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What is a church covenant?

A covenant is an agreement that forms the basis of a relationship.

Throughout the Bible covenants are the spine that hold the Scriptures together. Covenant is how God relates to us by His grace.

As believer’s have been brought into a New Covenant (relationship) with God through belief and baptism in Jesus Christ (vertical covenant), so too believers covenant together to form a local church (horizontal covenant). We are the New Covenant community pictured in Acts. A church covenant is a voluntary promissory commitment by which believers unite together in membership to live together, by God’s grace, to fulfill God’s calling upon the local church and our Christian walk.

It is a basic thing, committing to walk in the elementary things of Christ.
It is solemn because to be part of Christ’s church is an awesome thing.
It is joyful because to serve Christ and one another is a wonderful thing.
It differentiates one local church from another local church.
It is counter-cultural as we value community and commitment in an individualist and non-committal world.
It is the structure that creates a place of belonging.

We read our covenant every time a new member(s) joins and also regularly in between such times to remind ourselves of what we commit to in Christ as Christians walking together.

All of this is why our covenant is headed with these words:

"Seeing as God deals with mankind through the New Covenant, we as members of this local church, having professed Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour and been baptized by immersion in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit into His body, solemnly and joyfully covenant together before God, angels and one another as one local body in Christ, with the following promises consistent with the Biblical teaching of a New Testament Gospel church."
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This blog series will explain the different elements of our church covenant block by block. 

A recent study in the UK has coined the phrase ‘quiet revival.’ Historically revivals—periods where the Holy Spirit has wrought great repentance and faith in Jesus— have seen 100s, 1000s, indeed whole communities and nations transformed for Christ. What the study observed in the UK was not such a revival, more quiet, yet a revival nevertheless. It observed that since 2018 church attendance has doubled, especially amongst youth. This is quite something in a country so impacted by secularism that, despite being twice the population of Canada, has had half the church attendance.
Yet this ‘quiet revival’ applies not only to the UK. Arguably it describes a phenomenon across the West, including right here in Canada. Culturally it may be linked to Covid or the wackiness of wokeness. Religiously it is a quiet movement of the Spirit of God. It does appear that the Lord is watering the root of His faithful remnant (Job 14:7–9).

This study helped give words to something we have been witnessing across Ontario amongst faithful churches. A church in Windsor that was 150 is now 300+. A church in Timmins was 75 and is now 150+. This past Passover (Easter) many churches experienced countless baptism, not 100s but in the 2s and 12s. Some of this growth represents seekers, brand new believers, sometimes migrating Christians from mainline churches or lapsed Christians. Closer to home in our own Association, the past few years have proven a similar trend. The church of 15/50/75/100/150/200 is now 30/100/150/300/400, etc. None of these churches have done anything ‘special’ apart from faithfully existing but the Lord has quietly been sending people to them.

We have experienced this here at MBC. Just prior to Covid we hadn’t had a recent baptism, had 26 members and about 40-50 people who regularly connected with us. Since then we’ve had 9 baptisms, 38 members (in spite of natural losses) and have well over 100+ people regularly worshipping and connecting with us. Measured financially, our budget has nearly doubled and we've invested surpluses in local and foreign missions. (Yet, there is still more to do. Higher numbers require more work. We long to see the sinners amongst us saved and baptized, saints join in membership and together to worship and serve the Lord. Then there is still the vastly unreached population in our community).

Yet, we would not boast in ourselves or our techniques. We haven’t done anything extraordinary, and most people have simply found us. One young man is an example. He attended our church out of the blue and simply felt prompted to Google ‘church near me.’ Our website came up since it is very active. All we have done is seek to be faithful to God’s commands for a church: gather regularly on the Lord’s Day (a.m./p.m.) in worship; preach the Word; pray; provide opportunities for discipleship; seek to make Christ known in our community; visit and care for each other; invest in our facilities, etc. (1 Cor 3:6).

We rejoice at what the Lord is doing—however quietly!

Would you join us in what He is doing?