Not a Sermon - Just a Thought for January 26, 2007
In 1985 I was baptized into the family of Jonesboro Heights Baptist Church in Sanford, North Carolina. I remember lots about the church: The red carpet in the soaring sanctuary, the green paint in the basement fellowship hall, and the smell of Wednesday night potluck meals.
I had another memory, a fuzzy one, so I called my old church today to verify that, yes indeed, the church covenant hung on the wall in the sanctuary foyer. Hand painted letters on white wood, the full text of our promises greeted us each time we entered the sanctuary to worship.
The church’s covenant hung on the wall, but it lived in the people. The covenant came to life for me on camping trips with the RA’s. The covenant took on flesh as parents took turns as chaperones. I became a part of the covenant when I helped a widow by raking leaves with my youth group. The covenant shaped my calling when I got to preach my first sermon in that giant fortress of a pulpit at a Sunday night youth service in 1986. The covenant was birthed in me because other people were willing to make commitments, allowing Christ to shape and reshape their lives as they lived in community.
Today I serve as pastor of a covenantal church and I have a deeper understanding of my obligations to the community of faith than I did as a teenager. I appreciate my old church better in retrospect because I learned there that covenantal churches are able to:
- Build shelters from the storms of life,
- Build in us loyalties and allegiance to the Kingdom of God, and
- Build up their surroundings into better communities.
The gates of hell shall not prevail against a church where covenant keeping is the building block of faith and
I, for one, desire to live in such a community. How about you?
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