Volume 6: Issue 4 | July 2023
A Church and Its Building
Since we began worship services in 2006, Christ RPC has scouted probably 100 church buildings. By “scouted” I mean anything from internet investigations to making an offer. Most of them I scouted personally, and had just enough sense to keep most of those investigations to myself. As it is, I’m sure that the congregation (and my fellow elders) got pretty tired of church building talk.
Back Story
Christ Reformed Presbyterian in Riverside, Rhode Island is a “daughter church” of First Reformed Presbyterian of Cambridge, Massachusetts. David and Deryl Robson were the drivers of the church planting initiative: Deryl is a native of Rhode Island and Dave moved there for work many years ago, met and married Deryl. In the early 2000s as their family grew, driving to worship in Cambridge (where they were members and Dave a deacon) became increasingly onerous. The trip is about 60 miles, through Boston traffic. Meanwhile the Providence metro area (which includes most of Rhode Island and some of Massachusetts) was a clear candidate for a church planting effort. Like most New England cities it had almost no Reformed or conservative Presbyterian presence (there were, at the time, two NAPARC churches in the state), and few evangelical congregations of any stripe.
John Edgar was interning with Christian Adjemian of First RP when he led a Bible study at the Robsons’ home in 2002. This was the first serious step toward starting a new church. I took over the Bible study and led it as an intern during the subsequent year. Between 2002 and 2007 Dave pursued a policy of shameless nepotism, hiring or finding jobs for a number of First RP friends who showed an interest in a Rhode Island church plant. In the meantime I was teaching at a Christian school in Boston. From 2005 on things moved more rapidly (though not rapidly enough for youthful impatience). I did a “scouting” internship in the summer of 2005, assessing the social and church situation in Rhode Island and recommending that we plant a church in the city of East Providence.
The Cambridge session launched a “preaching station” on New Year’s Day of 2006, in a rented facility (St. Mary’s Episcopal Church) in East Providence. The station was served by a rotation of preachers, including Pastor Adjemian, Elder Chris Wright, and me, and for some time services were held only twice a month. In the summer of 2006 my family moved to northern Rhode Island. Interest in the church gathered (at a modest, Reformed Presbyterian scale), and in the Spring of 2007 I was called by First RP to be an associate pastor for church planting in Rhode Island. Teaching wrapped up in June 2007 and I was ordained and installed in July, at St. Mary’s.
Tenure at St. Mary’s
From New Year’s Day 2006 through August 28, 2022, Christ RPC stayed in one location. This is remarkable. I grew up in an RP church plant (Oswego, New York) that moved several times, and I have attended other RP church plants. Never have I seen one stay in the place it started for so long. Our years at St. Mary’s had ups and downs, but in all we were blessed to be there. We started out worshiping in the pretty but somber sanctuary (dark wood, dark red carpeting, and stained glass). Later we moved into the much brighter parish hall.
We rented through the tenures of four interim priests, and ultimately outlasted the parish itself. The first and last padres were evangelicals and allies. The first, Ashley Peckham, was a colorful character, one of two people who comprised the Rhode Island Bible Society, and the port chaplain for Providence and New Bedford, Massachusetts. He had the task of doing onboard wellness checks, with interpreter in tow, for foreign-flagged vessels that were docked in those ports, and he had the authority to direct the Coast Guard to stop them from sailing if he judged that their crews were being mistreated. The last priest, Father Don Parker, was dedicated to the salvation of those in his parish who were unconverted. By that time St. Mary’s had dwindled down to two dozen or so, and the state of Don’s health and that of aging parishioners led them to never resume in-person services after the March-May 2020 Covid lockdown. The disposition of the property (which we scouted purchasing at several points in time) is now a headache for the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island.
The location of the church was great for a Providence metro area congregation, but the building itself was a limiting factor for several years. The sanctuary and parish hall had similar footprints, and each held a maximum of 110 or so. But a room feels full when 80% or so of the seats are occupied. When a room feels full, visitors don’t come back, and there is an unconscious barrier to inviting people as well. There were other issues: no parking, no office space, classes squeezed into awkward parts of the building, and occasional friction with the owners.
Looking for a Larger Tent
Over time I have learned to hold onto my visions and plans loosely. God is jealous for his own glory above all, and has a way of sabotaging our bright ideas and bringing blessing from unexpected quarters. But I have also learned that the process of planning is part of faithfulness. For years a strategy question plagued the elders: try to plant, or try to grow? We had planted with 15 or so people; it could be done. In fact, this seems to be the norm in the RPCNA. But the result is often two weak congregations. If possible, growing to a larger size (150 is the bottom of the “medium” category in church growth parlance, although it is a “megachurch” in RP terms) would allow a more healthy pattern of planting: instead of sending out 15, send out 40, and help with funding. (One of the wisest things First RP did for us was to segregate Rhode Island families’ giving for several years before we started worship services. That provided seed money allowed us to turn down the last few years of Home Mission Board “reducing aid” in 2011.) This is what we have prayed for since at least 2018: that the Lord would allow us to grow and become an anchor church for our area, so that church planting can happen sustainably in the decades to come.
But: how are you going to grow beyond the 80 people who can fit in the pews? We looked at changing rentals to an enormous building on Providence’s East Side, or to another that used to house the Rhode Island Catholic Reporter newspaper. Our “closest call” was in late 2015 when a remarkable Lutheran building in Cranston, Rhode Island came onto our radar screen, available for a price we could pay in cash. Before this came to a vote it was discovered that a very fine Baptist church was our competitor for the facility — and that they had a claim to it, having actively ministered in the immediate neighborhood, cultivated relationships, and worshiped there for years. Several of their members had even moved to be close to the church, and they had cultivated a relationship with the soon-to-close Lutheran congregation in hope of buying the building. In a remarkable act of brotherliness, our congregation made and passed a motion in December that we could not “in good conscience put an offer forward” while there was still interest from the other church.
This wasn’t the last near miss. We considered a derelict former AME Zion building on the South Side, built in 1901 as the ironically named Westminster Unitarian Church. (Quiz: What do you put on your stained glass when you don’t believe in much of anything? A picture of your previous church building!). A developer bought it instead. We checked into the empty Oddfellows’ Hall two doors down from St. Mary’s. It was being sold with an asking price of $1, but it was smaller than St. Mary’s and we would have had to restore it to strict historic standards. We looked into an old factory building on the West Side, and another near the harbor. We could not compete with developers. In the fall of 2019 the elders explored a remarkable stone sanctuary and parish hall in Olneyville Square. The church that owned it sold to a Muslim developer, who promptly started converting it to apartments.
On March 3 of last year, nearly two years to the day since the long dark of Covid had begun, elders Jonathan Trexler, Dave Robson, and I toured 10 Turner Avenue in Riverside. Riverside is a neighborhood of East Providence, a six-minute drive south of St. Mary’s. The property listing had been sent to me by two different people: one a member of our congregation, the other my neighbor in nearby Warren, Rhode Island. The listing price was a hair under $1,000,000 but this was not a surprise. Over the previous years we had reached the conclusion that all church buildings in our area cost a million dollars. Either they are free and need to be rebuilt for a million, or they are move-in ready and cost a million, or somewhere between.
The facility was built as St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in 1965, after the parish’s 19th century building burned. It was located in a good neighborhood (safe but not posh) called Riverside Square. It was on the bike path and the bus line. It was solidly built (if you want a good facility, get one built by Episcopalians in their heyday). It had tons of natural light (the first time we saw that in an Episcopal building). It had …
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many classrooms
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two to four offices (depending on how you use the rooms)
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library and nursery space
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a sound room (or translator booth, or cry room)
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an enormous pipe organ (not on our “must have” list)
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a great kitchen
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a big fellowship hall (the “parish house” in Episcopal parlance)
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parking (three different lots, different sizes)
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a central courtyard for light and ventilation
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a three-bedroom rectory/manse/parsonage/house on the property
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more space than we could think of what to do with.
The parish that owned it had reduced in size until they needed to merge with another in 2012. Since then they had rented to a Spanish-speaking evangelical church. (When we bought the building we offered to continue sharing space but they wanted a place that they could have to themselves — so they moved two blocks into a similarly declining Congregational church’s building!) With our savings, a denominational mortgage, and plenty of fundraising, we judged that we could make a serious bid.
Our first offer was 15% below asking. But we had competition — another church and a developer. With the congregation’s go-ahead (we held several meetings at this juncture) we increased our offer to 105% of the asking price. On March 18 our offer was, by God’s grace, accepted. The subsequent few months were filled with inspections, renegotiation (back down to almost exactly the original price), fundraising, and procuring a mortgage. The Trustees of Synod office was great to work with, and gave us the maximum $400,000 in loans at very good rates, minus a $10,000 grant. We had $230,000 saved. We had commitments of over $200,000 from within the congregation, early.
For fundraising purposes we sought to raise an additional 20% over the purchase price for renovations, repairs, and move-in costs. We sent letters to churches far and near, and made some phone calls as well. I do not enjoy asking for money. But one of the great joys for me in this entire process has been seeing the outpouring of kindness from all over the Reformed Presbyterian Church and beyond. Local churches helped. A handful of RP congregations sent very generous gifts. People we had never met sent gifts. Small or large, local or from beyond the USA, every single gift was an encouragement and, well, a gift. After months of silly delays (it turns out that presbyterianism is not the slowest-moving polity) we closed on August 18.
If you want to get church renovations done quickly, I have a tip: get yourself a motivated elder whose daughter wants to get married in the building in four months. Our first service in the new building took place on September 4, 2022. We rejoiced in three separate child baptisms in the following two months. And the renovations got going, fast and hard. I cannot name all the people who dove head-first into the work this fall, but Dave and Deryl deserve special praise. By early October several rooms had new carpet. In early November the new “stage” was completed (the old one had covered all the heating return vents, was clad in old carpet, and was built with enveloping arms that made it look like the Starship Enterprise). By mid-November the parsonage roof was replaced. By the end of the month the pews had been entirely sanded and repainted. By mid-December the sanctuary and narthex (a.k.a. foyer a.k.a. entry) floors had been replaced. By the end of the month broken heating loops had been repaired (all but my office). And, as we had anticipated, on January 7 Elena Robson wed Curtis Jenkins in a sanctuary packed with 300 or so guests.
The Mandate
What’s next? I don’t know. I need a nap. Just kidding (kind of). Now, in winter 2023, we are enjoying a necessary lull after the blitz of 2022. But it is clear to me that the Lord has not given us such an excellent building merely for our own enjoyment. He has given us room to grow, and we should seek to grow. But not at all costs, and not in some of the ways that churches sometimes seek to grow. We saw over and over, from 2006 on, that if we seek to be faithful to the Lord and do the work that he has given us, among the people he has sent us, he will bless us.
If you don’t mind, please pray for us. Please give thanks for the Lord’s preservation and care for over 17 years as a congregation, for his wisdom in saying “no” to many building purchases that I (personally) thought were perfect, and for his provision of the best facility, in the best location, at the best moment, that we could imagine. Give thanks for the generosity of his people, in aiding us in this work. Please ask the Lord to bring people into our doors, and to give us wisdom in prayer, outreach, advertising, assimilating new folks, and serving our neighborhood (and metro area) in his name. Please ask the Lord to strengthen our young people in the faith, and to build a foundation for Gospel ministry in Rhode Island and beyond for generations to come.
-- Daniel Howe
From the editors: Christ Church pays $2330.75 per month on their building loan of $384,530 (as of March, 2023). If you would like to help them pay down their mortgage, send a check marked “Building Fund” to
Christ Reformed Presbyterian Church
10 Turner Avenue
Riverside RI 02915.
Keep the Sabbath
"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.
On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter,
your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.
For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.
Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy."
– Exodus 20:8-11
The ancient Church debated when Christians should observe the Sabbath. On the seventh day as formerly, or on the first day, the day Jesus rose from the dead? Guided by some hints in the Scriptures (“I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day,” Rev. 1:10. If the first day is now the Lord's day...), the Church settled on the first. In the Middle Ages, Sabbath observance was legally binding and, by today's standards, rather strict. So were the early Presbyterians, Puritans, and Baptists. But now it is almost as if there were only nine commandments. When was the fourth commandment rescinded?
Christians know very well that Jesus battled the Pharisaic understanding of the Sabbath. Very well, let us avoid Pharisaism. What we need is Jesus' understanding. He said that the Sabbath was made for man. That makes it a divine gift as well as a divine commandment. We may not decline either a divine gift or a divine commandment, so in these words he deepened our responsibility, even as he lightened the Pharisaic yoke.
Jesus also claimed to be the Lord of the Sabbath. Was he the kind of man who would boast of being Lord of nothing? If he is our Lord, and the Sabbath's Lord, we must ask him how to observe it. He considered it worth claiming as his own. We observe first, that Jesus was in the synagogue on the Sabbath. Being his people, we are to imitate him by being in church on the Sabbath. We observe second, that he freed a daughter of Abraham of her affliction on the Sabbath. Making the Sabbath a day for freedom fits the reasons attached to the fourth commandment, namely, remembering having been slaves in Egypt (see Deuteronomy 5:15). How are we to imitate Jesus in making the Sabbath a day for freedom?
Ancient Israel was freed from Pharaoh in order to serve the Lord alone. “Let my people go, that they may serve me,” the Lord repeated six times. We should also focus on freeing people to serve the Lord. That means freeing them from their slavery to Pharaoh, whose new name is the Almighty Dollar. We do not want anyone serving coffee at Dunkin on Sunday. American serfs should at least be able to attend church. So do not patronize Dunkin on Sunday. Brew your coffee at home, or buy the church a coffee maker. Do not go out for Sunday brunch. Do you think the restaurant workers were at church that morning? They had to arrive early to prepare the brunch. Do not shop for clothing on Sunday. Do you not have six days to shop?
An author once wrote, “Respect means putting yourself out.” Out of respect for God, and out of concern for the poor, we are to put ourselves out (that is, inconvenience ourselves) on God's day, so that others may fellowship with us, as our fellowship is with the Father and the Son (see 1 John 1:3).
The battle is on, and too many American Christians have joined the wrong side. The battle is between Almighty God and the Almighty Dollar. Whom do we serve? And do we care enough for the poor to free them from seven days a week slavery? Words matter less than actions. Remember the Sabbath Day, by keeping it holy: separate and different, a day for us and our poor neighbors to serve God, not Pharaoh.
– John Edgar
Blessed Head or Smashed Mouth
"Blessings are on the head of the righteous,
but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence."
Proverbs 10:6
The two halves of this proverb seem incongruous. “Blessings” prepares us for “curses,” but Solomon heads in a different direction. We’ll look at each section separately and then see how they relate to each other.
“Blessings” sum up God’s promises to the righteous; they include children, prosperity, and victory over enemies (Deuteronomy 28). The Bible extends these good things to spiritual children, richness in grace, and crushing Satan under our feet (Isaiah 54:1, II Corinthians 9:8, Romans 16:20). Those whom God blesses receive manifold blessings. He does not hold back.
Why “on the head?” Because that was how people conveyed blessings in Israel. Jacob memorably blessed Manasseh and Ephraim, Joseph’s sons, with crossed hands laid on their heads (Genesis 48:14). Of course, the blessings come from God, who uses his representatives to pronounce his blessing. Kings and priests said blessings on their people, and even workers in a field could bless their master (Ruth 2:4).
Who are the “righteous?” They are the ones who keep covenant with God and obey his laws. None do so perfectly, except Jesus. He summed up Israel in himself, and he alone fully kept covenant with God. So those united to Christ by faith have his righteousness, the righteousness of God, and their sins are forgiven. God gives his blessings to Jesus, and through him to all who trust in Him. Thus we pray confidently, “Give us this day our daily bread (Matthew 6:11).”
The righteous man has a head to receive God’s blessings. The wicked man has a mouth, with which he speaks vile and violent things. The Authorized Version probably has it right, translating, “but violence covereth the mouth of the wicked.” What does that mean? That the wicked, who speak proudly and harshly, but also deceptively, will have their mouths smashed. God will punch them in the teeth to silence them, exactly what David praises God for. “Arise, O LORD! Save me, O my God! For you strike all my enemies on the cheek; you break the teeth of the wicked (Psalm 3:7).” Before God, every mouth will be stopped (Romans 3:19).
Words are not just words. God will hold us accountable for every idle word (Matthew 12:36). Words wound and kill. He who calls his brother a fool breaks God’s command against murder (Matthew 5:22). Wicked words come out of wicked people, but God will make those words rebound on the mouth that speaks them and smash it.
The two parts of the proverb cohere. The righteous head for blessings and the wicked mouth for smashing! Blessings come from the Lord’s grace, but a wicked man’s mouth brings a boomerang curse. The “son” of Proverbs, and we also, need to hear that this is how it really is in God’s world, so that we don’t lose heart when we see the wicked prosper for a moment. We live by faith.
– Bill Edgar
A Little News from Hazleton
On May 24, 2023, Pastor Paul Brace of the Hazleton Area Reformed Presbyterian Church (Hazleton, PA) celebrated the 20th year anniversary of his ordination as a teaching elder and minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Pastor Brace was ordained by the Presbytery of the Alleganies, in the Rimersburg, PA church. Pastor William Edgar preached the sermon in the ordination service. Pastor Brace has been with the Hazleton congregation for the past fourteen (14) years. The Hazleton congregation thanks God for the past 20 years of Paul’s faithful ministry, and prays for many more years of continued ministry of the gospel, if the Lord wills.
– Jeremy Nelson
To the editors: On Symbols
Bill Edgar's article "I Don't See Jesus Anywhere" (A Little Strength 6.2, April 2023) was a good reminder that where we most clearly see Jesus is in the Body of Christ itself, the Church. We do not need pictures or statues of the Divine to worship: these things are worse than unhelpful, because they bring God down into concrete form that merely reflects our desires, much as the ancient Israelites put their idea of God into the form of a golden calf. As a congregation that recently bought a former Episcopal facility, complete with White, mid-twentieth-century Jesus in several stained glass windows, this is something we have had to discuss recently. (If anyone would like to help us replace some windows, please let me know!) However, I take issue with Edgar's rejection of the Cross as an appropriate Christian symbol, for several reasons (and not just the fact that we have a 40-foot structurally integrated cross at the front of our building).
First, people cannot have no symbolism whatsoever. Houses converted into Christian places of worship in the first centuries often featured mosaics or frescoes of Noah's ark, doves and olive leaves, a young shepherd with a lamb on his shoulders (never labeled as Jesus, to my knowledge). Later, of course, the use of pictures or statues as objects of worship developed, and one of the great dividing lines between East and West was that Western Christianity was fine with both, while the East only accepted 2D paintings (because they were flat they didn't count as "graven images"!). Later the Eastern Church's Iconoclast movement replaced icons, not with blank spots, but with crosses. New England meetinghouses, probably the most stripped-down and unadorned church buildings before the Industrial Revolution, have not stayed that way: today many of them feature a very clear symbol, though not a Christian one: the rainbow flag. Today, "conservatives" signal their discontent with the Biden regime and commitment to staying armed and dangerous with rifle or Punisher decals on their trucks. It's not a matter of whether you will use symbols, but what symbols you will use. Covenanters agree: that's why they have historically put their own blue banner in their churches, and not the more generically Presbyterian burning bush, or another symbol.
Second, the Cross is a fitting symbol of Christian discipleship. Recently a foolish Congresswoman joked to a Christian audience that Jesus "didn’t have enough [AR-15s] to keep his government from killing him." By contrast Jesus told his disciples that to follow him they must take up, not weapons, but their crosses. Humiliation comes before exaltation. The Cross sets suffering first, which is the right place for suffering in the mindset of Christians.
Third, the cross is a universal Christian symbol. Unlike the various denominational symbols available (including the Blue Banner), it is universally associated with the universal church. Belief in "one holy, catholic, and apostolic church" is part of the faith that saves. The war-banner of the Scottish Covenanters, as much as we may love it, represents a very small moment in the great story of God's salvation. The cross of Christ is the focal point of human history, literally the crossroads of the cosmic crisis of estrangement from God and its resolution. This is a symbol that anyone who holds to the Apostles' or Nicene or Chalcedonian Creed can get behind.
Fourth and finally, the cross is empty. Edgar is right to point out that not only the cross but also the resurrection are central (crucial, from the Latin crux, cross) to our salvation and faith. But that is actually part of the point of the cross: it is not a crucifix, with Jesus still hanging from it, but an empty cross. The empty cross shouts out the resurrection of our Lord, not just his crucifixion. "He is not here, for he has risen, as he said." And because the empty cross speaks of resurrection, it also speaks to the believer's future, which is not eternal cross-bearing and suffering, but resurrection and joy. "This beauteous form assures a pitious minde," wrote John Donne (Holy Sonnet XIII).
In our hatchet-wielding Reformational zeal, let's not throw out what Jesus told us to take up and carry. "Woodman, spare that tree!"
– Daniel Howe
Opening Up Camp
My family had been staying at White Lake Covenanter Camp for two weeks, after a month-long vacation to and from Montana. We were there to help for prep week. My dad had been invited to speak at camp, and we were going to help prepare the whole camp. I was eager to begin.
We watched the counselors and staff arrive one by one on Saturday. The next day we went to worship at Coldenham RP Church, and returned to camp for a psalm sing that evening. Monday morning we met in the Mess Hall and got to work.
There was a lot of work to do. Bob, the camp director, told us what had to be done. The camp had been vacant for almost two years, so many things had to be cleaned. We scrubbed picnic tables, old cabins, and even an old RV that had been sitting in the same spot for the last seventeen years. It was Bob’s; he had been serving as camp director for that long! My brother and I used a sponge and a water power sprayer to clean the RV. I was never assigned to clean the cabins, so I don’t know what that was like, but I heard that there were mice living in them.
There were tents that needed to be assembled and moved, archery tents, recreation tents, and an old-fashioned tent that was used as a staff tent. The latter was the hardest to set up. It had wooden boards with poles to stick in the holes in other wooden boards. All the tents were difficult to make, but they were still fun.
In previous years, camp had two teepees. This year, however, some of the teepee poles had rotted. We were assigned to find out which poles were rotten, and which were okay to use. Some poles were fine. Others were not so good. Some of the poles broke when picked up, some broke when put down, and others didn’t break but still were rotten. Almost all the poles had rotted, so we didn’t have any teepees that year.
We sprayed wasp nests that were on the cabins, swept floors in the Mess Hall and Rec Hall, rearranged tables and chairs, and inflated some knocker balls. Only a few of the large plastic balls inflated well enough for a person to get into and try to knock over a person inside a different knocker ball; the others had holes. We also set up an archery range that the campers could use once camp started. To set it up, we needed to assemble tripods for the targets to sit on and string the bows.
One day was a rest day. On that day most of the counselors and staff went tubing on a nearby river with my brother and me. Bob said that because we had worked so hard at cleaning, we should be allowed to join the fun on the river. There were a few very small waterfalls and some places where the water was going quite fast, but most of the way it was smooth. I liked the rapids the most.
Throughout the week, I liked helping with work and getting lots of things done. But by the end of the week I was very tired and very eager to begin camp.
I had learned more and more about the staff and got to know each of them personally more than I had before. Some of them were new, but most of them had been to White Lake before and many had already been on the staff in previous years. Despite knowing most of them, I had never known them as I know them now.
I also learned that it takes a lot more work to prepare the camp than I had thought previously. I realized how much the staff sacrifices for the campers every year, since they don’t get paid. I am looking forward to helping with camp this year, and excited to see what it will bring.
– Andrew Bailey, age 12
Genesis 1-3 Psalm Sing
Singing the Psalms is a blessing, an act of worship, and an act of obedience. The Reformed Presbyterian Church of Elkins Park has for many years made the last evening service of the month a Psalm Sing, that is, we spend nearly the entire hour singing psalms to God. The first forty minutes or so is spent singing a series of psalms prepared by a pastor around a given theme, with each psalm introduced by brief remarks. Then we rest our voices by sharing prayer requests. After prayer, there is a shorter time for people to request that the congregation sing a favorite psalm. We conclude in prayer just before the close of the hour.
Multiple people have asked for the publication of the psalm series and their accompanying remarks. While we cannot capture the flavor of the moment entirely, we offer these brief remarks to anyone who would like to use them, whether in family worship, prayer meetings, or other psalm sings.
Elkins Park's other evening services are currently going through the book of Genesis, so the February 2023 Psalm Sing followed Genesis 1-3. The italicized words were read directly from the Bible. All psalm references are selections from The Book of Psalms for Worship, available from Crown & Covenant Publications.
1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Psalm 24 proclaims that God created everything, and then gives an application: since God created everything, everything belongs to God.
Let us sing Psalm 24A.
2. Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Psalm 8 celebrates what God did in Genesis 1. He gave us dominion over what he had made!
Let us sing Psalm 8B.
3. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Be fruitful and multiply. Psalm 128 celebrates that blessing.
Let us sing Psalm 128B.
4. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
God himself rested. He has given us both work and rest, both purpose and refreshment. Psalm 116 celebrates rest and calls us back to it: return my soul, to your own quiet rest.
Let us sing Psalm 116A.
5. The LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
Psalm 150 celebrates our breath, and gives us an application: do you have breath? Then praise the Lord with it.
Let us sing Psalm 150A.
6. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
It is hard to know exactly what Adam knew about good and evil before he ate of the tree. But surely he knew this much: he knew he should shun evil, as it says in Psalm 37:27.
Let us sing Psalm 37C.
7. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
We have in Genesis the man's reaction to his wedding day. In Psalm 45 we address how the woman is to react.
Let us sing Psalm 45C.
8. And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
The devil slandered God, and his lying mouth brought us generations of pain. With Psalm 109 we ask God to crush the devil, our greatest enemy.
Let us sing Psalm 109A.
9. Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” The LORD God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
In Psalm 91, we look forward to the Blessed Champion who crushes serpents.
Let us sing Psalm 91A.
10. And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Look around. God returns us to dust.
Let us sing Psalm 90A.
11. The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
In these mercies we see our God who knows our frame; he knows that we are dust.
Let us sing Psalm 103C.
– John Edgar
The Meeting of the Atlantic Presbytery, March 24-25, 2023
Elkins Park RPC (Philadelphia) has been a busy place. After hosting both the Home Mission and RP Global Boards in early March, in late March Elkins Park hosted the spring meeting of presbytery. Quite a few young adults chose to watch the proceedings, and lend their voices to the singing, which was consequently especially robust. Retiring moderator John Edgar preached from 1 Peter 4:10-5:11 on the theme, Don't Whine, Gladly Glorify God. His personal commitment to his chosen theme was immediately tested as one elder after another subsequently refused to replace him as moderator. He was eventually elected to a rare second term.
The editors of A Little Strength anticipate presenting new authors to you in coming months, because the presbytery passed a resolution calling on each congregation to write an article for this publication describing her outreach efforts to some nearby location. This resolution was inspired by discovering that the effort being made by the Pennsylvania churches to plant a church in Salisbury MD (sometimes referred to as “Delmarva”) was unknown to many in the other churches of our Presbytery further north. The aim is that we would help one another by our prayers.
Each session reported on the past year, with a generally encouraging tone. Broomall now has its fourth treasurer … since World War II (Sarah Archer, Eleanor Edgar, Joe Comanda, now Sam Ashleigh). That is some remarkable stability. We rejoiced over the new building recently purchased by Christ Church in Rhode Island (the young adults described it for us, having been there the previous weekend). The Hazleton Area RPC has been encouraged and strengthened by their own children becoming contributing young adults. They have had two budget surpluses in a row! Coldenham-Newburgh RPC needs a pastor and is praying for some younger members.
The second morning Paul Brace preached on Mark 4:26-32, two Kingdom of God parables about planting seeds, and then they grow, and the planter has no idea how they grow. They just do. So it is with church growth: no one can say how it happens except that God does it. He emphasized our ignorance of how to make a church grow by noting that there are over 10,000 book titles dealing with church growth, which suggests that no one has a good formula to make it happen. We plant the seed of the Gospel, and God makes it grow as he chooses.
Presbytery then proceeded to the examination of students. Ryan Alsheimer of Walton/Oneonta passed his history paper and was licensed to preach. This means he is free, indeed encouraged, to preach wherever the Lord provides opportunity. He may not yet serve the Lord's Supper, perform weddings, or give the benediction. He went on to pass his examination in pastoral and evangelistic gifts, and his second examination in systematic theology and RP “distinctives,” such as singing Psalms a cappella. He has two examinations left before becoming eligible to receive a call. Elder John Cripps of Walton passed his own examination in systematic theology and RP distinctives. He is seeking to be licensed to preach more regularly. Dan Self of the Walton congregation was introduced and received as a student under care. Zack Seigman of Elkins Park has moved to Samford, Florida, to begin a pastoral internship program at a nondenominational church there.
Barry York, president of the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, brought greetings and briefly described a new chaplaincy program and growing ministry to the Chinese. He answered several pointed questions about what his administration would do to ensure the seminary did not give short shrift to a presbytery's concerns about the seminary's teaching.
The health department of Sullivan County NY, where White Lake Camp is located, has been requiring all camps to require measles vaccinations of all campers for the past few years, with no possibility for a religious exemption. This requirement presents a difficulty for one of our congregations. After some discussion, it was suggested that an attempt might be made locally to obtain some such exemption. The presbytery moved on to note that the RP Global Mission Board is no longer sponsoring domestic short-term mission trips, beyond one annual trip to Pittsburgh. Our presbytery, we thank God, has a number of young people willing to serve the church. After some discussion, the elders were encouraged to consider if a visiting team of young adults, coming just for a weekend, might be able to provide some useful service to a given congregation. A team from Elkins Park is currently planning to go to help the Delmarva RP Fellowship for a Saturday in Salisbury MD. We hope lessons can be learned from that excursion and perhaps a model for such action developed.
There are many empty pulpits across the denomination, such as Coldenham-Newburgh, and at times it seems as though men are resigning faster than others are coming to replace them. At the request of the RP Seminary, May 31 was set as a day of prayer and fasting for the Lord to raise up 'workers for the harvest' (see Matthew 9:38).
The fall meeting was set for September 22-23 at White Lake Camp, potentially in conjunction with a youth retreat. The 2024 spring meeting was set for March 22-23 at the new building of Christ Church, now in Riverside RI. The elders went home in peace. It was a long meeting, but it was a good meeting.
– John Edgar
The Connected Self: Whose Son Are You?
In his review of Andrea Wulf’s book, Magnificent Rebels (see A Little Strength 6.2), Noah Bailey quotes the philosopher Charles Taylor’s summary of the modern self – “the self as a psychological inner person, social affirmation of self in its ordinary existence, and happiness as vindication of self.” That is, a person looks inward to find True Self, expects every other Self to applaud it, with feeling happy as strong evidence that True Self has been found.
The modern self is Gnostic: it is the “psychological inner person,” with no use for a body except as a tool. The modern self is aggressive: others must approve it. The modern Self is desperate. It longs for happiness, which frequently hinges on the approbation of other people.
The modern Self is also self-deceived. Only the Connected Self exists. Every person exists at the intersection of many threads, not as a lonely speck in the huge universe. The would-be unconnected self, looking inward to find itself, pretends to be a god, maker of rules, and re-creator even of biology. This inward looking Self cannot be. Only God himself can declare, “I AM THAT I AM (Exodus 3:14).” Only he, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God in three persons, is sufficient in himself, having aseity (theological term – the absolute independence, self-sufficiency, and autonomy of God). For any created being to claim a self-created, self-given identity found by looking inward is to blaspheme the true God.
I have heard people say, “Oh, he’s a McCracken; he’ll be good.” At one of our sons’ weddings, the father of the bride told me that when he heard whom his daughter was dating, he said, “Good, he’s an Edgar!” Now, you may not share these positive evaluations of McCrackens and Edgars, but they illustrate something central: a person’s identity comes from connections, to families among other things. When King Saul interviewed the shepherd who had just killed the giant Goliath, he asked him, “Whose son are you, young man? (I Samuel 17:58).” He did not ask, as moderns would, “Who are you?” or “What’s your name?”
So what is the pre-modern Self? In Christendom, the pre-modern Self more closely approximated the biblical Self, which is a Connected Self. What threads make a person who he (generic pronoun for both sexes) is?
1. The Creator In the beginning God made Man, male and female, in his image and likeness. See a human body, a person, and you see the Creator as in a mirror. Born a cracked mirror, every Self must be either a friend of God, becoming an ever better mirror of the Creator, or an enemy of God, destined eventually to shatter into wind-blown shards. We are restless until we find our rest in God, in whom alone there is rest. Every Self is connected to God, as friend or enemy.
2. Soil Every Self is connected to the earth, which nourishes us with food. Not everyone tills the soil, but some must, and every Self depends on them. No farmers, no food. No stable food supply, no peaceful civilization. Scarce food is the single most important cause of violent political revolutions. Destroy the soil, end rain, and make the world cold, and every Self will die. In the beginning, God made man from the dust of the earth and named him “Adam,” the Hebrew word for earth. We are so closely connected to the soil, that at death we return to it: ashes to ashes, dust to dust, there to wait until the Resurrection of the body. The whole Creation is connected to Man, which is “waiting for the redemption of our body (Romans 8:23).” Every Self is connected to the soil that gives us food and to which we will return, while the whole Creation awaits the resurrection.
3. Body No Self can escape its embodied reality. I am an old man of seventy-six winters. If my inner psychological self thinks I am young, that thought is simply wrong. No amount of exercise, dieting, and Botox treatments can make me young. I can pretend to be female, maybe even with the help of [expensive] surgical make-up, but it is still pretending. Each cell in my body has that male Y chromosome. I am an old, white-haired man and cannot be otherwise. Every Self is an embodied Self.
4. Father and Mother - Family Father and mother alone can produce a baby. They make a family and provide a home for their baby’s growth. The family can be replaced with distorted and inferior versions of itself, but the biology does not change. Some families have missing persons: a child without a father is “fatherless,” and in a weak position. To express sadness, we sing from the Negro spiritual, “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.” An orphan has no family, sometimes no living relatives, but still he knows that he came from a father and mother.
Father and mother who refuse to get along with each other, choosing instead the easy out of divorce, damage their children’s anchored sense of themselves and tempt them to the lie that they must look into themselves to find fulfillment. Christian mothers and fathers worry that TikTok videos, Drag Queen Story Hour at the library, or propaganda at their local college will endanger their children’s knowledge that they are either male or female and cannot change that fact. Miserable, hate-filled, angry, fighting Christian families, however, do far more damage to their children than these external threats.
Because we all know instinctively that we need a family, fakes abound. Employers boast, “We’re family here,” but they are not. They will fire you when they want to. A group of friends can call themselves a “chosen family,” but they aren’t a family. Friends drift in and out of such ersatz “families of choice.” The 1970s hippie communes were short-lived. (See Fake Families in A Little Strength 5.2)
Some children have the blessing of a rich family, growing up with father and mother, grandparents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, and cousins nearby. Jesus had such an earthly family: Mary and Joseph to whom he was subject (Luke 2:51), four named brothers and more than one sister (Mark 6:3), a famous cousin called John the Baptist (see Luke 1:36), and more. Other children are less rich. Nevertheless, every Self knows that it came from a biological father and a mother.
5. Marriage God created Man, male and female (Genesis 1:27, 5:1-2). A male and a female together can make a marriage. Not everyone marries, but most people do in all cultures, in all places, in all times. Whatever ceremony establishes a marriage, it is a pre-political reality since God himself joins a man and a woman in marriage (Matthew 19:6). Marriage is a life-long covenant of mutual faithfulness between a man and a woman to live as one flesh, for their mutual benefit, and for the bearing and rearing of children. Their sexual union as “one flesh” can create (procreate) a child. To pretend otherwise is to pretend. Discard male and female unions and there will be no babies – and no future. Love in a one-flesh Marriage of Man and Woman is as “strong as death (Song of Songs 8:6).”
6. Animals In the beginning, God brought animals to Adam to name them. Israelites lived with animals: the Tenth Commandment forbids coveting a neighbor’s donkey or ox. Until very, very recently, and still today in many places, people lived cheek by jowl with animals. Even cities were filled with horses. Many older Americans remember working with animals, especially dogs, cats, cows, pigs, and chickens. The modern world misses its animals, one reason why we still read our small children books about animals they will likely never deal with. The animals most of us see now are birds flying, the stray cat, outdoor mice that in winter want to be indoor mice, and the ubiquitous squirrel. Many people, therefore, go to significant trouble and expense to have pet dogs and cats. Some urban folk fanatically defend the habitats of wild animals they have never seen. Without quite knowing it, modern man longs for animals.
Machines that have replaced animals bring wealth and ease, but the cost of our lost connection to animals is greater than we suspect. One thread of the web that anchors our identity is nearly severed.
7. Country Every Self belongs to a tribe, or kindred, or nation, or kingdom, or empire. Like every country, the United States of America is made up of born citizens, naturalized citizens, and resident aliens both legal and illegal who generally hope to become citizens some day. Imagine a world with no tribes, villages, cities, nations, kingdoms, or empires, and you imagine a world where no one feels at home. A “man without a country” is adrift in a ship that docks nowhere. Every city, every locale, sometimes every street in a large city has its own identity, ways of speaking, and ambitions.
Because we all long for connections, propagandists trumpet fake communities, like the “LGBTQ+ community” or the “Transgender community.” But these folk don’t live in particular townships, staff volunteer fire companies, or coach each other’s kids in Little League games. It’s make-believe “community,” even if there are sometimes fairly long-lasting groups of friends that support and help each other. The “citizen of the world” is an outlaw, subject to the law of no country. Every Self has a connection to his “Polis” and his country.
8. Friends and Neighbors Every Self longs for friends. Some have many friends and some have few, but friends along with families and countries help to anchor a person in reality. The human person is excruciatingly vulnerable to the soul-crushing loneliness of having no friends or neighbors. When Paul arrived alone in Corinth, he quickly sought out friends and found two fellow tent-makers recently expelled from Rome, Aquila and Priscilla (Acts 18:1-3). We resemble a pride of lions or a pack of wolves, not tigers that hunt alone. Of course, people also have enemies, sometimes at work, sometimes living next door, giving us the challenge of loving our enemies and being at peace with all, as much as we can. The Self is connected to friends, neighbors, and workfellows.
9. Church God calls those whom he chooses into the Christian Church to form a brotherhood that will last forever. God’s elect enter his Church by the once-for-all rite of baptism that signifies being born again into the household of God. In the Church all believers together hear God’s Word read and explained. They sing to God himself in worship. Believers pray for help and forgiveness, giving thanks to their Creator and Redeemer. Remembering the present and coming King until his return, the Church eats and drinks in communion with each other and with their Lord. Isolated believers, who never worship bodily with the church, or who run in and out of the service quickly to avoid talking with other believers, flirt with danger: an isolated log in a fireplace soon stops burning. In a church a Self learns [imperfectly] to love the Creator and Redeemer, family, friends and neighbors, and yes, country too. God gives the Self in the Body of Christ, the Household of God, an everlasting home.
No Self is ever just an inner psyche endowed with the power to demand affirmation, maker of its own happiness. Every Self is embedded in a web of connections: to friends, soil, nation, family, and the Creator. Except for the Creator, the entire web has been twisted by sin and can hurt us. The modern Psychological Self, who scorns and tries to escape this web, looking inward to find an identity, struggles futilely to be happy. Who could be more alone? What could be more pitiable? Where did the Promethean and isolated modern Self come from? Not from wisdom, not from tradition, and certainly not from God the Creator. It doesn’t work. What will become of a family or nation full of lonely and imaginary modern selves? It will die. Every person trying to look inward to find himself should stop wasting his time and repent of that folly.
Christian reader: when you think of yourself, think less of yourself. Think of your family, your country, your neighbor, your church, your friends, your garden, your animals, and your God. Think how to make your families, your church, and your neighborhood places of peace and order. Aim to strengthen your tie to God and to others. Remember that every Self, however cracked, is created in the image of God to whom all power and glory belong.
– Bill Edgar
Book Review:
Marple’s Gretchen Harrington Tragedy:
Kidnapping, Murder and Innocence Lost in Suburban Philadelphia
by: Mike Mathis and Joanna Falcone Sullivan
History Press: 2022, 112 pp.
The authors are career journalists who lived in Marple (Delaware County, Pennsylvania) in August 1975, when eight-year-old Gretchen Harrington was abducted and murdered. They were a few years older than Gretchen at the time and memories of the crime have never left them. So they decided to write a book about it, using old newspaper clippings, Marple police records, an interview with Gretchen’s older sister Ann, a 1988 newspaper interview with Gretchen’s father Harold, and memories of Gretchen’s school and neighborhood friends. The Pennsylvania State Police refused them access to its records. The FBI never got involved despite parental pleas for their help.
The book narrates the horror of the Broomall neighborhood from the moment they heard the helicopter overhead and several hundred police and firemen searching, its new fear for its children, and the end of innocence. Up until 1975 nearly all children were what is now called “free range,” out until after dark, going where they wanted to, home in time for dinner the only parental rule. After Gretchen’s murder, especially since the murderer was never found, parents in Marple became far more restrictive and protective of their children – as they have across the country. Gretchen’s family, of course, was deeply affected ever after: her parents and her three sisters, the youngest of whom came home from the hospital the day Gretchen was murdered.
The book puts the murder in various contexts: the rapid growth of suburbs after World War II; other unsolved child murders in the Philadelphia area in the 1970s and since; the advance since 2000 in solving cases using DNA evidence; the lack of sharing of information in the 1970s between local police departments; the absence of constant news in 1975; and later FBI involvement in child disappearance cases that indicates how very rare stranger abductions actually are.
A hiker found Gretchen’s decayed body lying in some brush in nearby Ridley Creek State Park several months after her death. Her clothes were lying folded next to her skeletal body. Her mother Ena had sewed them and could therefore identify them with certainty. Dental records also confirmed the identification. More than one Marple child close to Gretchen’s age when she was killed still finds it difficult or impossible to visit Ridley Creek State Park. The author of this review, a member in 1975 of the Broomall Reformed Presbyterian Church where Gretchen’s father was the pastor, has entered that park only once since 1975.
The authors did their legwork gathering information for their history, except that they failed to contact church members from 1975 for their memories. They, as much as people then living in Marple, were deeply affected by Gretchen’s murder. The book quotes from the obituary of Harold Harrington written by Edgar, the Broomall RP Church’s next pastor without letting their readers know where to find the full obituary. Because the book puts the murder in so many different contexts, it can sometimes be a little hard to follow. Nevertheless, the book merits reading, especially by those who remember the crime and are still wondering whether it has ever been solved.
What can be gained by reading this book? One learns how deeply the local police can care about a case like this. The Marple police wanted justice just as much as Gretchen’s family did. One learns how a single event of such evil can immediately affect how parents and children live their lives and how it can have a lasting impact on mores even decades later. And one learns that sometimes there is no final “closure” in this life to evils done. The authorities think they know the man who killed Gretchen, Richard E. Bailey, who died in prison, but they can’t be sure. Even when dying, Bailey refused to talk to the Marple police. So the case is still officially open, probably waiting until all things are revealed at the end of time.
– Bill Edgar
A Little Help?
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Authors in this issue
Andrew Bailey is the son of Noah & Lydia Bailey and is a member of the Cambridge RPC.
Daniel Howe is the pastor of Christ RPC of Providence, RI.
Bill Edgar has published a two volume history of our denomination covering 1871 to 1980: History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America 1871-1920 and History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America 1920-1980. Find them on Crown & Covenant and Amazon.com. Read up and leave a review!
John Edgar is the pastor of Elkins Park RPC (Philadelphia). He recently completed his Doctoral of Ministry degree at Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
Jeremy Nelson is an elder of the Hazleton Area Reformed Presbyterian Church.