Our Church Covenant, pt. VI

Continuing in our series on our church covenant (find earlier blogs here and our actual covenant here), we press into 1. 3.7:

We also engage to maintain family and secret devotion; to religiously educate our children; to seek the salvation of our kindred and acquaintances;

While using older language, this covenant clause emphasizes three commitments:

1. Personal Worship (This used to be called ‘family worship’): Whether we are single, married or a child in a family, we should all take time—ideally daily—to hear from and speak to God in praise and prayer and the reading of Scripture. We should cultivate this as a normative pattern in our lives. We should do it as a family if we are more than one and even if we are part of a family, we should also do it privately.
2. Discipleship of Children: If you have children, then there is a spiritual responsibility to disciple them (Dt 6); to intentionally do spiritual good to them. (Even if they are grown, we can still seek this). If you, or you and your spouse, don’t have children, we can always seek to do spiritual good toward children generally. If you have children, the point here is not to offload this responsibility to others (e.g. a Christian school, the church); however, involved the Christian community should be. The point is that parents have a responsibility to teach their children the faith by instruction and example.  

*As an example of points 1 & 2: every morning I lead my son in reading from a children’s Bible and, at the moment, a Christian biography; every evening after story time, we read a child friendly Christian book and then the Bible. We pray together (petitions) as a family using a ‘prayer jar’ that contains many prayer requests
      3. General Evangelization: Not only should we seek the salvation of our children (or other                   children), but we ought also to fulfil the Great Commission generally. Our entire relational                  network is our mission field. Growing and making disciples should be our bread and butter.
​*A simple example of this is to find small ways to drop biblical truths or speak of God as Gospel opportunities in day-to-day communication and examples. We can of course be more forthright too.

It is right and good to attend public worship and support the evangelistic and discipleship activities of your church. However, this clause encourages us to be consistent in our own lives. When we regularly worship, disciple and evangelize personally, our minds will be fixed on Christ, His will and Word, resulting in personal transformation, humility and readiness to serve Him.