December 13 Today in OPC History

On December 13, 1961, the Rev. George E. Haney, Jr. was installed as pastor of Pilgrim OPC in Bangor, Maine. Born in 1931 in Atlantic City, New Jersey and educated at Gettysburg College and Westminster Seminary, Haney had previously served in Waterloo, Iowa (1957–1961), where he met Grace Vanden Bosch, whom he married in 1959.

After his tenure in Bangor, Haney pastored OP congregations in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin (1968–1974) and Vienna, Virginia (1982–1985). However, he is most remembered in the church for his two tenures as general secretary of the Committee on Home Missions and Church Extension (1974–1982 and 1987–1990), shepherding that committee through significant transitions in the work of church planting. He stepped down from his second tenure when he engaged in a long and painful battle with cancer to which he eventually succumbed on May 22, 1999.

Picture: George and Grace Haney