November 2024 Ordained Servant

From the Editor. Wheaton College history professor Tracy McKenzie challenges our popular understanding of the Pilgrim’s first thanksgiving in “Remembering the Pilgrims.” Was their main reason for coming to the new world religious freedom? Was the 1621 feast actually the first thanksgiving feast? This article will give you new things to discuss on Thanksgiving Day.

John Mallin provides a catalog of his experience as a presbytery clerk in the two part article “The Clerk and His Work.” Part 2 will be published next month. He has served as stated clerk of the Presbytery of Connecticut and Southern New York for more than twenty years. He covers the work of clerks of sessions, presbyteries, and general assemblies. This should serve as a helpful manual for years to come.

Recently retired Ronald Pearce walks us through how his own church prepared for his retirement in “How to Prepare a Church for a Pastor’s Retirement.” Since our denomination has a history of very long pastorates—far above the national average—preparation for the transition is all the more important.

Andy Wilson reviews Charles Taylor’s new book Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment in “The Promise and Peril of Reconnecting with Reality through Poetry.” Since many Christian authors, like Carl Trueman, often favorably quote Taylor’s The Secular Age (2007), I thought it would be important to have his latest book reviewed in Ordained Servant. It turns out that progressive politics dominate the text and thus make the latest book disappointing. Taylor’s use of poetry as a means of transcendence is interesting but inadequate for the demands of life in a fallen world. Thus, Wilson also reviews a new book by Frost expert Jay Parini: Robert Frost: Sixteen Poems to Learn by Heart, for a superbly insightful and more modest appreciation of poetry’s transcendent qualities.

David VanDrunen reviews T. David Gordon’s latest book: Choose Better: Five Biblical Models for Making Ethical Decisions. Gordon explores four models for Christian ethics and biblical decision making that expand the territory beyond just law as the predominant Reformed model.

I review Susan Erikson’s latest book of poetry: Bones in the Womb: Living by Faith in an Ecclesiastes World. Erikson’s well-crafted free verse beautifully covers the thematic terrain of the entire book of Ecclesiastes. The oral and mnemonic power of poetry takes center stage in free verse because it resembles ordinary speech, but artfully condenses language and seasons it with internal cadence and rhyme. This fine poetry should be a significant aid to Bible study and sermon preparation.

Our poem this month is Psalm 136. For almost four decades I have read this Psalm before each Thanksgiving dinner. As a Psalm of redemptive history, Psalm 136 reminds us that our Creator and Redeemer’s mercy endures forever. I have chosen the King James Version because it is the most poetic. I do like the English Standard Version’s translation of the Hebrew word hesed (חֶסֶד) as “steadfast love,” better.

Please note a major change in the eighteenth edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, which is our essential standard of style. The geographical location of publishers is no longer required in footnotes and bibliographies. Is this a sign of cybergnosticism? Perhaps. However, I have often found the location of small houses difficult to find. On the other hand, large houses like Oxford University Press have a number of locations. So, both of our serial publications will follow the new style.

Blessings in the Lamb,
Gregory Edward Reynolds

FROM THE ARCHIVES: “THANKS”
/OS/pdf/Subject_Index.pdf

• “Giving Thanks—The Neglected Prayer.” (Jeffrey B. Wilson) 21 (2012): 27–31.
• “The Pilgrims: Forgotten, Remembered, Celebrated.” (Darryl G. Hart) 29 (2020): 62–66.

Ordained Servant exists to help encourage, inform, and equip church officers for faithful, effective, and God-glorifying ministry in the visible church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Its primary audience is ministers, elders, and deacons of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, as well as interested officers from other Presbyterian and Reformed churches. Through high-quality editorials, articles, and book reviews, we will endeavor to stimulate clear thinking and the consistent practice of historic, confessional Presbyterianism.