February 19 Today in OPC History

Born on this date in 1959, Dr. Bryan D. Estelle is an Orthodox Presbyterian Church minister who serves as professor of Old Testament at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido. Raised in mainline Presbyterian churches in Texas and Southern California, he became a Christian in his late teens. Bryan moved to Santa Barbara and worked with prison inmates and troubled youth. He also was employed in Yosemite National Park as a mountain climbing guide in the Sierras, where he scaled the northwest face of Half Dome and southwest face of El Capitan.

There he met Lisa, a fellow guide whom he followed to Eugene, Oregon. Lisa became his wife on September 5, 1982, and they have three children, Sean, David, and Kaitlin. For eight summers, Bryan and Lisa fished for salmon in Kodiak, Alaska. The Estelles worshiped at Oak Hill OPC in Eugene where he learned the Reformed faith from OP pastors Larry Conard and Alfred Poirier. After Bryan earned his bachelor’s from the University of Oregon, Eugene, in 1987, Conard and Poirier told Bryan he had ministerial gifts and urged him to go to WSC. Edmund Clowney’s book, Called to the Ministry, also educated him on the high calling of being a minister. In 1989, Bryan went to WSC and graduated with a masters of divinity in 1992.

In 1994, the Estelles moved to Washington, D.C., where Bryan earned his masters of art in 1998 and his doctorate in Semitic languages at Catholic University of America in 2001. During this time, Bryan was ordained by the OPC’s Presbytery of the Mid-Atlantic on August 9, 1996. He served as assistant pastor of Knox OPC in Silver Spring, Maryland until 2000, when he was invited back to WSC. Serving the broader OPC, Bryan was elected by the General Assembly to serve on the Committee on Creation in 2001 and on the Committee to Study Republication in 2014. He also served as Hebraist for the Psalter-Hymnal Committee. He has written Salvation through Judgment and Mercy: The Gospel According to Jonah (2005), The Exodus Motif (2017), and The Primary Mission of the Church (2021).

Picture: Bryan Estelle with David Mendes (top), Dick Gerber and RMS participant (bottom), and in late 1970s in Oregon.