I still struggle to believe Charlie is gone. I’m looking right now at the last text he sent to me. He ended the brief back-and-forth with, “Our best days are ahead! Onward!” Those words echo with a force I cannot shake.
In the most tremendous sense, for Charlie, those best days are now. His race is finished. His fight is won. He has come into the nearest presence of Christ in heaven, where the crown of righteousness is laid upon his head by the Lord Himself. His best days are not ahead in this world, but are right now in the world without end.
So then, to whom is the directive “Onward” now addressed? It is not for Charlie. Not anymore. He has reached the goal. It is, therefore, to us. To you. To me. To the Church still laboring in the shadowed fields of this world. It is a word pressed into the souls of those who remain: Do not falter. Do not retreat. Do not let grief harden into silence. The command is clear. Onward! Charlie’s voice is now at rest in the quiet of eternal life. Ours must now grow confidently louder. His steps are stilled in this life. Ours must move even more steadily and faster. His courage has been poured out. Ours must now be filled to the brim. Charlie’s legacy is not a eulogy that fades when everyone goes home. It is a summons.
Charlie’s courage exposes a festering wound in the Church today. It is simply this: too many Christians, too many pastors, have fallen silent. Silence is not an option. Not for you. Not for me. Not for anyone who dares to call Christ Lord in this fading republic. In an age when the wolves howl in the open, the shepherds often retreat into whispers. After years in the trenches, and countless conversations with clergy, I can tell you the main reason.
Silence risks nothing. It doesn’t risk the paycheck. It doesn’t risk the security. It doesn’t risk congregational division. Pastors, called to be guardians of the flock, whether they realize it or not, often hide behind abstractions, clichés, and vague theological “applications” that never risk offense. And so, the sheep wander, harassed and helpless (Matthew 9:36), while the shepherds polish their sermons with careful neutrality.
Charlie did not waste his time. He gave it to students, to families, to the Church, to this nation. He stood where others would not. He said what others feared to say. He bore the insults, the smears, the attempted cancellations, and finally, he took a bullet meant to terrify the rest of us into passive quietism.
So, what now? Do we mourn? Yes, and rightly so. The day of his funeral was a hard one. But mourning is not the end. Mourning must stir resolve. Indeed, if Charlie could take his stand on hostile campuses, then surely we can take ours in pulpits, in workplaces, in classrooms, in school board meetings, in conversations with family and friends, in the public square—wherever truth is denied and darkness boasts the upper hand.
With a little bit of self-reflection, a pastor might realize that silence is not safety. Silence is surrender. But Christ did not call his shepherds to surrender to the world’s expectations. He called them to surrender to Him. As such, they are made heralds of the Truth. And the Truth, as Charlie reminded us by both word and deed, cannot be divided into harmless categories—one slice for the gospel, another for politics, another for culture. Truth is whole. Truth is the Good Shepherd—Christ Himself—everything that He is.
And so, when the pastors, the undershepherds, refuse to speak, the wolves do not retreat. They advance. They teach the children. They shape the culture—even the Church’s culture. They redefine male and female. They catechize the congregation with the liturgies of CRT, DEI, and self-made identity. Neutrality, then, is not polite churchmanship but abdication. The silence of the undershepherds is consent to the wolves.
Jesus Himself warns that the hired hand, who sees the wolf coming but flees, proves that he cares nothing for the sheep (John 10:12–13). And yet, even as that hired hand remains safely professional and polished, he becomes powerless in his role. Afraid to name the sins that are devouring the flock, they become content to rely on platitudes, hoping the wolf will be satisfied with someone else’s blood. Maybe Charlie’s blood. This is the shame of Christian quietism.
The pastor’s calling is not to build a wall of safety for himself in this world. It is to preach and teach the Gospel in purity and to administer the sacraments according to Christ’s command. This is dangerous work because it steers headlong into everything Satan would prefer for the sheep. For one, he would have the sheep slow-boiled into being comfortable in destruction. And yet, to protect the sheep, a pastor is to afflict the comfortable. To preach Christ crucified means to name the sins for which Jesus died, not to blur them into generic “brokenness” that is easily disregarded. Sheep need precision. Sheep need clarity. Sheep need truth. Sheep need undershepherds who will lift the rod and staff against the enemy, not hide them in quietism’s sheath.
Of course, there’s no use in hiding what any of this really means. It will cost you. You will lose friends. You may lose your job. You may even lose your life. But the greater cost is cowardice. Cowardice is the corrosion of the soul. It is the slow rot of a nation that once knew what it meant to stand when standing was required. Cowardice is precisely what the enemy of Truth is counting on in this hour. If fear can muzzle us, if the comfort of safety and security can buy us off, then evil has already won without firing another shot.
I know it’s scary. Still, the sheep need watchmen who will not hold their peace day or night (Isaiah 62:6). Silence is simply not an option. Neither is neutrality. For example, pastors must be willing to inform their people that electing candidates who advocate for ideologies contrary to Christ’s will means taking a grave step away from Christ. And then they need to name the candidates who do this. Indeed, to refuse to speak in these ways is to deny Christ before men. And He warns that those who do so will be denied before the Father.
What then? Well, the only thing I can say is what I’ve already been saying for a decade and a half. The Church must recover the courage of her confession. The seminaries must make it a point to teach and talk about such things. Pastors must know and be found willing to proclaim the whole counsel of God, even as the world will call it hate speech, even when the culture will mock, even when members of the flock will most certainly be offended. It’s far better to lose security in this life for offending the world than to offend the Shepherd who laid down His life that we would have eternal life (Matthew 16:25).
Something I’ve said on more than one occasion as a pastor: You cannot love your people if you do not love God more. Charlie Kirk’s death stirs these concerns. Again, this one requires sincere self-reflection. And yet, by holding to Christ in faith, I’m confident it will stir the same forthrightness of the Apostles, who said so boldly, “We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20).
Consider Saint Paul’s words in 2 Timothy 4:7. “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” Charlie did that. Even so, the fight remains. The race continues. The faith must still be kept. That means the responsibility falls to us—the ones still breathing, still standing, still given the gift of time in this moment of history.
Charlie’s race is finished. Yours is not. His voice is silenced. Yours is not. His courage has been spent. Yours is being summoned. Do not look away. Do not retreat. Do not stand aside waiting for someone else to do what needs to be done. That someone else is you.
For Charlie’s heartbroken wife and children, for the Church in desperate need of those who’d engage faithfully, for the country we all love, and above all, for the Lord who gave us breath—get in the game. Pick up the torch. Carry it high. Do not let the darkness have the last word.
