August 2020 New Horizons

Setting the Menu: Sunday School or Worship First?

by Roger W. Schmurr

COVID-19 has caused significant changes to church ministries. Zoom no longer refers only to the Corvette passing you on the interstate but also to how parishioners have been participating in worship, Bible studies, and fellowship. Even congregations now meeting corporately find themselves distancing from other worshipers, lamenting the closure of the church nursery, and searching for the offering plate at the back of the auditorium. Some churches may use this time to promote another change that Orthodox Presbyterian congregations started to employ a few decades ago: starting the Lord’s day with the worship service and following that with Sunday school. Sequence, of course, is important in life. If you are eating in a nice restaurant, hors d’oeuvres come first. And at home, kids must eat their dinner before indulging in dessert. Neither hors d’oeuvres nor dessert probably appear on breakfast menus for OP members preparing for church, but those members are interested in what their first ... Read more

Sunday School Roundup

by Patricia E. Clawson

Sunday schools have changed in the eighty-four years since the OPC began, yet their goal has remained the same: to foster belief by teaching Reformed theology. The OPC’s Second General Assembly in 1936 confirmed the importance of Sunday school by directing congregations to use whatever evangelical and Reformed materials were available. Not satisfied with existing curriculums, the fledgling OPC soon mimeographed its own materials that reflected its theology. By 1975 the OPC and the new Presbyterian Church in America jointly formed Great Commission Publications for the purpose of producing Sunday school materials that were solidly Reformed and biblically based. Today OPC sessions have several Reformed and biblically-based curricula to choose from as they develop Sunday schools best suited to the needs of their flocks. Nearly forty percent of OPC members attend Sunday school, according to OPC statistician Luke Brown’s 2019 report. Six OP churches with higher-than-average Sunday school attendance share how ... Read more

The Church after George Floyd

by Eric B. Watkins

“Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them” (Eccl. 4:1). On May 25, our nation watched in horror as a police officer held his knee down on a man’s neck until the man, George Floyd, tragically died. One person with power and authority, bearing the image of God, took the life of another person bearing the image of God. Several things were additionally troubling about this event. First, a bewildered crowd surrounded the event with camera phones, making the world an eyewitness. Second, his death was immediately perceived to be the emblem of systemic police brutality and injustice. But what drew the public ire more than anything else was the fact that the police officer was white and the man on the ground was black . In the eyes of many, George Floyd died simply because he was black. Since that day, evil has ... Read more

What Should the Church Say?

by Alan D. Strange

Does the church have something to say in the present civil crisis? Yes, it does. As the prime recipient and interpreter of divine writ, by the Spirit’s enablement, the church has something to say about racism and civil governance: it does because the Bible has something to say about such matters. Certainly, we, as followers of the Lord Jesus, abominate the death of George Floyd, as one made in God’s image, and decry the police brutality that it so clearly demonstrated; yet while protests that begin and remain peaceful are permissible, Christians call for proper submission to civil authority, condemning rioting and looting as violent and destructive. We support our civil magistracy in the proper wielding of its power. The Spirituality of the Church Some may assume that the doctrine of the spirituality of the church (SOTC) would forbid the church from saying anything about this. Charles Hodge, when he first encountered the usage of the SOTC by Southern Old School Presbyterian theologians in the ... Read more