I want to testify to how the Lord has dealt graciously with me by pointing out two significant truths of this life.

The Reality of Death

My earliest recollections are from about two to three years old, a time where my parents were tenant farmers, or sharecroppers, in Illinois. I remember kerosene lamps, since we had no electricity. We had no running water or indoor plumbing until I was ten.

These years were difficult for my parents, through a number of events and frequent moves that were no fault of their own. When I was seven to eight, several of these events brought me to confront the reality of death. One night, my sister and I were awakened and asked to say goodbye to our father. It was his intention to commit suicide, and my mother used us to help convince him not to go through with it. He had been having health issues and was diagnosed with undulant fever, for which he was told there was no cure. At the same time, the farm we were living on experienced a flood, which wiped out all of our crops. It was overwhelming for my father.

In God’s providence, we convinced my father not to go through with his plan. However, without crops, which were our income, we sold everything we had and were still $5,000 in debt. My parents, over time, repaid all of that debt. A nearby farmer who owned two farms allowed us to live in the house he was not using. The following summer, my maternal grandfather, a steel worker in Chicago, Ill., was killed in an accident at work. It was a devastating loss. Not having a car, we traveled to Chicago by train for the funeral. Two weeks later, his father, my great-grandfather, died and we again traveled to Chicago for the funeral by train.

These experiences forced me to deal with the reality of death. My family had rarely attended church during these years but started to do so sporadically around this time. Following a few more challenging events and another couple of moves, the last to Abingdon, Ill., where my father was raised, we began attending the Christian Church that my father’s aunt had taken him to as a child. At age 11, I was baptized along with my mother and sister. Because of my association with the reality of death and my sin, I knew I needed a savior. I remember attesting during the baptism that I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I believe that God brought me to this point of acknowledging the Lord and that I was saved.

My relationship with the Lord was real, but between more moves and only occasional church attendance, I did not grow in any significant way spiritually. The Lord had given me a strong moral sense of right and wrong that protected me through high school and college. He also provided my wife with a like belief in the Lord and a strong moral standard. Upon our move to Columbus, Ind., we started attending North Christian Church. We were blessed with two children, Kelly and David.

The Life-Giving Power of the Word

The Lord then brought my wife to question the nature of her relationship with Him, and, through a friend in the church, she made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ. She also started attending a Bible study in her friend’s home led by Dr. Roy Blackwood. Following the completion of the bowling league season, I, too, joined the Bible study.

In that Bible study, the Lord brought Lynn and me to see and understand the Scriptures in a new way. Roy explained the Old and New Testaments from the Reformed perspective, and we sensed the beauty and wisdom of the Word and understood the Lordship of Jesus Christ in a whole new way. The lessons were learned: If you are going to grow in the Christian faith, you must be in the Word of God. If you are going to serve God, you need to know God and have a relationship with Him (John 1:1–5).

We later came to host this Bible study in our home for two to three years. Out of this study, a men’s early morning Bible study was initiated in a local Christian physician’s office.

About this time, women’s Bible Study Fellowship started a chapter in Columbus. Soon, women were growing more spiritually because of this study group than from the liberal churches they were attending. Several of them wanted to start a dinner fellowship where their husbands could meet and be encouraged by other Christian men. I was asked if I would provide leadership for the group, and it was called Insight. It started with six couples. Following the first meeting, I asked Dr. Roy Blackwood to lead a short Bible study or devotional at these meetings. Within five months, the Insight attendance reached 80 people. There was a genuine awakening and interest in the Word of God.

At the men’s Monday morning Bible study, we agreed that we were not being spiritually fed in the churches we were attending and initiated efforts to start a worship service, a youth group, a college Bible study and a young career-aged Bible study. We also continued to support the Insight fellowship group that was underway. I was asked to initiate the worship and continue to be the lead for the Insight group. Given the key role that Dr. Blackwood had already played, I continued to work with him as plans for worship were developed.

The first worship service was held in our home in late June 1977. Two more services were held that summer, and regular morning and evening services began in September 1977. We agreed to continue to hold services in our home until a more suitable meeting place could be found.

Dr. Blackwood stepped into the role of pastor by preaching our morning service held at 8:30 a.m. and returning to preach and teach in the evening service at 6 p.m. Following his preaching in Columbus in the morning, he would drive to Second RPC and preach their morning service. Dr. Blackwood’s faithful preaching of the Word, the encouragement to memorize Scripture, and singing the Psalms helped us grow in our faith and obedience. It was such an exciting change from what we had experienced in the liberal church we had left. The Lord used Dr. Blackwood in this way for two years. The next two years, two interns at Second RPC provided preaching, along with RP pastoral candidates for a potential call to Columbus.

While some of the original attendees to this church wanted to initiate an independent church, I felt called to stay the course with the Reformed teaching and Dr. Blackwood’s faithful service to God and to us. We were organized as an RP congregation in November 1978. Lynn, Kelly, and David were baptized as believers and joined the church in 1978 and I joined by profession of faith. I was elected an elder in the congregation soon after. The congregation continued to work toward calling a pastor, and the Lord blessed us with Jerry O’Neill accepting the call to Columbus in spring 1981. He joined the congregation in August, after completing his studies at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary (RPTS).

In 1983, two years after Jerry arrived, the congregation purchased the medical office building where we had met for Bible study and prayer over seven years prior. This allowed us to move the services from our home. Over those years when the church was in our home, we used the basement and all of the rooms for classes except the master bedroom and our son’s bedroom.

I want you to know how faithfully the Lord had called and prepared my wife, Lynn’s, heart to serve: She prepared the home not only for holding the morning and evening services each week, but for fellowship meals, session meetings, hosting pastoral candidates, and a presbytery dinner. We typically had 30–60 people at a service, and we had 88 people at the congregation’s organization and Jerry O’Neill’s ordination service. She also used her organizational skills in the Insight group and to generate community support for the crisis pregnancy center and Youth for Christ.

We have been greatly blessed by this church, the body of Christ, that the Lord has established. “The Lord created the heavens and the earth and everything in them” (Ex. 20:11), and yet He knows even us, and He knows us more completely than we know ourselves (Ps. 100:3; 139). “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence….For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 1:3–8). All praise, honor, and glory be to the Lord our God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.