On March 26, 2025, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) shut down its foreign mission endeavors. Mission workers were let go, tendered severance packages, or offered other positions in the PCUSA. In its announcement, the denomination included a statement, “Four Waves of Mission,” about its work in foreign fields since 1789. According to it, the major achievements of the first wave, 1789–1958, were the establishment of the inaugural Protestant missions board in the United States and the sending of missionaries that led to the opening of hospitals, clinics, and schools around the world. The second wave started in 1958 and saw mission stations dismantled and resources turned over to local groups. The third wave, beginning in the 1970s, saw partnerships with other faith traditions. Mission networks were developed that “offered a U.S. presence in the world that often radically contrasted with that of large transnational corporations and U.S. government policies.” It was also at this time that “humanitarian needs and social justice goals joined evangelistic goals as they shared incarnationally.” The fourth wave has now come with the sunset of Presbyterian World Mission.

A Resounding Question

In his 1925 book, What Is Faith?, J. Gresham Machen lamented that the teaching of Modernism—which rejected, or did not want to speak of, the sense of sin and guilt, the fear of God’s judgment, and the necessity of Jesus’s atoning death on the cross—was spreading in the leadership of the Presbyterian Church. Jesus Christ, God come in the flesh and the object of faith, was not bring proclaimed as such in all the activity of the church, particularly on the mission fields. In its place was a “polite paganism” (41) which relied on human resources and was being quietly substituted for the heroism of devotion to the gospel.

Still, Machen rejoiced that there were those Presbyterians whose hearts were touched by the conflict taking place. They knew that they were sinners for whom Jesus had died, and that the least they could do

was to be faithful to Him; they could not continue to support, by their gifts and by their efforts, anything that was hostile to His gospel; and they were compelled, therefore, in the face of all opposition, to raise the question what it is that the Church is in the world to do. (41)

Machen then added, “God grant that question never be silenced until it is answered aright!”

Rethinking the Church’s Task

Machen’s willingness to fight for the gospel in the Presbyterian Church was put to the test with the 1932 publication of Re-Thinking Missions: A Layman’s Inquiry after One Hundred Years. Financially underwritten by John D. Rockefeller Jr., representatives of seven denominations—Baptist (Northern), Congregational, Methodist Episcopal, PCUSA, Protestant Episcopal, Reformed Church in America, and United Presbyterian—surveyed missionaries, gathered information, and drew conclusions from missions in Burma, India, Japan, and China. Re-Thinking Missions declared that the aim of missions was “to seek with people of other lands a true knowledge and love of God, expressing in life and word what we have learned through Jesus Christ, and endeavoring to give effect to his spirit in the life of the world” (59).

The report also maintained that Christianity was the fulfillment of other religions. It stated that Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism were stung by critical Christian missions but had responded with internal reform. The report decreed that relations between these religions and Christian missions increasingly take the form of a common search for truth.

Machen responded that Re-Thinking Missions attacked the historic Christian faith. “ Jesus is presented as a “great religious Teacher and Example, as Christianity’s ‘highest expression of religious life,’ but certainly not as very God of very God” (Stonehouse, Machen, 419). Machen concluded that the report “belittles evangelism, definite conversions, open profession of faith in Christ, and membership in the Christian Church.” 

As disheartening as the content of Re-Thinking Missions was, as disturbing to Machen if not more so was the posture of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions and its secretary Robert E. Speer to the report. Two board members participated in the project and were on the Appraisal Committee that had written the report and put forth recommendations. Rather than disapproving of the final product, Speer issued a vague statement concerning the board’s loyalty to the evangelical basis of Presbyterian missions.

No Other Name under Heaven

Alarmed at what was happening with Presbyterian foreign missions and Speer’s mode of leadership that sought to avoid doctrinal conflict at all costs, Machen founded the Independent Board of Presbyterian Foreign Missions. In doing so, he was charged with violating his vows as a gospel minister in the Presbyterian Church. He was found guilty at the presbytery level and lost his appeal to the PCUSA General Assembly on June 1, 1936. Ten days later what we now know as the Orthodox Presbyterian Church was formed.

Despite the fact that the OPC was small in size, forty-eight congregations and a little over four thousand members, the new church was committed to foreign missions based upon such texts as Acts 3 and 4.

In Acts 3, Peter and John heal a man lame from birth in front of the temple. The Jewish leaders were jealous and had them arrested. The next day Annas the high priest and other high priestly members questioned Peter and John by what power or by what name they had done this. Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, replied they did this “by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the chief cornerstone” (4:10–11). Peter then declares what could be called a Christian manifesto of the New Testament church and missions: “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (4:12).

Peter’s Spirit-filled declaration tells us what is at the heart of Christianity. What does Christianity believe about salvation? There is salvation in no one else but Jesus. What does Christianity believe about authority? God gives the name by which we must be saved.

The healing of the lame man is a picture of salvation in Jesus. The lame man could not deliver himself from his condition. Crippled from birth, he had to be carried every day to the temple gate to beg. What happens to him is supernatural. He’s made a new creation. That’s why he’s leaping after he’s healed in Acts 3. He can finally go into the temple and worship God. For his whole life, he’s been barred by the law from doing so. In the new day that Jesus brings, the lame man is not kept at a distance.

The heartbreak is that from Machen’s day forward the PCUSA did not unambiguously lead with these biblical truths. Jesus Christ through his death on the cross and resurrection from the dead saves sinners, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Peter is not talking about the goodness of man and everyone working together. He’s talking about salvation being found only in Jesus Christ.

A Church Devoted to Gospel Missions

Christianity is a message of supernatural salvation in the name of the crucified and risen Christ. The church is to be witness of the salvation found in Jesus. It is to take the message about him from Jerusalem through Samaria to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). The church’s task is not about cooperating with other non-Christian faith traditions found around the world. The church’s task is to not to provide an alternative American political presence. The commission that Jesus gives to his church is to go into the world and to make disciples of every nation, baptizing in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching all that Jesus commanded (Matt. 28:19–20).

In June 1936, there was rejoicing in belonging to a Presbyterian church devoted to proclaiming the supernatural, divinely-given salvation in Jesus Christ in its exclusivity, in its purity to all peoples. Praise be to God that the OPC has had and continues to have the blessed opportunity to raise up and support gospel missionaries who take the good news concerning Jesus to the ends of the world. That’s the answer to the question raised by Machen: What is it that the church is in the world to do?

The author is editor of  New Horizons. New Horizons, August–September 2025.