May 29 Today in OPC History

Since Allen C. Tomlinson was four, he wanted to be a minister. He and his wife, Ann, both came to faith at a young age. They started dating during his junior year at Fort Wayne Bible College in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Two weeks after their graduation, Allen married Ann on this day in 1976. Ordained in the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference in 1982, Allen served as pastor in congregational churches in Indiana and Colorado and earned his master of arts from Indiana Wesleyan University in 1984. In 1988, he accepted a call to the First Congregational Church of Merrimack, New Hampshire. The church, founded in 1771, had moved from liberalism back to the Scriptures through the ministry of PCA minister Bruce Gor by the time Allen arrived.

In college he started reading Martyn Lloyd-Jones's sermons, then John Calvin, and considered himself Reformed by 1980. Becoming Presbyterian in ecclesiology took seven more years. In 1995, Allen was received by the Reformed Presbyterian Church, General Assembly. OPC pastors Dick Wynja and Greg Reynolds guided him into the OPC. In the 1990s, Allen and Greg developed a modest school which met for four years at Greg’s Manchester, New Hampshire OP church. Both Meredith G. Kline and Meredith M. Kline served as teachers. Subscribing to the Westminister Confession of Faith, Allen was received into the Orthodox Presbyterian Church through the Presbytery of New York and New England on September 21, 1997. Allen completed his Ph.D. from Whitfield Theological Seminary in Lakeland, Florida in 1998.

For seventeen years he labored “out of ecclesiastical bounds” as an OPC minister serving the Merrimack congregation. Through preaching and teaching, the elders and most of the congregation voted overwhelmingly to apply for membership in the OPC. The historic church, made up of 189 members, was received by the OPC on December 12, 2014, and changed its name to the First Church of Merrimack, OPC.