Big John Holland

I’ve been thinking about Big John Holland so I guess I’ll write about him, though my memories of John are fading like photos from the 1950’s.

Why is it that photos from the late 1800’s and the first part of the 1900’s retain their images far better than the black and white photos I have from the 1950’s? If you know will you let me know?

John Holland was known as John Holland, but I always refer to him as Big John Holland, for he was indeed a BIG man. John was around 6’5’’, maybe taller, with a muscular build, a center-bald head with black hair on the sides and back, and dark eyes. John’s wife, whose name has faded from the photo, was tall and angular.

I met John at a camp meeting in Virginia in the early 1970’s. The Hollands had been missionaries in Nigeria when civil war broke out in Biafra. The story is told that as missionaries were being evacuated that the Hollands were forced to leave, and that when John was told that if they didn’t leave that they’d be killed that John still wouldn’t voluntarily leave – he wanted to stay with his people.

After the forced evacuation from Nigeria John flew back into the country, he was going back to his people. There was quite a scene at the airport with a representative from the US Embassy being called in to explain to John that he would not be allowed back in the country.

I guess you could say that Big John wasn’t just big in stature but was also big in heart.

Now I don’t know that John trying to get back into the country was all that smart, and I don’t know that John refusing to leave in the first place, and being forced to leave, was all that smart. On the other hand, I’m not sure that the things Peter and Paul did were always all that smart, and what about Jesus?

Maybe love isn’t always smart? Love doesn’t play it safe. Love doesn’t weight the pros and cons as if it were contemplating a business deal and wanting to make a profit.

In business we talk about “risk management”. I wonder what would have become of the Early Church had it contained a risk management department? I realize there is a tension here, but I think the tension may be more theoretical today than real because I suspect we capitulate to avoiding risk rather than negotiating the tension between obedient risk for Christ and plain foolishness.

Big John Holland was escorted back onto the plane in Nigeria. That must have been quite the scene. I wonder what his fellow passengers thought? No doubt they thought the big man off his big rocker. I wonder what his seat mates thought? Was the big man going to go “nuts” on the flight?

I wonder if John's people in Nigeria, God’s people, knew how much he loved them?