Moving Into Covenant
I want to send a big “thank you” to all of you who took time out to participate in one of our Covenant Team’s small group listening circles. These groups were an opportunity for the team and I to get a snapshot of the congregation’s attitudes about and readiness for a covenanting process. In the next few months, you’ll be hearing even more from us as we move into the main phase of the process. In fact, mark your calendars now for Sunday, March 22nd, when we’ll hold a special worship service dedicated to gathering all of us together to create the foundation of what will be our new congregational covenant.
In our conversations, what we found is that the congregation has very healthy ideas about what covenant is and what it means to be accountable to one another. We also learned that there were some common concerns about what a congregational covenant might or might not do. A couple of big things we heard were concerns that a covenant would end up being a list of rules to follow, and that the process of making, breaking, and coming back to covenant might be too legalistic.
What I hope we don’t create by the end of this process is a list of “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots.” Instead, I view covenant as a container for our aspirations – a statement that names who we want to be in community and what our basic promises are to one another in choosing to be together in that community, giving us the space to become what we aspire to without stifling individual expression or creativity. Or, to put it another way, covenant is a “to be” list and not a “to do” list.
That being said, when covenant is broken, it is more about stepping over a boundary instead of breaking a law. The way back to covenant almost always begins with a gentle calling back into bounds. And, in a community where we aspire to beloved-ness and are building a space for trust, very often that calling in is enough. Living into covenant is like taking dancing lessons – there’s a rhythm to follow, some basic steps, and then room to improvise. Occasionally, we step on one another’s toes – mistakes are guaranteed – but we hopefully learn from the misstep, make and adjustment, and keep on dancing. And yes, sometimes the breaks in covenant are more serious. Sometimes people cause harm and refuse accountability. This is one reason why the congregation has policy around disruptive persons – and that can be a little more legalistic. But that’s a last resort and not a first step. First, we try to keep holding one another.
So, in the next several weeks, the covenant team and I are going to be asking all of you what we see as a few foundational questions, the answers to which will provide the beginning sketches of our covenant. I don’t want you to answer these questions just yet. I want you to hold onto them, and give them your deepest consideration. And I’ll start with a biggie:
What do I need in order to trust this community, these people, with my heart?
We’ll have a few others to ask over the next few weeks. Spend time with them. Let yourself be honest with them. And then, on Sunday March 22nd, join together with your community in worship as we share our answers and hear what others have to say.
What happens next? We’ll charge the Covenant Team with collecting these answers and the conversations around them and distill all of it into a draft covenant statement. Later in the spring, we’ll present a draft covenant to the congregation for comment and discussion. From there, our intent is to present a final covenant statement to be voted on by the congregation at our May meeting.
Once a covenant is in place, we’ll take on the continued work of creating avenues for keeping it at the forefront of our congregational life, for treating covenant as a living document, and for finding means for helping one another navigate when we inevitably step on each other’s toes.
I hope each and every one of you, as beloved members of our church community, will take part in the steps to come.
#
I’ll be taking a week of study leave beginning on Monday, February 9th, and will return to the office on Tuesday, February 17th. Study leave is a chance for me to catch up on reading, plan out my preaching for the spring, and organize my thoughts on the life of the congregation. I’ll be available for emergencies.