A number of churches in Fayette County can look to their beginning during the 1880s.

While the county lost one-fourth of its fighting men during the War Between The States, it did not suffer from the Reconstruction era and a degree of normalcy began to take hold by 1880.

Ebenezer United Methodist Church consisted of a group of believers joined together under a brush arbor to worship God and share in Christian fellowship in the early 1880s. In a couple of years it was able to build a white frame structure and in 1883 the Ebenezer church joined the Methodist conference.

Through the years Ebenezer has come from being a “second Sunday preaching” church to a full member of the North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church.

The white frame structure from the middle 1880s has been through a lot of changes, major repairs and remodeling. A two-story addition housing the fellowship hall and Sunday School rooms has been added at the back of the sanctuary. The most recent additions have been a steeple and chimes.

The Rev. Charles L. Govenstein serves as pastor of the 100-member congregation.

He was born and reared in Chatham County, Ga. After high school he served in the Navy for two years and worked for the Postal Service for two years. He went to the University of Miami for two years and then transferred to Georgia Southern, where he graduated in 1955 with a degree in health and physical education. He later obtained a master's in school administration.

He had served as a principal and assistant principal for 34 years before retiring from public education. He graduated from Candler School of Theology at Emory University in 1970 with a master's in sacred theology.

For the next seven years he served in the ministry full-time and then on a part-time basis, retiring in 1997. After seven months, he decided that retirement was not for him and began serving Ebenezer in July 1997.

He met his wife, Marylin, in a drug store while working as a coach at a local high school. They married in 1957 and are the parents of two children, Charles “Chuck” Govenstein, who has a degree in health and physical education and works at a middle school in Newnan, and Terri Brown, who is a flight attendant and lives with her family in Newnan. They enjoy two grandchildren, Ryan and Cassie Brown.

Sunday School is at 9:45 a.m. with worship services beginning at 11 a.m. Choir rehearsal is each Tuesday evening at 6:30 and a fellowship supper is the last Saturday evening of the month at 6:30 p.m. The men's club meets the first Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and the United Methodist Women meet third Tuesdays at 7 p.m.

The church is at 680 Ebenezer Church Road and can be reached at 770-631-0306 or 770-463-2100.

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