Westminster Biblical Missions to Pakistan - February 2007
Sardar Ahmed Din, Missionary
Dennis E. Roe, Interim Field Chairman
Dear Co-laborers in Missions,
Greetings in the wonderful name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I hope that this letter finds you well and rejoicing in the grace of our Lord.
Please note the change of address for the mission below. Recently the board appointed Mr. Arne Wilkening as treasurer. Mr. Wilkening, a board member and former missionary in Nepal, lives near Rising Sun, Maryland where we have located our post office box for the mission. Also, if you’ve sent anything to the old address, it will be forwarded to our new address.
Below is a summary of the report on the work that I recently received from Rev. Din. I hope you are encouraged by it. He reports the following: Read more…
Posted on March 22nd, 2007 by Rev. Dennis Roe
Filed under: Newsletters, Pakistan | No Comments »
Dear WBM Family,
My name is Dr. Clinton Szekely Foraker. The board of Westminster Biblical Missions appointed me interim field chairman for Central and Eastern Europe. I am also pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Rising Sun, MD and a founding member of the ERPC (Evangelical Reformed Presbyterian Church).
I have served on the WBM board for ten years. As you can tell from my middle name, Szekely, I am from Hungarian descent through my maternal grandparents, who came from the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. My “Nagy Papa” (grandfather), Andrew, was from devout Reformed stock, and one of his brothers was a minister of the gospel. From my earliest recollection, I have been interested in all things Hungarian. I can still remember sitting on my Uncle John’s knee and asking him, “What are we?” His reply, “Clinton, we are Magyars.”
Read more…
Posted on March 17th, 2007 by Rev. Dennis Roe
Filed under: Biographies, Eastern Europe | No Comments »
Sardar Ahmed Din, director of the Presbyterian Theological Seminary of Pakistan, became a Christian as a small illiterate village boy through the witness of American Presbyterian missionaries. The missionary program provided his early education and challenged him to dedicate his life for Christian service, which he did. Earning a scholarship, he attended Forman Christian College in Lahore, then India, but now Pakistan. There he won a number of academic and athletic awards. After graduation he worked for the American Embassy in Lahore and the Fullbright Foundation, but resigned to devote full time to Christian work. For many years Mr. Din was an ordained elder in the Bible-believing denomination, the Lahore Church Council, and is now an ordained minister. He has held important administrative positions in the church as well as teaching a number of subjects in the seminary.
Read more…
Posted on March 1st, 2007 by Rev. Earl Pinckney
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Founding
Westminster Biblical Missions, incorporated October 4, 1973, has its roots in historic Presbyterianism. Westminster identifies its doctrinal foundation in the Westminster Confession of Faith, and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms. Biblical signifies that the Bible, God’s only infallible revelation of rules and practices for mankind, and especially for His church is the determining factor in the testimony and ministry of the mission. Mission specifies the special area of its operations. Through its historic connections with the Independent Board For Presbyterian Foreign Missions, the issues that gave it birth in 1933 led to the adoption of “Standing in the Faith, Defending the Faith, Spreading the Faith” for its motto. The strategy adopted has been described in the book, Planting and Development of Missionary Churches (1885) by John L. Nevius. This is summarized in such statements as planting national churches that are selfsupporting, selfgoverning and selfpropagating.
Read more…
Posted on March 1st, 2007 by Rev. Earl Pinckney
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In the development of missionary churches it is necessary for those who are laboring as pastors to not “lord it over” the sheep. Scripture is very emphatic on this point. Christ says,
42 But Jesus called them to Himself and said to them, You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. 43 Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. 44 And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many. (Mark 10:42-45)
Read more…
Posted on February 26th, 2007 by Rev. Eric Bristley
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By Bruce F. Hunt
Preface to the Fourth Edition of John L. Nevius, The Planting and Development of Missionary Churches
In 1890 Dr. John L. Nevius, a Presbyterian missionary working in China, received an invitation to Korea from a group of seven young missionaries who were just beginning their work in that little peninsula off the east coast of Asia, which until then had been closed to missionaries. They asked him to give them two weeks of instructions in the missionary methods which he had first set forth in a series of articles in the Chinese Recorder in 1885. Read more…
Posted on February 20th, 2007 by Rev. Eric Bristley
Filed under: Missions | 1 Comment »
Life and Work
John Livingston Nevius was the seventh generation of Joannes Nevius who became schepen of New Amsterdam in 1654. About 1818 John P. Nevius moved from New Jersey to a farm the Finger Lakes region of western New York in the township of Ovid, Seneca County. His son, Benjamin Hageman Nevius, married in 1826 Mary Denton, of English descent. To them was born John Livingston on March 4, 1829, in the same place. During his early years on the farm John developed a strong physique and developed a knowledge of farming. With his brother Reuben he first attended Ovid Academy and then entered Union College, at Schenectady New York in 1845. Upon graduating in 1848, he went south to Georgia, where he taught school for a year with considerable success. The greatest event of this period, however, was his conversion. From his letters to his brother Reuben, his conversion was the result not of sudden influences from without but of months of inner questioning. Read more…
Posted on February 20th, 2007 by Rev. Eric Bristley
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Field Chairman to Mexico. Bill Higgins has worked with the native Tarascan peoples of Michoacán, Central Mexico, since 1997.
Bill has his B.A. degree from Covenant College. His M.A.T.S., S.T.M., and Th.M. degrees are from Whitefield Theological Seminary, as is his Ph.D. in Christian Thought, emphasis in Puritan Studies. He has also done graduate work in Education with the University of Tennessee. Read more…
Posted on February 19th, 2007 by Rev. Eric Bristley
Filed under: Biographies, Mexico | No Comments »
Earl was born April 22, 1923, the fifth of six children, into a nominal Christian Baptist home in Brewster, New York. He was baptized and became a member of the Baptist Church as a teenager, but had no assurance of salvation at that time. He graduated from Brewster High School in 1941 and joined the army in January, 1942. He became a second lieutenant in the Ordnance Corps in June, 1942, and served in the European theater during the war. At the end of the war he came to an assurance of salvation through the ministry of a chaplain. It was then that he decided to prepare for the ministry and he entered the National Bible Institute in New York, and graduated with a Bachelor of Religious Education degree in June, 1950. Read more…
Posted on February 19th, 2007 by Rev. Eric Bristley
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Dennis was born at Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1948. Following his graduation from high school in 1966, he spent two years in the U.S. Army. During his time in the Army he served a year in Vietnam as a combat infantryman and was twice awarded the Silver Star for heroism.
Having attended John Wesley College in Owosso, Michigan, he majored in Biblical Studies and minored in American History and received his Bachelor of Arts degree. Sensing God’s call to the ministry he studied at Theological Seminary of the Reformed Episcopal Church in 1979 where he received the Master of Divinity degree.
He is an ordained minister of the Reformed Church in the United States and has served in the Reformed Church since 1983. He began his pastoral ministry by pioneering a new work in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, where he labored 13 years before coming to Grass Valley.
Read more…
Posted on February 19th, 2007 by Rev. Eric Bristley
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