If you’re around long enough, people assume you’ve always been there, like the woodwork. That’s true for me and the Reformed Presbyterian Church. I was once new to the denomination, struggling to learn the people, places, and documents, and trying to get used to hearing my untrained voice singing a cappella.

One thing I valued right away is all the good information in the RPCNA that has been committed to print. The RP Testimony was a treasure in those early days, and there’s a ton of great doctrine, history, and other writing available to you.

Considering how much there is to know might tempt someone to think, “Why bother?” And the past is in the past. Regardless of how much you want to think only about the church today, the church’s history will always be a part of its present. To try to forge ahead without understanding the context is like agreeing to pull a cart without knowing the weight of the contents.

Finding someone to curate the mountain of information available to you is invaluable. Nathaniel Pockras has distinguished himself in the Reformed Presbyterian Church with his depth and breadth of historical research, and for marrying that with technology. He has edited and digitized some really important works, from Glasgow’s history of the Reformed Presbyterian Church to the complete acts of RPCNA Synods.

I’m very pleased that Nathaniel will be writing a column for this magazine, beginning with this issue. Unless you’re thoroughly schooled in RP history yourself, you’re going to learn a lot through this column, and you’re going to have an excellent guide for doing so.

At a time when media and social media seem bent on doomsday scenarios, Nathaniel sees a deeper theme to history. “As we look to the future of Christ’s Church, we have cause to rejoice, whether we consider all of organized Christianity or just the RPCNA. We know that God will ultimately have the victory, be it tomorrow or thousands of years into the future, and for this let us praise Him” (from the 2005 foreword to W. Melancthon Glasgow’s History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in America).