EPC stated clerk nominee is refugee from the PCUSA
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, August 28, 2006
The Evangelical Presbyterian Church – increasingly becoming a refuge for Presbyterian Church (USA) congregations that are leaving the mainline denomination – is poised to elect a new stated clerk. He is also a PCUSA refugee.
The candidate is Dr. Jeffrey Jon Jeremiah, pastor of the 900-member First Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Renton, Wash. An EPC search committee unanimously recommended Jeremiah’s election and denominational leaders have asked the commissioners to the 26th General Assembly in June to call a special meeting to consider the nomination. Forty petitions are required to call the meeting, tentatively set for Sept. 9.
They said that “the timing of this development and the operational and strategic importance of the office of Stated Clerk warrants a called General Assembly for the purpose of electing a Stated Clerk. We do not believe it is possible or desirable to wait until the 27th General Assembly convenes next June.”
The EPC Web site has published an online petition for commissioners to sign in order to call the 26th General Assembly back into session.
Originally ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA), Jeremiah was active in Presbyterians for Biblical Concerns, a renewal organization in the United Presbyterian Church (USA) before the northern denomination reunited with the Presbyterian Church U.S. in 1983 to form the PCUSA.
Presbyterians for Biblical Concerns later merged with the Covenant Fellowship to form what is now known as Presbyterians For Renewal.
The EPC was formed in 1981 by 12 congregations. Today it has 191 congregations with 90,000 members. As a denomination, the EPC sponsors 80 missionaries – a ratio of one per 1,125 members. The PCUSA sponsors 230 missionaries – one per 10,400 members.
Jeremiah was an associate pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Md., until 1987, when the congregation left the PCUSA to affiliate with the EPC and Jeremiah was approved as a member of the Presbytery of the East.
In 1994, he was called to serve First Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Renton. Under his leadership, the congregation has had a 70 percent growth in attendance, 60 percent in membership and 300 percent in giving.
Jeremiah is a graduate of The College of William and Mary. He earned a master of divinity degree at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary in 1980 and a Ph.D. from George Washington University in 1992. His doctoral work was on the Westminster divines, 17th-century English Presbyterianism and Anglican Edward Reynolds.