Sunday July 11 will mark a significant milestone in the life of Covenant Fellowship as we officially begin our pastoral relationship with the Rev. Dr. David P. Smith. David and his wife Tracy and their three children, Gresham (9), Isaac (6) and Katie (4) have come to us from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where David was the Bible Department chair at Delaware County Christian School and a teaching elder in the metro Philadelphia presbytery of the PCA. They attended and were actively involved at Tenth Presbyterian church in downtown Philadelphia.
David was originally ordained in the ARP as an associate pastor at Back Creek church in Charlotte, NC in 1995 after completing an M. Div. at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, MO. In 1998 David and Tracy moved to the Chicago area for him to begin doctoral studies in historical theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School under the guidance of John Woodbridge. During the first four years in the Chicago area, Tracy blessed Covenant Presbyterian church in Hammond, IN by serving as church secretary and on the missions committee. Meanwhile, David taught and coached at Illiana Christian high school for two years, and served the church through occasional preaching, teaching and leading worship before beginning doctoral studies. In 2003 David and Tracy, along with their 2 yr. old son Gresham, moved to Philadelphia. While in Philadelphia, the Lord blessed them with two more children, and the completion of David’s dissertation on B. B. Warfield.
David summarizes his philosophy of pastoral ministry as follows: “I have full confidence that God builds his church through his Word and Spirit. God’s Word and Spirit create and nourish God’s covenant community, the church, through the preaching of God’s written word and the administration of his sacraments—baptism and the Lord’s Supper. 2Timothy 3:16-17 specifically tell us that every good work that a Christian could ever engage in is produced by the God-breathed Scriptures. My confidence is in God producing and perfecting in me and all his people that which only he can produce and perfect. The practical implication of this is that our priority will be on the preaching of God’s word, the administration of the sacraments and prayer fueled by both. We will wait on the Lord to act and when he does, as he most certainly will, we will enter into the labors that he illumines and empowers us to do. The Christian’s experience with God is not fundamentally or primarily about that Christian, but about God, who is not only our physical creator, but also our spiritual re-creator. As Ephesians 2:10 reveals, God’s people are God’s workmanship. So, we work in the energy that God supplies, and all that we do is centered on what God the Father has, is and will accomplish through Jesus, his Son, and by means of the Holy Spirit’s power. When God’s people operate consistent with these truths, they learn of true holy rest, enter into the joy of their Master, and are continually energized to live in faithful obedience to Jesus. All these things are produced because God is producing repentance from sin, which means he drives our focus away from our feelings, our abilities, our plans, and our programs, and toward the means he supplies to produce what only he can produce so that he is glorified.”
Covenant Fellowship invites all those who desire to be part of what Dr. Smith has described in his pastoral philosophy to join us, as we receive from God and rest in him as our gracious and merciful Lord and Savior.
