PCUSA is ‘about to make a huge
leap into the pit of apostasy’
John H. Adams, Posted Monday, Apr 8, 2002
Article updated April 28, 2011
Pam Metherell of Laguna Beach, Calif., a director of the Presbyterian Lay Committee – has the deepest roots.
She comes out of the Church of Scotland, one of the citadels of the 16th-century Reformation, although her deepening walk with Christ did not begin until after she and her husband, Alex, moved to the United States in 1964.
Metherell began attending the Church of Scotland when she was a child.
“I never really heard what it meant to be a Christian,” she says, emphasizing that the Gospel may have been clearly preached in the Church of Scotland services she attended faithfully, but that it didn’t click.
As an adult schoolteacher, she was on vacation in England when she met her future husband; five days later, they were engaged and two years later, they were married.
In 1964, they sailed to America aboard the Queen Elizabeth I and Alex, who had a Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering, became a member of the faculty of the University of Minnesota. She taught school.
“We decided that as bad as the weather was in Scotland, it was horrendous in Minnesota,” she said.
Son’s birth had impact
The couple, who then rarely attended church services, settled in Newport Beach. The birth of their son Mark set off a chain of events that changed their lives.
They wanted to have Mark baptized and began a search in the Yellow Pages for a minister to conduct the service. The pastor of the church they first chose – a liberal congregation – declined. The pastor of St. Andrews Presbyterian Church – an evangelical congregation – accepted.
That set both Metherells and their family on the path along which Christ became the center of their lives.
First, Alex heard a Bible teacher at St. Andrews describe the way Jesus had fulfilled Old Testament prophecies.
“That night, my husband accepted the Lord and became a Jesus freak,” she laughed.
A year later, she was attending a Bible study in which the leader focused on original sin. Pointing to a baby in the audience, the speaker said, “If that baby needs Jesus, what about you?”
Realizing that she had committed many more sins than the baby, Metherell accepted Christ as her savior. The moment is etched in her memory, like as stone marking Israel’s deliverance from slavery.
“That baby grew up and married my son, Mark,” she says.
The Metherells have three children: Mark, a Navy Seal who was killed in action while serving in Iraq in 2008 and is now serving in Heaven with his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ; Alison, a pediatrician; and Caroline, a schoolteacher.
She has the pride of a mother whose children have done well – but, more so, because they are Christians. She is also the proud and busy grandmother of two grandsons and two granddaughters, all 4-years old or younger who live nearby.
Irrepressible evangelicals
Pam and Alex Metherell are irrepressible evangelicals.
Both have served as elders of St. Andrews Presbyterian Church. She was a commissioner to General Assembly in 2001, and he was a commissioner in 2002.
For 20 years, she has served in leadership in Bible Study Fellowship and is now serving in the leadership of Community Bible Study.
She became familiar with the ministry of the Presbyterian Lay Committee through The Layman, and was elected to become a director in 2001.
She relishes the work of renewal but says she has recently been tempted to leave the Presbyterian Church (USA) – especially “since the PCUSA is about to make a huge leap into the pit of apostasy.”
If only the leap Metherell prays, would be backwards – to the Reformed tradition that came alive in Scotland during the Reformation.