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August 29 Today in OPC History

Larry and Bonnie Conard

2021

 

Larry D. Conard felt a calling to the ministry after he heard the preaching of missionary Bruce Hunt in the 1940s. His father served as an elder of the Valley Church (OPC) in Santee, California, for more than fifty years. Larry studied two years at the University of Wyoming, then attended the Los Angeles Baptist College. He met Bonnie Hanks when she visited a friend during a college outing to the snowy mountains east of LA. A long-distance courtship began and they married on this date in 1959. After he graduated in 1962, Larry served in the U.S. Air Force, then earned his bachelors of divinity from Westminster Theological Seminary in 1967. Ordained by the Presbytery of the Dakotas on March 20, 1968, Larry served as pastor of Park Hill OPC in Denver, Colorado, until 1973. He was pastor of Bay View OPC in Chula Vista, California until 1977 when he became a missionary-at-large for the Presbytery of Southern California. In 1980 he served as administrator of a Christian school they helped to start in Chula Vista, where Bonnie had served as administrator.

Larry was co-pastor and then pastor of Oak Hill OPC in Eugene, Oregon (1981-1984). For the next three years he labored as a Christian school administrator and Bible teacher in Eugene. From 1987 to 1992, he served as a Presbyterian Church in America pastor to a PCA church near Moreno Valley, California. (The congregation came into the OPC in 1995.) Larry was received back into the OPC in 1992 to pastor at Faith OPC in Grants Pass, Oregon, serving until 2002. Semi-retired, Larry filled many pulpits and functioned as stated supply at Covenant Grace OPC in Roseburg, Oregon, from 2009 until he retired in 2014.

For a decade Larry was on the OPC’s Committee for Home Missions and Church Extension as well as on each of his presbyteries’ Home Missions committees. He also served as moderator of the Forty-fifth General Assembly in 1978 and in each of his presbyteries. Larry was the first president of the Board of Trustees of Westminster Theological Seminary California. Over the years, Bonnie taught and served as administrator of three schools as well as played the piano or organ for the worship services.

Larry Conard died and went to be with the Lord on September 8, 2018 and Bonnie followed on January 24, 2019.

 

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