During my college years on the weekend after Thanksgiving break, despite term papers and looming finals, I had to ski Sugarloaf Mountain. Fanatical? You bet and I became an excellent skier.

That’s why it struck me on a 2009 trip to Vail that I couldn’t keep up with my 71-year-old friend. Oh, I could out-ski him in the bumps, but for speed and daring The Very Rev. Dr. Peter C. Moore skied way out of my comfort zone. 

I’ve thought quite a bit about skiing with Peter since his death on May 30 at age 83. He was the sort of person who never seemed to slowed down.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. That’s number four on the list of things I learned from him. Better to begin at the beginning.

1) Peter Loved The Scriptures

The chaplain at my boarding school held a weekly Bible study at his home and already owning a Bible, I decided to attend. There in January 1971 I first met Peter. He was just moving from New York City to Connecticut to create an outreach to private school students: Fellowship of Christians in Universities and Schools (FOCUS).

That evening Peter mentioned the importance of reading Scripture daily. He so successfully recommended Scripture Union’s Encounter with God that I subscribed the next day and used it for years.

At every FOCUS program I attended and in conversations with Peter, I saw someone who not only believed and loved the Scriptures, but did all he could to obey. His tireless efforts over the years to renew the Episcopal Church always centered on believing and obeying the Bible. As one reflection on his life put it, “He was a man who served under the Bible and not above it, fighting to keep the church he knew and loved in a place of obedience to Scripture.”

2) Peter Loved God With All His Mind

While FOCUS programs included a good deal of Bible study, they never ended there. Now that you’re a Christian, I was told, you’ll want to read these books. The books included works by Francis Schaeffer (Peter had studied with Schaeffer at L’Abri in Switzerland), C.S. Lewis, Os Guinness, J.I. Packer, and John Stott. Peter and others led discussions about existentialism, utilitarianism, the sexual revolution, media, modern art, and contemporary literature.

“Is this what Christians do?” I asked. Someone assured me that it was — a pious act of wishful thinking. Nonetheless, it’s what I learned to do.

Peter taught me that “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2Corinthians 10:5) included all my schoolwork, everything I read, the news, music, movies, science, poetry, philosophy, humor, dating, marriage, family. … “Every thought” meant every thought. Christianity, he insisted, was an all-encompassing worldview. And in my writing, speaking, and teaching, in work I did with Chuck Colson and in the distance learning program I direct at Wyoming Catholic College, “every thought captive” remains central.

3) Peter Loved the Church

During the summer between graduating from boarding school and heading off to college, Peter and I went for a long walk. I don’t know what exactly was said, but I do know that when we returned, I was what the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus called “an ecclesial Christian.” Neuhaus wrote, “An ecclesial Christian is one who understands with mind and heart, and even feels with his fingertips, that Christ and his Church, head and body, are inseparable. For the ecclesial Christian, the act of faith in Christ and the act of faith in the Church are not two acts of faith but one.”

Peter’s whole career reflected his ecclesial Christianity. Founding FOCUS was about evangelizing youth in order to renew the Church to then renew the culture. Founding and serving as president of Trinity School for Ministry (originally Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry) was about renewing the Church to renew the nation. Later in life, directing The Anglican Leadership Institute was about renewing the global Church to renew the whole world. Love for Christ means love for the Body of Christ, the Church.

4) Peter Ended Well.

Six years ago when Peter was 77, he heeded Anglican Bishop Mark Lawrence who “called for the creation of a leadership training initiative that would bring future leaders in the Anglican Communion to America … for periods of study, teaching, reflection and nurture.”

Peter, on staff at St. Michael’s Church in Charleston, became director of The Anglican Leadership Institute. There, in what some might call his “old age,” he had had an outsized influence on Christianity across the globe.

This February, already quite ill, Peter mentioned in an email his recent “30 podcasts on famous church leaders through the centuries from Irenaeus to John Stott.” Why would he let age or even illness stop him?

Which brings me back to skiing. Peter had his share of difficulties, suffering, and sorrows. But he never lost his love for the Scriptures, his love for the Church, his love for sharing the Gospel, and his love for going full speed ahead in God’s service.

May he rest in peace and may his tribe increase.

Dr. James Tonkowich, a senior contributor to The Stream, is a freelance writer, speaker and commentator on spirituality, religion and public life. He is the author of The Liberty Threat: The Attack on Religious Freedom in America Today and Pears, Grapes, and Dates: A Good Life After Mid-Life. Jim serves as Director of Distance Learning at Wyoming Catholic College and is host of the college’s weekly podcast, “The After Dinner Scholar.”