September 6 Today in OPC History

Thomas and Jean Champness were married on this date in 1957. One week after Tom graduated from Wheaton College in 1955, he met Jean at an Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship meeting held at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where Jean was in nurses training. They married in 1957 before Tom’s senior year at Westminster Theological Seminary and joined Calvary Orthodox Presbyterian Church, across the street from the seminary. Tom graduated with a bachelor of divinity in 1958 and a masters of theology in 1959.

Tom was ordained by the Presbytery of New Jersey on June 12, 1959 to serve as the first OP pastor of Garfield Community OPC in Garfield, New Jersey (1959–1964). He also was the first pastor at Grace OPC in Modesto, California (1965–1974), while working part–time with IVCF (1963–1974). Tom became the pastor of Redeemer OPC in Atlanta (1974–2009). During that time, he received his doctor of ministry from Luther Rice Seminary (1986).

During Tom’s fifty years of ministry, he served on the Committee on Foreign Missions and the Committee for Christian Education. He also mentored fourteen ministerial interns.

Tom was a member of a singing quartet at the Boardwalk Chapel in Wildwood, New Jersey. He also played the cello while Jean played the violin in the DeKalb Symphony Orchestra in Atlanta for thirty years. She directed the choir at Redeemer OPC for a decade and played the organ for thirty-four years. Jean accompanied their daughter who conducted a choir at a retirement center and in a home school music program. Jean encouraged women that their “homes should be a taste of heaven on earth” (The Presbyterian Guardian, April 1975). In 2009, Tom and Jean retired near their children in Collierville, Tennessee. Jean joined the Church Triumphant on August 18, 2020.

Picture: Tom and Jean in 1994.