“We’re all on the same team”

45-member congregation commits support to Joining Hearts & Hands

September 2006

Members of New Creation Community Presbyterian Church, Greensboro, N.C. Photo by Sarah D. Freeman.

At New Creation Community Presbyterian Church, “hands-on” ministry can assume a wide range of meanings.  Especially with Greensboro, North Carolina’s own resident “Goat Lady” as an active church member.

Unique service projects — such as helping to make vests for the “kids” at the nearby “Goat Lady Dairy” farm during kidding season — are both the hallmark and the fruit of the church’s unique missional relationships.

Because New Creation’s pastor, Frank Dew, firmly believes that hands-on service is often a missing component in the life of the church, he has intentionally enabled partnerships with a wide variety of local and global outreach ministries.  In addition to its involvement with the “Goat Lady Dairy,” the church tills and tends its own Community Garden, builds houses for Habitat for Humanity, and nurtures international partnerships with Nicaragua and South Africa.  Over the years, New Creation has sponsored and financially supported a total of two black Presbyterian students from South Africa to attend the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

The accomplishments are significant for a 45-member, 21-year old congregation.

“We may be small, but we’re interesting,” Dew said.  “Collectively we have had a lot of experience with hands-on work, both locally and globally.”

Several of those globally-aware members, former missionaries for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), alerted the congregation to the work of Joining Hearts & Hands in addressing the critical shortage of funds for new international mission positions.

“We have an appreciation for the importance of mission in the life of the church,” said Dew, “It is important that we maintain denominational resources to help facilitate mission activity, not only to make those connections, but to have the larger view of how and where to do missions.  For those reasons, we wanted to support Joining Hearts & Hands.”

“Together we can do more than any one of us can do apart,” he said.

Dew, who has pastored the church since it was organized in 1985, is grateful for the freedom that a smaller church gives him “to pursue the gospel and to follow the way of Jesus” as he is led.  Church services are held at 5:00 p.m. on Sundays, with the Lord’s Supper celebrated weekly, followed by a simple fellowship meal.

Because the church does not have a conventional building, but rather shares space with the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant in Greensboro, Dew said that New Creation is “not encumbered by all kinds of financial indebtedness that can tend to limit the options for church expression.”

“My hope continues to be that we can be as authentic an expression of the church as we can be.  That’s exciting to me.  When we really feel we’re connected, not just to our Presbyterian body, but as a part of the whole body of Christ, we know we’re all on the same team,” Dew said.