Ministries
Resources
At 9:00 am on October 20, 1975, the certificate of incorporation for Great Commission Publications was filed in the Delaware office of the Secretary of State. On that same morning in Orlando, Florida, I was likely being held in my mother’s arms as a six-month-old baby eating breakfast, completely unaware that this auspicious event happened the same year of my birth.
Reflecting on the providence of God, I am celebrating my fiftieth year of life and my twenty-third year at GCP—something I never planned nor would’ve guessed would be my path as a little girl dreaming of becoming an astronaut while watching Space Shuttle launches. And yet, the mysteries of God’s sovereign purposes—the faithfulness of my mother raising me as a covenant child, her Covenant College friend Donna Williams working at GCP when I was moving to Atlanta—have led me to this point.
Over the past twenty-three years, I was discipled and mentored at work by Donna and by Mark Lowrey, a humble servant leader and our former executive director who began editorial operations anew in 1996 and went home to glory on a Lord’s Day in 2023 while still in his role at GCP. Now as we celebrate God’s faithfulness to his church through the work of GCP, I see how our heavenly Father has sustained and flourished this unlikely joint venture of two denominations and look forward to where he is leading us.
The Sunday school curriculum produced by GCP to this day is rooted in the paradigm established by the OPC’s Committee on Christian Education (CCE) in the early 1940s. GCP’s theology, operating principles, and distinctives are based on the Bible from a Reformed perspective as taught in the Westminster Standards. Starting with senior high in 1961, a complete Sunday school curriculum was completed in twelve years’ time. In Confident of Better Things (2011), the first executive director of GCP, Tom Patete, quoted a section from The Orthodox Presbyterian Church 1936–1986 regarding this accomplishment:
What a tremendous undertaking! No denomination of the size of the OPC could possibly accomplish what needed to be done, or support the effort according to the best advice of experts. But by the grace of God it was done!
Before the PCA was formed as a denomination, the OPC’s Committee on Christian Education had laid the groundwork for not only excellent Christian education materials but also the beloved Trinity Hymnal.
From the beginning, the OPC recognized the need for its materials to serve not only its own churches but also to appeal to the broader Reformed and evangelical community. Their objective was worldwide outreach through Christian education. The CCE put it this way: “If the OPC had thought that its projected curriculum would be of use only within its own congregations, it would have never undertaken the project. In the providence of God, we have initiated the program, but we have done it on behalf of all who love the Reformed faith.” In the first year after all twelve grades were in print, 78 percent of the 558 churches using GCP curriculum were non-OPC churches.
The operating name Great Commission Publications proved to be a wise choice for this global vision. The nondenominational name made it easy for the materials produced by GCP to be used in any Bible-believing church. GCP’s curriculum is faithful to the Scriptures while maintaining a distinctive focus on five key areas: the sovereignty of God, the centrality of Jesus in the unfolding story of salvation, the covenantal focus, a redemptive-historical approach, and the crucial connection between church and family. Children, parents, teachers, volunteers, and ministry leaders in diverse contexts who are simply looking for biblically sound resources are exposed to Reformed and covenantal theology each time they interact with GCP’s material. Praise God!
That carefully considered direction led the PCA, formed in 1973, to be able to partner with the OPC to produce doctrinally suitable curriculum in the joint venture. Over my years at GCP, I’ve come to see how Jesus’s Great Commission to his disciples over two thousand years ago has impacted even me. I grew up in a Christian and Missionary Alliance church, went to a Baptist university, and was not even looking for a Presbyterian church or ministry job when my husband and I moved to Atlanta. But God used my love for him and editing experience to bring me to GCP, which in turn led us to join a PCA church.
Over the years, working at GCP has brought me to love and embrace Reformed theology. By God’s grace, we at GCP pray that each child who is under the teaching of our materials will come to know and love God through his Word, grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ, and embrace the blessings of the covenant.
Over my years at GCP, we’ve not only expanded and improved on our Sunday school curriculum, we’ve added catechetical curriculum, a Pilgrim’s Progress book and curriculum, and digital versions of Trinity Hymnal. First Catechism alone has touched the lives of at least 315,000 children as young as age two since 2003. Many New Horizons readers will remember Dorothy Anderson’s beloved Bible Doctrine curriculum, and since we revised it into Digging Deeper in 2022, thousands more young people are learning the Shorter Catechism.
GCP provides materials to 3,500 churches in the United States, 20 percent of whose congregants are children. This is an exciting time for GCP, as we focus on a three-pronged initiative over the next five years: a revised Show Me Jesus curriculum, a nationwide network of regional trainers to equip local churches, and new tools for parents to fuel robust family worship and discipleship.
The new Show Me Jesus Preschool curriculum will be available for fall 2025. This two-year program is flexible for four- and five-year-olds and will be in the ESV translation, with new illustrations and digital resources for in-class and family discipleship. You may download a sample lesson and learn more at new.gcp.org. I have the teacher manual on my desk today as we prepare to finalize the files. In the introduction, it says:
From start to finish, the children learn that the Lord our Creator is gracious and merciful to his covenant people—forgiving them, saving them, and keeping them. With God’s blessing, each child who participates in these lessons will begin to develop a biblical self-image. He or she will begin to know: I am a child created in God’s image. My purpose is to glorify my Creator.
Wow, that is my prayer for each of the children who will be taught from this curriculum.
As Show Me Jesus Preschool is published over the next two years, we will follow it with new Younger Elementary (grades 1–2) and new Middle Elementary (grades 3–4). We are prayerful that a revised Toddler curriculum will soon follow. We are also planning to launch new music resources to prepare children to be active worshipers. And a new digital platform for teachers and parents will help facilitate more discipleship opportunities.
I’ve lightheartedly dubbed this year of fiftieth celebrations as my year of jubilee. The old covenant Sabbath cycles kept alive the hope for the reign of Jesus the Messiah. We new-covenant people know that our Savior has now come. We rejoice in the work of our triune God in his church through GCP, and we anticipate with hope that many more will know the jubilee of his salvation until he comes again.
The author is director of content strategy and publishing at Great Commission Publications.
© 2025 The Orthodox Presbyterian Church
