June 20 Today in OPC History

Former Orthodox Presbyterian missionaries Lendall and Sherrill Smith celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary today. Foreign Missions has been close to their hearts since they met at the Philadelphia College of Bible where Lendall was president of the Foreign Missions Fellowship. They married, then headed to Westminster Theological Seminary where they embraced Reformed theology. Following graduation Lendall was ordained and installed as pastor of Faith OPC in Pittsgrove, New Jersey in 1969. Later when the Committee on Foreign Missions urged young pastors to consider becoming missionaries, Lendall prayed for new candidates, then decided to apply himself.

Approved as missionaries, the Smiths moved with their three children to Taiwan in 1974. Supported by the OPC and the Reformed Church in the U.S., Eureka Classis, they faithfully served for 17 years before he accepted the call in 1991 as pastor of Bethel Presbyterian Church in Wheaton, Illinois. His ministry brought healing to the congregation after it split two years earlier over the issue of women’s ordination, reducing the congregation from more than 300 to 44 members. Lendall also served on the Committee on Foreign Missions from 1993 to 2014 and on the Committee for Diaconal Ministries since 2006. After retiring from the pastoral ministry in 2007, Lendall helped to assess the diaconal needs after the Japanese Tsunami and served short-term in Uganda, China, and in OP churches in Elmer (Pittsgrove), New Jersey; DeKalb and Batavia in Illinois; and New Berlin, Wisconsin.

Picture: Lendall and Sherill Smith