Family Covenant

On Saturday night a very special event took place in the life of our community. We Covenanted, and we celebrated this commitment to one another with a meal of celebration. It was an awesome time. We have been looking at the issue of Covenanting for some time now as a network. I know the word "covenanting" freaks a lot of people out, but we are not really stuck on the word as much as we are the heart of it. So what is covenanting and why do we feel it to be important?

Our good friend, Dick Scoggins explains it really well, I have pasted a section on this topic from one of his church planting manuals below.

"Today, in Western culture, baptism is seldom understood as having a horizontal component (new relationships within the Christian community). Baptism is rather seen as symbolic of a personal decision with only a vertical component (of the individual following Jesus). In churches where it has lost its horizontal component (commitment to God's people), it no longer defines meaningful membership in the church. There are many people who have been baptized who are not members of any local assembly, nor do they understand why they ought to be. Perhaps some differences in our modern society contribute to this.

In the first century the community to which a person belonged (a guild, mystery religion, church, etc.) was the social/welfare network for that person and his family. Today, this role is taken by the government. Thus a person does not depend upon an intimate community in time of need. We have tried in times past to teach the horizontal component of baptism and thus utilize it as the vehicle for defining community, but without success in our Western culture. The Christian culture in America is so influenced by the "individual commitment" understanding of Baptism, that the horizontal component remains hidden for many.

So if Baptism is not a good vehicle for defining membership in an assembly in our culture, what is? We will explore three other vehicles which have been used historically in defining membership in an assembly: a covenant, a constitution, and articles of faith. We believe a covenant is the most suitable vehicle in our culture for defining membership in the church. A covenant places the emphasis on the church as an organism of living relationships rather than an institutional organization. This is the obvious emphasis of the book of Acts and the epistles; the New Testament church was a body of believers identified by their deep intimate inter-personal relationships (which neither came nor were maintained with ease). The relationships that believers enjoyed was based solely on the relationship that each one shared with Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit. The relational responsibility among believers is exemplified by Jesus' relationship with his disciples (Cf. John 13, 17), and is defined in the many "one another" verses in the New Testament, as well as in passages such as I Cor 12, Galatians 5f, Colossians 3, Ephesians 4-6.

The relationship believers have with God is a formal covenantal relationship. God has always worked with his people through covenants, and his people are often expected to respond to God's covenantal love by entering into covenant with one another (See "Covenanting Together", Appendix 12). In our culture, the marriage covenant serves as an example of a covenant which defines a relationship. A marriage covenant establishes the expectations that a husband and wife have in the marriage relationship.

A church covenant can be an excellent way to define the expectations which believers ought to have with one another in a particular assembly, and should be based on God's commands regulating relationships among believers. Thus, a church covenant identifies the expectations of the members of the community which we call the church. It establishes the fact that to become a part of the church a believer enters into a RELATIONSHIP with the other believers in the assembly. It sets the parameters of the relationship. In our independent thinking culture, it also serves to bind those who would leave the covenant community for spurious reasons, which short-circuit God's plan for sanctification both for the church and the individual. Since the reformation, covenants have often been used to define the membership of churches, especially by anabaptists."