Meet Our Pastor

---

The Reverend Dr. John Callahan is a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Princeton Theological and Pittsburgh Theological Seminaries. He served as associate pastor in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, and as pastor of the Clinton United Presbyterian Church in Saxonburg, PA. He began his ministry with Morrow Presbyterian Church on Sunday, May 4, 2008.

John served on an administrative commission of the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta and the Good Shepherd Clinic Board of Directors of Morrow, GA. He also served for six years on the Examinations Committee of the Presbytery, which admits pastors into membership of the Presbytery. He currently serves on the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta and as a Pastor Nominations Committee Liaison to Stockbridge Presbyterian Church. 

John’s wife, Tamara, is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and served as Sunday School Superintendent and Moderator of the Presbyterian Women of Morrow Church. She participates in the Sunday School as a teacher of our fourth and fifth graders and in the music program of Morrow Church, playing the piano and singing in the choir.  She and John have two children, Parker and Amanda. Parker graduated from Union Grove High School and is enrolled at the University of Maryland with a focus on architecture. His talent is the trumpet, which he plays during Sunday worship. Amanda is a Sophmore at Valdosta State University. She shares her talent of singing in our church. She joined the Children’s Choir of Spivey Hall for five years and sang and danced for her school through the Advanced Women’s Chorus and Union Groove.

April 2023  

There are two king Herods in the Gospels. There is the Herod of Jesus’ birth, and there is the Herod of Jesus’ passion or suffering (Matthew 2:1-12 and Luke 23:6-12). Let’s talk about the second one.

In Luke 23:8 Herod finally meets Jesus, and he wants Jesus to put on a show. Herod wants magic tricks to entertain him and his guests. Is this not what Jesus is known for? Multiplying fish, walking on water, healing a child or two? Herod wants to see some wondrous sign, so he can become even more fascinated with the oddity that is Jesus. In the movie Jesus Christ Superstar Herod sings this little number: “If you are the Christ, yes, the great Jesus Christ, prove to me that you’re divine, turn my water into wine, that’s all you need do then I know it’s all true. Come on, King of the Jews.”

It is a silly song. The dance that goes along with it is even sillier. So is Herod’s request. He has standing before him the Savior of the world, the long-awaited Messiah, God in the flesh… and what he wants are parlor tricks. Jesus is a spectacle and nobody to be taken seriously, according to Herod. 

How do we treat Jesus, as our Savior or as our Hero when he comes around to being one? As our Everything or as a Vending Machine when we insert our prayers and expect a certain result? If we had any clue whom we worship, we should bow down before him in awe. If we had any idea of whom we follow, we would never hesitate to listen to his word and let him take the lead.

C.S. Lewis says in his book, Mere Christianity, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [that is, Christ]: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse…. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Jesus means to be more than a teacher or even a magician pulling off parlor tricks. To us, Jesus Christ is the most important Person in the universe. We give him room in our hearts, so that he makes his home there. From that command center Jesus rules our lives, influencing everything we do and say and believe. There is nothing we can do or say or believe without him. We read the words of our Savior in Scripture and do what we can, always with God’s help. We don’t see our obedience to Jesus as drudgery but as a gift we happily receive and gratefully carry out. Jesus means everything to us, and through him great things happen in us all.

Herod had Jesus right in front of him! Oh, what we would have done to have Jesus standing right before us. If only Herod had believed Jesus was and is the Christ, the Messiah, great things could have happened in him as well.

Peace in Christ, 

Rev. Dr. John