7 May 2000 AD: Jim Boice's Last Sunday in Tenth's Pulpit

7 May 2000 A.D.  Presbyterian Statesman’s Last Time in His Pulpit. Mr. (Rev. Dr.) James Montgomery Boice, Pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church, preached his last sermon.  8 weeks later, on 15 Jun 2000, a Great General and Field Marshall in Israel fell asleep in Jesus.

(This was is personal:  Jim was my pastor, mentor and friend. I’ll call him Jim. I met him in the early 70s as the PCRT started.  We were members of Tenth for 3 years, that is, he was my Pastor.  We were on-hand for Tenth’s vote to secede from PCUSA and to join the RPCES followed, shortly, by entrance to the PCA (791-5 vote to secede with family of Dr. C. Everett Coop voting “nay”).  Also, correspondence was maintained for years.  Further, he insisted on me calling him “Jim.” He was a friend, but back on point.)

The story is told by Dr. Rusten.  Rusten, E. Michael and Rusten, Sharon. The One Year Christian History. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2003.  Available at: http://www.amazon.com/The-Year-Christian-History-Books/dp/0842355073/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1393302630&sr=8-1&keywords=rusten+church+history

As a boy with his family, Jim attended Tenth Presbyterian, Philadelphia, an historic church.  He thought highly of his Pastor, the Rev. Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse.  He was an avid listener to The Bible Study Hour. By age 12, he wanted to be a minister.  Little did he know that one day he would fill Tenth’s historic pulpit in Center City.

Figure 5-Jim's view from the pulpit

Jim attended Harvard, getting his BA in English literature.  He met Linda Ann Boice (nee McNamara) at Intervarsity Christian Fellowship.  She received an MA from Harvard. They married.  Jim attended Princeton Seminary, earning the M.Div. Afterwards, they went to the University of Basel, Switzerland, and Jim earned his D.Theo. under Prof. Oscar Cullman.  After Basel, they settled in Washington D.C. where Jim worked for Christianity Today.

In 1968, Tenth Presbyterian called Jim to the pulpit of his youth as the senior Pastor. On 1969, he became the speaker for The Bible Study Hour.  Jim was always scholarly, accessible and relevant in his expository messages. Tenth grew in numbers, outreach, income and programs. The church also created an inner-city classical and college preparatory school.

Perhaps more famously, Jim and Jim alone initiated the “Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology” (PCRT) at a time when it had languished in American life.  Jim invited top-drawer Professors to the 4-city conferences:  Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, and  varied other cities.  Dr. Jack Gerstner, the then-young-and-unknown R.C. Sproul, Dr. James Packer, Dr. Roger Nicole and others were frequent guests in the conferences.  As a result, other conferences, e.g. Ligonier Ministries, were inaugurated.

In 1977, Jim initiated and led the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, a 10-year project that drew scholars and professors to address.

Jim contributed to and wrote more than 60 books.

On Good Friday, 2000, 2 hours before the opening of a PCRT in Philadelphia, and 2 hours before Jim was scheduled to preach, he was told that he had an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer.  The prognosis was poor.

On Sunday, 7 May, 2000, Jim mounted the pulpit of Tenth for the last time.  He announced to his stunned congregation that he was rapidly dying of cancer.  Whoever can forget his final statement :

“Should you pray for a miracle? Well, you’re free to do that, of course.  My general impression is that the God who is able to perform miracles—and certainly He can—is also able to keep you from getting the problem in the first place…Above all, I would say pray for the glory of God.  If you think of God glorifying Himself in history and you say, `Where in all of history has God most glorified Himself?’ the answer is that He did it at the cross of Jesus Christ, and it wasn’t by delivering Jesus from the cross, though He could have…And yet that’s where God is most glorified.”

On 15 June 2000, age 61, the Rev. Dr. James Montgomery Boice died peacefully in his sleep 8 weeks after his diagnosis. 

A General and Admiral in Israel fell.

Horton, Michael. “James Montgomery Boice: Servant of the Word.” Modern

Reformation. 9 no. 5   (September/October 2000): 10-11.