Introduction

The joyful privilege of the teaching ministry in Oswego, N.Y., RPC has been mine since Dec. 2, 1980, and is scheduled to conclude on Dec. 31, 2020. I pray and plan for a very active retirement, but I find that my strength is becoming unequal to the right demands of the solo teaching ministry.

We began seeking our next pastor about a year ago and enjoyed hosting a number of men we thought would serve us well. They would have, but the Lord’s call to service elsewhere was clear to them and to us. Therefore, we continue to seek the Lord’s provision and pray that this article will stir the heart of the man God will call to be our next pastor.

Community

Oswego means “outpouring” and refers to the Oswego River, which flows north and empties into Lake Ontario. We are well known for our lake-effect storms that give us an average snowfall of about 150 inches per year. Our proximity to the lake also gives us extra warmth in the winter and cooling in the summer compared to inland areas. The river and lake provide many recreational opportunities, including excellent fishing and boating.

City government and services are good and improving; they include regular community events, fully staffed police and fire departments, very competent public works, and well-managed water and wastewater treatment plants. Our public schools are academically solid and we have a small, faithful Christian school (evangelical/mildly Pentecostal). Our major businesses include six electric generating plants (three nuclear, two natural gas, and one oil), an aluminum processing plant, a campus of the State University of New York, an extensive hospital system, and various smaller businesses, including many wonderful restaurants.

We have the usual mainline and Roman Catholic churches, which are very much diminished. Many of the Catholic congregations are in the process of merging. I have a personal relationship with some of the mainline pastors and pray for opportunities to seek reformation in these congregations on the foundation of the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scriptures and echoing in the Confession and Catechisms. We have five evangelical churches; three Pentecostal, one Alliance, and Oswego RPC. One of the Pentecostal churches had a pastor in the 1980s who was a Martyn Lloyd-Jones fan, with the result that elements of Reformed theology and Presbyterian government remain in that congregation. This legacy gives us a greater closeness with them. Recently, we worked with their pastors to help a family that was bouncing between our congregations. Many of the evangelical pastors meet weekly for prayer in the City Hall Common Council chambers and semi-monthly for mutual instruction and encouragement. For a season, a few of us enjoyed biblical languages study and reading together.

Congregation

Our congregation is a daughter of the Syracuse, N.Y., RPC through the labors of Pastors Edward Robson and Charles Leach in the late 1970s. I assisted Pastor Leach as an intern after seminary and continued the work when he was called to Japan. The St. Lawrence Presbytery organized the congregation on Oct. 7, 1980, and I was ordained to the teaching ministry and installed into this work in this congregation on Dec. 2, 1980, as mentioned. The Lord used us to plant a church in Fulton, N.Y., in 1995 and another in the Utica, N.Y., area in 1997, largely through the work of dedicated ruling elders, pastoral interns, and local families. We have had the privilege of hosting many pastoral interns over the years. We enjoyed these gifted and faithful young men with distinctive personalities and diverse ministry styles.

We started out as a small group dedicated to Scripture and doctrinal study, regulated worship, mutual care, and community connection. Morning and evening Lord’s Day worship, Sabbath school after morning worship, the Lord’s Supper once a month in evening worship, and a monthly fellowship dinner were the standard elements of our life together. We have developed into a congregation with broader needs and wider opportunities though still strongly committed to the ordinances of worship and means of grace and the Great Commission.

Our current schedule includes Lord’s Day morning worship with the Lord’s Supper; private hospitality in the afternoon; evening fellowship for sermon discussion, praise, and prayer; and a fellowship dinner once a month. We enjoy a community family night each Wednesday with a full meal followed by classes for all ages, including two classes for adults, one on basic doctrine and church history and the other a detailed Bible study. Some of us often meet on Thursday evenings for our Invisible Choir, where we practice the psalms for the coming Lord’s Day morning worship as well as other selections that are more challenging to sing. This is to provide help to the congregation in skillful and joyful praise, each choir member sitting with their family and thus invisible as a choir.

The session (three ruling elders and one teaching elder) meets monthly on the second Tuesday and the diaconate (three deacons and one deaconess) meets as needed, though they are in regular communication about actively meeting various needs. We have enjoyed a dedicated and long-serving core of laborers, including officers and members.

The spirit of the age “loathes this miserable food” (Num. 21:5) of the ordinary means of grace that the Spirit uses to do His extraordinary work. Instead, there is a preference for the thin soup of easier and more entertaining broad evangelicalism. Consequently, we do not experience transfer growth and, instead, persevere in the challenge of sacrificial and long-term investment in individuals and families. The word on the street is that we are respected by the Christian community but alien to their expectations and too salty for their taste. We are not well known by the broader community, though some are familiar with the monthly articles that I submit to the local paper as a contributing columnist.

Our first meeting place was the Oswego Town Hall, southwest of the city. After this, we met in the city of Oswego at the YMCA and then the Dante Alighieri Italian American Club, spending a few years in each. For about 10 years, we met at the American Legion, which had been First Presbyterian Church until the Second World War. But the time came when we needed to relocate, and we had no options. The First United Methodist Church near Oswego State invited and hosted us very kindly for a year. During that time, the Lord provided our current building, which has been a blessing to us since 2000.

Champlain Commons, a subsidized housing project, is under construction to our north and will have 56 units, including 16 for special needs. The crew is making surprising progress in horrible weather, and completion is scheduled for the spring. We are praying for significant opportunities for gospel ministry with the residents in the coming years. We anticipate welcoming many new people to our community family night dinners and classes, and may have an opportunity to offer various classes in the community room of this housing complex or in our building. We are reconsidering additions to our current facilities in connection with serving our new neighbors.

We praise God that we have known His guidance, faithfulness, and blessing over these almost 40 years of our congregational fellowship and ministry.

I would like to see our biblical languages reading group resume. I would also like to see us resume our IXTHUS Christian Study Group at Oswego State and make a renewed effort in church planting in Watertown, N.Y. I continue to dream about a Calvin Institute of annual lectures at the college along with a large house for students mentored by a resident older couple. I long to see permaculture developed on our current property, including natural burial. Another dream is a Farel Farm to provide employment, housing, fresh foods, and a setting to host guests for a season of refreshment.

Succession

We pray that the Lord will raise up our next pastor soon and that he will be desirous of participating in a process of succession in which I, as the current pastor, will lead with the next pastor’s assistance, transitioning into the next pastor continuing on his own. Scriptural models of succession include Moses and Joshua, Elijah and Elisha, and Paul and Timothy. An audio file and a PDF outline of a sermon on this subject are available here.

Responses

Please pray with us that the Lord will provide our next pastor soon. Remember also other congregations who need a pastor. Consider praying regularly for men for the ministry and ministry for the men, including thanksgiving and petition for the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary students, faculty, administration, and staff. If you are a teaching elder, or are preparing to become one, and the Lord inclines your heart to the need and opportunity for this service in our congregation, please send a succinct resume, testimony, and philosophy of ministry to Pastor Swartz at oswegorpc@hotmail.com. Any other responses to this article are invited and will be appreciated.

Kit Swartz is pastor of Oswego, N.Y., RPC and the writer of the Songs of the Covenant column that appears in the Witness.