Covenant is a church of loving, caring, intelligent, mentally stimulating people engaged in active service to others.

We enhance our worship with a dedicated choir that enjoys challenging selections, hand bells, children’s messages as well as rotating liturgists, greeters and ushers. Church members help plan and participate in special services.

Covenant is a church committed to mission. Mission projects have used the gifts, skills and expertise of church members and developed the same in other participants. We have built houses locally and in other countries. We have built water systems, painted churches and conducted Bible schools in foreign countries. We deliver meals to the hungry. Visionary church members with passion, leadership and dedication have seen the need and established sustainable community service projects.

Covenant is a benevolent tithing church. Covenant is the only church in Tuscaloosa that voluntarily pays property taxes for education.

We hold special receptions, prepare suppers and host picnics that use our fellowship gifts.

Covenant is a caring church. Members pray for each other, and we visit the sick and bereaved.

Covenant is open and inclusive, with members with different ideas who agree to disagree while loving each other.

Covenant is a church committed to education. Members teach church school for all ages and conduct Bible study.

Youth and children are an integral part of Covenant. They are appreciated, embraced and nurtured in their Christian development through participation in church programming, camps and retreats.

For more on our mission, click here

History

During 1944, the Tuscaloosa Presbytery’s Committee of Home Missions became interested in colonizing a church in east Tuscaloosa and presented the need to the General Assembly. Preliminary moves toward a new church toward a new church got actively underway in 1945 when the Assembly’s Home Mission Committee appropriated $500 to cover expenses for a survey of needs in the east portion of the city.

In 1946 a seminary student was placed in east Tuscaloosa by the Presbytery and church school and Morning Worship Services were held in a building near the University of Alabama campus throughout the summer. However, when the student had to return to Union Seminary to continue his studies, activities were suspended.

Response and interest was high that summer, and by December 1946 property was purchased on the corner of Hargrove Road and Prince Avenue for the location of a church some time in the future.

Little seems to have been done toward establishing a new church during the next year, but during the spring of 1948 a group of members of the First Presbyterian Church organized themselves into an East Tuscaloosa Committee and began to develop plans to establish a church school and hold morning worship services.

The group met, elected a staff of church school teachers and chose the name of Covenant Presbyterian Church for the new congregation. With the authorization of the session of the First Presbyterian Church, the new group secured the Red Cross auditorium on the Northington campus as its temporary meeting place.

Dr. Samuel Burney Hay conducted the first services Sunday, Dec. 5, 1948, with 46 attending church school and 38 attending the morning worship service. Attendance grew rapidly, and by the middle of December, the group elected an Executive Committee to take over the responsibility formerly carried by the East Tuscaloosa Committee. Steps were begun to secure a regular pastor.

The Rev. Dr. J Will Ormond, a young minister from Marion, preached two services for the new congregation in late December, and on Jan. 2, 1949, the group unanimously invited him to serve as regular pastor.

Petition was made to the Tuscaloosa Presbytery on Jan. 18, 1949, and Covenant Presbyterian Church with 91 charter members was duly constituted on Sunday, Jan. 30, 1949. Elders and deacons were elected and installed, and the Rev. Ormond was installed as pastor.

In the months ahead, the church continued to grow, so much so that it became apparent by the summer of 1949 that additional property was needed near the proposed church site on Prince Avenue. A second lot south of the original lot was purchased and the small house on it was used by the bachelor pastor as a manse for several years.

The Covenant congregation moved into part of its present facilities Sunday, May 20, 1951. The present fellowship hall, educational building, kindergarten and nursery facilities were constructed when Covenant rolls carried 183 members.

In order to handle additional growth of the church, a master building plan was adopted, and plans were begun for construction of a sanctuary as well as a separate classroom building for the elementary church school children.

The Rev. Ormond provided pastoral leadership of the church until mid 1965, when he resigned to continue his education in Scotland and later join the faculty of Columbia Seminary.

Named as second minister of Covenant was the Rev. Murphey Chandler Wilds, who served her nine years before accepting a call to the First Presbyterian Church of Denton, Texas, in 1973. During his years of pastoral leadership, facilities were expanded to include our present sanctuary, which was occupied on Nov. 6, 1966, and a specially built pipe organ installed in 1971.

The Rev. Dr. Hugh Fleece Halverstadt was served as pastor from 1973 until 1976. The Rev. Dr. Ralph W. Milligan was pastor from 1979 to 1985 and The Rev. Dr. Charles Samual "Sam" Haun from 1985 until 2004.

The Covenant Legacy

Covenant Presbyterian Church was home to the first woman elder in the Presbyterian Church U.S., and to the first woman moderator of the John Knox Presbytery. Six Covenant women have received Life Membership Pins from W.O.C. and Presbyterian Women. Ten former members, six men and four women, have entered the ministry. Covenant was home to the first weekday kindergarten in a Presbyterian Church in Alabama. Covenant is a benevolent tithing church, and is the only church in town to pay its share of property tax for education

Clara D. Williams, the first woman elder in the Presbyterian Church U.S., is installed and ordained at Covenant Presbyterian Church, July 5, 1964.

Covenant’s facilities are used by the community to support Habitat for Humanity, Family Counseling Service, Alcoholics Anonymous, League of Women Voters, PTO, Boy Scouts/Girl Scouts and a summer camp for mentally ill children.