July 2004 New Horizons

Mission Utah

by Ross W. Graham

"One thing you have to understand about our ministry here in Utah is that we love Mormons." That was how OP pastor Jason Wallace explained to me the unique, ongoing outreach effort of Christ Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City. "Many of the fundamentalist churches in the valley hate the Mormons. They will often go to Temple Square and publicly rail against them, even sometimes trespassing on their property and defacing things Mormons hold dear. But we see ourselves as being here to reach Mormons with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our Reformed commitment to sovereign grace means that God can and often does bring these misled people out of darkness and into his marvelous light." There is a lot of darkness in that beautiful land of high desert and snow-capped mountains. And people are blatantly misled about the gospel. Listening to the radio on my travels back and forth between Salt Lake City and Provo, I couldn't miss the perversion. "Family is the most important thing, the only thing, the thing that saves. ... Read more

Reaching Mormons with the Gospel

by D. Jason Wallace

Utah is a graveyard of evangelical gimmicks. Nearly every conceivable attempt has been made to reach Mormons with the gospel, but no large inroad has ever been made. Meanwhile, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has over 60,000 missionaries in 165 countries and grows by over 300,000 members each year. A recent Southern Baptist study estimates that they lose 282 members per week to the Mormons. The most popular approach to reaching Mormons over the last thirty years has been to show them the blatant errors and contradictions that their "prophets" have uttered. For example, the Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith, claimed that American Indians were the lost tribes of Israel who had their skin turned dark as a curse for their rebellion. Yet modern archaeology and genetics refute those claims. Mormonism also has an extensive paper trail that shows its false prophecies and how its prophets have contradicted earlier prophets. As popular as this approach has been, it has borne little fruit. It shows that ... Read more

Committee on Home Missions and Church Extension

by Various Ministers

Pointing to Paradise Richard R. Gerber Four years ago the Todd Wagenmaker family went on vacation to the Keweenaw (pronounced key-when-ah ) Peninsula on the northwestern end of Michigan's Upper Peninsula (UP). Thousands of people go to the UP every year to fish, hunt, boat, bicycle, and ski and for the pure enjoyment of the outdoors. In the course of that ordinary American tradition of family vacations, God laid the groundwork for a new Orthodox Presbyterian congregation. Todd looked around and saw so much that attracted him to Houghton, the gateway to the Keweenaw Peninsula. What a wonderful place to raise a family, he thought. With virtually no crime in this town of 12,000 people, children can be out and about on their own in relative safety. And what a wonderful place for ministry! Houghton is home to Michigan Technological University. One thousand international students and foreign-born faculty are part of this campus of 7,000 students. Ministry to internationals had been important to ... Read more