This past weekend we went down to Baton Rouge to see two of my brothers and their families (Hurricane Delta unfortunately cut our trip short by a day). On Sunday morning we visited South Baton Rouge Presbyterian Church, a PCA congregation that was planted in 2000, a couple years after I graduated from LSU. When I was growing up nearly all the Presbyterian churches in Baton Rouge were in the PCUSA, and the only PCA churches were on the outskirts of Baton Rouge or in surrounding towns. I was brought to Reformed convictions during college, and attended Plains PCA (where the Kwasnys were members) - about a thirty minute drive from LSU and downtown Baton Rouge. So when I heard that a PCA church was being planted near LSU, I rejoiced.
Church planting has been in the DNA of the PCA from its inception, and it has also long been in the DNA of Pear Orchard Presbyterian Church. A church plant ourselves out of First Presbyterian Church Jackson, in our brief lifetime as a congregation we have supported dozens of church planters around the country, partnered with Highlands Presbyterian Church to plant Madison Heights Presbyterian Church, and been a founding church of the Mid-South Church Planting Network. The three senior pastors before me were committed to church planting, and I want to follow in their train. I want our congregation to continue to be a church planting church, a church that sends its money and its members into areas of our community devoid of solid Reformed Presbyterian churches centered on the gospel of God in Christ - for planting new churches is one of the best ways to reach the lost for Jesus and to energize the evangelistic fervor of established churches.
If you looked at a map of the Jackson metro area, you’d see several places where there are no PCA congregations: Gluckstadt, Canton, Richland/Florence, southwest Jackson near JSU, the Northshore/further out Lakeland - and soon the 39211 zip code. For at the end of January 2021, for a variety of reasons, Trinity Presbyterian Church will be closing its doors after 70 years of service to Christ and His people. You have likely seen several Trinity families visiting among us on Sundays and Wednesdays, as they consider where the Lord might lead them to transfer their membership. But as those families disperse into congregations across the metro area, a hole will be left for gospel ministry in one of the most diverse and populated zip codes in our region.
Let’s be praying that the Lord, who is never slow but never in a hurry, would raise up a new church in due time in 39211, to reach His elect there with the gospel of Jesus. Very early initial and exploratory conversations about what this plant might look like and how it might come about have begun in our Presbytery, and it excites me to think about ways that Pear Orchard might be able to play a role in a new work to our south one day. And one day in the future, who knows what other churches might be planted around us - as the saying goes, we often overestimate what can be done in five years, and underestimate what can be done in twenty years. God is at work! And we are privileged to join Him in the harvest fields.
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This coming Lord’s Day I will be preaching from Genesis 38, the story of Judah and Tamar. I encourage you to read it ahead of time (especially if you have children) so that you won’t be caught off guard and so that you will begin to think through how you might discuss it with your family. It’s a shocking and sordid story of sexual sin, and depicts the reality of life in a fallen world without sugar coating any of the raw and awkward edges. But it also reveals the shocking grace of God, who saves a sinful people and brings good out of evil. Be praying for our time together in God’s word.