8 Expectations of Covenant Members, Part Six

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 generously give of my income to the cause of the Kingdom, and will prioritize Restore as my local church body.

Jesus teaching radically transformed the way that people saw the religious teachings that they had grown up with. Several times in the Gospel accounts of his life, he would say something to the effect of, hat you thought was one way, I'm telling you is actually another way. More often than not, what he meant was that the laws and the rules given to the Israelite people were really just supposed to function as an indicator of something deeper or greater. So murder was off limits, but not because killing people was the problem. The real problem was that you hated your brother to begin with. You could avoid the symptom (murder), but still suffer from the fundamental defect: hate.

We believe that one of the radically transformative teachings of Jesus, and the New Testament as a whole, relates to the area of financial giving. In the Old Testament, certain percentages were mandated for the Israelites that they had to give of their income. In the New Testament, we see that the law really pointed towards a greater reality: giving was good, but generosity was the real issue. The giving that was mandated to Israel was really just a guide that served to expose their true heart. Some people felt guilty, some people felt self-righteous; some people did their duty gladly, others did it with begrudging submission. You could hit the percentage-giving-mark, and not have a generous heart; the opposite was also true: there were no doubt generous people who simply didn't have much to give.

The New Testament teaching is not that there is a strict percentage that ought to be used to gauge financial giving, but actually reveals what was true all along. Everything we have is to be given back to God. Everything we have, all of our financial resources, have been given to us by God for the good of his kingdom. This is what we mean when we talk about "stewardship"; a steward is someone who serves his master by taking care of his business while he is away. In our case, we take care of the Master's resources to conduct the Master's business while he is away.

Practically speaking, if a person is a believer, then there should be an increase in the generosity of their hearts that will work itself out tangibly through greater financial giving. It won't happen all at once, and in many cases, our generosity and financial giving is the last stronghold that the Gospel begins to untangle! We believe, though, that radical generosity was a distinguishing mark of the early church as they grew to understand the implications of the good news of Jesus on the entirety of their lives.

Covenant Members not only agree to be generous with their finances, but they also agree to prioritize the local church. Our belief is not that Restore, per se, should come first in our giving practice, but that the local church where we have committed should come first. There are hundreds and thousands of organizations that are doing incredible work that could use our money, and don't hesitate to ask. We want our members to be generous to them, too! But at the end of the day, it is the local church that is the hope of the world, and if the church is not healthy, whether spiritually or financially, then it cannot survive; if the local church doesn't survive, neither will most of those other organizations.

We have been blessed as individuals and as a corporate body because of the grace of Jesus Christ. When we pour out blessing on others through financial giving, that grace is clearly seen!

8 Expectations of Covenant Members, Part 5

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.

8 Expectations of Covenant Members, Part 4

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 prioritize gathering for worship with the corporate body of Restore.

Covenant membership is about "doing life together". It's more than just showing up in the same building together on a Sunday; it's about a commitment to live with one another, share one another's concerns, and gather around the teaching of the Bible that guides our lives. Yet it's in that normal, regular gathering of the church community that this counter-cultural approach to life is most clearly seen. In those regular gatherings, the church, made up of many different people from many different walks of life, gathers together around their common savior and the common Word. The author of Hebrews makes clear that we ought not to "give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing." The fact is that something is lost when the corporate gathering loses it's significance in the life of the believer or in the life of the church.

There are both practical and spiritual reasons for calling covenant members to commit to prioritize the worship gathering at Restore. The first reason that we believe Covenant Members should prioritize the weekly gathering is because we believe that it is an essential component of the Christian life. Or at least it should be.

Every week we make an attempt to go out into the world and live as Christ has called us to live, and every week, we fall short. Sometimes, we are doing our best and we feel persecuted in some fashion. Most times, we want to do our best but our sin, or our laziness, or our apathy, or negligence, prevents us from doing what we really want to do. We come into the weekly gathering, if we are honest, as people who are wounded, broken, and totally aware of our own shortcomings. David said it best when he said of God that he longed for him like a deer pants for water. That's how we ought to come into the weekly gathering. Like a parched deer on the brink of exhaustion, looking for the waters of life.

When Restore gathers together, it isn't out of spiritual obligation. It's out of spiritual necessity. We need to be reminded of the good news of Jesus, first and foremost, that Jesus chases us down and saves us precisely because we do fall short. His grace is what saves us and sets us free from feelings of failure or guilt or shame. We are not condemned. Instead, we are infused with fresh life. And this reminder is not just theoretical; it's not just the sermon we need. It's the tangible experience of being with our brothers and sisters who, like us, have fallen short too. And yet, in our common experience we love one another with an unconditional type of love; we see our family and say to one another, "I'm glad you're here, just as you are." The Christian life lived well is a life that is constantly in need of the reminders of grace.

But it's not just us that needs that reminder of grace. It's our neighbors, as well. And that's the second reason we require this commitment of Covenant Members.

When the corporate body is gathered together, there is life. When half of the body is gone, that life feels muted. Practically speaking, there is an obvious difference when the church is full verses when it is half-full.

More importantly, however, our dedication to gathering with the corporate body of believers, around the message of the Gospel, in love for one another, demonstrates the love and unity of Christ like no other event. Our neighbors don't just see "religious people"; they see people in need of God's grace, in love with Jesus, and united with one another. They see the body of Christ in action, gathering around our savior. Instead of thinking to themselves that the mark of the Christian is "religious devotion", the hope is that they'll see that the mark of the Christian is living in the freedom of the grace of God towards us in Jesus Christ. The difference between those two is astounding.

We aren't looking for spiritual juggernauts. We're looking for people who need Jesus, and need each other. That's why we prioritize gathering with the corporate body.

8 Expectations of Covenant Members, Part 3

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 study the Scripture and seek to live in alignment with how God calls me to live.

All communities must be built on a common understanding of what life in the community will look like. Even those people who would consider themselves cultural relativists believe that it is the agreed upon values of a particular culture or society that sets the social standard, and not individual belief systems or values. Part of being in a community is having a shared value system that dictates how members in the community behave.

At Restore, we believe that it is God who sets the standard for how we should live, a standard that he has revealed to us most clearly through the person of Jesus Christ. This standard has been revealed to us in the Bible. Not only does the Bible describe the standard for us, but all of the Bible, from first to last, is centered on Jesus as the complete fulfillment of God's standards and the one who enables us to live according to the standard as well. In other words, the Bible is the guide by which we can determine how we, individually and collectively, are called to live. Every Covenant Member agrees that if we want to know what God desires for us, we must turn to the Bible to find out.

Furthermore, every Covenant Member agrees that the goal of our fellowship is to help one another live in alignment with how God calls us to live. We use that word "alignment" very intentionally. Imagine that the tires on your car have come out of alignment. The car will still go relatively straight, but the tendency is to veer off the road in one direction or the other. That's sort of like the Christian life. Although we are empowered because of Jesus, and because of the Holy Spirit, to live according to the standards of God, we are still going to swerve off the proper path. The goal of Christian community is to redirect one another back to God's standards; it's to loving bring one another back into alignment with how God calls us to live.

This is key to our understanding of the good news of Jesus. We believe that the Christian person no longer lives under the condemnation of failure, or inability to meet the law. Instead, we live under the freedom of Jesus' perfect fulfillment, and his perfect grace towards us. The "law" of God is no longer "law" to us; instead it is the natural path that the free person walks when they understand the goodness of God. We believe that the Christian person is actually empowered to live according to this standard. When a believer does act contrary to that standard, we consider it more like coming out of alignment with how God has called us to live, rather than coming completely unhinged. To go back to the analogy I used earlier, it's more like your car's alignment than it is like a train coming off the tracks into disaster.

As a church, the common foundation of the Bible clarifies what we agree on, and what we can disagree on. What we can agree on, because we have already agreed to take the Bible seriously. What we can disagree on, because if we do take it seriously, we recognize that if the Bible is relatively silent on an issue, that typically means that we are free to choose what we think is in the best interest of the Kingdom or of our own spiritual growth. (This is described in more detail under "our beliefs". We call areas of agreement essentials and areas of disagreement non-essentials.)

This common understanding is also in part what gives the Elders any type of authority within the church. Covenant Membership is agreeing to unite under a particular church leadership; we ought to ask what that leadership believes about life and how God has called us to live. We agree that it is the Bible, and not our opinions, that set the standard for how we are called to live. Part of the elders calling is to take the Bible seriously and help us all apply it in the context of our daily lives. When we agree to unite under church leadership, we do so believing that the leadership is doing their best to accurately apply what the Bible actually says; they don't act on their own authority, but on the authority of what God has made clear.

The beauty of being a Christian in the 21st century is that God's revealed will in the Bible is available to nearly every person on the planet, and almost certainly available to everyone who is reading this. That means that even as we submit to local church leadership, we have access to the same word of God that they do; even though there is authority and submission, it is held in check by our common foundation of God's word, revealed to all.

8 Expectations of Covenant Members, Part Two

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 learn and practice the discipline of corporate and private prayer.

The church of God is a praying church.

As Restore has grown from an idea to a church plant to a stabilizing church, the recognition of our need to be a praying people has grown right along with it. Believing that prayer was important in theory gave way to believing prayer was important in practice; there have been and continue to be moments where all we have are our desperate prayers.

The fact that we do pray is an admission of our own need. It, in itself, is a repentant act. It's an act of coming before God and thanking him for his grace, appealing to him for his mercy, asking him for his power, looking towards him for direction, and any other number of things that we bring before him. It begins, however, when we understand that we are not only powerless to save ourselves, but are actually quite powerless to accomplish anything in this life. Proud people, or self-righteous people, don't pray. They may look like they are praying, but it is the type of prayer that goes unheard. Only the desperate man, fully aware of his lack of ability and great need for mercy, is the one who is heard and that God responds to.

The early church were a people of prayer because they recognized that great need almost immediately. When Jesus told them to wait for the Holy Spirit, they understood "waiting" to mean "praying with anticipation". Jesus had promised to send the Holy Spirit; now they just had to wait and pray in full confidence that he would do what he said he would do. Even upon the receipt of the promised gift, the church continued to pray with abandon. They were devoted to it. They knew that it was their lifeline to the power that God had promised; it was their connection with the master. They couldn't imagine the Christian life without prayer.

They prayed corporately and they prayed privately. They prayed for themselves and they prayed for each other. They prayed out of gratitude and out of fear; they prayed for the apostles release from prison and they prayed for boldness to speak the truth of the Gospel even when they knew it would get them arrested.

If Covenant Membership really is doing life together in such a way that we continue to grow in Christ-likeness and reflect the beauty and the glory of God, it is going to require that we pray for one another. The only way that transformation in our lives is possible, whether in a singular instance or over the long-haul, is if God does it. That's why we pray for ourselves, that's why we pray for the church, that's why we pray for the world. Not just in theory, but in practice. Not just belief, but anticipation: God really will do what he has promised to do.

8 Expectations of Covenant Members, Part One

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 be a Christ-follower before all else.

When a person agrees to become a covenant member of a church, there is, in one sense, a lot that they are agreeing to. Every church has a particular way of practicing church leadership, it has a particular strategy, a unique language, a certain way of doing the sacraments, the ministries are different and run differently, with different philosophies. This is the reason that we offer a Covenant Membership course at all. We think that joining a church as a covenant member ought to require that you are familiar with how that church functions, since how much you agree with or appreciate those things will likely dictate how much you enjoy the fellowship in that community and willingly and joyfully support the leadership. In that sense, joining any particular local church requires more than joining the universal church of Jesus Christ–but it never requires less.

We emphasis that if you have put your full confidence in Jesus Christ, then you are a member of Christ's body, the church. This is the most important membership any of us can have. It, too, is a covenant membership, but it is one that is totally and perfectly fulfilled because it is written and sealed by Jesus himself. His blood, poured out on the cross, drafted the new covenant and declared it complete and unbreakable. This is the good news: because of Jesus, we are made totally righteous in front of our Father God, and as a result, we can live free from condemnation, eternally reconciled to Him. If we believe that, we are a part of the God's family not as a result of what we have done, but because God, in his infinite, one-way love for rebels like us, chased us down and adopted us into his family. The enormous group of people who have believed this throughout humanity–that God, in his mercy, would make a way–make up what the Bible calls the "great cloud of witnesses". All believers, past, present, and future will be a part of this great body, and their status is irrevocable, so Paul states with confidence in the book of Romans. Nothing can separate us from the love of God.

This commitment that we will be Christ-followers then is more than just a statement we make so that we can check off the list. Everything that we do as a church is based on the reality of that commitment. Restore is a local expression of the universal church of Jesus Christ–just one expression, but an expression nevertheless–and so membership at Restore can nly follow membership of Christ's church universal. If we affirm and put our confidence in Jesus, the rest of the commitments that we make with one another will naturally follow, and where they don't, we have committed to one another to gently exhort each other on to the Christ-following that we claimed as part of expectation number one.

Being a follower of Christ before all else means not only that we affirm our status in the universal church of God because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but also that we consider it to be the most important thing about us. Many of the covenant expectations are built on that premise; the commitment to worship with the body unless our location or sickness precludes it, for example. The reason we worship with the body is because our identity in Christ is the most important thing about us, thus, our life revolves around our commitment to Christ, first, and his body, second. 

At the end of the Covenant Membership process, there is an interview with the Elders, and although we seek feedback on all of the covenant expectations, it is this ultimately only this one that we seek to affirm. The affirmation that a person truly is a Christian is essential. First, because as was already stated the local church is always part of the universal church of Jesus Christ, not the other way around. Second, because it is only in this context that a genuine covenant relationship with other Christians can even work. We know that we are unable to do it on our own power; a Christ-follower, however, is empowered by the Holy Spirit. Third, because it is only if a person is truly a Christ-follower that the work of the Elders will have any meaning in that persons life. The Elders of a church have been given a charge to oversee the people that Jesus himself has placed under their care; a Christ-follower will submit to that oversight with joy and not begrudgingly.

The Christian life is a journey, and one that will have slip-ups, failures, successes, good times, and difficult times. Our commitment to a body of believers allows us to proceed on that journey together, with the encouragement and sometimes the loving words of correction that we truly need. A Christ-follower will not only show demonstrable growth resulting in an increasing love towards others, but they will also show genuine repentance in their own life; the gentle rebuke and exhortation of a fellow member, or an Elder, will be likely to bring them back in alignment with how God has called us to live.

Covenant membership is a promise between Christ-followers that we will protect one another, as much as we are able, so that like Paul, we can say that our goal was to present one another as a spotless bride to our savior, Jesus.