Greetings in Christ!
 

Welcome to the home page of Covenant Fellowship Church, an evangelical Presbyterian Church in beautiful Greensboro, North Carolina.

Back in the 1970's E. F. Schumacher wrote an amazing  book that was both very popular and very challenging to the status quo of his day. It was entitled "Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered." It is one of those books I think everyone should read, and which is perhaps more relevant today than ever.

I'd like to see someone write a book called "Small is Beautiful: Doing Church as if People Mattered."

It's hard to try to convey the virtues of being a smaller church (most churches are in fact "smaller" churches) without it sounding like excuse for failure - such is the state of things today in McMansionland.

At Covenant Fellowship we're not trying to be small just to be small; we're trying to go about being the church in a way that mirrors as closely as possible what we read about in the book of Acts and the New Testament letters, and we're trying to do church in a way that focuses on the most essential things.

In Acts chapter two it says of the new church that "they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers....And all who believed were together and held all things in common."

There are many such glimpses we get into the life of the early church. When asked by folks what are we really trying to do, when all is said and done, the best answer often is simply  that we are "just trying to be the church."

Good small churches don't try to be big churches. They don't aspire to be big churches. Big churches offer many services and ministries and programs a small church cannot offer. Small churches offer many qualities a big church cannot offer. The way to be a good small church is to embrace the smallness as a virtue.

For example, in our church we have very little overhead other than support of the pastor and rental of the Sunday worship space. Thus our members are free to throw themselves into the service of one another and of their neighbors in the community and world with no regard whatsoever as to whether it "grows the church" financially or numerically. This is amazingly freeing. It is wonderful.

In a church of our size all the people know each other, or can realistically know each other, including the little children knowing the retirees, and the single people being friends with couples and families. We don't need name tags. We know who is a visitor and who is a regular. We're not all divided up into a million sub groups. We're like an extended family. This is such a blessing. Our teens actually talk to and know and love our adults - amazing!

Children read Scriptures in public service and everyone has a chance to participate and speak their mind. On a recent Sunday we had a season of open prayer and several very young children - and I mean three to five years old - prayed along with the oldest among us. It was beautiful.

Our services are not rushed. There is no hype. There is plenty of time to catch up and reconnect. There is plenty of time to devote to the apostles'  teaching, to prayer, to the breaking of bread, and to loving on another.

Despite our being small God has blessed us with an amazing array of gifted and talented and capable people whom he uses to encourage us in our life and worship.

We commend this way of doing church to anyone coming to our web site. Feel free to browse around, and feel free to visit with us on Sunday at any time. We hope that something in our site will be of encouragement and blessing to you,

In Christ,

Joel Gillespie,
Pastor, Covenant Fellowship