Mr. Joseph has been a life-long member of Trinity Presbyterian Church, and has served first as a deacon from 1955 to 1962, then as an Elder from 1962 to 2014. In 1979 he was elected Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), the Church’s highest court, and served during the year 1979/80. He also served many years on the PCA’s Administration Committee, including several terms as Chairman.

William (Bill) Francis Joseph, Jr. was born in Montgomery, Alabama. June 15, 1929. Jesus came to take him home on Friday, May 20, 2022. His life was one of a faithful servant of Jesus.
John 12:26 If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.
William (Bill) F. Joseph Jr. was born in Montgomery, Alabama in 1929. He was the faithful son of William Francis Joseph and Alice Evans Pelzer Joseph. He attended Bellinger Hill Elementary, Baldwin Junior High and graduated from Lanier High School in 1947, and then attended Auburn University, earning a Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture in 1952.
On August 29, 1951 he married Florence (Peggy) Charles Hall at First Presbyterian Church in downtown Montgomery. They faithfully loved and served one another for 70 years till his death.
Their family included three sons; William “Billy” Francis Joseph III (Marian), Thomas Taylor Joseph (Peggy) and Charles Kinlock Joseph (Laura); grandchildren; Camille Joseph Carroll (Grant) and William Francis Joseph IV (Kayb), Thomas Taylor Joseph, Jr. (Jennifer), Edmund William Joseph, Blake Charles Joseph, Brannon Dyar Joseph, Tyler Hall Joseph, Austin Randolph Joseph (Brook), and 11 great grandchildren.
Mr. Joseph served two years in the Army during the Korean War. He returned to Montgomery in 1954 and joined the firm of Morton & McElhaney Consulting Engineers & Architects. Mr. Joseph became a partner in the firm in 1960. He retired in 2001 from Joseph & Spain Architectural Engineering. He served many a friend in Montgomery crawling under their homes to inspect their foundations for them. He has truly seen Montgomery from a different angle.
In 1964 he was elected to the Montgomery County Commission as a Republican, serving ten consecutive terms. He has served as Chairman of the County Commission for over 30 of his 40 years. Bill retired from the County Commission in November 2004. He was challenged to serve this way by his pastor, Dr. Robert Strong.
Mr. Joseph has been a life-long member of Trinity Presbyterian Church, and has served first as a deacon from 1955 to 1962, then as an Elder from 1962 to 2014. In 1979 he was elected Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), the Church’s highest court, and served during the year 1979/80. He also served many years on the PCA’s Administration Committee, including several terms as Chairman.
Bill also served for many years on the Board of Directors of God World Publication (World Magazine) formerly The Presbyterian Journal.
Bill served for many years on the Alabama and Montgomery Republican Executive Committee. He is a charter member and past President of the Capital City Kiwanis Club, a past member of the Board of Directors of the Chamber of Commerce, and a member of the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. He is past President of the Montgomery Symphony Board of Directors. Bill has served several terms as Chairman of the Central Alabama Aging Consortium and the Central Alabama Regional Planning and Development Commission.
Bill was always a problem solver. He tried to see both or all sides of an issue or difficulty while trying to find the right or best solution. Whether a building difficulty, a political problem, church decisions or dealing with his family he was a gentle, firm and loving servant of Jesus Christ. He followed Jesus, all the way to heaven itself. But as a sinner himself, he knew that Jesus was the one alone, who was able to present him faultless before the throne of His father.
Those who preceded his homegoing include his parents William Francis Joseph and Alice Evans Pelzer Joseph, his sisters Elizabeth Pelzer Joseph Boykin (Raymond) and Alice Joseph Davis (Withers), and niece Elizabeth Crum Boykin.
Those who remain here include his wife of 70 years Florence (Peggy) Hall Joseph, sons; William “Billy” Francis Joseph III (Marian), Thomas Taylor Joseph (Peggy) and Charles Kinlock Joseph (Laura); grandchildren; Camille Joseph Carroll (Grant) and William Francis Joseph IV (Kayb), Thomas Taylor Joseph, Jr. (Jennifer), Edmund William Joseph, Blake Charles Joseph, Brannon Dyar Joseph, Tyler Hall Joseph, Austin Randolph Joseph (Brook), 11 great grandchildren, 3 nieces, 4 nephews and many cousins.
The family would also like to thank his caregivers Carol Lovejoy, Lavekia Cook and Kiwi Pettway.
The family will gather at the graveside on Wednesday May 25, 2022 at 11 AM at Greenwood Cemetery.
On Thursday, May 26, 2022 Visitation will be at Trinity Presbyterian Church 1728 South Hull Street, Montgomery, Alabama from 10:00 to 11:45 a.m. followed by a Memorial Service at 12:00 p.m., officiated by Rev. Claude McRoberts and Rev. Michael Howell.
In lieu of flowers, he would be honored to be remembered with any donations made to Montgomery Christian School (334) 386-1749, 3265 McGehee Road, Montgomery, AL 36111 or Trinity Presbyterian Church, 1728 South Hull Street Montgomery, AL 36104
Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at Leak Memory Chapel for the JOSEPH family.
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The view of paedocommunion advocates, however, is that the benefit of the sacrament can be conveyed without any active subjective reception by the recipient. In other words, the receiver can be “worthy” (as a baptized child of the covenant) and yet be “ignorant” of the sacrament’s meaning. Our elders reasoned that this different theology of the sacrament itself would make it impossible for an officer of the church to uphold and protect the confessional standards from which they depart on this vital issue.

The Lord’s Supper is a sign and seal of our mystical union with Jesus Christ. It is also a means by which Jesus unites the different members of his church into one body. Our “coming together” (1 Cor. 11:17) at the Table of the Lord isn’t just a moment on our calendar—the Supper constitutes the church as the body of Christ.
So, what happens when the Supper divides the church rather than unites the church? I’m not focusing on how the heirs of the Reformation have not been able to bridge the differences that first appeared at the Colloquy of Marburg when Luther and Zwingli tangled. I’m focusing on how differences on the Supper sometimes divide the local church at the very point we should find the most intimate unity with our brothers and sisters in Christ every Lord’s Day.
In this essay, I’m reflecting on and lamenting a painful experience in the life of my church to illustrate this point. The real people who were involved are good and honorable, and I remain friendly with many of them. My intention in telling the story isn’t to call them into question or rehash the decisions our elders made. It is simply to lament the divisions in the church—locally and globally—and to help other churches and pastors who may be facing similar difficulties.
The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) congregation in which I serve as a pastor regularly solicits elder and deacon nominations from our members. The nominees are trained and examined by the current elders to ascertain their fitness for ministry. Those who are found qualified are put forward to the church for a vote. Over the years, our elders have occasionally disqualified men for a variety of reasons: an insufficient grasp of theology, biblical or doctrinal issues, personal issues, or otherwise. Recently, we disqualified two men because of their commitment to paedocommunion.
Adherents of paedocommunion reject the traditional practice of admitting children of believers to the Table only after making a profession of faith to the elders. Some churches set a minimum age for such an interview, while others require children to attend a communicants’ class or participate in a confirmation class. Although my church admits young children to the table, our elders interview every child and evaluate their age-appropriate profession of faith before admitting them to the Supper.
Our two candidates asked to make an exception to those portions of the Westminster Confession of Faith and Larger and Shorter Catechisms that speak to this aspect of our doctrine of the sacraments and Communion. Specifically, they objected to the language of the Larger Catechism, question 177:
Wherein do the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper differ?The sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper differ, in that Baptism is to be administered but once, with water, to be a sign and seal of our regeneration and ingrafting into Christ, and that even to infants; whereas the Lord’s Supper is to be administered often, in the elements of bread and wine, to represent and exhibit Christ as spiritual nourishment to the soul, and to confirm our continuance and growth in him, and that only to such as are of years and ability to examine themselves.
The biblical text for this catechism question is 1 Corinthians 11:28. Our candidates did not believe the Westminster Divines properly interpreted or applied that passage in using it to support the restriction of covenant children from the Supper. Our elders could respond in one of three ways:

We could judge that their stated exception was merely semantic. That is, the candidates believed the same thing our confessional standards express, but they used different language to state their beliefs.

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Calvin repeatedly reminds his hearers that the aspiration of believers is both to fear (for the sake of discipline) and to love (for the sake of emulation) God’s revealed majesty by living out, with the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, his character and actions as demonstrated in the Lord Jesus. By contrast, the grave sin of believers, then, is to know that revelation and not respond by obediently, insistently, and persistently living in accordance with it. That failure Calvin calls ingratitude and declares it worthy of condemnation.

In his introduction to the new translation of John Calvin’s Sermons on Job (Banner of Truth Trust, 2022), Dr. Derek Thomas (author of Calvin’s Teaching on Job: Proclaiming the Incomprehensible God) points out that the then contemporary interest in Calvin’s work on Job was such that two French editions were published, both coinciding with the Civil Wars of Religion in France (1562-1598). There followed translations into German, Latin, and English. Three further editions of the English version appeared subsequently, making the Job sermons more popular than the Reformer’s Institutes of the Christian Religion! Latterly, however, Calvin’s work on Job has become a neglected part of his corpus, with no modern translations of his sermons available. Now, for the first time, Calvin’s 159 sermons on this enigmatic work of wisdom literature are available in modern English for the first time in a new edition published by Banner of Truth.
Dr. Thomas surmises that a study of Job’s trials must have seemed appropriate in the midst of the civil upheavals of the Wars of Religion. Calvin had access to earlier expositions on Job but does not seem to have been influenced by them. He “did not believe that the book of Job contained solutions to the great moral dilemmas of the universe,” but, considering the book as “a lengthy discourse about God… he sought to turn the congregation in Geneva, and his own soul, to the reality of God’s sovereignty and power in the contingencies of a seemingly disordered life. According to Calvin’s Institutes, ‘in The Book of Job is set forth a declaration of such sublimity as to humble our minds.’” Calvin, as Dr. Thomas points out, compares his role as a preacher expounding the Book of Job to medical doctors who “need to be sensitive to the radically different treatments that various diseases require. Likewise, ministers of the gospel need to be aware that trials that befall a Christian require different diagnosis and treatment.”
Dr. Thomas also extends a challenge to those who read these sermons:
“It is not only the content of the sermons that astonishes us today; it is the fact that they were weekday sermons, each one averaging just under an hour’s exposition of Scripture. It is hard to imagine such a thing in our own time. We live in an indifferent age, barely able to cope with one sermon a week. When we pray for revival (and surely we do!), what do we expect by way of an answer? For, should the sovereign Lord grant our request, our appetite for Scripture would change, our thirst for the Word of God would grow. It is earnestly to be hoped that, after reading these sermons, we shall be challenged to pray in such a manner that we might desire such a change to be wrought in us.”
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