Description
Andrew Morrell is a beloved child of God, a husband and father shaped by love, loss, and grace. He loves learning history, fishing with friends, cooking good food, traveling, laughter, motorcycle rides with his wife, watching children mature, reading Scripture, journaling, and sitting in silence to be with God. These ordinary joys shape his vision of gospel, Sabbath identity, grace, hope, and resistance to oppression for life under the sun.
In 2016, Andrew planted REAL Community Covenant Church (Evangelical Covenant Church) in his hometown of Marion, Indiana—a multiethnic, multi-class congregation in the center of a historically disinvested neighborhood shaped by white flight. That year, the church purchased a 34,000-square-foot building for ten dollars and began stewarding it as a Kingdom asset for neighborhood flourishing. After attending a CCDA Conference, REAL deepened its commitment to holistic community development and in 2020 launched the I Have A Dream Preschool Academy, a Spanish language immersion preschool ministry. The church shares its facility with mission-aligned partners including the Family Resource Center through Firefly Alliance, Adult Education programs through Marion Regional Career Center, Circles of Grant County, and Arca de Salvación, a Latino church plant. In 2023, REAL collaborated with Hope House Recovery Homes, College Wesleyan Church, and the Grant County Community Foundation to establish the Bowman Stone Park, named after two Black women (Joan Bowman & Norma Stone) who were pillars in the Center City Neighborhood. The church also leads worship in the county jail, launched a wood shop ministry, and is developing a youth-focused t-shirt printing social enterprise to cultivate skills, dignity, and sustainable ministry income. In 2024, REAL received a Lilly Endowment grant to begin Parenting Ambassadors of Reconciliation, equipping families to disciple children in age appropriate conversations about race, class, and the Kingdom of God.
Andrew’s passion for reconciliation is personal. He descends from the Pettiford and Weaver families—free Black pioneers from Greensboro, North Carolina who migrated to Indiana in the 1840s, established a thriving Free Black settlement, and were instrumental participants in the Underground Railroad through Hills Chapel AME Church alongside Quakers and Wesleyans. Their legacy of faith and cooperative justice continues to shape his work today.
