Compass Fellowship Baptist Church
Location: Morrisville, PA
Founding Date: 1909
Retiring Senior Pastor: Gary Taylor
After 35 years/5 months as Senior Pastor at Compass Fellowship Baptist Church (formerly First Baptist Church Morrisville), Rev. Dr. Gary Taylor has retired from the church in the summer of 2024.
Long time serving in one church!
Pastor Gary is among our longest tenured Pastors in the VCN Mid-Atlantic network. He continued a proud family pastoral ministry tradition following his father Horace Taylor, who for 33 years pastored Mt. Ephraim Baptist Church, also part of the VCN Mid-Atlantic network.
Over his long ministry in Morrisville, PA, Gary had a front-row seat in seeing this old riverside steel town change from a vibrant blue-collar middle class community to a struggling-to-reinvent-itself-town after the steel mills closed. So Gary adjusted. Together with his leadership team, they weathered the Covid quarantine. They changed the church name and branding to reflect a more inviting posture to the community. A number of years before the pandemic, they began a pre-school daycare, targeted for community engagement and benefit. Gary’s bride Lois served as director during most of its existence, and today the daycare is a busy and thriving beehive drawing people into the ministry of CFBC.
Somehow along the way, Gary served in the PA Army National Guard as a Chaplain, retiring with the rank of Colonel. But at home, his bride Lois still remains the commanding General.
Gary and Lois raised 5 children in Morrisville and experienced all the ups and downs of ministry stresses, challenges, and successes all families face in pastoral ministry. Through it all, Gary remained faithful in his calling, consistent in teaching the Word of God, and together with Lois, a model of perseverance as Jesus Followers.
Well done Gary & Lois!
Offered as part of VCNMA’s ministry initiative MERG