On September 18, 2010, Beverly Heights celebrated twenty-five years of Pastor Rick and Mary Wolling’s ministry, and Rick asked that the weekend be about God’s faithfulness rather than his own. To close the evening, Dr. John Frame came home.

Frame grew up at Beverly Heights from 1945 to 1967. He heard the gospel through its youth program and choir, came to trust in Christ, and served as occasional organist, Bible teacher, and youth ministry intern before teaching a generation of pastors at Westminster Theological Seminary and Reformed Theological Seminary. That night he remembered the Sunday school teachers who sowed seeds in a kid who didn’t care, and the long trail of faithful people who kept the gospel here. When he left in 1967, he feared Beverly Heights would go the way of other evangelical churches in the PC(USA). “I prayed that it wouldn’t happen here,” he said, “and it didn’t.” Then he preached 1 Corinthians 1:9: “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Pastor Nate Devlin, then associate pastor, introduces Dr. Frame. This recording comes from our archive.

Mentioned in this episode:
1 Corinthians 1:4–9
Isaiah 52:7
John M. Frame, John Frame’s Selected Shorter Writings, Volume 1 (P&R Publishing, 2014), chapter 37, “1 Corinthians 1:9: Remarks at Beverly Heights”
Further reading: John M. Frame, Theology of My Life (Cascade Books, 2017), pages 77–79

https://theparrhesians.com/