Jonathan Winch
1. How did you become a Christian?
One very ordinary Saturday (football, friends, homework) I went to bed but couldn’t sleep. A sense of my selfishness, pride and unkindness threatened to overwhelm my ten-year-old mind. Close to midnight I went to my dad, feeling desperate. His simple question was: ‘Could this be the Father calling you to Himself ?’ We prayed together for forgiveness through Christ. The result was a peace and a joy that had eluded me for two years – and a Bible that was no longer boring!
2. What lessons have you learnt since that you would want to pass on to a younger Christian version of yourself?
‘It’s not about you.’ Knowing that would have conquered my childhood shyness. When I stepped into leadership, it would have kept me from fear of failure and from pride. I wish I had known sooner that ‘I must decrease that Christ may increase’. I forget it still.
3. How would you describe your prayer life?
Inadequate. And sometimes exhilarating. When prayer is hard, it’s often because I’m focusing on supplication – which is to do spiritual battle. I need at such times to put my list aside and focus on who God is. The psalms teach us to do that. And the Lord’s Prayer, in the first three petitions.
I’ve discovered that whilst prayer doesn’t change God it does change me. I’ve also found that many (perhaps most) of my prayers are answered. That only makes sense if the God who has ordained whatever comes to pass ordained the prayer too.
4. Which two or three Christian books apart from the Bible have most influenced your faith?
Edwards’ The Religious Affections taught me to love God because He is beautiful, not just because of what He’s done for me. Elliott’s Through Gates of Splendour showed me the manliness of Christianity. Gurnall’s Christian in Complete Armour transfixed me; there’s a reason why Spurgeon called it ‘the best thought-breeder in all our library’.
5. Who or what have been your biggest Christian influences?
My dad, David, lived a life of Christlike self-forgetfulness. Forty years a missionary amongst Turks, he won respect and love in hostile settings for his gentleness and humility.
John Burn, co-founder of the first school I led, showed me the costliness and privilege of leadership.
From my pastor and friend Brian Norton I learned that the church is the glorious body and bride of Christ.
6. What are the main challenges you believe Christians face today?
The gospel is under attack. This is nothing new, of course; Satan has always been lashing out at the gospel, a serpent in its death throes. But perhaps the nature of the attack is new: personal responsibility is evaded by labelling sin as ‘identity’ – and Christians are buying the lie. Praise God, the weapons of our warfare, effective in New Testament times to demolish strongholds, are just as effective today.
We’re experiencing in the West the slow and lingering death of a great civilisation. But civilisations rise and civilisations fall; Christ is the stone cut from a mountain without human hand that breaks them all in pieces. His is a kingdom that shall never be destroyed.
7. What encourages and what discourages you?
Criticism discourages me. Seeing that what man intends for harm God intends for good encourages me.
8. What makes you laugh?
My wife, Julie, has been my best friend for 37 years, and we laugh when we’re together just because we’re happy! And our older son, Dan, is so funny he can make us laugh till we cry.
9. What would you want to say to the wider evangelical world?
Our God is too small – and, as a result, so are we. Walk in the old ways. For J. I. Packer it was the Puritans who enlarged his view of God: ‘The Puritans exemplified maturity; we don’t. We are spiritual dwarfs. … They were great souls serving a great God.’
10. Which Biblical person (other than Jesus) do you most look forward to meeting in glory and why?
John. I want to hear him tell all those stories which, had he recorded them, the world itself would not have been able to contain the books that would be written.
