September 21 Today in OPC History

On this day in 1953, the Rev. George J. Willis was received as a ministerial member of the Presbytery of Philadelphia and installed as pastor of St. Andrews OPC, Baltimore, Maryland. Mr. Willis had been ordained in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1941 to serve as pastor of Calvary OPC, Cedar Grove, Wisconsin. In 1944 he resigned as pastor to became a chaplain in the U.S. Navy. After his discharge from the Navy in April 1946, he served as field secretary for Westminster Theological Seminary. He then served four years as pastor of Snow Hill PCUS, Snow Hill, North Carolina.

In 1959, he was called to Memorial Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Rochester. New York. He would serve at Memorial OPC until his retirement in 1975. After he died on September 1, 1977, the Presbytery of New York and New England adopted a memorial minute. It read in part, “George Willis was committed to all that the Orthodox Presbyterian Church stands for. Yet no church could confine him with blind reverence. Bound only by the word of God, our brother was a free spirit who could detect and prick the pretensions of men and of institutions. Yet a more gentle, understanding and open-hearted servant of Jesus Christ has rarely existed.”

Picture: George Willis as a U.S. Navy chaplain in 1944