Welcome
A Welcome from Pastor Wilson
I have now been a pastor for more than 25 years with most of those years at Providence OPC. And I have had the pleasure of meeting many people who have visited this church. Predictably, there are questions about the doctrine of the church, our worship, and what we are all about. The members of this church have come from many different church backgrounds—some have come without much Christian experience at all—and they are from different cultures and political persuasions. Yet they all have one faith and one Lord. Of course you are more than welcome to visit with us. But most of all I invite you to come to a place in this world where God speaks to us with the preaching of his Word and feeds us at the table so we may grow in our new life in Christ and be his servants.
Our Standards
As Christians we are committed to the authority of the Bible as our primary standard of faith and life. With the whole Church we confess the faith as articulated in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds of the early Church. As Presbyterians we also hold to the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms as secondary standards, which are received by every ordained person “as containing the system of doctrine taught in Holy Scripture.”
While the Westminster Confession and Catechisms give a full and systematic expression of the Christian (and Reformed) Faith, the following have particularly characterized the Reformed tradition:
an emphasis on the sovereignty of God in salvation and history,
an emphasis on the free grace of God in Jesus Christ,
an understanding of God’s dealings with man as covenantal,
an acknowledgment of God’s election of a people to worship and serve him and to exist as a light to the nations,
a comprehensive understanding of the lordship of Jesus Christ in all areas of life, and
a Christ-centered view of the Bible which understands the whole of Scripture as a record of salvation history (God’s acts to redeem his fallen creation in and through Jesus Christ).
Our Pastor
The Rev. Jeffrey B. Wilson was raised on the plains of Eastern Colorado. His family belonged to the First United Presbyterian Church in Greeley, Colorado. He enrolled in Oral Roberts University and graduated with a B.A. in 1984.
Intending to become a minister in the Presbyterian Church he applied to Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, VA and was accepted into the Masters of Divinity program in the fall of 1984. During his course of studies at Union Seminary he served as a summer intern at Third Presbyterian Church in Richmond, VA and for a year at Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas, TX. Upon graduation from seminary, in 1988, Mr. Wilson received a call to be an Associate Pastor at the First Presbyterian Church in Royal Oak, MI.
Five years later he moved to Leoti, KS where he served as the minister until 1996. It was at this time that he accepted a call into the Orthodox Presbyterian Church to serve the new mission work in Royal Oak, MI called Providence Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Mr. Wilson is married to Heidi and has three children, Seth, Hannah, and Rebekah.
Life Together at Providence OPC
Proceeding from our communion with Christ in worship is our community with each other in the church.
We celebrate our fellowship together in Christ every week in the Lord’s Supper. In the words of an ancient Christian text, “As the [grain in the] bread was scattered over the hills and then was brought together and made one…,” so God has brought us together. And he continues to bring people to Providence OPC from different ends of the Detroit metropolitan area. To promote our fellowship during the week we have a Friday evening meal and prayer together on the third Friday of every month. We also have a meal together at the church following worship on the first Sunday of every month. Periodically, there are study groups that meet in the different regions where our members live. It is our ongoing desire to be together as a church.