About

Before I speak of the church, I’ll say something about myself.  I was ordained and installed at New Covenant on Jan. 17^th 2010. This is my first pastorate.  The New Covenant congregation has given me this opportunity, and the ongoing support I need, to see my most cherished ministry desires come to pass.

High among those desires is the desire to see dying churches revitalized – to see God raise up glory out of despair. When I first came to New Covenant, worship services were held in the fellowship building behind the church. We have a beautiful sanctuary; yet heating and cooling such a large building, for twenty people, didn’t make good financial sense. Accompaniment music for hymn-singing was played via a CD player.  There was a loving group of people gathered, there, each Sunday; yet it was inevitable that the congregation would continue to decline unless some changes were made.  We started worshiping in the sanctuary, we hired an organist, and we committed to taking a large financial risk by hiring three pastoral interns to help with outreach to the neighborhood. The congregation unanimously voted to make these changes.

Here are a few things we are doing things which I hope will continue to define the mission of New Covenant for years to come.

1. Intern Training. We plan to continually provide training and ministry opportunities for many seminary interns.

2. Worship. We hope to have a vibrant church, which is biblical in its teaching, preaching and worship.

3. Outreach and Evangelism. We plan to be much more involved in outreach and service to the Plaza-Shamrock Neighborhood.

4. Church Revitalization. We pray that the Lord will give us good health as a church, so that one day we will provide help and hope to churches which are dying. This is often called “church revitalization” ministry.

Intern Training

My style of training is really quite simple: I invite men, who appear to be called to pastoral ministry, to participate with me in all aspects of my ministry. That’s all there is to it – that, along with transparency and godly concern for one another. At present, we have five men who are serving in an internship capacity. We financially support three RTS students – Bruce Brown, Eric Hancox and Paul Ragwa. They attend the same seminary from which I graduated, Reformed Theological Seminary (RTS). James Costner, although not an intern, he does all that the interns do. He is a former RTS student and is about to graduate from a Lutheran Seminary. RTS requires its students to do internships. We are located nine miles away from the school,  so as long as RTS is thriving we ought to thrive in this aspect of our mission.  These interns will hopefully be pastoring churches one day, so it is easy to see how this ministry in our small church will eventually have a large influence. You can read more about our intern program in the “ministry” section of this website.

A Vibrant, Biblical Church

We want New Covenant to be a vibrant church, which is biblical in its teaching and worship.  Sometimes vibrancy in a church is measured by how uplifting and enjoyable the music is; so upbeat contemporary songs are often employed to achieve that goal.  Odd thing…a third of the hymnbook which Jesus used, the Psalms, are laments, i.e., they are extremely sad.  Often in church revitalization efforts, hymns, which were for so long cherished by the older saints, are replaced by contemporary songs. Older folks are often offended by this.  But we seek to “honor our fathers and mothers,” that includes not offending them unnecessarily.  Our experience has proven that reaching new folks in a multicultural urban setting does not require a change in music.  People who have a strong desire for contemporary Christian music have many options for churches in Charlotte.  Thankfully, contemporary music and a praise band are not necessary for church growth; otherwise, small churches like ours, not having the necessary musicians, would surely die.  We strive to be biblical in the things that we teach and preach, and in the way we worship. The vibrancy that we’re aiming at is summed up in the word “love” – love of God and of people – that is something that any church can, and must, do. Additionally, “love” isn’t difficult to understand – it is a summary of the Law of God.  Vibrancy and relevance which come from obedience to God’s commands – that’s what I hope we’re striving after.

Outreach

The church neglected outreach for many years, and so it steadily declined; but currently we are spending over 30% of our income on outreach.  Our outreach efforts include pay for three seminary interns, who, along with the Pastor, do the bulk of the door to door outreach in the neighborhood. Others have joined in as well. 

Most people are afraid of knocking on doors; so it is good that we have a few other ways of doing outreach, which are very easy to do. Perhaps the easiest, yet perhaps most productive outreach to date, is simply remaining after church and eating with someone you do not already know.  After worship each Sunday, we gather for lunch in the fellowship building.  This is free to all, but it costs the church a lot of money. However, it is money well spent. For example, two families in the neighborhood, both new to the church, got to know each other during our after-church lunches. They didn’t know each other before this. I called one of those women, and asked her for the phone number for the other woman; imagine my delight when she said, “Oh, you can talk with her right now; I am in her house.”  We get into conversations with one another in which we often find out about needs and concerns.

We conduct a worship service on three Sundays per month at the Brian Center Nursing Home, which is one block away from the church.  Not only have we visited with the residents, but also with their visiting family members who live in the surrounding community.

We do a lot on Sundays – Sunday school, Worship, lunch, intern meeting, preaching lab (all sermons are preach a week ahead of time for critique), door to door evangelism, and the nursing home.  We may add an evening Bible study and an evening meal, soon.  The Lord gives clear instructions about Sabbath-keeping – please notice the commands and promises:

6 “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? 8 Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. 9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’ If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, 10 if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. 11 And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. 12 And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in. 13 “If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; 14 then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

We have not gone nearly as far as those verses describe. Some of us go into the neighborhood to evangelize – “to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke,” etc. especially with respect to spiritual bondage (v. 6). Every Sunday we have a free lunch. There is no solicitation for donations, nor have any been taken (v. 7a). On all but one Sunday each month, we minister at the Brian Center, a nursing home near the church (v. 7b). Because we are a diverse group, “pointing of the finger” could easily be done, but by God’s grace we largely avoid it (v. 9b). The Pastor’s desire is that we spend most of each Sabbath Day at the church, and in the neighborhood, “not going [our] own ways, or seeking [our] own pleasure, or talking idly”(v. 13).  The more that we do these things, the more we will be looking for the promises of (vv. 8-9a; 10b-12, and 14) to be fulfilled in our lives, in our church, and in the neighborhood.

It’s all about love – loving God and your fellow man.  That’s the summary of the Law. We’ve talked about the Law with respect to honoring father and mother, and we’ve said something about the Law with respect to Sabbath-keeping; and here is another part of the Law - “You shall not murder.”  The flip side of that, as explicated in our standards, is that we are responsible to promote life and to help people; so we strive to be a holistic ministry, helping people with respect to all aspects of their lives. Obviously that is easier said than done, but we do try. We are entering into relationships with the Crisis Assistance Ministry (CAM) and Second Harvest Food Bank (SHFB) in Charlotte. These are well-run multimillion dollar operations.  Because they use Charlotte city buildings their overhead is low.  CAM gives over 94% of its receipts (about 10 million dollars) to those in need.  They provide many services. They are tied in with the police, the court system, social services, the utility companies, landlords, etc. – as a partner with them, we have access to the case files of anyone who asks us for assistance.  One of the many things they do is provide free clothing in a “store” which looks like a Marshall’s Store. It looks that way because Marshall’s and its employees are involved in running it. SHFB requires that its partners have an already existing food ministry, which has been operational for at least six months.  We meet that requirement with our Sunday afternoon meals.  Our people can go to their facility and sort food, and earn points for use in their store.  We can also buy food at 16 cents per pound.  Needless to say, this with reduce costs with our current food ministry and give us food to distribute to our community.

Church Revitalization. We pray that the Lord will make our church healthy, so that we might be able to help our sister churches. We have received help along the way from All Saint’s ARP Church in Charlotte.  A sad fact about church revitalization in the ARP is that there has not been funding for it until recently.  We recently applied for this funding, and we received it.  The longtime emphasis of Presbytery’s Church Extension Committee and Synod’s Outreach North America has been on church planting, even though their responsibility is for both planting and revitalization. Dying churches died. Property was sold. Those property sales provided the lion’s share of money for church planting.  Again, while Church Extension and ONA are responsible for both planting and revitalization, clearly planting has received almost all the attention and all the funding – funding which has largely come from the sale of churches, which were not revitalized.  While there are similarities in revitalizing and planting, the differences are great.

New Covenant asked the denomination for help a few years ago.  The church was told that a revitalizing specialist could come at the cost of about $2,000.00 per day!  Is it any wonder that New Covenant didn’t concern itself very much regarding Presbytery and the denomination after that? However, we have now received a $101,000.00 grant from the combined giving of ONA and First Presbytery.  We are very thankful for the love and support which has, now, come our way. We hope that we can give back to ONA and First Presbytery in ways which will help them to do for other churches what they have done for us.

If you wish to stay more up to date with the goings on at the church, join us each Sunday!

Your brother in Christ,

Pastor Scott