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.