A note from Rev. Neil Dunnavant

For our most up-to-date information, please see our coronavirus page. Dear FPC families: In line with guidance from Gov. Roy Cooper and recommendations from our Salem Presbytery, FPC is canceling all church-related events (including the Weekday Preschool Center and...

A sabbath afternoon at the ballpark

There is one day of the year that I always look forward to more than any other: opening day of baseball season. Every year at the end of the World Series in October, I go into extreme mourning, putting on my sackcloth and covering my head in ashes. Then I wait in...

Thoughts from the bottom of the ACC season

I know many of you are in despair over the UNC Tar Heels basketball season. The emotional challenge is going from feeling like a winner to feeling like a loser. How do we deal with such feelings?  How do we regain hope? How do we obey the Bruce Springsteen command...

At its best, church is family

Dear Friends at FPC, As a pastor I am often with parishioners at the best and worst seasons of their lives – days of happiness and celebration like births, baptisms, and weddings and days of sorrow like loss, illness, and death. I usually have been on the dispensing...

An update from our Pastor Nominating Committee

The work of our Pastor Nominating Committee continues. If you missed the committee’s update during worship this past Sunday, you can read it online here. Let’s keep the committee in our prayers as it continues narrowing its field of candidates. And if...

The Beautiful and Holy Work of Flexibility

The summer before I was ordained and began my work here, I worked at Montreat Conference Center. Those summer months of 2019 became a time of holy rest for me as I prepared to enter the wilderness of full-time pastoral ministry. I spent my days teaching devotions to...

When a King was a Prophet

On Monday, Jan. 20, I had the opportunity to take eight Page High School students to the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Breakfast hosted by the Greensboro Human Relations Commission. We were joined by church member and state Rep. Ashton Clemmons. As we...

The Parables: A World of Serious Playfulness and Wise Foolishness

Between Christmas and Easter, we are no longer beside the manger anymore. Jesus is all grown up, and that night in Bethlehem has faded into memory. But we are not yet at the cross and the empty tomb either. Instead, we find ourselves following Jesus around in his...

Making 2020 one beautiful day after another

The start of a new year is a good time to take a seat on the Neighborhood Trolley. FPC has one, currently on display in Currie Library. Joanne Rogers sent it a few years ago after we voted her late husband, Fred Rogers, winner of March Madness for Ministry. In case...