By Zoe S. Erler
On Tuesday, June 18, Bruce Terrell, ruling elder and executive director at Redeemer (New York City) was elected as moderator of the 41st (Presbyterian Church in America) General Assembly in Greenville, S.C. Nominated by Dr. Tim Keller, Redeemer’s senior pastor, Terrell has devoted almost 30 years to the PCA, both professionally and personally.
An unashamed Braves fan—despite his current location in “Yankees” territory—Terrell worked for 20 years at the MTW headquarters in Atlanta, serving in a variety of roles, including chief operating officer. Before accepting the call to come to Redeemer in 2006, he served as a ruling elder at Intown Community Church.
Terrell currently serves on the Standing Judicial Commission and on the board of New York City’s Bowery Mission. Terrell is husband to Missy, who is a counselor at Redeemer, and father to two grown children. His son Andrew and his wife are currently serving as MTW missionaries in Madrid.
Read more at http://byfaithonline.com/bruce-terrell-elected-moderator/
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I’d like to provide more information on the In-town Community Church which i think will be enjoyable.
Unless I’m mistaken, this is the former In-town location of Perimeter Church, a P.C.A. congregation that used or used to use a modified collegiate system. The idea was to have a presence in downtown and to be strategically located all around the suburbs, sort of all the major points of the compass. When I lived in metro Atlanta (1987-88), Perimeter had 4 congregations – Northwest in Cobb County, In-town meeting in a downtown hotel, East meeting in a 7th Day Adventist Church in Stone Mountain, and the main location, Suburban, in Norcross.
Each location met separately but whichever location you went to, you’d hear the same message from the same sermon series and the same Sunday School lesson. Being a huge fan of the collegiate system, I really enjoyed and appreciated Perimeter.
The idea was that when a new location was launched, the existing locations would help with the workload and costs ‘til that location could function.
The senior pastor desired to start a 5th location, one that would be in the Cumberland Mall area and would specifically reach the Black population. While I would welcome such, I don’t know if anything actually happened with this.
Four times a year they would have a joint worship service, I remember such being held at the Hyatt Ravinia.
The local major newspaper did a nice write up on Perimeter during that time period.
Just before I left the area, In-town moved to a location in the suburbs. I welcomed the change because while the hotel had great visibility from the expressways, it was nigh impossible to reach. However, the move not lonely negated their choice of name but also put them very close to both the Norcross and Stone Mountain locations. I used to drop by the In-town location every now and then.
Since my time down there, Northwest and In-town spun off to become separate congregations while a new location was started in Athens.
Also, the church growth “experts” came in and started pushing them to abandon the collegiate model and go the route of being a mega-church with a dynamic pastor. Oh great, just what Atlanta needs, another mega-church.
Also since my time down there, the Atlanta city government wanted to push the remaining churches out of downtown and redevelop their properties, they particularly drooled lasciviously over 1st Baptist’s 16 acre site. 1st eventually relocated, and the only other congregations that I remember downtown having actual church buildings were St. Mark’s U.M.C. and 1st U.M.C. I hope they’re still there.