We view Covenant Membership as a commitment between Christians to care for one another, do life together, and unite under a particular church leadership. In our Covenant Membership course, we spend one whole session considering 8 expectations that we have for our members. This is part one in an eight part series that will look at each of these expectations individually. Click here for more information on what we believe about Covenant Membership.
I will seek out and maintain Christian fellowship and be intentional about living my life with other believers in such a way that I will be further shaped into the likeness of Christ.
It's worth returning to the point we've been making: covenant membership is about "doing life together". It's about getting into the nitty-gritty of one another's lives. It's about loving one another for who we really are, in the circumstances we really are in. It's in that context that each of us begins to be shaped and molded more and more into the likeness of Christ.
One of our values is "Community", and the subtext to the value states that it is in community with others that we become like Christ. There are two reasons that occurs in community. First, because in Christian community you learn to love others despite differences and flaws. You learn about the grace of Jesus as you give it to others. It works the other way, as well. The second reason you lean to be like Christ is because you begin to feel the love of unconditional people towards you, despite your flaws. A continual change towards Christ-likeness occurs in community; but it only occurs in communities when change is not absolutely necessary. It occurs when the people around you love you right where you are at, exactly how you are.
That's why every Covenant Member at Restore commits to making sure that they are in intentional Christian community with other Christians. That is, they ought to have relationships with other Christian people who they are doing life with, apart from just showing up together at the same church on Sundays.
The program that we use to help accomplish this is lifegroups. Lifegroups are our "life groups". They were created to put people together and help foster this type of deep, real-life interaction, but a covenant member doesn't absolutely have to be in one in order to have these types of relationships. Some of the best lifegroups are the ones that weren't planned!
Life is filled with ups and downs, tragedies, heart ache, joys, and sorrows. There's one thing that we know, however. Life really is better together. In fact, not only is it better together, but it's what we were created for. We were created to do life together. Covenant Members at Restore commit to ensuring that it is really happening in their daily life.