This Week in Church History

July 28

J. Gresham Machen

On July 28, 1881, J. Gresham Machen was born in Baltimore, Maryland.

The second of three sons born to Arthur Webster Machen and Mary Gresham Machen, Gresham was raised in an affluent Southern Presbyterian home, and his family attended Franklin Street Presbyterian Church, an influential Old School congregation. His upbringing nurtured him less in the “sentimental variety associated with Victorian Protestantism” than in “older forms of Protestant piety " the Bible, the Westminster Catechism, and Pilgrim's Progress,” according to biographer D.G. Hart. Machen's resistance to moralism would prompt his initial reluctance to enter the ministry after his education at Johns Hopkins University and Princeton Seminary. Eventually, his theological and cultural viewpoints would lead him to reject both theological modernism that he would condemn in Christianity and Liberalism and the “sickly interdenominationalism” of Protestant fundamentalism.

- John Muether

History of Grace OPC

Grace Church began its existence as an Orthodox Presbyterian church on June 15, 1978. Its history, however, looks back to June of 1963. Duane Edward Spencer was then a Methodist minister resigning from the Methodist Church because of its liberalism. Other members left with him and together they established Grace Bible Church of San Antonio. The first worship services were held at a Ramada Inn.

The church eventually grew and a seven-acre tract of land was purchased near the intersection of Interstate 10 and Loop 410 on the northwest side of town. Military barracks buildings were moved onto the property and later remodeled into an attractive complex for church use.

Spencer was a popular figure on the Bible conference circuit and developed an international radio ministry. His method of preaching and teaching centered on what he called the "key words of Scripture." This involved studying individual words of Scripture, in their original languages, as a means of interpreting the Bible. The result was a rediscovery of the truths of Scripture as taught by the Protestant Reformers.

Ultimately, Spencer became convinced that the Reformation was a watershed in church history and that the faith of the Reformers (i.e., the Reformed theology) was in keeping with the word of God. In 1977 the congregation of Grace Bible, after investigating Reformed churches with which to unite, applied for membership in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

It should be noted that Spencer created controversy in the mid-1970's preaching from the Scriptures concerning election and predestination. In most churches these doctrines were either vilified or suppressed. John Bradford once wrote, "Let a man go to the grammar school of faith and repentance before he goes to the university of election and predestination." For many, Duane Spencer opened the door to that "university."

Duane Spencer died on December 28, 1981. He was succeeded in the ministry by Jack Peterson, who was Grace's pastor for more than 20 years before being succeeded by our current pastor, Nathan Hornfeld.