August 6 Today in OPC History

Eight days after its founding, the Committee on Home Missions and Church Extension of the Presbyterian Church of America (now OPC) erected three presbyteries: New Jersey, New York and New England, and Philadelphia. Seven weeks later, the Sherman Square Hotel in New York City was the site of the first meeting when the Presbytery of New York and New England convened on August 6, 1936. The Presbytery received five ministers into its membership, the Rev. Messrs. C. D. Chrisman, William P. Green, Alford Kelley, J. C. Rankin, and John H. Skilton. The Presbytery also received three churches that had applied for admission: Second Parish Presbyterian Church, Portland, ME (at the time, the only Presbyterian church in the state of Maine), Calvary Presbyterian Church, Worcester, NY, and Calvin Presbyterian Church, New Haven, CT. The Presbytery elected L. Craig Long as its moderator and J. C. Rankin as its stated clerk.

Gradual and steady growth would characterize the Presbytery from its founding. By November it added Covenant church in Rochester, along with its pastor, the Rev. Robert Vining. In the following spring, the Presbytery ordained Professor John Murray of Westminster Seminary to the ministry on May 28. Through the decades the Presbytery has retained its name, but it changed its borders on January 1, 1998, when five of its churches in the southern portion of the Presbytery formed the Presbytery of Connecticut and Southern New York.

Picture: John Murray