Author Archives: A. Donald MacLeod

The Minister as Intercessor

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An excerpt from A. Donald MacLeod’s latest book.

An explanation for this book.

My wonderful 21-year-old grandson, Callum, asked me two questions as we were discussing his future: “What is it like to be a minister, Gramps? How has the ministry changed since you were ordained back in 1963?” It is to respond to these questions that I have set out my answer, in hopes that it will clarify both his understanding, and share what I’ve learned during my years of service. — ADM

Chapter 5 – Ministry to a New Generation

Writing about the prayer life of a minister, I must start with a disclaimer. There is no subject that makes me feel more inadequate, more prone to the complaint that I am a hypocrite, but I know of no minister who feels that his or her prayer life is totally adequate, as the sheer pressures and time constraints of our profession make it very difficult to find the time we need to spend on our knees. It is also one of the most subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) temptations of the Evil One to keep us from this essential ingredient of a fulfilling and life-changing ministry. In eternity, the question will be asked of each of us, as to how faithful we have been in our prayer life, and I can speak only for myself when I admit that I have been sadly deficient in this regard. With this caveat, I proceed to the Scriptural teaching about the minister as intercessor, and turn to the life of our Lord. I have always found helpful a marvellous book, Our Lord Prays for His Own, by Marcus Rainsford, who pastored first in Dundalk, Ireland, and later at St. John’s Church in Belgrade Square in London. His classic treatment of John 17 provides soul-searching explanations of our Lord’s high-priestly prayers for His followers as He was on His way to the cross. Jesus is our example and there is no better illustration of this than His prayer for Peter as He and the disciples gathered at the Last Supper, and he indicated that he was praying for Peter that his faith not fail. As I have asked the Lord to strengthen the commitment of a faltering parishioner, I have often thought of His prayer and recognized that although there may not be an immediate answer, we can be sure of one at the end, in His will, because He is faithful.

Our Lord prays that His disciples will be one, even as He and His Father are one, and that He would, in His time and good pleasure, fulfill His purposes in our lives, as His intercession combines with our prayers to keep those who are under our charge faithful and fruitful. My own praying for my congregants started early in my ministry as I found myself in conflict with the woman who provided a student minister with room and board in her guesthouse. For some reason she took an immediate dislike to me, and did everything she could to thwart my ministry. One day I picked up the party line at our house to call a parishioner, only to hear her lambasting the new student, and advising her friend not to return to church the next Sunday. She was also the organist at this small country church, and one Sunday, minutes before worship was to begin, she decided she would not turn up to play. Fortunately, we had an alternative, and a replacement was quickly arranged, but it was a shattering experience, and I barely got through the service. I prayed urgently that the Lord would remove this trial, but she stayed on and remained as organist, though I was able to make alternative boarding arrangements the next summer.

A second challenge occurred the night I learned, at the very end of my posting, that a family in my congregation, returning from a holiday in Saskatchewan, had had a serious car accident and three parishioners had been killed. I remember standing outside the home of the family I was visiting at the time, and prayed earnestly to the Lord that I would be given strength as I went to visit the bereaved family that dark night. The sad thing was that I had neglected my own personal devotional life for several days previously, and had to be reconnected with Jesus, but the Master came and healed me and used me in turn to bring healing in that terrible situation. Four days later, as mourners crowded the packed church to pay their last respects, Dr. Reid supported me as he preached a magnificent sermon.

The whole incident was a powerful reminder to me, as I started my final year in university, that God was in control of my life, and how essential both my devotional life and my dependence on Him would be for an effective prosecution of a Gospel ministry.

One of the powerful resources for my prayer life throughout my years of ministry has been a diligent study of Paul’s great prayers for his correspondents in his epistles, as he lists the requests he makes for the congregations in Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, as well as in the letters to Timothy and Titus. We can connect with him and I have often turned to his words in specific intercessions during my prayer times, naming people and situations. It means that I do not deal in generalities, but focus on particular needs and individual requests.

When I came to start a new church in Scarborough, suburban Toronto, I found the pressures of beginning a church from scratch very demanding, but also very exhilarating. Things were going well, and the congregation was growing as we approached the building of a new edifice, but then a problem occurred, and everything seemed to fall apart. Two prominent families in the church were caught up in a moral crisis, and I blundered in where angels would have feared to tread. Both families left our church, along with several others, and I poured out my heart to the Lord in desperation. The Rev. Gerald and Kitty Griffiths, who had had a connection with one of the families called me to say they were en route to catch a plane at Pearson and would stop by to see us. They came in and prayed with me and I shall never forget their intercession which sustained me in a dark moment, and gave me strength for the journey.

I also received reassurance from a denominational official, the Reverend Howard Doig. We clergy need each other’s support as no one else can fully understand the challenges we face. As I was thrown upon the Lord, blessing and growth came that summer as they had never done previously. Once again, challenges in the ministry brought me back to the Source of my strength, and I was grateful to the Lord for His presence and peace.

While I was in ministry at Knox Church, Toronto, I discovered the benefits of a “monthly prayer day.” I would go off to our denominational retreat centre in Crieff, where a cottage was made available for me in beautiful woodland surroundings. There I would shut the door, take out my Bible, and furiously write out my prayer needs in longhand as I cited all the situations in my ministry that needed intercession. Then I would commit them to the Lord in prayer. I never returned from those days apart without peace restored and calm gained. I have kept those pages and as I look over them I see how faithful God has been in His presence and grace.

I remember John Allison, a beloved minister in the PCC now gone to glory, who would list his prayer requests with a blank column on the right side of the page to record when an answer was given or how it was resolved. John, who had been a fellow student at Westminster Seminary, experienced challenges in his years as pastor in British Columbia and Ontario. He was known as a great person of prayer, and whose premature death saddened us all. As his former roommate, I can still see him at 6 a.m. every morning, kneeling beside our bunk bed where he had the lower level with his feet turned outward in prayer, as he would spend more than an hour each day in intercession. No wonder God powerfully used him through the years of suffering and challenge.

In subsequent years, when I moved to the city of Boston, I was able to make use of a Roman Catholic retreat centre, where I found consolation and courage in my times of solitude and prayer. I did not need a rosary to systematize my intercession, but found again that systematic writing out of prayer needs kept me on target and disciplined a mind that could easily be distracted during those times.

Confidentiality and discretion are essential in group prayer, particularly clergy group prayer. Gossip must be avoided. Some years ago, while I was in Boston, there were a number of evangelical young PCUSA pastors who gathered in a small New Hampshire village every month for support and prayer. All went well at first, and I was grateful that my assistant, fresh out of seminary, had found courage and strength there, but then I started to hear reports that she had requested prayer for her relationship with her “difficult senior pastor.” The complaint was that I had not allowed her equal time in the pulpit with me, and that I had been overbearing.

It compromised my relationship with several of those pastors, which was awkward.

One of the greatest helps in my devotional life has been my use of certain classic books on prayer. As a teenager I was introduced to Hallesby’s book, Prayer, and subsequently Augustine’s Confessions and books written by Oswald Chambers, Amy Carmichael, and A.W. Tozer.

Books of prayers were also useful. When I was a child, my father would conduct our daily devotions from A Chain Of Prayer Across The Ages: Forty Centuries Of Prayer, 2000 B.C.-A.D. 1912, compiled by Selina Fitzherbert Fox and published in 1913, which incorporated prayers from many sources. Dad used to say that this kept us from wandering and was helpful in focusing both our language and our content. He also would bring us regularly to Anglican Evensong which was a beautiful worship experience based on the magnificent Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. We attended memorable worship services in St Andrews Church on Nathan Road in Kowloon. Some of those prayers still illumine my own language in prayer and intensify my understanding of talking with God, so that my thoughts do not wander. Our family worship had been a very powerful experience growing up, and I attempted to recreate it for my own family worship. We made prayer a family experience which we hope provided inspiration for our children and grandchildren. On a

memorable trip to the UK in 1966, a friend from Harvard Graduate School days, the Rev’d Michael Higgins, who was then a curate in an Anglican Church, introduced me to The Minister’s Prayerbook, It became a vade mecum for me over the following decades.

The practice of intercession is the greatest instrument the Holy Spirit can use in our ministry, and we neglect it at our peril. God is waiting to bring blessing to us as we wait on Him. The power of our public praying as we lead a congregation in worship is determined by our personal prayer. “You have not because you do not ask.”

A. Donald MacLeod
A. Donald MacLeod


Christian Ministry Today is the working title for this book. Publication arrangements to be finalized.

A. Donald MacLeod is a former research professor of church history at Tyndale University College and Seminary in Toronto. He was born in Philadelphia and studied at McGill, Harvard and Westminster Theological Seminary. He was ordained as a minister in the PCC and served as a pastor and church planter. He was president of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada from 1973 to 1975 and General Director of the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship of Canada from 1975 to 1980. He helped establish The Renewal Fellowship within The Presbyterian Church in Canada and served as its Chairman from 1980 to 1985. He also served as Senior Minister of Newton Presbyterian Church in Boston. He is on the Appendix to the Roll of he Presbytery of Kingston.

Heritage as a Sacred Trust

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Of the many surprises in the recent General Assembly, and the strange twists that the debates took, none was more surprising than an unexpected recommendation, dependent on the passing of the remits, that we apologize to the United Church of Lachine for past wrongs. The recommendation suggested that a great wrong had been done to the congregation of St Andrews Presbyterian Church, Lachine, which was absorbed by the United Church of Lachine, when the 123rd General Assembly had affirmed the historic position on homosexuality in 1996. There was no debate in the Assembly, and it was approved that a letter be sent full of regrets and apologies. To my astonishment, aside from a remark from a Presbytery of Montreal Commissioner that the proper name of the United Church had not been used, there was no further discussion, and the vote seemed to pass unanimously.

The rewriting of history is a fairly recent phenomenon in our society. We find it difficult to sympathize with (now) unpopular views of an earlier age which no longer seem sustainable. The University previously named after Egerton Ryerson, that great Methodist pioneer, now has a new name. Ryerson’s considerable accomplishments in evangelizing colonial Canada are now ignored because of his presumed mistakes in educating Canada’s aboriginal occupants. Likewise the horrors of the residential schools obliterate the sacrifices of our dedicated WMS workers in serving Canada’s First Nations. History is no longer understood as a record of the past, but a place to even scores. Likewise those who affirm historic and orthodox Christianity are told that we will be condemned by the later verdict of history, rendering our views as completely inadmissible. History, it is asserted, will prove us wrong, and that we have buried our heads in the proverbial sand. One wonders how far this will be taken. Will the whole heroic missionary movement of the church in past centuries be regarded as a mistaken effort to eliminate native cultures? David Livingston’s memorial in Blantyre, Scotland, is being altered to reflect African native cultures.

On the 50th anniversary of Church Union, in an issue of Stanford Reid’s Presbyterian Comment, professor Ritchie Bell asked the question in the title of a memorable article, “Did I make a mistake in 1925?” in the then current frenzy of ecumenical excitement. Bell defended the anti-Unionists, saying that they were the ones who had fought the good fight for religious orthodoxy, and that Canadian Presbyterians had nothing to apologize for. So it is with those who maintained creedal orthodoxy in 1996 when the 123rd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada affirmed the church’s traditional position on homosexuality. They did so out of a deep and conscientious concern for the historic position of the church in all its branches. At the close of the Assembly, as commissioners were leaving, one commissioner, an influential educator, told all who passed by that she would do everything she could to reverse the decision of the Assembly. The principled stand of Dr. William Klempa, the Reverends Bill Manson, Don Neil, Peter Szabo, and George Anderson, all members of the Presbytery of Montreal, was destined, she claimed, to the ash heap of history. A concerted effort was made over the following years to change the verdict. As we have seen, this has succeeded, and at a recent meeting of my presbytery I was denied the right to speak when I requested a place on the docket after the impending positive vote would be taken on the remits. The silencing of all opposition so that we will not appear freakishly outdated by future affirmers was evident.

The Presbyterian Church in Canada, thanks to the dedicated and committed anti-unionists of 1925, has always so far stood on the “right side of history.” Its history is valued, not as a relic of an archaic past, but as a living and vital heritage. As one who has taught church history in theological seminaries, that discipline is vital to our life and ministry. One does not have to identify with the Proud Boys to uphold the heritage that we have been given as a sacred trust. It is not something that we should be ashamed of, but hopefully should enable us to seek to serve a generation that is obliterating all its monuments, devaluing its archives, and failing to pass on the faith “once for all delivered to the saints.” (Jude 3)

Rev. A. Donald MacLeod is a retired PCC minister and a co-founder of The Renewal Fellowship

Dal Schindell: a true “Channel”

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Dal Schindell’s death on August 6, 2019 in Vancouver leaves us saddened at the passing of a unique Canadian evangelical who made a significant contribution to the establishment of The Renewal Fellowship within the Presbyterian Church in Canada.

Dal had a vision for a publication of the organization which had been founded in May 1983. For him, the old gospel hymn “Channels Only” said it all. The first issue which appeared in the fall of 1983 was full of helpful and practical suggestions for the denomination’s renewal. It provided a global perspective on the church, articles by key renewal leaders here and in the United States, written especially for a Canadian audience with a passion for vivid and challenging teaching. Over the years of its existence, Channels became a resource for the encouragement and renewal of our denomination.

An elder at Fairview Presbyterian Church in Vancouver, he used his creative gifts to establish the magazine. He was on the staff of Regent College (see their tribute here)and thus had a wide perspective on the entire evangelical community in Canada and abroad.

The magazine featured the latest in design and content, establishing the credibility of our cause. Feature articles varied from lives of Canadian Presbyterian missionaries to the ways in which congregations could become set on fire as the Holy Spirit was active in our congregations. Dal, with his keen sense of humour, had a talent for involving his Regent College contacts — often diverse well-known renewal leaders. Dal consistently produced a quality publication which even today has much to tell us about his influence and impact.

Dal was a true channel in the early days of our Fellowship and was an encouragement for all of us who prayed that God would bring new life and vision to the denomination. Even today its articles speak to us in our present situation as a church, claiming with confidence and hope the promise of God’s blessings on his people as they are obedient to His truth.

Dal’s passing is a reminder of how much we owe to those who have passed on, as well as being a challenge for renewed commitment and trust. Our sympathy goes out to his widow, Kit, and the family.

Donald MacLeod is the founding chairman of The Renewal Fellowship. He resides in Brighton, Ontario.

Memorial to Rev. Bill Manson

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Rev. Dr. A. Donald MacLeodDr. Don MacLeod (at right) gave the following memorial at the funeral of the Rev. William Manson (at left) which was held at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Trenton, Ontario, on November 12, 2010, at 2:00 p.m. Bill was a solid man of faith and member of the Renewal Fellowship, who was unashamed of the Gospel and took a strong stand in matters he felt were authorized and important in Scripture. Bill was also host minister at Cote des Neiges, Montreal QC, where the first Annual Meeting of the Fellowship was held. We feel the loss of his departure but celebrate his life. — Calvin Brown

Rev. William MansonWilliam Manson, son of Edith Lillian Sommerville and Alastair Black Manson, was born in Neilston, Glasgow, East Renfrewshire, Scotland, on 4 September 1936. His family emigrated to Toronto when he was fifteen. They joined first St. Matthew's Church and subsequently Fallingbrook congregation in Scarborough. Bill received his B.A. from the University of Toronto in 1961 in Honours Classics, and three years later an M. Div. from Knox College.

He was ordained by the Presbytery of East Toronto on 16 June 1964 and was appointed for his ordained missionary year to a three-point charge in Pictou Presbytery: Tatamagouche, Wallace and The Falls, NS. On completion of that appointment he returned to Ontario and served briefly in the Millbrook charge in Peterborough Presbytery before being called to Beaches Church, where he ministered for sixteen years. In 1984 he moved to historic Cote des Neiges congregation, Montreal. He retired 1 June 2001, settling in Brighton.

Bill was a Presbyterian confessionalist, deeply committed to the standards of the denomination, and a doughty and brave controversialist who fearlessly made his position known without rancor or bitterness. Moderator of the Presbytery of Montreal in the tumultuous years 1994-5 he courageously maintained the church's position on chastity and faithfulness in marriage. He was a frequent contributor to the Presbyterian Record, always on timely subjects. His successor, Rev. John Vaudry, wrote of his seventeen years at Cote des Neiges: "During that time he carried out a faithful ministry of Bible teaching, pastoral care and diligent involvement in the courts of the Church. He was very concerned to uphold Reformed doctrine and Presbyterian practice in both congregation and presbytery. Undoubtedly, the long hours of work and the tension encountered in many of the meetings he attended had an effect on his health."

Bill married Janet Blair, a primary school classmate with whom he later reconnected, in Scotland on 7 July 1969. Deeply committed to ministry, together they were partners in service for over forty years.

After being diagnosed with leukemia on 17 September 2010, Bill passed into the nearer presence of his Lord on 6 November.

Thirty-five years ago Bill described the faith in which he lived and died: "Someday we shall find that neither death nor disaster has been able to separate us from the love of God. We shall find that our struggles have availed and our faith has not been in vain."

Remembrances of Rev. Bill Manson

by elder Richard Lancing

I first met Reverend and Mrs. Manson at the Renewal Fellowship in 1983. In fact, we sat at the same table for lunch. However none of us at that time knew that we would even meet again. At the meeting of the Fellowship, I was asked to share about the crisis that Cote des Neiges Presbyterian Church was experiencing — the fact that the Presbytery of Montreal did not sustain our call extended to the Rev. John Vaudry. The Renewal Fellowship was very supportive of the congregation and had offered pastoral care in different forms. But the Reverend Bill Manson was the one who offered support in the most practical way. He applied for the vacancy. No one else wanted to move to Quebec at that time. He was inducted in March 1984.

What the Mansons started as a "mission to French Canada" became a settled pastoral ministry until his retirement 17 years later, the second-longest in the 146-year history of our congregation. They endeared themselves to this multi-ethnic congregation: Scots and Arabs, black and white, Asians and Africans. When invited to speak at our anniversary celebration two years ago, Rev. Manson said to Rev. Vaudry, our current minister, "The pulpit has been yours all along, I was just filler." So generous and gracious was his spirit.

He loved his people and his people loved him back. He preached the Word clearly and faithfully. He took a stand for the Scriptures and sound doctrine. He wrote articles to the Presbyterian Record. He defended solemnity in worship and emphasized repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. As the Reverend Vaudry notes in his book on the history of Cote des Neiges Church, these articles "revealed Mr. Manson's keen intellect, concern for good order, and desire for the well-being of the whole church". During his time as Moderator of the Presbytery of Montreal, he dealt firmly and decisively in a matter of grave importance to the whole of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.

He encouraged participation and good administration. He felt that the house of prayer should be protected. He introduced building insurance and an alarm system. He delegated responsibilities according to individual gifts. During his ministry, many improvements to the sanctuary were made: new church lights, electric fans, a new organ, a simultaneous translation system, etc. At worship, he insisted that the sound of the organ should not be louder than the voice of the people praising the Lord. He taught us lessons too numerous to mention at this time. It is hard to realize that it has been nine years since he retired, and it is even harder to know that he is no longer with us.

Our sincere condolences to Jan and Ian and the rest of the family. Their loss, our loss, is heaven's gain.

Memorial for Rev. Dr. Mariano DiGangi

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Mariano DiGangiRev. Dr. A. Donald MacLeodThis tribute was given at a memorial service for Rev. Dr. Mariano DiGangi (at left), held at Knox Presbyterian Church, Toronto ON, April 22, 2008, by Rev. Dr. A. Donald MacLeod (at right), Research Professor of Church History, Tyndale Theological Seminary, Toronto ON.

"My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof." Elisha's exclamation as Elijah was carried to heaven in a chariot came to mind as the word went out of Mariano DiGangi's homecall on the 18th of March, the Tuesday of Holy Week. For many of us, Mario was indeed our spiritual father. His articulate intellect, his fundamental integrity, his essential godliness, continually reminded us of the influence and power of a single life. What he said of the death of his hero Peter Martyr Vermigli was also profoundly true of himself: "Right to the end, this old soldier showed faith and firmness as a member of the Church militant en route to joining the Church triumphant."1

All of us here today who loved him have our favourite Mariano DiGangi anecdotes. I have been reviewing almost a half century of correspondence, poring over some of his voluminous writings, reminiscing about his life. Mario could say a great deal, eloquently, in few words. May I also have the gift of brevity as I try in a few moments to encapsulate his towering legacy and example.

Mario was Italian, Sicilian, the son of immigrants. From his artwork you could tell his love for his native soil. The warm colours, the reds, the ochres, the bright greens, you knew that here was a man who was passionate about his heritage. And at the end, when the man (now ninety-two and still active in ministry) who brought him to faith and encouraged him to enter the ministry when he was a teenager in Brooklyn, spoke to him as he lay dying, it was in Italian, the language of his heart. Mario had a deep love, shared with Ninette, for everything Italian. Remember his recounting, on his return from Italy, his latest ministry opportunities, his encouragement of Italian students preparing for ministry, his love of Sicily, of pasta, of Chianti. That vision was shared and enabled by orange juice magnate Antonio Rossi in a providential partnership.

Mariano's attachment to Italy was all the more surprising because, except for seven years in the Italian Presbyterian Church in Montreal, his entire ministry was spent among Scots and Anglo-Saxons. There were times when he joked about needing to be renamed "MacGangi" — particularly during that decade when he was in Hamilton at St. Enoch Church among Scottish immigrants. His name was also described by some as a liability because it did not end in "B", as with every other noted minister at Tenth Presbyterian Church.

Those six years in Philadelphia were arguably the pinnacle of Mario's ministry and yet also, as is so often the case, the most personally costly. Ten years after he left, the now noted American historian, Allen Guelzo, gave full honour to what he accomplished there. "DiGangi," he wrote, "was obstinate in his public position on civil rights and urban mission, but he was not obnoxious, and after the temperamentally touchy had gathered their skirts around themselves and departed, the church quietly contented itself with DiGangi's moderation. Most important, DiGangi continued to educate and edify his flock with consistent biblical preaching."2

Having taken a principled stand on the Confession of 1967 as inconsistent with commitment to Reformed and confessional orthodoxy, Mario returned to Canada. Here of course, he was welcomed enthusiastically. In the Presbyterian Church in Canada, his name resonated: he had trebled the membership of a gritty east-end Hamilton congregation to over a thousand, he had commuted a day a week into Toronto to serve as unpaid secretary of the embryonic denominational Board of Evangelism and Social Action, and his synod-sponsored radio programme, "Time and Eternity", was broadcast throughout the Atlantic provinces and Alberta.

Becoming general director of the Bible and Medical and Missionary Fellowship (which he later named InterServe) in 1967 now placed Mario in an international context. He joined the missionary ranks of this congregation. Always committed to the Great Commission, he now had a platform to challenge and goad his audiences to sacrificial engagement with the demands and opportunities of the worldwide church. For the next twenty-five years, his schedule made superhuman demands on him physically and spiritually. No invitation, it appeared, was ever turned down, and he was in constant demand. His ability to cross time zones, emerge from intercontinental air flights, and every imaginable kind of speaker's accommodation, was an act of heroic proportions. None of us knew how he did it, and without his strong faith in a sovereign Lord — and the constant support of Ninette — he could not have accomplished half of what he did in those tumultuous years of feverish activity.

While in Bombay, India, in 1969, he received a call from the executive of an embryonic and troubled Evangelical Fellowship of Canada asking him to become president, a task that he filled with distinction for two years in a rescue operation. Further opportunities came: at Lausanne 1974, the Canadian contingent asked him to become chair of the Canadian committee.

And in 1975/6, with the start-up of Tyndale Theological Seminary as a graduate school of what was the Toronto (later Ontario) Bible College, Mario signed on as Professor of Pastoral Studies. For a decade, he inspired a whole generation of preachers. Many of his students had their pulpit ministries shaped by his example and inspiration. He was always organized, always practical, and always demanding the best of those who sat under him. He set the bar high, and many who had him as instructor still feel his presence as they mount the pulpit steps.

In the autumn of 1987, he became regular pulpit supply at Knox Church. For two years, this congregation, unable to agree on a candidate and profoundly grateful for his leadership, asked him to come out of retirement, and at an age when many would feel they could coast to the finish line, he was called. In less than three years health concerns made him resign.

What was there about this man that God used him so mightily? There was an essential humility, a self-effacing, even self-deprecating, inability to take himself seriously. Given other pulpit personalities and his gifts of oratory and his adoring congregants, that was no small gift. I think that one thing that saved him was his marvellous sense of humour, his puns. When I turned sixty, always a sombre moment, he lightened the occasion by giving me a book of humour inscribed "to a senior (as well as señor)." He was a delight to work for — my wife, who also served at InterServe along with many others, some of whom are here today, will vouch for. He was organized, thorough, fair, compassionate, and even-tempered.

When all is said, however, the answer to my question as to why God used him would be found in a single word: "Grace." I conclude with a quotation from a sermon he preached on Isaiah 6 over forty years ago: "The livelier our sense of guilt and grace and gratitude, the more faithful and fervent will be our obedience to our Lord and Saviour. When we are grateful for the grace that is greater than all our guilt, our souls are stirred to deeper reverence and higher loyalty."3

"My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof."

Endnotes

1. DiGangi, Mariano; Peter Martyr Vermigli 1499 – 1562: Renaissance Man, Reformation Master; Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993; 181.

2. Guelzo, Allen C; "City Church Again" chapter 4 in Tenth Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia; Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 2004, 107.

3. DiGangi, Mariano; "The Day I Met God"; Philadelphia: "Time and Eternity", 1965.