December 27 Today in OPC History

When the Rev. Dr. Stewart Elwood Lauer married Laurie Lynne Gleason on this date in 1978, they both came from similar backgrounds and had similar goals. Woody had grown up in Western Pennsylvania and was part of United Presbyterian churches until he drifted away in high school. During his junior year at Union College in Schenectady, New York, his younger brother died suddenly of mononucleosis. Woody’s classmate’s apologetics drew him to commit his life to Christ and soon he attended the college fellowship. In 1977 he joined First Presbyterian Church, which recently had left the UPCUSA for forcing ministerial candidates to affirm women’s ordination. He became close friends with Stuart Jones, associate pastor of Calvary Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Schenectady. After graduation in 1978, he joined a Pittsburgh-based campus ministry called the Coalition for Christian Outreach, where he met Laurie, a fellow coworker. Laurie had attended a United Presbyterian Church while growing up in Wilmington, Delaware. In high school she became a Christian and attended a RPCES congregation, then earned her bachelor’s from Ohio Wesleyan University. Woody and Laurie discovered they both wanted to serve God in a foreign land since they each studied in Europe during college. By November they were engaged, and they married the following month. They joined Grace OPC in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. Two years later, Woody attended Westminster Theological Seminary, graduating with an M. Div. in 1983. Preparing to serve as a“tentmaker” missionary, he earned a master’s in chemical engineering from Villanova University in 1984. That year Laurie’s attention turned to her role as mother to their first child, David. Stephen, Joshua, SaraJean, Jonathan, Daniel, and Paul followed, keeping Laurie busy homeschooling over the years. She also taught cooking and conversational English to the women they ministered to over the years.

Woody was ordained by the Presbytery of Ohio on May 18, 1985. For three decades from 1985 to 2015, he served as a missionary teacher/evangelist in Japan for the Committee on Foreign Missions. After language school, the Lauers moved to Sendai to work with the Kita Nakayama Chapel, where the Lord added twenty-seven members to their congregation in a couple of years. When the Committee on Foreign Missions asked him to attain a doctorate to enable him to train men for the ministry in Japanese seminaries, Woody earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wales in 2011. Woody served as professor of Biblical Studies at Kobe Reformed Theological Seminary from 1998 to 2007, then over the years as a lecturer at Kobe RTS and Kobe Theological Hall. He also served as an evangelist at the Kita Numazu Reformed Church of Japan Chapel from 2008 to 2015.

The Lauers’ ministry expanded in 2011 after the massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami off the coast of Sendai. The OPC sent short-term mission teams to help OPC missionaries Cal Cummings, Kaz Yaegashi, and the Lauers minister to the people of that devastated area. The OPC Japan Relief Fund, which raised about $550,000, bought a damaged building, which was repaired by short-term teams to become the Nozomi Center, a community outreach center. In 2015 Woody was called as a missionary-evangelist to Japan by the OPC’s Presbytery of Ohio. The mission is now overseen by the Presbytery of the Dakotas.