Our Story

The Plant – A Great Commission Desire

Since the very beginning, Fellowship Church has had a desire to be an obedient, aggressive, and sacrificial community of Jesus’ disciples determined to help fulfill His great commission. A church planting team from Houston came to College Station in 1977 and began this ministry with a month-long evangelistic outreach on the Texas A&M campus. The team of about a dozen young people was led by Ron Tewson, a young married man gifted in leadership and evangelism. They saw the strategic importance of reaching students at major universities in Texas to carry out Jesus’ great commission in this state and beyond. 

The Early Years –Developing “the next generation”

Pastor Ron’s open air preaching on the Texas A&M campus and lots of personal evangelism by church members resulted in many students joining the new church and it quickly became necessary to meet in local school building auditoriums on Sundays. Many of the church members moved to live within just a few blocks of one another on the north side of the Texas A&M campus so they could have daily fellowship. Some of the core practices of Fellowship such as HOMEGROUPS and PERSONAL DISCIPLESHIP were established in these early days.

From early in our history, Fellowship was also committed to the core practices of RAISING UP NEW LEADERS FROM WITHIN the church and CHURCH PLANTING. For example, Fellowship participated in Invasion ’85, an aggressive church planting strategy by the Great Commission Association Of Churches (GCAC). Four teams from Fellowship set out to campuses across the south to establish church plants. Here in College Station, Pastor Ron worked hard to multiply his life by training up future pastors. Ron led Ray Muenich to salvation and discipled him in the faith and leadership. In 1988 Ray was ordained as a pastor and took over as the sole pastor-elder when the other pastors moved away to pursue other ministry opportunities. 

This scenario has been repeated over and over again in the history of Fellowship. Young college students away from home get involved in the homegroup life of our church, receive personal discipling, become part of a homegroup leadership team, and then move into greater leadership roles to help shepherd Fellowship Church or move out on a church plant. Of course, most students move to another city after graduation. Even in this case, it has always been our desire to train them to become committed members wherever they go. This is all part of our “TRAIN & SEND” strategy.

A growing influence in the early years was our connection with the Great Commission Association of Churches.   This association of churches was built primarily on the relationships between the pastors of the various churches, but as God blessed the association, the ties became more formal. It seemed prudent, effective, and God-honoring for Fellowship to be part of this association for the purpose of mutual support, training, and collaboration in world evangelism. The “branch” of Great Commission we are currently working with is called COLLEGIATE CHURCH NETWORK. Although we are a self-governing church, we do hold ourselves accountable to Collegiate in the areas of doctrine and ethics & we share a vision to focus on reaching college campuses across the world.

 The 90 s – Growing Pains & New Opportunities

 The primary outreach of Fellowship has always been to A&M students.  Our passion to evangelize and disciple college students for Christ only continues to increase. However, by the late 1980s, a good number of our graduates had begun careers in the BCS area and started families and befriended other families in the community. Thus we started some City Homegroups made up of families or working singles. 

These city homegroups have participated in various evangelistic and service projects throughout the years. A couple of notable examples are the city-wide distribution of the Jesus movie and active participation in the Franklin Graham Festival. Also, they have distributed thousands of gospel tracts across Bryan/College Station throughout the years and have helped Fellowship to be a regular financial supporter to various community ministries that help the poor and needy such as Hope Pregnancy Center.

A very big contribution over the years made by city members has been to provide much of the direction, oversight, finances, examples, and experience for a church with lots of students. Fellowship Church could not maintain and grow its passion and mission of reaching and training Texas A&M students to fulfill the Great Commission without the year after year dedication and hard work of mature, sacrificial, servants in the city homegroups. In return, we are committed to caring for these city members and their children, primarily through homegroups. One example of the way this works is a ministry designed for MARRIED STUDENTS. James & Neva Lund, who are part of one of our city homegroups, lead this ministry. Hundreds of young couples have been helped by the Lunds to receive the counseling and guidance needed to get them started right in their new relationship. 

The 90’s also saw the beginning of Fellowship’s Global Missions. In 1995, John Schmid and others began a Bible study for international students and eight students showed up – all Chinese! Thus began a ministry that would become a mainstay with the church and eventually lead to an overseas strategy called the EAST ASIA PROJECT (EAP). Outreach to A&M international students from numerous nationalities continues to be an important part of our vision to this day. 

A big step forward in these years was the ordination/recognition of long-time member and leader Rodger Lewis in April, 1996. Rodger stepped into the role of overseeing business operations & sharing teaching & equipping responsibilities. Although Fellowship went 7 years without it, one of our core practices is to function under a PLURALITY OF ELDERS/PASTORS.  

The 90s were a time of trying to figure out what Fellowship was supposed to do as its part in building God’s Kingdom. Diversifying into city ministry and international student ministry were exciting developments, but we  also went through a period of confusion about our mission and vision. Possibly due to this confusion, we went through a time of declining membership. The “vision” and “strategy” questions prompted church leaders to regularly pray through and think through and discuss how we were supposed to “do church”, what our focus was supposed to be, how we were going to raise up mature disciples, and how we were going to be a part of practically fulfilling the great commission. 

It was during this time that many of the church’s strategic plans were developed. Now we had a working blueprint.   

2000 – 2015 Working The Plan 

During these 15 years Fellowship Church established systems and strategies to increase our effectiveness in making mature disciples both locally and abroad.  In short, we began working the vision and plan we felt God had led us to develop. Three parts of this strategy were 1) better equipped disciples and leaders; 2) practical and recurring steps in Global missions and church planting; and 3) renewed commitment to the undergraduate college student ministry at Texas A&M. 

One core practice that has never changed with Fellowship is our commitment to HOMEGROUPS. It has always been the centerpiece of our way of doing church. The homegroups are our “method” of seeing lives transformed into Christlikeness. It is our conviction that what is missing in most believers’ growth plan is discipleship through genuine community. Our desire is to grow and multiply disciples and then grow the church by multiplying more and more of these homegroups as they fill up with mature disciples. God has blessed this desire – we have grown from 11 homegroups in 2000 to our present 35 homegroups!

One area of discipleship that is difficult to develop in the homegroups is deeper theology and some ministry skills. Fellowship’s EQUIPPING CLASSES were greatly broadened during this time period and now include such courses as Old & New Testament Overviews, Church History, Essential Bible Doctrines, Roots and Branches, Preparing for Marriage, Leadership Training, etc. In the Spring of 2015, the pastors announced the establishment of the FELLOWSHIP SCHOOL OF EQUIPPING, LEADERSHIP, & MISSIONS. This venture encourages members & staff to a higher degree of rigor in their study by striving for various certificates of completion.  

Our Global outreach grew significantly during these 15 years. Pastor Steve Kessler oversaw a growing missions department and Fellowship’s commitment to MISSIONS PARTNERSHIPS. Currently our partnerships are in Mexico, East Asia, and the Balkans.  Our commitment to these partnerships includes sending over short term teams, prayer & financial giving to assist with their needs, and training up individuals and even church plant teams to better reach the peoples of these places. 

CHURCH PLANTING continued to be a passion of Fellowship.  The pastors and staff have personally discipled potential church planters, helped them recruit & train teams to go out, and have committed to overseeing the new churches’ health. We have sent out 4 church planting teams in the last 19 years: 2000 to University of North Texas in Denton, 2010 to Texas State University in San Marcos; 2013 to a campus in East Asia; 2017 to the University of Texas at San Antonio. 

Here in Bryan/College Station, God continued to use us to expand our COLLEGE STUDENT MINISTRY which has been our primary focus since the beginning. The campus outreach of Fellowship currently has 26 homegroups with around 450 involved.  The campus ministry continues to be the training ground for most of our leaders and the incubator for our ventures in church planting and Global missions. 

A change that has had long-term ramifications upon Fellowship was the beginning of the Reliant STAFF PROGRAM. In 1989, Great Commission Ministries began a support-based missionary program. Fellowship benefited greatly because our tithe base didn’t allow for multiple church-paid staff. These support-based staff have helped Fellowship grow its campus outreach, expand into international and married student ministries and send out church planting teams to other campuses. Since 1989, around 50 Fellowship Church members have gone into ministry through this staff program! We see the Reliant Staff Program as an extremely significant key to the future missionary and church planting expansion that God has put on our hearts to pursue. 

2016 and The Future – Faithful & Multiplying

A big question for our continued growth has been adequate facilities. Part of God’s answer has been BRAZOS CHRISTIAN SCHOOL. The school’s full-sized gym can seat up to 700 and has met our “weekend needs” for over 20 years. As for the rest of the week and other initiatives, the Lord blessed us with 2.5 acres right next to Wolf Pen Creek Park. In March 2011 we began a capital fund drive we called THE NEXT STEP PROJECT to raise funds to build a DISCIPLESHIP CENTER and then in October 2015 we moved our ministry “headquarters” into the center at 1001 Colgate and began what feels like a new era of our church history.

This new facility has opened up new opportunities for our ministry such as hosting a retreat for our Texas Church Plants and city-wide missions events such as the Perspectives Class. The biggest impact of this DISCIPLESHIP CENTER has been… discipleship! Every week we see dozens and dozens of personal meetings taking place here. Homegroup leadership teams pray and strategize on how to reach and grow up their members and staff have personal office space to meet with those they are developing into the next generation of leaders.

Our desire is to excel in the primary areas bolded throughout this document. In January 2020, after 43 years of existing as a church, the leadership believed the Lord was leading us to build a worship center. We call this project, FOR GENERATIONS TO COME. Our prayers and intentions are to continue to reach future generations of college students and believe the location will be an effective tool to further our effectiveness. 

We’d love to get to 50 homegroups sometime in the near future. And, in the midst of all of this, we are developing qualified leadership to take over the current senior staff so that the Lord’s work may continue to progress in greater ways for generations to come! 

All of this will require vast resources, tremendous sacrifice and enduring courage on our parts, and the grace of God to provide direction, provision, protection and empowerment. TO HIM BE THE GLORY FOREVER AND EVER!