Chuck Colson's Motto : Faithfulness Not Success

Dr. Ray Pritchard

The news that Chuck Colson died today brought to mind a visit to his office eleven years ago.

It happened a few weeks after 9/11 when a team from Calvary Memorial Church in Oak Park, IL spent the night at Prison Fellowship headquarters in Virginia. The next morning we were given a tour of the facilities, including a brief visit to Chuck Colson’s office. Since he was out of town, we were invited to go in and look around. One of us spotted a sign on the wall right above his desk. It was placed at eye-level so Mr. Colson would be sure to see it when he was sitting down. The sign contained just three words:

A Life Transformed: Remembering Chuck Colson

Kristin Wright, Crosswalk.com Contributing Writer

Chuck Colson, the Watergate figure and Nixon “hatchet man” whose prison term and dramatic conversion to Christianity led him to dedicate over 35 years of his life to prison ministry and evangelical leadership, died on Saturday. He was 80 years old.

Once known as Nixon's “dirty tricks” man, a cunning political operative whose ruthlessness earned him both respect and hatred in Washington, Colson made an about-face in 1973 with his conversion to Christianity. Although his “born-again” experience was met with doubt and skepticism at first, Colson ultimately proved his commitment to his new-found faith over the course of decades of work inside U.S. prisons and years of evangelical outreach throughout the world.