbertson: A
Man of God (1974). During months of research, I found a few people who disagreed with his program, and some who were impatient with his deliberate style of management, but I found no one who questioned his character or attacked his reputation. Even his enemies (and he had a few) had to admit he was a man of God.
So much for his life and ministry. Now let us go deeper and explore the spiritual principles that operated in his life. Above all else, Culbertson walked with God. He spent time in the Word and in prayer. He looked at the practical decisions of life with the eyes of a man who first looked to God. He did not call committee meetings, make decisions, and then ask God to bless them. He prayed about matters, pondered them long and hard, and brought to bear upon his decisions every experience with God, every truth God had taught him from the Word. You could not be with him very long before saying to yourself, “This is a man of God.” This does not mean Culbertson was solemn and ultra-spiritual, a fragile saint only to be admired from a distance. He had a great sense of humor, and he lived in contact with people. He did not waste his time “building a public image.” He was what he was whether preaching in a church or playing handball with men on the staff. He practiced a healthy kind of holiness that convinced you it was a joyful, robust thing to be a Christian.
I am impressed by the way God prepared him for his strategic ministry. His years of study (and they were difficult years), his experience as a teacher, his work as a bishop: all contributed to his ministry at Moody Bible Institute. He did not seek any office, and to “politic” for position would have been utterly foreign to him. He was content to do the work God had given him until the Master called him to another ministry. I suppose every organization has its “pyramid climbers” who jockey for promotion and position. Culbertson would not be in their company. A Christian leader recently lamented to me about the small number of younger men and women who are prepared to move into positions of greater leadership. “Where are the replacements?” he asked me. “Isn’t God preparing people today as he did in Bible days?” My answer may not be the correct or only one, but it is worth considering: many Christians today will not permit God to prepare them. They go too fast, too soon. When they get “to the top,” they soon discover the shoes are too big for their pygmy feet. The applause of the crowd is not always the approval of the Lord.
Culbertson was a lifelong student of the Word and of related subjects. Stephen Olford’s evaluation of Culbertson’s preaching is apt: “You sense reality in his preaching.” Culbertson did not depend on other people for either his sermons or the articles he wrote. What he produced came from God and was (as Robert Murray McCheyne used to say) “oil, beaten oil for the sanctuary.” His Monday morning chapel addresses at the institute were filled with solid spiritual food, some of which the students did not completely digest until years later. I have read scores of letters from former students at the institute who had become pastors and missionaries and who wrote something like this: “We did not always fully understand what you taught us in chapel, but now that we are in the heat of the battle, your messages come back to us with new power and blessing.”
I have always felt that Culbertson lived under the shadow of Houghton, his predecessor. Houghton was a dynamic leader and eloquent pulpiteer; Culbertson was a quiet leader who preferred to work through organizational channels, and a preacher who depended more on depth of character and thought than on heights of oratory. Each man had to be true to his own gifts and calling, and we must not say that one was better than the other. Each made his contribution to the work and then was “called home.” Certainly Culbertson had no reason to doubt his abilities or question his competence because his style of leadership was different from Houghton’s.
I get the impression that some Christian leaders are too busy to meditate on the Word, pray, and wait for God to speak to them personally. I have heard many sermons and read many books that merely recycle old material; they are the shallow products of a busy life. Whenever you heard Culbertson speak (or pray), you knew he had just come from the throne with a live coal ready to burst into flame. Christian leaders must realize that if they suffer from shallowness, the malady will spread throughout their entire organization.
I have touched on three factors that contributed to Culbertson’s ministry: a deep devotion to Christ, a period of God-directed preparation, and a disciplined effort to “take time to be holy.” Let me add a fourth: a loving conviction about biblical separation. Culbertson believed in separation, but not in the pharisaical sort that separates true believers. “There is a schismatic separation,” he said in an early sermon, “when our notions separate us from true believers, when we separate ourselves unto men or mere opinions. There is no cause for separation when men differ in minor details but not in the great doctrines of Scripture.” It was not easy to maintain the school’s steady course during those stormy days of the 1950s and 1960s when evangelical groups were debating and dividing over the matter of separation. Because Culbertson feared God, he feared no man; but he was always gracious and kind when he disagreed. He held to his position courageously, but he did not require you to stand with him. He respected your right to disagree, but he expected you to give him the same right.
Not only are some Christian leaders neglecting spiritual and intellectual growth, but they tend to cater to the constituency, especially if they depend on the constituency for support. I have seen Christian organizations completely reverse a policy or abandon a principle because of a few letters of criticism. While it is true we must listen to the counsel and even the criticism of others, it is also true that we dare not be “reeds shaken in the wind.” Culbertson listened, pondered, and prayed; he did not impulsively make radical changes just to please people. “For if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ” (Gal. 1:10). I suppose the word that best describes his leadership is integrity. In a letter to Culbertson in 1939, Houghton said: “With modernism as dead as ever . . . with the worldly churches dying of dry rot, and with so much of Fundamentalism impotent through various causes, there is surely a place of tremendous need for an institution of integrity, loyalty, faith, and power.” Integrity is the opposite of duplicity; it speaks of wholeness of character. Like David, William Culbertson “fed them according to the integrity of his heart, and guided them by the skillfulness of his hands” (Ps. 78:72). And like David he was a “man after God’s own heart”—a man of God.
Unfortunately, not many of Culbertson’s messages have been published. Only three volumes have appeared: God’s Provision for Holy Living, his Bible readings at British Keswick in 1957; The Faith Once Delivered, his keynote addresses for the institute’s annual Founder’s Week; and For Times Like These, his editorials in Moody Monthly. A book of his “man to man” addresses to pastors would be valuable, as would a book of his chapel talks.
In time there arises “a generation that knows not Joseph,” and we must not complain if yesterday’s spiritual heroes become but memories. But there are many of us who give thanks for the privilege of living in the same century as William Culbertson, and we trust we will not forget the lessons he taught us.