During early 2020, both the Mission Committee and session of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Fort Myers, Florida, voted to nominate our congregation as a Matthew 25 church based on all three Matthew 25 distinctives. With regards to building congregational vitality, Covenant can be described as an active, inclusive and missional church, nurturing our congregation while engaging in partnerships and outreach in Fort Myers, Southwest Florida and beyond. We are engaged in a Looking Forward process to help us better discern who we are as a congregation, as well as what we aspire to be and who we hope to be in the context of the Southwest Florida community. We are also working to dismantle structural racism, particularly through our involvement in Lee Interfaith for Empowerment Inc., which operates under the DART network. Partnering with local congregations reflecting racial diversity, we strive to negotiate the needs of our community with a commitment to do justice for all. We are working to eradicate systemic poverty in numerous ways, including involvement in nutritional and justice concerns for our local farmworker community, leading local efforts related to Operation Inasmuch and through the support of the food security work of PC(USA) mission co-workers in Madagascar.
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