by Steve Wilburn, Covenant congregation
In 1984, a core group formed from the Franconia congregation to begin planning for a new church plant in the Lansdale/Montgomeryville area. In December 1986, the doors of Covenant Community Fellowship were opened for their first worship service at North Penn Senior Center on Main Street in Lansdale. Three years later, with the assistance of other Franconia Conference churches, and under the leadership of Pastor Earl Anders, Covenant acquired the Beth-Israel Synagogue building just outside of Lansdale. The congregation still meets there today, led by Pastor Jay Moyer.
Like most churches, we seek to worship God well, care for our neighbors, and reach out to our community. Our services are informal and include a mix of contemporary worship and traditional hymns, as well as practical teaching based on God’s Word. We regularly pray for and minister to the needs of our congregation and our neighbors. And we find ways to engage with our community through events like our free Spaghetti Dinner, which we host twice a year.
Recently, though, we’ve begun leaning into one of the areas in which God has blessed our congregation: our age diversity.
We are a multigenerational congregation with people of all ages worshiping and fellowshipping together each week. We have a number of young families and have recently had the joy of welcoming several new babies into our church community. We also have older couples and individuals who have been attending Covenant for many years.
In the past year, we have become more intentional about not just being multigenerational in our attendance, but also in our engagement with one another. Older and younger church members regularly meet to learn and grow from each other. Our regular women’s and men’s gatherings are designed to be open to people in all different stages of life so we can learn and grow together.
We recently started a mentoring program to pair up our youth with adults in the congregation that can help guide them in faith and discipleship.
This past spring, we hosted monthly family nights where we invited several of the more mature members of our congregation to share their wisdom on practical life topics including finances, parenting, and marriage. This sharing led to wonderful times of discussions between age groups that were fun, encouraging, and challenging for everyone that attended.
The support and care across generations has proven especially important as we’ve had congregation members face health issues, financial hardship, and loss over the past year. In each circumstance, God has not only shown his grace and provision, but he has brought a deeper unity and interdependence to our congregation as we have had older and younger members cross generational barriers to minister to and support one another.
More and more we are discovering how God has created Covenant to be a place of worship for people in all stages of life. We like to tell people that we at Covenant are not a bunch of perfect people, we are broken people that worship a perfect God. Our desire is to share the love and truth of that perfect God to everyone we can, from every generation.
Prayer Requests:
- Pray for our Lead Pastor, Jay Moyer, as he finishes his sabbatical in the coming weeks.
- Pray for our Summer Do initiative as we seek to reach our neighbors through prayer, invitation, and service.
- Pray for the parents of several new babies born in our congregation over the past six months.