The 2024 Westminster Conference, the latest in a multi-year series, was in session on 20-21 September of 2024 at the same venue where the Conference has been held since its beginning; the auditorium of the Providence Presbyterian Church (PCA). Providence Presbyterian’s auditorium has been where the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary (RPTS) graduation has occurred in recent years.
Normally, speakers for the annual Westminster Conference are faculty members of the Seminary and this was, again, the case this year. These annual Westminster Conferences have lately been focused on topics taken from the Westminster Standards and the Reformed Presbyterian understanding of the means of grace. This year’s topic was “Making All Things of Nothing: God Executing His Eternal Decree of Creation”.
Speakers, in the order of their presentations, were:
- C. J. Williams, professor of Old Testament Study, who presented “In the Space of Six Days”
- Richard Gamble, professor of Systematic Theology, who lectured on “The Glory of Creation and Adam’s Covenant of Works”
- Matthew Everhard, an adjunct faculty member who teaches pastoral theology and missions addressed on “Finite Servants of an Infinite God: the Surprising Freedom of Being Small”
- Jeff Stivason, professor of New Testament Studies on “He Made me, He Made Me Not: Warfield and the Evolution Question”;
- President and professor of Pastoral Theology and Homiletics, Barry York on “John Own and the New Heavens and the New Earth”.
All of the presentations were scholarly, yet popularly accessible.
The Conference was co-sponsored by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals (ACE), who hope soon to have the lectures available on their website as audio recordings. As well, the Seminary’s Reformed Presbyterian Theological Journal will have them in print. The Journal is free at the Seminary’s website for download.
The number attending was over 200. It was gratifying to me, that a young member of our congregation also attended. She is about to finish secondary education and is an “alumna” of the RPCNA Synod’s Theological Foundations for Youth program (TFY). This was my first attendance at a Westminster Conference. I hope it will not be the last. Besides the high quality of the teaching, there was delightful fellowship with others across the church, and there was a splendid vendor area. Vendors included Crown and Covenant Publishers, the Banner of Truth Trust, and Christian Witness to Israel-North America.
Thanks to Phil Pockras for putting together this article. Phil is a minister in the RPCNA. He has served as the Associate Pastor of the Rose Point RPC and as pastor of the New Castle RPC, both in western Pennsylvania. He has been the minister of the Belle Center, Ohio, RPC for nearly 40 years, and was the minister-in-charge of the Dervock RPCI congregation for the summer of 1995, in exchange with Professor Norris Wilson. Phil is married to the former Judy Wilson, and the Lord has blessed them with two adult sons, two daughters-by-covenant, and three grandchildren, two of whom are living. Their older son and his family are in the RPC of Australia, their younger and his wife are members of the Manchester RPC near Pittsburgh.
