July 2011 New Horizons

The Pastor as Prophet, Priest, and King

by Jeffery A. Landis

It is Monday morning (or Tuesday, if your pastor takes Monday off), and your pastor is wondering where to begin. There are sermons to write, committee meetings to plan, visits to make, and things left over from last week's list that he was never able to get to. He may already feel overwhelmed, and the week has not yet even begun. Where should he begin? What should he be doing? Most Orthodox Presbyterian churches do not have a written job description for their pastor. We expect them to know what to do. But with the lack of a clear job description comes the problem of our expectations—unwritten, but as firm as if written in stone—of what our pastor ought to do. Pastors face the same problem: what should their priorities be? In this article, I want to suggest that the pastor's job description can best be defined by aligning it with the job description of Christ as our mediator. The Shorter Catechism reminds us that Christ, as our mediator, executes the offices of prophet, priest, and king (SC ... Read more

Harvesters in God's Fields

by Richard R. Gerber

"A sower went out to sow." Are you seeing the iconic picture of a man with a bag of seed slung over his shoulder, scattering seed by hand? But there is a lot more to this activity of sowing. The farmer makes a huge investment in the harvest. He owns or leases the land. He spends time planning what to sow, where to sow it, and when the sowing needs to be done. He invests in machinery to cultivate the land, sow the seed, and bring in the harvest. Money and time have been spent, but there is still no harvest. Throughout it all, the farmer lives in the hope of a harvest. Church planting is very similar. Moline, Illinois In January 2008, regional home missionary Jim Bosgraf and Presbytery of the Midwest Church Extension Committee chair Jim Megchelsen made a visit to the Quad Cities to meet with people who were interested in seeing an Orthodox Presbyterian church in the area. The Quad Cities, consisting of Moline and Rock Island in Illinois and Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa, are clustered ... Read more

Your Personal Relationship with Jesus

by Geoffrey L. Willour

A common concept in our contemporary evangelical culture is that of the believer having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Do Reformed Christians have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? That depends on what you mean by it. Many evangelical Christians use the phrase "personal relationship with Jesus" as a synonym for being in saving union with Christ (or, to use more popular terminology, for "being saved"). Or, more narrowly, the phrase is used to describe those who are justified by grace through faith in Christ alone, apart from works. In this sense, committed Christians within the historic Reformed faith most certainly do have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Like their broadly evangelical brethren, Reformed believers are "saved" through their union with Christ, having been justified through their God-given faith in Christ alone. However, the phrase "personal relationship with Jesus" is sometimes used in evangelical, charismatic, and Pentecostal circles to describe an ... Read more

Evangelism and the OPC: Part 3. Spending Our Inheritance

by Eric B. Watkins

What would you do with an inexhaustible inheritance? The purpose of this final article is to reflect on the way in which evangelism is not merely part of our past, but also vital to our current sense of identity and mission. The previous two articles demonstrated that J. Gresham Machen and Cornelius Van Til believed that God had called the OPC into existence with a definite evangelistic mission. Evangelism was not merely a sidebar of the church’s life; it was essential to her being and justified her existence. Had it not been for his clear sense of evangelistic urgency, Machen would not have been willing to burn the torch as brightly as he did. Van Til not only proclaimed that evangelism was at the core of the OPC’s reason for existence, but also, like Machen, practiced what he preached. He added to and strengthened what Machen had begun. Van Til’s self-consciously biblical and Reformed apologetic method may have been the gift God gave in place of the Machen whom he took away. In the hand of a ... Read more

Woman to Woman: Bloom Where You Are Planted

To: JuneMcrea@ustel.com From: KellyTodd@linkmac.com Dear Aunt June, I'm stuck! This economy stinks. No one is hiring. I've sent out hundreds of resumes. If a company has a job opening, they want experience. How am I to get experience if I can't get a job? This is not how I envisioned life as a college grad. I had two on-campus interviews, one with a graphic design firm in Indianapolis and one with a "mom and pop" firm in Jackson, but I haven't heard anything back yet. The future is one big question mark right now. It's crazy at home too. I love my folks, but do I really have to tell them every time I go out where I'm going and when I'll get back? I've lived on my own for four years! Don't get me wrong. I'm thankful for a roof over my head, since I don't have a "real" job yet. I only make a few bucks working at the library part-time. I'd never be able to afford an apartment or gas, even though my parents bought me an old Chevy for graduation. It's not fancy, and I have to use WD-40 to spray the ... Read more