Glory Reitz
The Gainesville Reformed Presbyterian Church (GRPC) is technically a fellowship, not a church, as it is not yet a legal entity. But the fellowship is growing, and Pastor Thomas Reid said there are no churches like it in Gainesville.
Reid graduated from Westminster Theological Seminary with a Master of Divinity in 1976 and preached in Ireland in the late 1970s and early ‘80s. In the late ‘80s he led a church in Kansas, then in Canada in the mid-90s. From 1996 until his retirement in 2020, Reid worked at Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh.
When Reid retired, he and his wife moved to Gainesville to be near their daughter. Reid led a Bible study in a University of Florida graduate student’s apartment for about four months, but the student moved away and the study did not last.
“We just kept trusting that the Lord would bring about some form of ministry for us,” Reid said in an interview. “Because we were still in relatively good health, still relatively young, and wanting to be of use to the community here. Not just Gainesville, but Alachua County and adjoining areas.”
In summer 2021, the couple was renovating their master bathroom and hired a carpenter recommended by some friends. When the Reids and the carpenter got to talking, he said he and his family were looking for a different kind of church than what they had seen in Gainesville.
What the carpenter described sounded to Reid like what the Reformed Presbyterian Church practices, so the group began a Bible study. The study has now grown into a fellowship with a service on Sunday evenings and studies on Wednesday evenings.
The Wednesday studies are focused on the Westminster Confession of Faith, which is the church’s basic statement of faith, as well as the Reformed Presbyterian testimony, which Reid said provides something like a commentary on the confession.
“In that study, my focus is to teach God’s people what the confession says, by testing it against what Scripture says,” Reid said. “So we spend most of our time looking at different passages of Scripture to see whether these things are so, thus enabling God’s people not just to believe what our church teaches, but also to be able to defend it, and to do so on a Biblical basis rather than on emotion or logic, or whatever other standard human beings might set up.”
After four years of pastoring the fellowship, Reid said the congregation has grown to 11 regular attendees, with another 7-8 Wednesday night regulars. But the church is still young, and Reid believes there are more people who the church can serve who have not found it yet.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: How have you seen the church, or fellowship, grow since the summer of 2021?
A: The church has grown through word of mouth. We’ve had a website since almost the beginning that hasn’t produced really any contacts, but it’s been by word of mouth. We’ve welcomed, especially recently, several families. Yet, ironically, those first two families both have moved out of state in the years since, for various family reasons. It’s still a pretty new congregation, in terms of how long people have been with us.
Q: How have your years of experience played into the role you now fill?
A: I heard a lot of student preaching at the Reformed Presbyterian Seminary. Every student for the ministry preaches seven times in chapel, which is pretty extraordinary compared with other seminaries. So, I heard a lot of preaching, some good and some not so good. That has helped me think about what should be good preaching, and we believe that preaching is the primary means by which God communicates his grace to his people. That is the focus of my ministry above everything else, both in terms of the time that I spent preparing and delivering sermons, but also the way that it has its position within our worship services.
I’m probably not quite as on top of Hebrew or Greek as I once was, but I’m still able to use them to some extent, and I think that’s important as well, for good preaching. As far as working in different countries, we do have an international student from UF among us now, and I understand some of the challenges.
Of course, I’ve worked in Ireland and Canada. These are not necessarily drastically different from ministry in the United States, first of all, because they’re English speaking, and I used English exclusively in my ministry in both countries. But they’re different enough that they make me sensitive to the way that I, as an American, can come across to people, including other Americans, because we’re not all from the same cookie cutter. We’re different. We have different sets of activities, different pasts. I want to be, and I think I am, more sensitive to that than I would be otherwise.
Q: What does the ministry here in Gainesville look like?
A: On our literature, we say that we are characterized by three things: God-centered worship, Bible-centered teaching and Christ-centered worldview. I lead God-centered worship, it’s simple, centered on the Bible, where God’s people worship their covenant King as he has commanded and not otherwise, and hear him speak through the reading and preaching of the Word.
For Bible-centered teaching, I preach and teach from the whole Bible, the New Testament and the Old Testament. And we sing only the Biblical Psalms. Sixty-six books in the Bible, 65 of them are to be read, one is to be sung and so we sing it. One hundred and fifty Psalms.
Then, Christ-centered worldview, we are not a church that focuses narrowly on the spiritual, but we believe that Christ is king now. His kingdom is now, not merely future. And therefore, the authority of Christ speaking in the Bible needs to be brought to bear on every aspect of human life, including government.
So, my preaching is not particularly long or short. But it’s focused on encouraging worship and encouraging God’s people to be centered in the scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments, and to serve Jesus as King over men and nations.
Q: How do you think that that ministry is unique in Gainesville?
A: There is no other church in the Gainesville area, the closest is Orlando, that worships as we do, which is the historic way that the Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists worshiped. It’s a very simple, straightforward kind of worship, where we sing without musical instruments, the 150 songs. So that’s different.
The Bible-centered teaching is perhaps not quite as distinctive, and yet in all the churches that I’m familiar with here, there tends to be an emphasis on only the spiritual applications, rather than on societal applications, corporate applications. It’s a very individualistic kind of Bible-centered teaching. And there’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but God’s people need more.
And then the Christ-centered worldview. We’re very concerned, as a church, about the way that our society and our nation respond to the claims of Christ. And so, what I said about teaching really informs our whole world and life view. So, our people are much more conscious than most Christians are of what’s going on in society, what the problems are. We have a very broad focus, that I’m not aware of any other church here having.
Q: For you, what has been the most difficult part of pastoring this church?
A: The most difficult part, and I suspect that many pastors have the same concern, is that the message doesn’t seem to be resonating with as many people as you would like to see. We’ve had visitors. Some have come back and joined, but others have come once and didn’t want to come back.
In a sense, that’s kind of a criticism, and yet I know that no church can be everything to everybody. It just can’t. But I’d like to think that there’d be more people who’d be interested in what we have to offer.
Q: On the flip side, what is your favorite part of pastoring this church?
A: My favorite part is that every single other person who has come in has come in from a different background than my wife and I have, and they have appreciated what we’re trying to do, enough to be part of it. And we can see growth. Every pastor will tell you they wish they see more growth, including in themselves, but there has been growth in people’s lives and sometimes it’s palpable. You can really see it. You can see the light going on. And it’s very exciting when that happens.
If you go:
What: Gainesville Reformed Presbyterian Fellowship
Where: Meadowbrook Activity Center, 3111 105th Boulevard NW
When: 5 p.m. on Sundays, 7 p.m. on Wednesdays
Interesting article. I hope you guys do more of these!