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Our Senior Pastor

We have found our new Senior Pastor!!  The congregation and Presbytery of Boston have concurred in the election of the Rev. Dr. D. William McIvor as our Senior Pastor.  Bill was installed on June 8, 2003.

Read the letter from Bill McIvor here.

I am a member of the Presbyterian Association on Science, Technology and the Christian Faith (publishing its quarterly newsletter and maintaining its website), Covenant Network, and a Paul Harris Fellow (Rotary International). I enjoy reading, running (very slowly), and Macintosh computers.

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How to begin a personal statement of faith? Credo—I believe. Yes, credo. Yet I am increasingly less likely to think of a personal statement of faith for it is the church that believes. As individuals we believe—and I believe—as part of the believing church and its creeds and confessions. So I will affirm my faith within the outline of the ordination and installation questions asked of deacons, elders, and ministers of the Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

1.     Do you trust in Jesus Christ your Savior, acknowledge him Lord of all and Head of the church, and through him believe in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

My faith in God is thoroughly christocentric and trinitarian. “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself.” (2 Cor. 5.19a) Blessed by being raised in a Christian home, I committed my life to Jesus Christ at an early age. I committed myself to Christ’s service while in high school. All of my adult life has been preparing for or doing Christian ministry. The sacrament of baptism in the trinitarian name greatly influences my understanding of God’s work in the world and in me through Jesus Christ. One of the lenses through which the church sees baptism is the sea crossing of the Israelites as they fled Pharaoh’s army. As the story is told in Exodus 14, the faith of the people is not extolled: “[The people] said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?”(Exo. 14.11) But God faithfully delivered an unfaithful people. “For God’s faithfulness signified in Baptism is constant and sure, even when human faithfulness to God is not.” (W-2.3007) Salvation is God’s work through Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. This I believe.

2.     Do you accept the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be, by the Holy Spirit, the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the church universal, and God’s Word to you?

The Confession of 1967 was adopted by the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America shortly before I began entered seminary in 1970. Perhaps because of this chronological proximity, its brief statement about the Bible (9.27-9.30) has been a touchstone for my understanding of the Scriptures. “The one sufficient revelation of God is Jesus Christ, the Word of God incarnate, to whom the Holy Spirit bears unique and authoritative witness through the Holy Scriptures, which are received and obeyed as the word of God written.” When the Ethiopian eunuch was reading from Isaiah as he traveled the road from Jerusalem to Gaza, Philip came alongside and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” (Acts 8.30) That is the primary hermeneutical question and the right lens to understand what we are reading is Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, a lens best known and used in the context of the believing community. “The Scriptures are not a witness among others, but the witness without parallel.” (9.27) This I believe.

3.     Do you sincerely receive and adopt the essential tenets of the Reformed faith as expressed in the confessions of our church as authentic and reliable expositions of what Scripture leads us to believe and do, and will you be instructed and led by those confessions as you lead the people of God?

Given what the Scots Confession says about councils and people, that they may err and “we do not receive uncritically whatever has been declared to men” (3.20), “instructed and led by” is the proper stance not only towards our church’s confessions but towards all theological and historical understandings. Protestants in general and Presbyterians in particular distinguish our view of the teachings of the church as having a lesser authority than the Word incarnate or the Word written. But not no authority. We live within the biblical tradition, within the tradition as expressed in our confessions, and within the insights of human knowledge. I do not think our Reformed confessional heritage is the only way to be a faithful Christian but it is the way I seek to be faithful. This I believe.

4.     Will you fulfill your office in obedience to Jesus Christ, under the authority of Scripture, and continually guided by our confessions?

Among many felicitous phrases in the Brief Statement of Faith, a few lines near its close express well my sense of fulfilling my office in obedience to Christ. “In gratitude to God, empowered by the Spirit, we strive to serve Christ in our daily tasks and to live holy and joyful lives, even as we watch for God’s new heaven and new earth, praying, ‘Come, Lord Jesus!’” (10.4) Christ, Scripture, and confessions all teach that we live and obey in light of the End. This I believe.

5.     Will you be governed by our church’s polity, and will you abide by its discipline? Will you be a friend among your colleagues in ministry, working with them, subject to the ordering of God’s Word and Spirit?

Occasionally I am asked why I’m a Presbyterian. In a sense I had no choice. I was born, baptized, raised, confirmed, married, and ordained in the context of one Presbyterian congregation. Presbyterianism is my heritage. But more importantly I choose Presbyterianism because of its connectional structure. I believe God created us for community. We are made to be together in family, in neighborhood, in society, and in covenant community with sisters and brothers in Christ. This requires individual responsibility and discipline alongside a commitment to others even when it would be easier to go it alone. This I believe.

6.     Will you in your own life seek to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, love your neighbors, and work for the reconciliation of the world?

To follow Christ, love neighbor, and work for reconciliation is what it means to witness, to account “for the hope that is in you.” (1 Peter 3.15) Our witness is to the faith that has awakened in us the love of God in the hope that others will also recognize the Lord’s presence. In all the ways that Christians live, they give witness to their faith. That is why witness is not just a verbal exercise. It is testimony of word and deed. It emphasizes the living quality of our faith in Jesus as did Philip when he invited Nathanael to “come and see.” (John 1.43) True witness enlivens our Christian life in both its personal and corporate expression. This I believe.

7.     Do you promise to further the peace, unity, and purity of the church?

Peace, unity, and purity are God’s gifts, not human achievements. Where two or three Presbyterians are gathered together, there will be two or three different opinions. It is not that diversity is wrong. In fact, diversity is also God’s gift. This is the fundamental insight of Paul’s discussion of spiritual gifts and the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12. But the apostle concludes the twelfth chapter by saying, “And I will show you a still more excellent way.” That way, of course, is love—easy to say and very hard to do. But we love confident that though we now see in dim mirrors, we will see face to face. (1 Cor. 13.12) This I believe.

8.     Will you seek to serve the people with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love?

The Second Helvetic Confessions says something very interesting about preaching in particular and, by extension, about ministry in general. “The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God. Wherefore when this Word of God is now preached in the church by preachers lawfully called, we believe that the very Word of God is proclaimed, and received by the faithful; and that neither any other Word of God is to be invented nor is to be expected from heaven: and that now the Word itself which is preached is to be regarded, not the minister that preaches; for even if he be evil and a sinner, nevertheless the Word of God remains still true and good.” (5.004) There is no question that I “be evil and a sinner.” But I serve with all that I have in the confidence that God’s Word in me “remains still true and good.” This I believe.

9.     Will you be a faithful minister, proclaiming the good news in Word and Sacrament, teaching faith, and caring for people? Will you be active in government and discipline, serving in governing bodies of the church; and in your ministry will you try to show the love and justice of Jesus Christ?

The 213th General Assembly (2001) restored a paragraph to the Book of Order, language traceable to the 1789 Form of Government affirming the roles of the pastoral office. “The person who fulfills this responsibility has, in Scripture, obtained different names expressive of his or her various duties. As he or she has the oversight of the flock of Christ, he or she is termed bishop. As he or she feeds them with spiritual food, he or she is termed pastor. As a servant of Christ in the Church, the term minister is given. As it is his or her duty to be grave and prudent, and an example to the flock, and to govern well in the house and Kingdom of Christ, he or she is termed presbyter or elder. As he or she is sent to declare the will of God to sinners, and to beseech them to be reconciled to God, through Christ, he or she is termed ambassador. And as he or she dispenses the manifold grace of God and the ordinances instituted by Christ, he or she is termed steward of the mysteries of God. Both men and women may be called to this office.” (G-6.0202) This I believe.