I give my time to the ordinary means and the people God has placed under our care. But saying it’s been freeing doesn’t mean it’s been made easier. Quite honestly, it’s more demanding than ever because I understand what these things are. The true biblical understanding of the fear of God takes greater space in my heart when I consider preaching, sacraments, and care of the people of God. But knowing the calling is clear and freeing; I know whom I belong to, and what that requires of me, in a light that before I only knew through observation and not personally.

In 2020, Dr. Clark interviewed me about my unconventional route to becoming a Presbyterian pastor and how I ended up receiving a call to the congregation I serve. It is strange to consider how much change can take place in only a few years. I still remember sitting in a coffee shop over ten years ago asking Clint, the first Presbyterian pastor I’d ever met, questions about polity, baptism, and covenant theology. Though, in hindsight, I wish it hadn’t taken so long, this eventually led to our joining a local PCA congregation four years ago as a member and having our children baptized, which to this day remains the highlight of all parts of this process. And now here I am, pastoring a PCA congregation.
I remember, on one of the last Sundays before we headed out of town to begin our new call, hearing a sermon preached by my good friend Daniel at the congregation where we had joined. As he was preaching, my heart was anxious about moving my family away from everything we knew to pastor a congregation of people I didn’t know, in a presbytery and denomination with men well beyond my gifting and wisdom, and in a denomination with a polity structure and Book of Church Order (BCO) that seemed the size of a congressional budget bill to this former Baptist pastor. Admittedly, I don’t remember the text of his sermon, but I remember his calling us to see that Christ has called us to Himself, and our tasks in the kingdom are for His sake, and that He equips us with the Holy Spirit, and we are to fear not. While the sermon certainly wasn’t given that day to me personally, it was a unique kindness from the Lord to help me in these last few days before heading to Woodstock, Georgia.
As of this writing, we have lived in Woodstock for nearly three years, and are very happy the Lord called us to this congregation, presbytery, and denomination. I can say now that in the beginning, things didn’t go as I would have thought, but at the beginning of January 2020 we never could have known the changes our country was about to face. However, our time here has been fruitful as I’ve had the privilege of baptizing a handful of covenant children, as well as two adults, and God opened an opportunity to secure a permanent facility for our church in July, 2020. We have seen our membership and regular attendance increase, and the congregation has graciously tolerated and welcomed me as their pastor. I’ve been able to give my time to pastoral care, preaching, teaching and praying, which in God’s kindness has developed a loving relationship between my family and the congregation. One unique aspect has been helping a number of new members find a home in a presbyterian church in the same way I did. How gracious of God to provide this in a time in our country—it would be easy to assume it would be the opposite.
In this kindness, the Lord has afforded me the ability to understand and mature in my beginning days of being a Presbyterian pastor. Though I had pastored for many years before and learned many things during that time, the particularities of being Presbyterian are new. I had never even been a member of a session, much less the moderator of one. I’m sure the other members have laughed thinking of the times when I clearly had no idea what I was doing.
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Joni Eareckson Tada, herself no stranger to chronic pain, writes of Anne Steele, “Hers was a ministry of suffering.”5. She goes on to say, “Do you serve God in your suffering? We serve him when we imitate Jesus’s endurance in our suffering. Or his patience in the face of disappointment or his perseverance while shouldering our cross. . . . And when we choose contentment over complaining, we imitate his glad willingness to submit to the Father’s terrible yet wonderful will. All of it comprises a fragrant, sacrificial service to God.”6 

When John Rippon published his influential hymnal A Selection of Hymns in 1787, 101 of the texts were by the short-lived but prolific Philip Doddridge (1702–1751). The second-most-represented author, with 47 texts in the hymnal, was Baptist poet Anne Steele. For many years, Steele’s poems figured prominently in evangelical hymnals, but by the early 20th century, her works nearly disappeared. By 1950, hymnologist Albert Bailey could write that “all but one of her 144 hymns are now forgotten.”1
However, Steele wrote hymns worth remembering and learning, hymns born out of a life of disappointment, grief, and suffering. When she was three years old, her mother died. A hip injury at age nineteen led to chronic physical pain for Anne. She also dealt with symptoms of malaria throughout her life. Many accounts of her life state that she was engaged to one Robert Elscourt, who drowned the day before or the day of their wedding. This may be a romanticized addition to her life, though she did remain unmarried her whole life.2 Her father remarried, but his second wife died when Anne was forty-three. A sister-in-law died two years later. Anne’s father developed poor health late in his life, and Anne cared for him until he died in 1769.
Despite the suffering and difficulty, Anne’s faith and hope were in God. Her father, a well-to-do merchant, also served as a deacon and eventually pastor of a Baptist church in Broughton, England. Anne joined the church at age 14 and from an early age exhibited a faith that expressed itself through poetry. She began to write primarily for her own devotional use, but her father saw the value of his daughter’s poetry and introduced these hymns to his church. Anne was initially reluctant to show her work to a wider audience, but through the encouragement of her father and step-mother, as well as a small group of pastors who championed her work,3 she submitted poetry for publication when she was in her early forties. The resulting book, Poems on Subjects Chiefly Devotional and published under the pen name Theodosia, introduced people to a significant new voice in hymnody. Baptist hymnologists Harry Eskew and Hugh McElrath state, “Miss Steele was the foremost of a group of Baptist hymnists . . . who, because their hymns possess a quality unsurpassed before or since, constitue a ‘Golden Age of Baptist Hymnody.’”4
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In Holy Communion God stoops down to our level to show the great mystery of our union with Christ in a very tangible manner. He does not just explain a complex theological concept to us and leave us to ponder about it. He lets us see, smell, touch, taste, and even participate in its reenactment. Even when we cannot see the cross of the past, or imagine our future feast, or comprehend our present union with Christ, Holy Communion still helps us get a small taste of this mysterious beauty.

What happens when Christians “do” Holy Communion? What’s the point of it? Is it just a visual aid—a symbolic depiction of something that can be communicated just as effectively by words? Is it something we really need?
Many of us might find it difficult to give clear answers to these questions—especially after the long period of online worship we have been through recently. Perhaps some of us still aren’t sure whether getting together for Communion makes any difference at all.
In this short article, I want to set out three things that Jonathan Edwards tells us about why we should take Communion seriously.
Remember: a Commemoration of Christ’s Death
This is perhaps the one thing that most Christians think of when they consider the meaning of Holy Communion. Remembrance is the most obvious aspect of the Communion. Jesus himself said during his Last Supper, “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24)
Jonathan Edwards said that Christ’s death “should be commemorated in the church in all ages by this representation of it in this ordinance [i.e., the Holy Communion].”[1] In a sense, this sacrament transfers our minds back across time. Every time Christians partake in the Holy Communion, we remember and even reenact Christ’s sacrifice which gives us life. And that’s a good thing. We are forgetful creatures. In the midst of the busyness and distractions of life, God has given us this sacrament to help us remember what Jesus has done. It is our duty to help our minds remember regularly by partaking in it as often as we can.
Hope: an Expectation of the Heavenly Feast
Holy Communion also transfers our minds to the future. This is probably not something a lot of Christians think of as they partake in Communion. But for Edwards, this was an important aspect of the sacrament. Communion is “a type of that eternal feast of the saints in heaven.”[2]
Imagine that: there are Christians having an eternal feast right now with Jesus at the head of the table—something that we, living Christians on earth, are looking forward to as well (see Isaiah 25:6; Revelation 19:9). We will join them when we get there. But for now, what we do during Communion is a “type”: a pointer towards that heavenly reality. Every time Christians partake in Holy Communion, we are participating in a spiritual feast together with all the saints—on earth and in heaven; from the past, present, and future. That future when we get together and actually feast with Jesus face to face will be “unspeakably happy and glorious”—so glorious that it will have to be experienced. But we can enjoy that experience now, to a small extent, as we partake in Holy Communion. Edwards constantly invited his church members to diligently participate in this sacrament for this reason. And he’s right. Who does not want to participate in that glorious heavenly banquet?
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