I would like to thank SBCToday for allowing me to guest blog on the topic of Church Covenants. I miss the daily interaction and fellowship with these guys so allowing me to post is a tremendous blessing. The piece below is actually part of an article I will include in a church newsletter. Whether you agree or disagree, I hope that you all are in some way blessed after reading it.
What is a church covenant? A church covenant is a commitment to God among fellow brothers and sisters as to how they will conduct themselves under the Lordship of Christ in their mutual relationship as fellow members of a New Testament church. Baptist churches have used covenants since their beginning. As one Baptist historian stated, “[Baptists] have written and used hundreds and perhaps thousands of church covenants” (Charles Deweese). But why were church covenants used by our Baptist forefathers and are seldom used today?
Early Baptists believed that the New Testament church consisted of regenerate (born again), baptized believers doing the work of the Great Commission (Matt 28:16-20; Acts 1:8). Yet they also understood the possibility and danger of allowing those who were not truly saved entering the church or allowing members to sin willfully and break their own covenant of Christ’s Lordship over their life. The church covenant, being biblically derived, was to safeguard a regenerate church membership living under the Lordship of Christ. Since Baptists are people of the book, they found their biblical underpinnings in both the Old and New Testaments. In the book of Nehemiah, the people of God made a covenant with God by declaring in writing their allegiance to Him and how they would live out that allegiance in their daily lives (Neh 9-10). In Matt 18:19, the idea of covenant is given in the Greek verb “suphoneo” (agree). This is an agreement “derived after negotiations” or “resulting from negotiations.” The context of the passage is church discipline and relates to the idea of helping a fellow believer who has sinned to be restored to the community of faith. When church members “agree” on how one should live among the community of believers, they make their agreement binding on each other under the Lordship of Christ. When one falls into sin, it is the responsibility of the church to help her fellow believer realize their sin and restore their relationship with Jesus and thereby the covenant community. A covenant helps clarify the parameters of how one relates to the church and how a believer should should progress in their walk with Christ. One final example is from the book of Hebrews. The writer speaks of God’s New Covenant of forgiveness through His Son Jesus in Heb 8:1-10:18. He then writes that because of our forgiveness in Christ, a believer should “hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering” and to “consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds” while “not forsaking our own assembling together” for the purpose of keeping ourselves from, “sinning willfully.” (10:23-26). Baptist covenants have been one way to “consider” helping the church to accomplish these biblical mandates. (I have heavily relied upon Dr. Jason K. Lee’s essay in Restoring Integrity in Baptist Churches for the Hebrews passage.)
But why has Church covenants fallen out of fashion? I believe there are two reasons. First, Baptists in the last century elevated the status of the individual believer over and above the church. In other words, the belief that a person has the God given right to believe anything they want has been used to supersede the church and impose the beliefs of the one or few upon the whole church body, thereby negating the Lordship of Christ over the church. The church has had to accommodate the beliefs of others that were contrary to the doctrines and practices of the church. Second, with the rapid growth of churches and the birth of the modern “mega-church,” in many instances numbers became the priority rather than the holiness of the body. Church covenants, when upheld, could possibly exclude people and decrease the numbers on the church role or people in attendance. Thereby church covenants were deemed an obstacle to accomplishing the main priority of increased church role numbers and attendance. The results oriented mindset of the church failed to realize the long term blessings that accompanied a covenant community.
Despite the negative feelings of the recent past towards church covenants, I believe they still are profitable in two ways in helping a church renew their vitality. First, if biblically based, they educate the body on how one should act in the community of saints. This can aid the church and her members from lapsing into serious sin and help her stay focused on the Great Commission. New members would fully understand the beliefs and expectations of the local church body. This could also lead to a decreased number of people leaving the church because they did not fully know the beliefs of the church when they joined. Second, they can benefit the local body in explaining what the church believes and possibly attract like-minded believers to join the church in witnessing to her community. While this “attraction” would be a benefit, it would not be the goal as such.
Church covenants can be a great tool to lead, educate, and edify the local body of Christ. While I do not believe it is THE issue that has led to our deficiency in vibrant healthy churches witnessing in our communities, a sincere commitment to a church covenant could be a key in bringing the revival necessary for a Great Commission Resurgence to happen on the local level.
I don’t know about your church, Robin, but at FBC Pelham, I find nobody has ever even studied the Baptist Faith & Message, to find a starting point as to what we believe. So what they’re affirming is mostly whatever it took to get in the door.
Baptists “believe” a whole lot of good things, and it’s a shame most of us don’t have a clue what they are. And it seems OK with everybody.
That, I don’t get. How can we be Baptists by conviction, if we don’t know what they are?
We have a church covenant somewhere, printed on a board. I haven’t seen it in maybe 20 years.
Brother Bob,
Do you realize that your response is like saying, Our country has a constitution somewhere up in Washington,I have never seen it so it really doesn’t matter? Regardless of whether someone has read it or not, there is a covenant that we as SB have said; ‘This is what we believe.’ The problem is that we have allowed people to buy into the false belief; ‘I am Baptist and that means no one can tell me what to believe’. The problems we have in the convention today is not a problem of understanding it is a problem of convictions. We have profs today signing the documents of their entities along with denominational leaders employed by entities with documents they signed, saying; ‘I do not beleieve in this but to be employed here, I will sign it and abide by it as best as I can.’ That is a secular mindset of employment and service on boards of trustees. We should advocate conviction over convenience.
Blessings,
Tim
Robin,
Good article on Church Covenants. I agree they are still valid and beneficial today.
I recently wrote on Church Covenants and our church has two statements that help define us: the Baptist Faith & Message 2000, and the Church Covenant. We use, and I still like, the old 1853 Church Covenant that has been slightly revised (available at Broadman Church Supplies, bhpublishinggroup.com). We inserted it inside the front cover of our 2008 Baptist Hymnals and we print it a couple of times a year in our church bulletin.
If nothing else, a Church Covenant can educate people and point them in the right direction.
David R. Brumbelow
Tim
I understand what you are trying to convey with this statement, ” The problem is that we have allowed people to buy into the false belief; ‘I am Baptist and that means no one can tell me what to believe’.”
Allow me to modify that thought a bit. I do believe people are given freedom of will to believe as they choose. We will stand before God one day and give an accounting. But that freedom to believe what we want to believe does not extend to dictating to another group to accept that belief if it is contrary to what that group has stated as their beliefs. The one does not override the many. Both the individual and the group is free to believe as they choose and can even debate and try to persuade the other to their own belief, but ultimately there comes a time when they must agree to disagree and if necessary, part ways.
“First, Baptists in the last century elevated the status of the individual believer over and above the church. In other words, the belief that a person has the God given right to believe anything they want has been used to supersede the church and impose the beliefs of the one or few upon the whole church body, thereby negating the Lordship of Christ over the church.”
Interesting. Can you document this claim, or is it just your opinion?
JND
Well, its not just my opinion, several have noted the shift from Biblical supremacy in the local church to elevating the primacy of ones individual experience. One person, noted historian and Baptist theologian R. Stanton Norman, wrote an essay concerning the theological perspective of Baptist Identity in David Dockery’s book “Southern Baptist Identity.” In it, Norman states, “Mullins elevated religious experience to an authoritative role that had previously been reserved in these writings on the Bible. This is not to say that issues of religious experience did not exist as a theological component within this distinctive genre; it certainly did. Mullins rather elevated this trait to a prominent role of religious authority, thereby infusing into the distinctive theological process a new, ‘interpretive’ distinctive.” Later he gives a contemporary example, “[Walter B.] Shurden asserts that the notion of the individual freedom is the ‘stackpole around which Baptist convictions develop.’
It is here that the locus of distinctives moved from a corporate confession, that was biblically derived, to the individual experience of the believer.
Hope this helps
I am planning to preach on this topic in the next month besides the resources listed do you have any other you would suggest on this topic. You can email me off list if you so desire. pastorjeffthomas@gmail.com
Jeff
Are you talking about the church being a covenant community of believers or about how the status of individual experience rose above that of the church?
If Church Covenants, to get you started in addition to what I have mentioned, I recommend Malcolm Yarnell, “Formation of Christian Doctrine” (pp 196-203), Charles Deweese, “Baptist Church Covenants,” and John Hammett, “Biblical Foundations for Baptist Churches.”
I pray your church is blessed with your study.
Sorry for the confusion. Covenant community of believers is what I meant. I have Dr. Yarnell’s book. I’ll need to get the other two. I also think Mark Dever’s book Polity might be a good read on this matter.
Jeff
Good catch. Dever does have some excellent material not only in “Polity,” but also in his “Nine Marks of a Healthy Church” and “Twelve Challenges Churches Face.”
Robin Foster,
I hate to hijack your post, but obviously the news of your early death was wrong.
You seem to be alive and well. The question now is; Where have you been so long? I had already thrown a shotgun shell off the Coosa River Bridge in honor of your memory.
CB
I’ve had to do some recon work in Oklahoma, so I have been under the radar. I have come out for a debriefing for a short period, but will go back into hiding for a little time to get more “intelligence” for the victory drive to a biblical ecclesiology for blogville. ;-)
Robin
Robin,
“That which you do, do quickly.” For such is greatly needed around here and other places. :-)
Robin,
Again, interesting. I’ll take a look at Norman’s essay. Thanks for the info and for opportunity to comment.
JND
JND
Thanks. I might also point you to Greg Wills chapter in that book dealing with a Southern Baptist Historical Perspective. There are some other articles in “Restoring Integrity in Baptist Churches” by White, Duesing, and Yarnell. Finally, James Leo Garrett’s tome, “Baptist Theology: A Four Century Study” details E.Y. Mullins reinterpretation of Baptist distinctives by means of personal Christian experience. Mullins theology had a great influence on the convention.