I cannot say for sure what year it was. It would have been between 2003-2005. I was the minister of East Columbus Church of Christ in Columbus, MS and was working in my office at the church when the phone rang. The man on the other end explained that he was visiting family while on vacation and was looking for a Church of Christ minister who knew something about the history of the movement. My car was scheduled to be serviced, so I dropped it off and arranged for the caller to pick me up at the dealership. We went to a Mexican restaurant and sat down to eat and to talk. The man was a Presbyterian minister from Pennsylvania. His name was Gregg Strawbridge.
Gregg was the first Presbyterian I ever met, the first Reformed Christian I ever talked to. I had grown up in the Churches of Christ, and even though I had been called to full-time ministry in those churches in 1998, my contact with Christians in other communions was very limited. That was partly due to the fact that I didn’t think there were Christians in other communions, at least, not any faithful Christians. I had been taught to believe--and for many years taught--that the Churches of Christ were the only faithful churches, and not even all of them qualified. Denominationalists were in denominations because they did not believe the Bible. Some of them might have been scripturally baptized, usually if they had been baptized in a Church of Christ, but most of them were in no meaningful sense Christians. That was my frame of reference when I met Gregg Strawbridge. Those beliefs and assumptions took a long time to change, many years in fact, but I can tell you when they began to change. It was when I ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant and spent a couple of hours talking to Gregg Strawbridge.
When Gregg picked me up for lunch, he was immediately friendly, kind, and respectful. He did not treat me the way that I viewed him. He treated me as a brother in Christ, as a Christian. We sat down and began to talk, and God began planting seeds of grace in my heart. I had no idea how profoundly that conversation with Gregg would shape me, but I continued to think about it for many years. He had asked to meet to talk about the history of the Churches of Christ. The most prominent organizers of what became known as the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement were originally Presbyterians, and Gregg had been doing research on that topic. I was not an expert, but I was a fifth generation member of the Church of Christ and had done a lot of reading. We talked about the Churches of Christ and Thomas and Alexander Campbell, but we quickly moved on to other topics. Maybe it was because I didn’t have much knowledge to share. Maybe Gregg realized I could not be as helpful as he had hoped. Or maybe he simply loved talking about the Scriptures. Whatever the reason, we began discussing the Bible, and the conversation that followed began, slowly, to change my life.
The Lord had already begun exposing me to Reformed theology, though I did not realize it. I had read J. I. Packer’s Knowing God and Jerry Bridges’s The Practice of Godliness some years before and was profoundly impacted by both books. I first heard John MacArthur preaching on the radio while serving a little church south of Birmingham, AL from 1999-2002. I would tune in every week as I drove to teach a Bible study. I didn’t know who MacArthur was. I didn’t even know his name for several weeks because I never heard the beginning or end of the program. But the sermon in the middle was thoroughly biblical. I am ashamed to admit how astonished I was that a preacher outside the Church of Christ could be so committed to Scripture. After listening for several weeks, I concluded this radio preacher might even be a Christian! It would be many years before I realized how many Reformed authors and influences God had placed in my life, years before I attempted to preach through a book of the Bible as I heard John MacArthur do, years before I realized these men all agreed on the sovereign and efficacious nature of God’s saving grace.
Gregg did not disparage or directly confront any of my idiosyncratic and unbiblical beliefs that day. He simply talked to me about the Bible. He pointed out things I had never noticed in texts I had read all my life. He listened to me when I spoke and treated me as a brother worthy of respect, even though I didn’t know what I was talking about. He raised questions that would remain with me for many years only to bear fruit at a later point in time. I had no idea that I would ever leave the Churches of Christ, no idea that one day I would be the Reformed pastor reaching out to ministers in the Churches of Christ, no idea that my meeting with Gregg would become an important way station on my journey to the Celestial City. But since embracing the doctrines of grace in 2011-2012 and joining a Reformed communion in 2016, I have told dozens and dozens of people my story about meeting Gregg Strawbridge.
When I realized almost ten years later what God was doing in my life in leading me to the Reformed faith, I reached out to Gregg online. I did not expect him to remember me, but he did, and I thanked him for the ways God had used that first meeting to bless and encourage me. He rejoiced with me in how the Lord continued to lead and bless my life and ministry and in the changes I was making. We remained in irregular contact by email after that. I would reach out to him periodically to express appreciation for his influence in my life and to share with him what I was learning and questions I had. I contacted him when I came to love the Book of Common Prayer and began learning about Reformed liturgy. I shared with him sermon notes and blog articles on various topics, and he continued to encourage me in various ways. I listened to his debates and sermons and continue to learn from him even today. I was last in contact with him in August of last year. I used some of his material on reconciliation in preparing a workshop on biblical peacemaking, and I sent him what I developed and acknowledged my debt to him and his work.
I had no idea where my first conversation with Gregg would lead or how it would continue to shape me even after I became Reformed. My contact with Gregg was a major factor in my own pursuit of Reformed catholicity. His grace toward me was a model I continue to aspire to but consistently fall short of. He did not have to treat me with the kindness that he did. I did not recognize him as a brother. I thank God that he recognized me.
When I woke up this morning, I learned that Gregg had a massive heart attack and died on Wednesday. We were not close friends. I never met his family, visited his church, or saw him in person since that one visit in Mississippi almost twenty years ago. But I have never forgotten our conversation, and I will continue to thank God for it and for him as long as I live.
ALMIGHTY and everliving God, we yield unto thee most high praise and hearty thanks, for the wonderful grace and virtue declared in all thy saints, who have been the choice vessels of thy grace, and the lights of the world in their several generations; most humbly beseeching thee to give us grace so to follow the example of their stedfastness in thy faith, and obedience to thy holy commandments, that at the day of the general Resurrection, we, with all those who are of the mystical body of thy Son, may be set on his right hand, and hear that his most joyful voice: Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Grant this, O Father, for the sake of the same, thy Son Jesus Christ, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen. (1928 BCP)
Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints. (Psalm 116:15)
--JME
