November–December 2026 Ordained Servant

From the Editor. Last fall I determined to step down from my membership on the Committee on Christian Education after twenty-five years of service. This included my retirement as editor of Ordained Servant at the end of this year. Thus, I conclude my editing work for the Committee on Christian Education with this issue. This had been determined in the fall of 2025. At age seventy-seven it is time to move on to other things. I am grateful for the privilege of serving on this committee, serving the officers of our church.

I will continue to publish on the web and in print. Many have expressed interest in keeping up with my work on media ecology and poetry. For those interested, my Substack site, Pilgrim Crossings, will be launched soon. Also, Meredith M. Kline and I have recently published Wisdom for Living in a Wacky World: The Biblical Realism.

In my “Servant Leadership: The Editor’s Farewell” I reflect on the title of this journal and its call to a kind of leadership in church and home that is markedly different from the world’s understanding of leadership. I also republish a meditation on Helmut Thielicke’s famous cautionary piece, “A Little Exercise for Young and Old Theologians Revisited.”

J. Gresham Machen has been a model for my ministry as a leader, pastor, thinker, and writer. So during this season when we tend to think of the Incarnation of our Lord, I thought it appropriate to publish his 1924 article “The Virgin Birth of Christ.” I have rarely republished material in OS. I do so here as a tribute befitting the season and the greatness of J. Gresham Machen, a model servant-leader. This lecture fortifies the faithful and challenges the unbeliever. His brilliant intellect was harnessed to the service of his Lord and his church. His historical polemic cogently demonstrates the historicity of this unique birth of the God-man, our Redeemer and Lord. I hope that this will be a great encouragement to my readers in our fallen and challenging world.

Brian Wingard defends Scriptural authority by rehearsing his own fascinating and instructive journey from doubt to certainty. Years ago, the late Charlie Dennison told me he believed one of the weaknesses of recent generations of OPC ministers was not knowing the arguments of liberals against historic Christianity. This article, along with Machen’s on the virgin birth, should encourage us to remember the fundamental principle of polemics for the Christian scholar is to accurately understand and represent the opposition before differing and offering a critique.

Scott Meadows encourages officers to remember the theological fountains of confessional orthodoxy in “Important Books for Confessional Churches.” If some think that this is preaching to the choir, we should remember that the choir needs the message as well as anyone else. Any officer who has not spent time with Francis Turretin or Richard Muller is missing out on the treasure of Post-Reformation theology. I have provided a list of “Post-Reformation, Reformed Scholastic Theologians” based on Richard Muller’s list. [Stephen hyperlink]

T. David Gordon presents a thorough argument against requiring ministers to break the bread in administering the Lord’s Supper as if the fraction were sacramentally significant, since it was simply a dining custom in the ancient world. “Is It Sacramentally Necessary to Break Bread When Celebrating the Lord’s Supper?” is a deep dive into this topic. It also highlights the importance of the more recent discoveries of ancient biblical manuscripts beginning in the late nineteenth century.

On Christmas Eve, 2013, a sermon by Lancelot Andrewes from Christmas 1616 was read by Elder Douglas Giebel, at Covenant (now Cornerstone) Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Rochester, New York. Mr. Giebel first became acquainted with Lancelot Andrewes’ sermons while reading T. S. Eliot’s Essays Ancient and Modern as a freshman fine arts major at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, in 1967. In the opening essay of this volume, Eliot commends the personal devotion Andrewes expresses in his Private Prayers. Of Andrewes’ sermons Eliot says, “They rank with the finest English prose of their time, of any time.” Mr. Giebel summarizes the sermon in “Notes on a Sermon by Lancelot Andrews on Psalm 85.”

For years in the first decades of my ministry, I climbed mountains and skied but did not make time for daily exercise. In my mid-fifties my doctor told me that to keep blood pressure and cholesterol under control I should walk three times a week getting my heart rate above 105 bpm. My first attempts were excruciating, but in a short while I realized that I no longer needed naps and looked forward to the invigorating benefits of regular exercise. I have found that while walking I can memorize psalms and other poetry. Regular exercise has also enhanced my prayer life and my planning. It clears the mind for creativity. Now at age seventy-seven, I find that if I do not walk, ride my bike, or ski, I feel that I have missed an important part of my day. I say all this as an introduction to Shane Lems’s insightful article “Exercise for Christian Caregivers.” Pay attention to this useful advice.

I was recently deeply touched by a daily devotion written by the mid-twentieth-century, Norwegian Lutheran minister Ole Kristian Hallesby, “Growing Old.” There are enough of us baby boomers around to benefit from this sweet encouragement. Younger ministers will find it useful in ministering to older folks. Hallesby’s book on prayer is a classic, reviewed by Alan Strange in OS in March 2012.

Late nineteenth-century contemporary of C. H. Spurgeon, Octavius Winslow, devoted two days’ devotions to “Prayer for Ministers.” Winslow emphasizes the importance of prayer for the ministry of ministers, especially for the effectiveness of their preaching. These should be distributed by sessions to members.

Since I entered the ministry in 1980, the question of weekly celebration of the Lord’s supper has been in the air. John Calvin and T. David Gordon have been a major influence on my thinking, and I was finally able to implement what I had long believed upon planting a church in Manchester, NH, in 1998. I incorporated the same weekly Supper in Jaffrey and Dover, New Hampshire church plants. No one has ever complained, and many have expressed great pleasure in the practice. It is fitting that Gordon should review Harrison Perkins’s Take and Eat: Recovering the Regular Celebration of the Lord’s Supper. This winsome, pastoral, and thorough apologia for the weekly Supper should be read and discussed by every session.

In “When Words Enchant,” I review Poetry as Enchantment and Other Essays by my favorite contemporary poet and critic, Dana Gioia. Gioia is a member of the school of New Formalism. This new quest for formal poetic discipline seeks to bring traditional verse forms back to the fore, standing in stark contrast to much of the modernist poetry that dominated the twentieth century. He is also an enthusiastic promoter for the new forms of poetry recitation that have emerged, especially among the young in recent decades. His work as a teacher and critic is equal to his poetic craftsmanship and expertise, all of which shine in Poetry as Enchantment.

My interest in media ecology, or the stewardship of media in the electronic environment, has never abated since I encountered Joel Nederhood, Neil Postman, and Marshall McLuhan in 1990 while matriculating in my doctoral program at Westminster Seminary California. I was elected to the Committee on Christian Education the same year The Word Is Worth a Thousand Pictures: Preaching in the Electronic Age was published (2001). This was timely because opc.org was still in its nascent stages of development. I enjoyed project managing the design and redesigns in 2006, 2014, and 2018. The Subcommittee on Internet Ministries (SIM) was established in 2004. We developed the “OPC Website Protocol: Procedure and Guidelines for opc.org.” We faced the challenge of navigating the Worldwide Web to take advantage of this new communication technology without compromising our deep commitment to God’s Word, the local church, in-person worship, and Christian education and learning. This is a challenge that we must not abandon. So I leave my readers with a sample of three significant books, briefly noted, because I have run out of time and space.

Mark Green graciously sent an unsolicited sonnet he dedicated to me on the occasion of my retirement, “The Hidden Harvest.” The traditional volta, or turning, in the ninth line, “The ache of years has made his steps less sure,” perfectly introduces the denouement.

This month I also offer three of my own poems as part of my adieu; the first is “The Cartouche of the Savior’s Life.” A cartouche is a carved tablet or drawing representing a scroll, used ornamentally or bearing an inscription. In Egyptian monuments it was an oval enclosing a sovereign’s name. For Jesus in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, European art cartouches enclosed portraits or monograms of Jesus Christ. I use this as a metaphor in my poetic portrait.

The two final poems are reflections on Christmas. “My Boyhood Christmas” is in free verse, reflecting the imagination of a young boy. The second, “Ornaments of Childhood,” is a more formal structure with two quatrains with abab end-rhymes, a sestet with ababab end-rhymes, concluding with a rhyming couplet to make the point.

The cover picture this issue is the main entrance to the offices of Ordained Servant for the past twenty-one years. It is also Chestnut Cottage where I have lived for thirty-four years. We came to New Hampshire from my first ministry in New Rochelle back in 1992. We had three very active young children and very little money, but just barely enough to afford the ramshackle cottage that we loved from the moment we set eyes on it. We have reason to believe that it was a hay barn on the estate of General John Stark. It had been owned by a woman who was first violin in the New Hampshire Philharmonic, but as she was an elderly person, the cottage had been left in serious disrepair. Had this not been the case in God’s providence, we would not have been able to afford to buy the house. But we knew it was God’s gift, because on the baby grand piano that came with the house, there was a single sheet of music for “Amazing Grace.”

Blessings in the Lamb,
Gregory Edward Reynolds

FROM THE ARCHIVES “INCARNATION, LORD’S SUPPER, POETRY”
/OS/pdf/Subject_Index.pdf

• “A Confessional Certainty: Machen’s Defense of the Virgin Birth in a Shifting World.” (Justin McLendon) 34 (2025): 22–28.
• “Elf on the Shelf or Christ on the Cross?” (Gregory E. Reynolds) 32 (2023): 6–7.
• “Machen’s Best Book: The Virgin Birth of Christ.” (Darryl G. Hart) 34 (2025): 29–31.
• “The Lord’s Supper—A Key to Reformation and Revival (A Review Article).” (Larry Wilson) 12:2 (Apr. 2003): 37–40.
• “The Lord’s Supper and the Structure of 1 Corinthians 11:17ff.” (Stewart E. Lauer) 13:4 (Oct. 2004): 88–92.
• “The Lord’s Supper: How Often?” (D. G. Hart & John R. Muether) 6:4 (Oct. 1997): 97–98.
• “Transforming Presence: A Meditation on the Lord’s Supper.” (Gregory Edward Reynolds) 17 (2008): 23–24.
• “Wine or Grape Juice? Theological and Pastoral Reflections on the Fruit of the Vine in Communion.” (John W. Mahaffy) 20 (2011): 51–55.
• “Beautiful Truth.” (Gregory E. Reynolds) 24 (2015): 6–7.
• “Poetry and the Heart in Preaching the Psalms.” (A. Craig Troxel) 33 (2024): 36–43.
• “Poetry: The Music of Particularity.” (Gregory Edward Reynolds) 34 (2025): 135–40.
• “The Power of Poetry for Preaching and Enjoyment.” (Gregory Edward Reynolds) 30 (2021): 20–25.
• “The Rhythms of the Christian Life in Bible Reading, Prayer, and Poetry.” (Gregory Edward Reynolds) 22 (2013): 109–11.
• “‘Submission’: A Model for Preachers.” (Gregory Edward Reynolds) 22 (2013): 13–16.
• “Your Personal Odyssey in Stereo.” (Mark A. Green) 30 (2021): 81–82.

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.