i

December 18 Today in OPC History

Ralph and Carol Rebandt

2022

 

Ralph and Carol Rebandt had been high school sweethearts from the Detroit suburbs before they married on this date in 1976. Ralph graduated from the Baptist Bible College in 1980, then headed to Westminster Theological Seminary, where he graduated with a masters of arts in religion in 1982 and a masters of divinity the following year. Carol kept busy with their burgeoning family of four children: Ralph Adam III, Amy, Jeffrey, and Joshua. During their Philadelphia years, the Rebandts worshipped at Calvary Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Glenside. While Ralph and Carol agreed with the Calvinistic teaching on salvation, Ralph wrestled with infant baptism, but under the patient tutelage of Pastor Steve Miller, and WTS professors Dick Gaffin and Norm Shepherd, the God-centered perspective of covenantal baptism became clear. Ralph completed a yearlong pastoral internship at Calvary before heading back to Motor City. Burdened for Detroit, Ralph was ordained by the Presbytery of the Midwest to serve as a church planter in Motown on March 13, 1987. That October he became the organizing pastor of New Hope OP Chapel in Farmington Hills, a Detroit suburb. The congregation, averaging 42 at worship in 1989, was renamed Oakland Hills Community OPC. By 1992, they neared 100 in worship! Today more than 250 fill the pews, including a 98-year-old woman who is one of their newest members.

Three decades after the Rebandts first set their hearts on Farmington Hills, they have seen their congregation reach out to their community. Ralph’s heart for evangelism has been contagious. In the early years, his congregation sponsored a little league team, featured seminars on marriage and family, drew many with a baseball fest, sponsored a film that aided the police chief’s “Say No to Drugs” program, and launched Project LOU (Lunch-On-Us) where they offered lunch after worship. Carol has made bulletin boards for the public library. Ralph was asked to join the Chief of Police’s Citizen’s Crime Prevention Advisory Committee and has served as chaplain to two local police departments and the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police. God blessed their efforts. After eighteen years of setting up for worship in rental facilities, God provided their congregation with a million-dollar gift which helped to fund a building project in 2005. The police in December 2007 escorted a procession of forty families through ice-covered streets to their newly built church home.

Along the way, the congregation also helped to grow daughter congregations. Three families from Royal Oak attended Ralph’s church before their own first worship service was held in 1996. They became a separate congregation in 1997. Also in the same year, three families traveled two hours from London, Ontario, to worship with the Farmington Hills congregation. Ralph and his session also helped them to establish an OP church back in their Canadian home.

Over the years the Rebandt family also has grown, adding three daughters-in-law, one son-in-law, and fifteen grandchildren.

 

CONTACT US

+1 215 830 0900

Contact Form

Find a Church