covenant
September is covenant season! Join us every Sunday night this September to engage in the Path to Covenant. October 3, 2010 will be our Covenant Celebration.
Click here to view the sermon series.
what does covenant mean?
Covenant is a biblical concept. In the Ancient Near East, it was a binding agreement in which covenant members had certain obligations and could expect certain benefits in return. What made a covenant different from a simple binding agreement is that covenant implied meaningful relationship: God covenanted with Noah, with Abram, with the people of Israel at Mt. Sinai, and eventually brought about a new covenant available to all through Jesus. In the scriptures, covenant meant an agreement that lasted for life—in the Gathering Network we are attempting to use this meaningful term while recognizing that membership of a local church is often not for life. The Gathering Network will have an annual renewal process in Covenant Membership.
What’s the difference between covenant and membership?
The Old Testament refers to covenant often. Covenant is the Gathering Network’s understanding of "membership." Who is the covenant between—me and God or me and the Gathering Network? Both. As one people, we covenant with God. As a local expression of God’s church, we covenant together with each other. This means we covenant with each other and with God.
Why should someone covenant with the Gathering Network?
The ultimate question here is, “Why should someone be part of a church?” Committing your life to Jesus, to others in community, and to bringing the healing of Jesus to the world is what it means to be church. Formally participating in covenant is a way of declaring that this commitment to Jesus and his church is a serious reality in your life.
How can I become a Covenant Member?
Although you can covenant with the Gathering Network at any time throughout the year, *covenant season takes place annually in early fall; this is a time of focused reflection on what it means to embody our shared values [the 3 loves and the 4 commitments] as a community. At this time, existing covenant members are invited to re-affirm covenant, and others are invited to affirm covenant for the first time.
*Covenant Season: for 2010 August 29 was our first Sunday in the path to covenant ... culminating October 3 in our covenant celebration.
Anyone is invited into covenant with the Gathering Network through the following procedure:
- Prayerfully consider what you are signing and prayerfully interact with others who are already in covenant with the Gathering Network
- Personally commit to embodying our shared values [the 3 loves and the 4 commitments]
- The night of October 3 we will sign covenants as a community at the Annual Covenant Celebration. However, any time of the year you may download the covenant and submit it to Amy Guerreri via e-mail.
What is the role of a person in covenant? How can I live that out?
A Covenant Member agrees to both adopt and embody our shared values and practices [the 3 loves and the 4 commitments].
3 loves
Love God: ...with generous devotion. We agree to spend generous amounts of time daily with God in personal worship, study, and prayer.
Love each other: We agree to honor one another in word and deed as we intentionally teach one another to follow Jesus.
Love the world: We agree to each share Jesus generously and always, and we agree that obedience to the commands of Jesus provoke change in the world.
4 commitments
Serve: We agree to serve each other and those outside our community through missional communities. We agree to disciple each other in 2’s and 3’s, and we agree to attend and serve in the Sunday night celebration service.
Grow: We agree to grow in personal holiness, and will desire to become a more whole person emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
Give: We agree to give at least 10% of our annual income as a tithe to the Gathering Network, and we anticipate giving above and beyond to other benevolent needs and ministries.
Live [an evangelistic lifestyle]: We agree to live an evangelistic lifestyle in every venue of our lives: work or play.
*We are grateful to Mars Hill Community Church for the influence of the Covenant Membership theory. The Covenant language on this page was adapted from a form called Membership FAQs found at www.marshill.org.