Showing the Mercy of Christ

by Danny E. Olinger

On June 25–27 over 220 deacons, deacons-in-training, ruling elders, and ministers participated in the fifth OPC National Diaconal Summit sponsored by the Committee on Diaconal Ministries (CDM) and held in Wheaton, Illinois. Those gathered were from the seventeen presbyteries of the OPC, the Presbytery of Southern California leading the way with thirty-six men from thirteen different congregations. Covenant OPC in Orland Park, Illinois, sent the most men (deacons Hal Hamstra, David Pontier, John Stob, Steve Voss; deacons-in-training Ryan Keane, Deddy Nababan, Jensen Sorensen) from a single congregation. Some deacons such as Geno Altiery (Bayview in Chula Vista, California) and John Stahl (Emmanuel in Wilmington, Delaware) had participated in all four previous summits; other deacons newly ordained such as Joshua Tracey (Lakeview in Rockport, Maine) and Thomas Kinney (Grace in Sewickley, Pennsylvania) were attending their first summit. But in the midst of such wonderful variety a shared theme permeated the ... Read more

A Panoramic View: The Ninety-Second General Assembly

by Ken B. Montgomery

Many well-paved mountain roads have pull-over vista points for drivers to park, pause, and take in the scenery of surrounding peaks and valleys. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church’s annual general assembly is like a vista point—it’s a time to enjoy a prolonged look at the big picture of the life of the whole denomination. What is in view is even more lovely than soaring summits and pristine rivers: The under-shepherds at general assembly are overseeing and appreciating God’s work within those who are on the pilgrimage to the heavenly Zion. “As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight” (Ps. 16:3). The Ninety-Second General Assembly met at Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, from June 3–9. It is fitting for Orthodox Presbyterians to meet at a place called “Geneva,” because in the sixteenth century this was the city in Switzerland where the form of present-day Presbyterianism began to take shape, the lakeside republic in which the three ... Read more

Some Reflections on Kreeft’s Autobiography

by Richard B. Gaffin Jr.

The author, Peter Kreeft, of the brief autobiography From Calvinist to Catholic —written, he says, not on his own initiative but at the behest of the publisher—has enjoyed a distinguished, decades-long career teaching philosophy at Boston College. A prolific author, he is widely regarded as a leading Roman Catholic philosopher and apologist. Born in 1937, Kreeft was raised in a closely-knit ethnically Dutch community in the Paterson, New Jersey, area, where his family also belonged to one among several local confessionally orthodox Reformed congregations. His primary and secondary education was in Christian schools with a Calvinist basis. Still appreciative today of his roots and with many positive memories from these early years, questions nevertheless began to form for Kreeft even as a child. Among these, why his and other Reformed denominations, if they were so right, were so small compared, for instance, to the Roman Catholic Church, and why Catholics, as he was taught, were so wrong. ... Read more