A Brief History of Covenant

In 1936 in response to liberal inroads in the denomination of their church, a small group of Christians began meeting on Sundays in the home of Mr. And Mrs. J.J. Fisher. The Fisher home on Cates Avenue in St. Louis was a large, turn-of-the-century house. Every Sunday the family moved their dining room furniture to one end, and the worship services were held in the connecting living and dining rooms.

After a time this loose body of Christians knew it would require a larger meeting place, so it rented a banquet hall in a hotel on Hamilton Avenue. They called or wrote interested people and invited them to attend their services. On Sunday evening, January 15, 1939 to the reverberations from the bowling alley below the hall, the group voted to become a congregation of the Bible Presbyterian Church.

The flock continued to grow and soon it needed a larger meeting place. The congregation purchased a church building in 1939 on the northeast corner of Union and Enright Avenues.

In October 1940, The Rev. John W. Sanderson Jr. was ordained and installed as the church's first pastor.

In December 1943, The Rev. Francis Schaeffer began his pulpit ministry. Children were at the heart of Mr. Schaeffer's call for evangelism. When the first Summer Bible School was held in 1944, it lasted four weeks and the average attendance was an astounding 217 students. The enthusiasm about it caught the interest of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, which devoted an entire page to the school.

Feeling the call of God, Mr. Schaeffer was granted a leave of absence in 1947 to travel Europe, surveying its post-war physical and spiritual needs. While there he began a work with college students known as L'Abri, "The Shelter." It is still in operation, and is located in several countries around the world.

A church must have a teaching elder, so the Rev. Calvin H. Harrah from Boothwyn, Pennsylvania was installed in April 1948.

Upon his departure, the Rev. John V. Kootz, a member of the faculty of Midwest Bible Institute in St. Louis, was made interim pastor and served until April 1953.

The Rev. Donald MacNair began his ministry in April 1953. This uniquely qualified servant could not have been called to leadership of the church at a more opportune time. For several years, the church had been facing a dilemma. As a small Bible believing church its appeal was both city and county wide. In evaluating how best to serve its worshipping population, the session found it most logical and seamless to relocate the church to west St. Louis County.

In January of 1953, the corporation approved the monumental decision to move the church to the present site on Ballas Road in Town and Country. The groundbreaking ceremony was held on September 26, 1953, and the old cornerstone was laid May 9, 1954.

The year 1955 saw the formation of Covenant College (which later moved to its present location at Lookout Mountain, Georgia) and in 1956 Covenant Theological Seminary with their location close to The First Bible Presbyterian Church. Because of the college and seminary, St. Louis received a large influx of committed Christians and excellent theologians who often with their families would join the church.

In 1961, the church saw the completion of an addition to the building to provide Sunday school rooms. That same year the church changed its name to The Covenant Presbyterian Church of St. Louis.

In 1964, Mr. MacNair concluded his work at Covenant Church. The Rev. Bill Armes, began his work in the church in September 1965. Also in 1965, Covenant's denomination merged with another to become the Reformed Presbyterian Church Evangelical Synod (RPCES).

Mr. Armes had a heart for missions and evangelism, and the church held missions conferences on a regular basis. After Mr. Armes had participated in a clinic on evangelism he began Evangelism Explosion training with the members.

The growth of the congregation required more space in which to carry out the ministries. In May 1968, a second addition to the church building was completed. Added to the building were classrooms and a gymnasium that doubled as a fellowship hall.

The fall of 1974 saw the church usher in a new level of ministry to its families. Covenant Christian School opened its doors to eighteen elementary-school aged children. The school experienced steady growth, using additional facilities to accommodate students. The school continued until 1990, when Twin Oaks Presbyterian Church established itself as a body and moved the school.

Mr. Armes resigned in 1976 and Rev. Peter Cross served as supply until the arrival of the Rev. H. Timothy Fortner in 1978. Mr. Fortner regarded the heart of his ministry to be the discipling of individuals one on one, and from the maturation of that individual would come the next discipler. Because he prioritized relationship building, there emerged among the congregation a resurgence of love demonstrated for one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.

It was during the time of Mr. Fortner's term that the denomination to which The Covenant Presbyterian Church of St. Louis belonged, the RPCES, was invited to join the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA). Through a process called "joining and receiving," the denomination was accepted into the PCA. Covenant became a PCA church in 1982.

In June 1983, Mr. Fortner resigned and the Rev. Rodney Stortz was called. Rev. Stortz, who had been actively involved in the church while he attended Covenant Seminary, was not a stranger to the congregation and was welcomed back with joy.

The Bible Press, the bi-weekly church paper that began in 1948, became The Covenant Column in December 1985, and began to be published monthly.

Covenant Christian School had continued to grow, as had the size of the congregation, and once again, the lack of space in the building had become a problem. The congregation approved a building plan, but the church did not receive the support of the Hawthorne Estates neighbors, who had concerns about the size and scope of the project. When church representatives presented the plan to the city of Town and Country, it was met with great opposition from the neighbors. City planners rejected the expansion plan in 1987.

Mr. Stortz and much of the congregation continued with the vision for a larger church. After much prayer and discussion on June 1, 1988, the Corporation voted to purchase a twenty-two acre tract of land in the Village of Twin Oaks. The session called a special meeting of the corporation on January 22, 1989 to vote on a recommendation to move the church from its present location, sell the Ballas building, and build a new church building on the land. The recommendation failed to pass by the required two-thirds majority, with 56% for and 44% against.

The majority group wanting to move did not have enough votes to pass the measure; the minority group wanting to remain at the Ballas location did not have the support of the majority to continue on in the church's same tradition.

Certainly there was tension, and that tension could be seen in the different visions the two groups of godly people had for the church. The final resolution to the problem was to divide the church into sister churches. The majority group formed the Twin Oaks Presbyterian Church and proceeded to build the new building, bringing with it the renamed Twin Oaks Christian School.

With the departure of Rev. Stortz, a new leader for the congregation was sought. The search committee, assembled by Covenant's session, after examination of several candidates, moved to call Mr. Robertson in February of 1991.

Mr. Robertson, with his relational skills and respect for others, set about on a restoration work with the neighbors in Hawthorne Estates. He encouraged the congregation to act as good neighbors, sprucing up the church and manse property and organizing events. After several years of building relationships in the subdivision, Pastor Robertson was invited to become a trustee in 1993. The Lord affected such a rich relationship that the neighbors actually encouraged the church to reconsider a building program. Throughout the long six-year planning process, the neighbors provided unanimous and public support.

The year 1999 handed a challenge to the congregation and administration. The building construction placed the staff in trailers, the adults in mud on their way to Sunday school, the children in shifting rooms, and the congregation in a makeshift sanctuary in the Fellowship Hall.

At last, when Pastor Robertson stood preaching his first sermon in the newly renovated and expanded sanctuary, Nov. 7, 1999, he stood behind a beautiful pulpit of exquisite wood. He explained its significance to curious congregants. It had been used at the church's first building at Union and Enright and was stored away after the church moved to its present location. The church ceased using it because it did not understand the significance of the pelican on the front. Pastor Robertson discovered it to be one of the Church's most ancient symbols of the atonement. It was once thought that in times of famine, the mother pelican would pluck out her breast and feed her young with her blood. That violent, gory image of self-sacrifice, Pastor Robertson said in his sermon, is an appropriate symbol of the price Christ paid for His people. That message of Christ's loving cross work was preached the first day in the new sanctuary, as it had been preached every Sunday of Covenant's sixty-year history. And by God's preserving grace, it will continue to be preached every Sunday until Christ returns.

In November 2006, Covenant called its current pastor, Rev. Ryan Laughlin. Ryan and his family arrived in January 2007, thrilled to be part of the next chapter of the church's history.

Soli Deo Gloria