William H. Dunlap Orphanage

Rev. Rob Roy McGregor - A Former Chairman of the Board

As I was growing up in the Louisiana and Arkansas South through my senior high school year, I never knew an orphan or saw an orphanage, to my knowledge! The most I knew of both was from a book, and stories you learn from books are like stories you learn from movies entertainment! After that, I was in school and learning. Then, it was learning and teaching and gaining no experience beyond that!

Then, I received a telephone call one day when I was 90 years old, and my interlocutor asked whether I would take over as the Chairman of the Board of Dunlap, the previous chairman having, as I recall, resigned to take a job outside the denomination. I was reluctant and resistant, but finally conceded.

It was one of the best decisions of my life!

At that first meeting of the Board, I learned the names of several established orphanages and their representatives. I learned about the physical facilities their organizations provided, which were on a par with what I had grown up with. Warmth in winter, adequate clothing, housing, and food to provide all their material needs comfortably.

Each organization saw to it that the children under their care, not all of whom were literally orphans, had access to public education or its equivalent, concerts, museums, theaters, and opportunities to take up a musical instrument or practice the arts or crafts. And into the midst of these advantages, they were allowed to develop their own personalities and tastes with (decent) clothing, decorations, designs, colors, and styles pleasing to them individually.

The first thing I noticed about those who presented their institution was their enthusiasm, subtle as it was. There was also a subtle joy, akin to pride, as they talked about the accomplishments of their projects. As a former high school teacher and university professor, I knew the feeling. But they had the advantage of helping guide these young people and helping them develop as whole persons, fully mature, competent, and self-reliant day and night, in joy and in sorrow. That requires affectionate involvement! Such affectionate involvement that you could get better paid work in other areas, but with lesser reward. Their reward was, as Christians, that they could serve by both teaching and exemplifying the life of Christ as the ultimate way to live his life after him: seeking first to do what is good and righteous by helping others in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount.

After that first meeting, I looked forward to the subsequent eleven meetings of my tenure on the Board and miss it even now.

A Christian orphanage is a good place, indeed, a blessed place to be! I kept thinking at every meeting during the presentations that I would be a better well-rounded and disciplined person if I had had the direction and focus those young people had. I envied them.

The ARP Church no longer has a standalone orphanage, but it has, as a small denomination, an unusually favored financial foundation from the sale of the buildings and land. The income from that foundation provides the funds that the Board shares among the organizations it works with. Having seen their work and shared in it, I do not think I would argue for the reestablishment of a localized, renewed, and refunded Dunlap. Such an establishment would limit our outreach and influence. I see the Board’s mission as a vision for the future. It already touches other countries in the world and there are more to reach! Aim at them. Think gigantic!

Now as I have been thinking about orphans, I have been thinking about widows. We ARPs, every year, send checks to ARP widows from the Christmas Benevolent Fund. Children in distress in our day are still symbolic of distress of all kinds requiring compassion in the Christian enterprise and are associated with religion, or the worship of God; as the Greek word in James 1:27 allows. Would it be too much to ask Synod to make Dunlap an integral part of the Denominational Ministry Fund?

God speed the compassionate ministry of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church until the return of our Lord Jesus Christ.